Cooling Finally got my h2o setup up ****UPDATED - NEW PICS***** (56k beware)

I finally got my first water setup up and running, I'm sitting here on a hot evening with a CPU temp of 37 degrees. A definate improvement on the 48 degrees I was getting on air. Here's what I have:

Blackice Prime rad
OCPC Neptune waterblock
EHEIM 1046 pump.

It's a close-looped system fully contained within a mid-tower AVGS Cyber-fusion case.
I'm fairly happy with my temps, but will they get better as the Arctic Silver 3 does it's phase change thing?
No pics at the moment I'm afraid, I don't have a digi-cam. Hopefully I can borrow one this weekend.

Here's a pic of my case pre-watercooling anyway:

 

Thanks for that post. It is roughly the same spec as I am planning and I was wondering how it would perform...

Arctic Silver 3 should reach optimum perfomance after a 3 day cure. It should not do its weird decompensation thing (where it turns liquid again and starts to ooze down the die) as watercooling does not subject the block/CPU assembly to vibrations like some aircooled arrays do.

So, Neptune block good?

 

This being my first watercooling setup I have nothing to compare the neptune to, but I've been running for a few hours now and the temp is hovering around the 37/38 degree mark, so it seems pretty good to me. It also looks damn good!

 

You've managed to mod a very difficult case in order to water-cool. The air ducts have come out well and look really nice, bet they weren't that easy to mod. I look forward to seeing the close ups, this already looks a tasty project, welldone.

Keep us posted

 

If you know the the Cyber-Fusion case you'll know that the space at the bottom of the case where my intakes are was originally a hidden 5.25" drive bay with a sliding door. I modifed this into a dual 80mm intake. It wasn't that hard to do actually. The Blackice prime now sits behind those intakes, with a 120mm sunon on the back of it. In order to get all the h20 kit in, I've lost all my internal drive bays, and one floppy bay. I now have no floppy drive, one HD in the 1 remaining floppy bay, and another HD in one of the three 5.25" bays with an adapter. With my writer and DVD drive in there I don't have any space whatsoever now. Still, that's what comes with having a self-contained water system in a mid tower case

Hopefully I'll get some close-up pics posted over the weekend, if I can manage to borrow a digi-cam.

 

You must have wanted to go water-cooling real bad to loose a lot of bays in order to do it. The ducts, look "frenched" like custom car lights. I think thats the right saying. I keep saying about mine but if its half as good as yours I will be pleased. :dude:

Be proud I would be

 

Yeah, I wanted everything contained in the case. I don't like rads hanging out the back/off the side/on the top of cases. I like it to look neat and compact. Thanx for the comments anyway, it's nice to see the hard work apreciated.

 

OK, got a digital camera today, so here are some close-up pics of the setup.







Window with flash:



Window with no flash:



What do you think?

 

Oh my God, never seen such a piece of ****.



Just kiddin'; looks great dude!

 

Very nice!

This is just a pet peeve of mine, but I would be looking to clean up the hoses a bit. There's just too much random looping for my taste. I'd start by finding a way to move the pump so it has a straight shot at a radiator barb rather than the crazy loop.

Next would be taking some slack out of the hoses and policing them so they run straight and true.

Just 2 cents worth, or would it be two pence here?

 

Well I put the pump where it is to keep the system compact. I like kinda like the way it loops round to the rad. What I probably will do though is put a straight barb on the pump intake, rather than the angled one that I got with it. The top tube will then be more all less horizontal.

 

I like it, you may want to look to see if you can take up some of the slack but it's by no means an issue for for me. The location of the rad is different but I like the way you have made use of some of the space you had to loose in order to fit the rad. People that own this case and have thought of water-cooling but didn't think it possible will be enlighten by this project.

You've done the hardest bit and that's water-cooling, enjoy the thrill.

Nice pictures too!

 

Very nice..and i like the loop, it gives it "character" but OMG whats that green stuff in your tubes! Clean it up! Nice work DreXeL!!

 

very nice....now how are u measuring these temps...if u say socket them then u need a comp u nurse or something to measure the actually cpu core temp.....and whats ur ambiant temps?? also u might wanna tidy up those cables a lil.....looks like u just stuffed them in the corner....cant have that with a l33t wc setup like that.....

 

LOL!!! 'that green stuff' is dyelite and I think it contrasts the black and blue colour scheme nicely
Haddy you are right about the cables, I'll get round to tidying them up soon. I'm measuring the temps from MBM5, on an I-WILL KK266-R Mobo, I don't know how accruate it is. My ambient is 26 degrees as I type this.

 

Heh..yeah dyelite is cool stuff, i use the blue kind myself (although it doesn't glow nearly as bright as green dyelite). Well as long as that IWILL uses the built in temp on the cpu and not the thermistor then you should get an accurate reading. What is MBM telling you for the cpus?

 

MBM is telling me 37 degrees right now.

 

thats not tooo tooo bad....also i thought i saw him say hes using a tbird *doesnt have built in temp sensor*

 

I must say, your setup is the cleanest and simplest I've ever seen. Good job

 

Check out Mashie's Syrinix:



I'm not a fan of the copper elbows, but the component placement gives virtually straight shots with no hose slack for everything, and it doesn't really take any more room to do it, you just have to think about how to mount everything.

I think its cool to do this kind of thing, but haven't seen anyone but Mashie pull it off. This rig is close, and if you like the look, you could get much cleaner without too much effort I think.

The other thing that Mashie did that was smart is figured out a way to exhaust the hot air from the radiator through the bottom of the case, to help keep overall case temps lower. Most watercoolers just dump the heat inside the case. Clever.