Project: Blue on Black

[Bolas]

Time to install the blocks. I've removed the hybrid silent pipe. Instructions say to remove the two screws. What screws? Ah yes, there are two screws holding it on. One on the left.



And one on the right.



Hmm.. maybe I should wash out the radiators with some boiling water and let them soak a bit while I do the blocks. That way, I could be ready to leak test some time soon.



Take off the old cpu fan bracket. Eww... double-stick tape isn't playing nice. It doesn't want to come off.



Pushing the plastic tabs through the board to remove the heat sinks.



So that's what the board looks like without the heat sinks!



Old heat sink. The big one.



And the little heat sink that's just for kicks.



Checking the fit.



Ok, so this goes here like that....



Put on thermal paste.



And install the blocks.



Add the fittings.



Not bad.



Now to install the block for the cpu.



First the thermal paste. Hmm... maybe putting the thermal paste on first is a bad idea? Why do the instructions tell me to do that? Wouldn't it make more sense to put it on at the last possible minute, then I wouldn't have this crud all over my hands when I brush it by accident. Arctic Silver 5 on the north bridge and south bridge chips, MX-2 on the cpu and the two gpu's, for those that are curious. Thank you, EK, for including some MX-2 in with your cpu block, very thoughtful.

And we can see that I still need much more practice with applying thermal paste.



Set up the back plate bracket.



Add some washers.



Push it through the board, being sure to smudge the thermal paste with my little finger.... yuck.



Add some washers top side.



And the block.



Tighten down the springs with the thumb screws... and the board has all the blocks installed.



Install the memory and the memory fan. Yes, I know that I probably don't need the fan, but I'm going to try it out and see what I think, so I'm installing it.



Lotta hardware on the board now.



Try to install the motherboard into the case... and there's one screw hole that I just can't get to in order to secure the motherboard into the case. Only eight screws instead of nine. Hope that doesn't cause any issues, but the water block is just plain covering the screw hole.



Board looks decent in the case. I'm starting to like this.





Reconnect the wiring to the motherboard.

[Devil_Dog]

Looking good!!

[Bolas]

Now to do the graphics card. Hmm... none of these screwdrivers work on the small screws. Time to buy more screwdrivers.



At least I can still change out gaskets!!



There, that's better.



I guess I'll work on the pump while I wait to get a small high quality screwdriver for the graphics card.



It's going to go into this reservoir.



Add the black face plate.



I can sleeve one of the cables on the pump, but not the other one. Can't get the 4-pin Molex connector off. Not sure what to do about that.



Maybe it won't be noticeable when it's installed.



Ok, that wiring looks... obvious and ugly. I will have to figure out a way to get that connector off of there and sleeve it.



I like the UV o-ring.



I'll try the reservoir out in this location, with the idea to put a display in the slot above the reservoir and some fan wiring stuff in the slot below the reservoir, where the lights shine up into the reservoir.



Bought a jeweler's screwdriver set. This should help with the graphics card.



Got the plastic shroud off.



And the spring mounts for the gpu's.



Wow that thing's huge!



Using the Arctic Silver heat sink remover drops. I know, EK does not recommend the use of any fluids to remove thermal paste, but I'm going to anyways, that sludge needs to come off and the q-tip isn't doing the trick.



That's better, shiny enough to see my finger in the reflection.



Now, how do I install this beast of a cooling block onto the board?



Looks like I still need to use the same back plane from the previous cooler. Lots of thermal pads, wonder if I should just re-use those or buy new ones? Since I don't know what to buy or where to get them.... I think re-use them for now.



Install the thermal paste and a lot of pads...



Eww, that stuff gets everywhere. Guess I forgot that I was to install it at the last possible minute. Ah well, I forgot to install the spacers the first time, it's got to come off anyways.



Do I re-install the spring loaded retention clips? I'm guessing no, since the screw holes are different sizes.



That looks decent, with the block installed.



Time for the fittings.



Those don't want to fit! Spacers are included, but those don't want to play nice either.



Looks like it's elbow grease time.

Wow, that left quite a mark on the blocks. Glad I didn't get the larger size tubing now LOL. It never would have fit. Unless I use the spacers or something, obviously.



Trying out the spacers again.







Something's not right, time to ditch the spacers.



And install the card into the motherboard.



Hmm... Needs power.



There we go.



Wish I could see the fluid flow through the blocks a bit better. Maybe my next build will need to be inverted ATX. Meanwhile, here's the view from underneath.

[Bolas]

Bought some small aluminum pipes. That might work for getting the connector off of the cable.



Tada!



I can sleeve anything now, muahahahaha!



Oh my goodness, SO much better.



Reservoir says to install the pump with the wires on the outside. That's just not going to work, they are too thick when sleeved and it would strain things too much. Pump looks symmetrical to me, I'm going to put the wires on the inside instead.



