So i decided last year to make a water cooling set up in my sig rig after the disappointment of a Corsair H80 which wasn't any better than my Coolermaster hyper 212 and just made more noise. Now this was my first project and looking back there are a few things I would have done differently if I were to do it again, that said, I will take that lesson into my next build. Below is how the PC looked before any modding: I trawled through guides on the forums etc and eventually came up with a shopping list of parts including the following XSPC Raystorm CPU block - This was to be modded with red LEDS to replace the blues standard ones Alphacool UT60 240mm Reservoir EK ddc 140 CSQ Reservoir and Laing DDC PWM 3.2 pump combo Primochill Advanced Clear Tubing Monsoon "Mod My Toys" Compression Fittings Blood Red Coolant The biggest hurdle i had first was figuring a way to fit the rad into the Antec 902, its a decent sized case but that rad is pretty big. I was looking over the internet for ideas and was working stuff out when I seen some ideas on a similar Mod, i decided to use some of those ideas for my own mod. I liked the blue fan on black look of the standard 902 so I opted initially for some Coolermaster Sickleflow 120mm fans to replace all the Antec case fans, 2 of which would eventually become my Rad Fans. I also like the red glow i get from the Soundblaster Z so I figured i would go for a red and blue theme inside the case. So as I stated the first thing was to fit the radiator, so as soon as I got it I flushed it with boiling distilled water to get all the debris out of it, I was fairly surprised how clean it was but I did get some out. I also decided at this point I wanted to sort the cables out, no point having all the mess visible, so I cut a circular hole next to the psu allowing all the psu cables go around the otherside of the case (burnt my drill slightly doing this :embarrase) Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures at this stage, I didn't think of a build log until people mentioned I should take some pictures, by this time the rad was already fitted. So the next thing was to get myself a Dremel and cut some ****! This was harder than I expected, i'm a trained sheet metalist and I thought the Dremel would make light work of the metal, unfortunately the side panel cut wasn't as clean as I would have liked so I would sort this later which involve taking the perspex panel off again and tidying the cut up: Once the panel was cut out and the Perspex panel applied I needed to cut the section out where the HDD cages used to be. The HDD was relocated to the side when the Rad was fitted and the SSD was located to the floor (initially) in front of the PSU. After the clean up, I refitted everything and waited on the Reservoir to arrive. I had also found a replacement modular wiring kit for Corsair HX series psu's with pre-braided wires so I grabbed one of those aswell. Unfortunately when it arrived all the modular fittings were incorrect for my PSU, so this is something else I needed to look at changing cause those PCI-E connectors look horrible. Luckily the 24 pin motherboard kit still worked and that is a massive improvement over the multicoloured **** that's attached. Once that was here I could get an idea of hose sizing and the best location for the res, I figured its quite nice, and I wanted the blood red to stand out so I decided to mount it right in front of the window: Once this was fitted I noticed the outlet hose to the block was going to be tight over the PSU so on my next order for the Block, 60cm strip of white LEDs and red leds for the Block, I also added 2x 45 degree rotating fittings. That all arrived a few days later and I got to work: First things I needed to get the block and hoses on and do some leak checks, btw I totally didn't leave the plastic on the block and not need to remove the block again ..... After a few hours leak testing, not a drop (plastic still fitted :embarrase) I decided id throw the other pieces in and keep an eye on things for a while making sure there's still no leaks and carry on bleeding it: After a while I was happy there was no leaks and got it all wrapped up, the last problem I had was light scratching in my perspex which showed up with the white LEDs Standard Clocks at this time Idle 27C Load 33.5C but that's only gaming
I had a think about the braided wiring pack I bought from corsair for my PSU. I decided I could unpin all the new cables and use the modular socket connectors from my original wires on the new braided ones. All went well until my pc wouldn't boot lol, traced it down to the SATA connectors. For some reason the wiring to the plug on the braided and originals were different so I had to find the correct voltage paths and wiring diagrams for both the psu modular sockets and for the SATA connectors. Managed that and thought all would be good, except I was trying to run my 280x on 2x 6 pin PCI-connectors as the modular connectors only have 6 pins. Had to make a new cable up for the 2x2 ground wires for the GPU, but alas after a little messing around, all is good! The next thing I wanted to do was to add the GPU (280X Sapphire Vapor X edition at this time) into the loop, which caused issues in its self as locating a water block was problematic. I then sorted the side panel out and added black edging the cuts I had made, finding it locally was a pain in the arse, and I ended up using some that's used on motorbike windscreens! Ive ordered a XSPC Razor 7970 for my card, apparently my 280 vapor x is same pcb as 7970 ghz vapor x. