Guess I'll share my project with the Bit-tech community, though my stuff pales in comparison to the excellent work on here. I hope to aspire to the quality of the mods on here... Forgive the title - it's a pretty poor pun/link to the project, but naming creativity is not my forte... Anyway, first post, the idea: My current system is as follows: CPU: i7 920 D0 Motherboard: Rampage III Formula GPU: GTX480 Memory: Patriot Sector 7 Sound Card: Xonar Xense PSU: Seasonic X-650 SSD: Kingston V-Series 128GB HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB Case: None Cooler: Thermalright HR02 Here is my system as-is (colour scheme clue, plus a bit of MDPC braiding): One of the things I'm working on during this project is my camera work. I have access to a Nikon D90 + tripod, so it's about time I learnt to use it, so hopefully you'll see an improvement over the project. I intend to watercool not only the CPU, but also the GPU core - as I change GPUs too often for a full cover waterblock. Here are my watercooling specs: CPU: EK Supreme LTX Nickel/Plexi GPU: EK VGA Supreme HF Nickel/Plexi Pump: Alphacool VPP655 Reservoir: XSPC Dual bay D5 Radiator: Black Ice GTS240 Fans: Scythe Ultra Kaze 3000rpm + Phobya shrouds Coolant: Deionised water + Mayhems red dye + silver kill coil So, here's the case: As you can see, I got a little carried away and have already installed the XSPC res and my trusty Lamptron Touch fan controller Lots of 'need to be braided' cables! And the watercooling bits line up: EK Supreme LTX Waterblock Supreme (hur-hur) quality from EK and a lovely finish. Should have good flow restriction, and be pretty good overall - especially for £30. Ooh - shiny EK VGA Supreme HF - same sentiments as the LTX - lovely Note the slightly up-angled barb ports Just as shiny as the LTX Fan/rad/shroud combo: I decided on trying something a little different than my usual watercooling, which is a high FPI radiator coupled with fast fans, which should allow me to run a small radiator - hopefully this'll work out well, because this radiator is all that will be cooling an i7 920 and a GTX480, and I hope to overclock both! Assembled - something I really like about the Black Ice rads is the fin protector soldered to the sides - which stops you puncturing the tubes with a wayward screw 30 FPI goodness Wonderful finish on the BI rads Pump: It's nice that you can get a D5 minus the stock top, at £58 is was a fair bit cheaper than a full D5. Nestled in there I think I'll leave the first post with this (a rather easy clue as to what is coming next):
gotta love those round cornered puppies . i had a v1000 to 5 years ago. but sold it without ever modding it . too bad lian-li stoped making these cases. i think these were their best ever.
They are rather lovely... Ok, so one of the things I wanted to do with this case was to repaint the interior, though I was not going to send it anywhere to get sprayed... It was getting quite overcast outside, and I can hear thunder in the distance, so I decided to bring the washing in, and wait until the next day to spray the case. However, it did allow me to prepare the case parts, now that they're all covered in finger prints and metal shavings. I've basically used the same technique I used to use when I sprayed RC car bodyshells, as it works well. So, here are the parts after removal, and the various cutting/dremelling etc. The dust and finger prints are easy to see. Always listen to something decent in the background Note Lian Li's helpful QC sticker remnants First, wash the parts in hot soapy water. I don't find that using a cloth works any better than hands at this stage, so I just use my hands to wipe the surfaces. I know my watch is black, but I'm not a goth... Secondly, rinse the parts with cold water to remove any soap suds, as they will dry with a nice film that prevents the paint from sticking. Then dry the parts with a rough tea towel, this 'roughens' the aluminium very slightly, and helps the paint to stick. After that, you are left with some lovely clean, finger-print and grease free parts ready for spraying. Obviously avoid handling the bits except on the edges right now - basically like handling a motherboard. Lovely Lian Li aluminium goodness Hopefully the body-shell spraying technique will work quite well overall, if not, call this 'guide' a log of how not to do it... Ok, so after spraying, I've reassembled the case, using screws and nuts rather than rivets. There are a fair number of paint runs, so the next time I spray a case, I have the following tips: Practice a little with whatever spray paint you've bought to find out what the 'dust' and 'heavy' pressures are like. Basically, how much do you have to press the nozzle to get a dust of paint, and how much to get a river... I (stupidly) didn't do this, as I'd had much experience of Tamiya spray paints before, but hadn't appreciated the fine line between the dust setting and the heavy setting with the Plastikote I was using For the first few layers, use the dust setting. Coverage won't look perfect, but you won't get runs! Only when you've got a fairly even coverage can you start with heavier layers, but even then make sure you methodically work and don't cover the same area twice per coat. Sweep past quickly, and start and finish off the ends of the work - this prevents heavy patches. So, the results (forgive the picture quality, I have no idea where the tripod is, so my hands were a little shaky): If you're wondering what the grille in the middle is for, it's there to provide airflow from the radiator to the rest of the components, rather than just relying on the exhaust fan to draw air out. The wire going across the motherboard tray is an NZXT red LED kit. At first I was going to hide the PCI controller, but then I thought that it actually fitted fairly well, and I don't need that slot, so it's staying. Amazingly, this is the only picture where the paint runs are really visible So, next up is the braiding!