Maybe something like this.



What if I move it down a notch, to lower the pump a bit?





Now to sleeve the LED's.



That's better.



Installing them in the pre-drilled holes.



It's getting there.



Now I need to do the power cable for the pump and the lights. I'll use a slightly larger size aluminum tube to remove the female pins from the 4-pin Molex connectors. Hmm... too large. I'll use the pliers to make the end slightly smaller. That works!



You are going to get sleeved, do you hear me?!? No obstacle too challenging to sleeve, I will sleeve anything!



Stock sleeving compared to bare wires with all sleeving and connectors removed.



Getting the first one sleeved now...



Heat shrink over the ends.



That's looking good, this is promising.



Much better than stock sleeving. Pity I'm running low on sleeve, I will probably have to order some more soon.



Ok, anyone know how to do cable management?



What a tangled mess in the back. I'll have to do a lot of work on this before the case will actually close.

[Bolas]

Time to mount the fans to the radiator.



Luckily, the Corsair case came with some screws that would work for this. I also installed some anti-vibration gaskets to help minimize the fan noise.



I still want to get some better screws -- ideally all black with only the end threaded and the rest a solid cylinder.

Hmm.. If I install it this way, the fittings go directly into the Blu-Ray player. That doesn't look like it will work.



So the other way looks a bit better.



Route the cables and we're good.



Now what about the small one?



Those fittings are awfully close together.



Might work.



What if I move the Blu-Ray down a notch, could I reverse the direction of the 360 rad?



Will it work to route the tubing to the 360 behind the motherboard tray?



Nope, too tight of a bend once it exits.



So if I flip the 360 around to shorten the tubing lengths... the tubes exit right into the Blu-Ray.



How about moving the Blu-Ray beneath the reservoir? That way, the heat rising from the reservoir won't go directly into the Blu-Ray player, which is a plus.



But if it's on the very bottom bay, then the cables are bent and strained a lot. Bleah. Maybe I could reverse the connection for the data cable, but not for the power cable, that's molded on.



Move it up a notch and it's butting up against the reservoir, which I don't like... but the cables aren't strained, so that works.



Looks OK from the front, so far.



So if I'm going to switch the radiator around, I have to reinstall the fans so that the wires exit from the right direction.



Looks like a nice straight shot from the pump to the rad now.





What if I install a bend on the motherboard block so that I can flip the 120 rad upside down? Nope, that won't work, the exit to the rad bumps into the expansion slots then.



In fact, I don't like the bend there on the motherboard block, it runs straight into other fittings. So that's out.



Now that we have everything figured out as far as orientation, time to start installing the loop. I'll go from the pump to the 360 rad.



Then from the 360 rad to the cpu block.



Then from the cpu to the motherboard blocks.



Then up to the 120 rad.



Then to the graphics card.



And back to the pump.



So how does it look overall?









I left about an inch of slack going to the reservoir, so that I can slide the res out slightly for easier filling.





Now to make use of that old Alienware computer. To power the pump!



Filling the reservoir with distilled water.



At this point, my camera battery died. Monday night. I leak tested overnight. The result?!? LEAK!! Tuesday morning, everything was wet. And to make it worse, it was wet in all the places that I didn't have paper towels, LOL. The water ran down the tubing and fell off where there wasn't anything covering the computer. So I soaked the 140 fan in the bottom of the case and learned a valuable lesson -- put paper towels everywhere.

I didn't have any time Tuesday night to work on it, so Wednesday after work... I went down and... hmm... even more water everywhere. On the floor.. everywhere. How did that happen? Ah I see.... one of the hoses has come COMPLETELY OFF! I guess I learned how not to do a compression fitting. At least I figured out where the leak was, LOL. On the radiator end of the tube going from the 360 rad to the cpu. Compression fitting wasn't properly compressed. I reattached it, doing (hopefully) a better job this time, and assessed the damage. The water had gone basically straight down from the res... into the Blu-Ray, the SSD, and the HDD. Learned valuable lesson #2. When leak testing, do not have extraneous hardware in the flood plain. That's what hot swap bays are for -- so that you can remove that stuff quick and easy and not have it get wet. Looks like everything was sealed from the top and didn't get any water into the internals, so hopefully no problems with any of those three. I'm going to let them dry for 48 hours though just to be sure.

Bad leak didn't get captured on film. Charged the camera battery, so now we're back in business. Leak testing attempt #2. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow about this time.

[josk1]

clear tubing and blue liquid and you'll have the perfect built!!!!
nice job man

[Bolas]

clear tubing and blue liquid and you'll have the perfect built!!!!
nice job man

Hahaha so funny. That's totally what I wanted to do, but was advised not to use anything other than distilled water. I figured I would at least try out the advice first, because I can always change it later.

