Hi, I'm new to water cooling and was just after some help. I want to install a 240mm radiator inside my Antec 1200. I'm looking to keep as much of the original cooling (drive bays) intact so I was looking to install the radiator at the back of the case along with the two existing exhaust fans or either replacing or mounting it under the Big Boy. I was just looking for some suggestions of good 240mm radiators, I'll be using the 120mm Scythe Gentle Typhoon (1450rmp) for the radiator. If anyone could suggest any other places to mount the radiator, I'm not afraid of modding the case but I'd like to keep it as stock as possible as I may use it for other builds in the future.
Hi bigboss, I also have the A1200 and am in the process of creating a WC loop. However, I've gone the 'full-on' route and removed the drive bays to install a triple rad at the front! I'm also looking at putting a 240mm rad at the back of the machine and haven't yet decided on if it will be internal (my preference) or external. I decided to go with EK for the rads, as I had already purchased their waterblocks (CPU, NB, SB, GPU [5870] and mosfets) and res. I know there are some rads available that are considerably thinner than the norm... Maybe take a look at the Swiftech QP stackable versions? Cheers, SouperAndy
i've modified my Antec 1200 for watercooling in a major way. first off, i've use the optional plastic fan bracket to mount a 240 rad off the back of a drive cage. it's surprisingly strong enough to do this without a problem, you just need to dremel a few things off and drill through the fan posts to get your rad bolts through. this has limited me to a graphics card that's 9 inches long though the major modification is that i've mounted a 200mmx200mm radiator underneath the bigboy fan. this required breaking out the dremel and cutting away the top of the motherboard tray to make it fit.
I am also researching on a 240 rad that would fit at the back of my Antec1200, so far I found some mods with rads attached to the rear fans but it is a close fit, some had to cut off small top part of the side panel. From the measurements I have taken I think a XSPC RS240 would fit. It is 277 x 121 x 35mm. Although it is gona be a very thight fit because of the graphics card.
Thanks for the replies guys, I would mount it in the font but I have two hard drives and two optical drives, if I mount the radiator in the there is nowhere for these and a pump to sit. I have made a net of this radiator but it's too big to fit in the back as I have a sound card above my graphics card and is too long to be mounted above the motherboard without hitting my DVD drive. I just wondered what people thought of its little brother or is it worth defacing my case for the RX240?
Sorry really should have mentioned that, I'll be cooling at overclocked i7 930. It's clocked at 4.1Ghz on my H50 but it runs hotter than I'm comfortable with and I want to see if I can squeeze some more power out of it.
The RX240 would be better as it's about 25mm thicker than the RS240 and would give you better temps. I'd also think about the GT1850s which should give you a couple of degrees improvement over the GT1450's. The RS240 would do it but you'd probably need higher cfm fans with the subsequent extra noise. Have you thought about mounting the rad externally? Are you planning to include a GPU at a later time? I've got both rads although my RX240 is version 1 both in the same loop so haven't got figures for the differences but plan on testing them separately in the near future.
I really wanna try and avoid mounting it externally as I move my PC around alot in cars from Uni to back home, plus it looks nasty. I don't plan to run a GPU into the loop, which is why I want to keep as much of the air cooling around the 5870 as I can. Also, how high a CFM are we talking? The Sycthe fans I already have are around 61CFM but drop to around 30 when but through a radiator.
I've just done a quick test with the system in my sig. I've swapped out the BI Stealth and replaced it with an Aquacomputer Pro 240 with GT1450s and turned off the fans on the quad rad. Although there'll still be heat dissipation from the quad with the fans off I doubt it would be that much. The AC Pro rad has similar fin spacing to the RS240 but it's only 30mm thick compared to 35mm. Running the system at 4GHz with a vcore of 1.27v I'm getting 61º in an ambient of 20ºC. That compares to the temps with the quad rad fans at full speed of 53ºC at 20º ambient. I've only run Prime95 for about 45 minutes. If you give me an hour or so I'll test it at 4.2GHz with 1.31v.
After an hour of Prime95 at 4.2GHz @1.31v temps were 66º. That gives you an idea of temps with a similar rad to an RS240.
Dude, thanks for running all those tests, I suspose it would be worth getting the RX240 but anything is an improvement over my temperatures at the moment.