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-189-XS&groupid=962&catid=1520&subcat=2327 So I then went ahead and added the GPU to the loop, average load temps on this before I fitted the block were 67C+ on anything really intensive, had it hit 76C whilst mining. As I said previously finding a block for the card wasn't easy, the only one close was the XSPC 7970 which required some modding to make it fit as my card is a vapor - x (non reference): The areas of concern been the 2x caps and the sapphire bios switch. Turns out the capacitors weren't a problem, however the Bios Switch required the area you can see to be cut from the block. I didn't really want the XSPC to be honest, but I couldn't be sure if other water blocks could be modded. So the finished things: Temps now at around 44C under load, although it has pushed CPU temps up by around 5C to around 37C, but I thought I could live with that!. I then ordered another pair of red LEDS to replace the blue glow on the block. I had one minor issue, the VRMS under Furmar were hitting 105C, I had read 120C max for those so stopped it there after around 5 mins. I was aware that I would have to sacrifice VRM cooling with this set up, but that was pretty HOT. I sorted this by placing spacers between the waterblock and full cover, allowing much more airflow to the VRMS, which dropped their temps at around 40C. Time passed fast and it was soon time to flush the rig and at this point I decided to do 2 things. One being to add a drain line, massive oversight on my initial plan (my first modded build + water cooling) and at the same time I wanted to swap from blood red to pastel red. I flushed the system and added the line and changed the coolant: So after a little while (and the fact the wife had nothing to buy me for christmas) i decided to swap out the motherboard, processor and gpu. The I7 3770k is still a good processor, but some muppet (me) damaged the memory controller when de-lidding it meaning it only runs in single channel, not much of a performance hit tbh, bit annoying non the less. I also wanted a motherboard that matched the colour scheme i had set out, so i decided to opt for the following: CPU - I7 4790k mobo - Asus Genie II Ranger http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-611-AS and finally i wanted to swap out the Sapphire Vapor X 280x for an EVGA 970GTX SC ACX 2.0. I was hovering over the 980 GTX i really tried to justify in my mind, but bottled it ! After 3 hours searching i finally found a full cover vga that would fit the EVGA card which was from alphacool: http://www.alphacool.com/product_in...language=en&XTCsid=llsplh88e2tc7oqmje7i6vfnk7 Not the best looking block, but literally the only one that will fit the evga at that time. To finish it off, i would also require some 90 degree adapters for the monsoons as the in/out configuration on the alphacool was slightly different to the XSPC 7970 block and with this crammed into a 902 case, i wouldnt have the clearance to fit the tubes. I went for dark chrome finish XSPC angles : http://www.xs-pc.com/hose-fittings/g14-90-rotary-fitting-black-chrome Whilst I was doing this I decided I would ditch the traditional blue of the Antec 902 and swap all the fans to red (making the build looks less "Police car"), at the same time, making the front of the build a little less "obvious". and add the ridiculously fast Samsung XP941 and PCIE adapter and another 8gb of Gkill Ripjaw X: http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/ROG_Front_Base/ Just waiting on a reply from Antec to grab a replacement drivebay cover, mine have vanished .... When I switched out the Blue LED Sickleflows to the Aerocool Sharkfin red led fans I noticed the load temps creeping up towards 60C as I was using the 7V silence line to keep fan noise down. I decided to reconfigure the radiator from Push to "Push - Pull" using the Red LED Aerocools as Pull and using the 120mm fans that were fitted to my Corsair H80 as Push. This dropped the temps by like 15C at load, made it a little quitter and allowing a more stealthier appearance from the front as the Asus Front Base can be switched off, however on looking at the side things aren't quite so stealthy: I also switched out the 200mm standard Blue Antec Bigboy to carry on the red and black theme: Some internal pics: Some nice SSD speeds =) Just waiting on new drive bay grills to arrive from Antec before starting my next build (a proper planned one this time)
The mod is now complete. Im gonna be reseting all the fans to blue (original Antec Big boy and sickleflow 120mm for the radiator. Prob going to be selling it with aerocool touchscreen fan controller : http://www.aerocool.us/peripheral/v12xt.htm Also received the Drive cover from antec and had a clean up, also removed the "chav" stickers Also leaving the radiator installed without fittings etc, any ideas how much it may be worth ?