[Bolas]

Eight hours of leak testing and no leak yet. So far so good. The first time it leaked, I was surprised to find it leaked. Now I'm so used to seeing water inside my case, that I was surprised to find it dry. I've actually ordered a few more parts -- some more fans and a fan power splitter -- which will arrive on Friday. So I'm just going to leak test until then.

Meanwhile, I am beta testing Starcraft II on my old laptop.

[Bolas]

Well, my shipment of hardware showed up a day early, so I was able to power up all the fans. Leak testing finished successfully the second time, so I was able to power up the system! I am now the proud owner of a fully functional water cooled computer for the first time in my life. Yay!

[Bolas]

When I first powered on the computer... I got a message that it couldn't find my boot disk.... OH NO! Maybe the SSD died from water damage! It turned out that the hot swap drive bay just didn't have a good connection, pulling it out and re-seating the SSD fixed the issue. WHEW!!

[Bolas]

Then, my computer wasn't seeing the data drive. At all. Not sure why. At least that one is one of the more inexpensive components in the system, at around $100 or so. I started to troubleshoot that, and then decided to see how much of a difference it makes in noise levels if I turn off the RAM cooler fan. When I was unplugging the fan, I watched in horror as a leak sprang from my cpu block and dribbled on the graphics card. Luckily, I was right there watching and quickly unplugged the power to the computer, so hopefully no damage was done.

I drained the loop and started disassembling everything. Hmmm... I think I see what I was doing wrong. I wasn't pushing the tubes onto the compression fittings far enough. The whole system was at risk, every single joint is potentially bad. Time to re-do everything. Ah well, I needed to re-do things anyways because I wanted to add some additional fans and try to make every radiator a push-pull setup. If I can't fit as many radiators into the case as I want, the least I can do is to make sure that the ones I do have are operating as efficiently as possible.

So I will be redoing the cooling completely. Things will have about a week to dry out because I will be out of town on business next week. By the time I get back, my sound card and adapter cable should be here -- hopefully.

[Church]

Have you tried your drive at different port? Have you tried at different PC? Are you shure you haven't disabled controller for port you use? (i have habbit to disable all unused controllers in bios, like serial/parallel/floppy/unused IDEs and such ..)
Also maybe some overclock is at fault? As in bus or integrated controller needs bit voltage bump or slowing down frequency to keep up with overclock?

[Armitage]

That is quite a lot of thermal paste!

Also - I lined my computer with paper towels. Thankfully in my build, there was no tubing/chance of a leak over the HD's.

Looks good. The sleeve looks great

[Armitage]

Then, my computer wasn't seeing the data drive. At all. Not sure why. At least that one is one of the more inexpensive components in the system, at around $100 or so. I started to troubleshoot that, and then decided to see how much of a difference it makes in noise levels if I turn off the RAM cooler fan. When I was unplugging the fan, I watched in horror as a leak sprang from my cpu block and dribbled on the graphics card. Luckily, I was right there watching and quickly unplugged the power to the computer, so hopefully no damage was done.

I drained the loop and started disassembling everything. Hmmm... I think I see what I was doing wrong. I wasn't pushing the tubes onto the compression fittings far enough. The whole system was at risk, every single joint is potentially bad. Time to re-do everything. Ah well, I needed to re-do things anyways because I wanted to add some additional fans and try to make every radiator a push-pull setup. If I can't fit as many radiators into the case as I want, the least I can do is to make sure that the ones I do have are operating as efficiently as possible.

So I will be redoing the cooling completely. Things will have about a week to dry out because I will be out of town on business next week. By the time I get back, my sound card and adapter cable should be here -- hopefully.

o. Just read this part. That really sucks.

I dunno how you had the fittings on there. But when i did mine, they were incredibly hard to get on. I had to head up the ends of the tube with my head gun, get em on there. Then the actual screwing of the compression was rough on my fingers (especially after sleeving, OUCH!)

Mine are on really tight, I think I could pull them without getting a leak.

[Bolas]

Have you tried your drive at different port? Have you tried at different PC? Are you shure you haven't disabled controller for port you use? (i have habbit to disable all unused controllers in bios, like serial/parallel/floppy/unused IDEs and such ..)
Also maybe some overclock is at fault? As in bus or integrated controller needs bit voltage bump or slowing down frequency to keep up with overclock?

I just started messing with the hard drive, I am thinking it's the wiring (hopefully).

I haven't messed with the BIOS yet at all, I will get it running perfectly with stock settings first, then start fiddling around with oc'ing.

[Bolas]

That is quite a lot of thermal paste!

Also - I lined my computer with paper towels. Thankfully in my build, there was no tubing/chance of a leak over the HD's.

Looks good. The sleeve looks great

I still need practice with applying thermal paste. I seem to get too much and it makes a mess.

I lined with paper towels for leak testing #1, but didn't remember to remove the drives and didn't have paper towels in all the right spots. For the second leak testing, I have the photo with the paper towels posted, I thought... if not, I'll add it soon.