Here we go, the final photo shoot: Kinda nicked joxang's mesh behind the window idea to hide the lower compartment, without just putting some flat black aluminium in there Also hides the HDDs, which I hadn't worked out what to do with them So, there were some build issues, primarily revolving around the pump/res. Basically, the ring that clamps the pump to the reservoir has an O-ring in it. Not having the prior knowledge of dismantling a stock pump, I followed the instructions (which were a little ambiguous as to the position of said O-ring, especially in anticipation of a poor translation), and basically put the O-ring behind the pump, not in front. This resulted in a huge leak every time I tried to fill the res. Unfortunately, my fan controller was right underneath, but luckily the water that did get on it was: a) de-ionised b) not dyed at this stage so a quick dry with a towel and a stay in the airing cupboard sorted that out. When I figured that out, I filled the loop, and then proceeded to get my old PSU out for the bleeding/leak testing stage. Plugged the pump in, had my shorting bridge attached to the 24-pin ATX connector and switched the PSU on. The fan kicked in, but no pump. I thought I might have killed it somehow, or that it was DOA. Turned out that despite the colours with PSUs being set as: Orange - 3.3V Red - 5V Yellow - 12V Black - Ground (et al) Alphacool had helpfully colour coded the pump with a red wire, so following the molex spec (rather than remembering where the wires went) I ended up putting it back for 5V, which naturally wouldn't start... So, after sorting that out (and it wasn't really worth braiding that cable either - oh well), it bled fairly successfully, and the pump works nicely on setting 5, though is a little loud at idle. I did hook it up to my fan controller (which worked when bleeding and was lovely and quiet on 7-8V, as I wanted to test it out) using a 3-pin to molex adaptor that I'd used before on a DDC, but for some reason it didn't start when I first fired the PC up, resulting in a boot temperature of 100°C on the CPU... So now to the performance, updates will be coming when I overclock, and I'll do some in-game temperatures and so on. As for noise however, I thought that this subject is the main potential sticking point of this type of set-up. There's no denying, at 100% fan, it's loud. Probably in terms of dB, louder, or as loud as, a GTX480 stock cooler at load. However, the noise is subjectively quieter, as the fans are quite deep, pitch wise, as you are simply hearing the air move through the radiator, not the fan itself as with the GTX480 fan, which whines annoyingly. As I play games with headphones on, load volume isn't a massive issue, so I can turn up to 100% without issue, but in the interests of not ****ing everyone else off, 75% still performs well, but isn't as loud. At idle however, this thing is great. With the fans down to ~900-1000 rpm (4V), the pump and HDD are as loud as the Ultra Kazes. I'm quite impressed with the Ultra Kazes at low voltage, and very impressed with the Sharkoon 2000rpm fan at the back for noise, neither making annoying screamy noises, but more a 'woosh'. Anyway, while playing Dawn Of War 2: Retribution last night, I had the fans on ~40% (4V) and the GPU temperature crept up to 53°C (as it sits almost permanently at 100% load), the water temperature was at ~40°C. I turned the fans to 100%, and within 30s to 1 minute the water temperature dropped by a full 10-12°C to 27-29°C, and the GPU temperature dropped to 45°C. This temperature remained stable through the rest of the game, which was about another 30 minutes. If you've bothered to read all that, well done, have an Internet cookie for your efforts. Overclocking results aside, I think this shows that a dual radiator with the right set-up can result in very nice temperatures, and a very capable loop. Final Specifications Hardware: CPU: i7 920 D0 Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Formula RAM: Patriot Viper II Sector 7 6GB GPU: Asus GTX480 SSD/HDD: Kingston SNV425 128GB, Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB PSU: Seasonic X-650 Gold Sound Card: Asus Xonar Xense TV/Capture card (the top green card): AverMedia HD Capture/H727 Cooling: CPU block: EK Supreme LTX Nickel/Plexi GPU block: EK VGA Supreme HF Nickel/Plexi GPU VRM/VRAM cooling: Asus GTX480 standard cooling plate with fan removed Pump: Alphacool VPP655 Reservoir: XSPC Dual-bay D5 Tubing: XSPC Clearflex 3/8" ID 1/2" OD Fittings: OCUK clearance PerfectSeal 3/8" barbs/Bitspower 3/8" 90° barbs/Bitspower G1/4 temperature probe/Bitspower X piece/Feser G1/4 through-fittings/XSPC M20.5-G1/4 adaptor Fluid: B&Q De-ionised water (49p per litre), Mayhems Red dye