There was a pool of water on top of my SSD. Sitting there for hours. Luckily, Intel builds them good, and no water got inside the SSD, so it still works. The HDD below that had only a few drips and I didn't see any way for water to get inside, so I'm suspecting cabling issues. I have moved stuff around it's quite possible that it's just a bad connection. Once I fire it up again in a week or so, I'll see if it finds the drive or not, and if not, I'll start doing some basic troubleshooting.

[Bolas]

o. Just read this part. That really sucks.

I dunno how you had the fittings on there. But when i did mine, they were incredibly hard to get on. I had to head up the ends of the tube with my head gun, get em on there. Then the actual screwing of the compression was rough on my fingers (especially after sleeving, OUCH!)

Mine are on really tight, I think I could pull them without getting a leak.

I will be posting some photos of how not to do compression fittings, as well as some tips I've figured out for the right way to do them.

I don't think I've damaged anything with water yet, but I've been really lucky in that regard. I easily could have blown up thousands of dollars of parts with some of the mistakes I have made.

Everything will have a week to dry out while I'm out of town on business, so it should not be a problem starting things up again once I've done round #3 of leak testing when I get back.

[Bolas]

Well I had some time to work on the computer after my daughter went to bed and before my wife got home from her scrap booking. So 10pm to 2am, basically. I tore the whole thing apart, added all the new fans (except for one which is optional and lacks mounting hardware currently), and re-did all the loops. Sadly, I forgot that I wanted to sleeve two of the tubes, so next time I drain the loop I'll fix that.

Disassembled the loop.



Determined that I could securely attach the connector on one end of each piece of tubing while it was outside the case. That would allow me to make sure that the tubing was completely seated and firmly screwed down without having to fit my fingers into a cramped space and without worrying about putting too much pressure or torque on a critical system component.



I check to see if I can fit a 120 rad into the bottom of the case without any kind of mod to the case.



Pretty tight bend for the tubing there.



It looks like it might fit but the tubing would be a huge pain. It might work better if I had the exact right fittings, but I don't really know what fittings I should get to make this work. It's also very close to the wiring, which I don't like. So I think I'll pass on buying another 120 rad and trying to jam it into the bottom of the case. If I do another radiator, I'll put a 240 in the bottom and I'll do the full mod needed to do so.



Hmm... the paint chips and flakes like crazy on these radiators. I'm not a big fan of them, I won't be buying this brand and model of radiators again.



Ok, so I've decided that if I can't fit more radiators into the case and I still want better cooling, what I should do is to maximize the radiators that I already have. I plan to set up a push-pull arrangement for the fans on each of the radiators. I also want things to remain silent, so I plan to put rubber gaskets between each fan and anything it touches, being sure to put the bezel side towards the fan and the flat side towards the other components.



That's a lot of cables to manage. Maybe I can plug all six into my fan power block?



OK, so I think that I can't attach the radiator to the top fans before I put it into the case or else I can not screw it to the case. So first I have to put the screws through the case and then shove the fans up into the screws from below. That doesn't seem to work, the gasket and the fans keep falling out before I can get them screwed down to the radiator.



Maybe if I turn the case on it's side, I can then get things installed without gravity messing me up.



That works much better, the fan isn't trying to jump off the bolts now.



OK, three fans installed. Ready for the radiator.



Here comes the rad.



Youch! That is covering my cable routing holes! What to do about that...



Maybe if I route all the cables first, before I put in the radiator.



And then slide the eight pin motherboard power connector off to the side while I install the rad.



The fans are covering the routing holes, but I don't mind because all my cables are already through the holes.



Screw them down, being careful not to tighten too much and risk putting the screws into the radiator coils...



And it all fits.



I can see the red and yellow wires showing through the top, but there's not really any way to sleeve that. Yes, I have the fans blowing air out of the case instead of in to the case. I wanted the inside of the case to look good and not have the ugly wires showing, so that means I orient the fans so that the back of the fan faces up.

[Bolas]

For those of you wondering what this noob did wrong when he did the loops the first time, here's a pic of the right way and the wrong way to install the hose over the compression fitting. Some were even worse than the one shown in the pic as "wrong way", if you can believe that.



This time, I'm going to add in the tubing one at a time with one compression fitting already installed on one end of the tubing before I install the 120 rad on the left side of the case. That way, I'll have more room to maneuver my hands and tighten down the fittings.





I have to remember to put the ring over the tube before fighting the tubing down over the compression fitting. A couple times, I forgot and had to pull the tubing off and then press it on again. My fingers are getting worn out!



Much easier to fit my hand in here without the 120 rad in the way.



That looks much tighter now.



That's better. Just need to tighten this last one.



I had to change the lengths of some of the tubing due to adding the fans and moving the reservoir. But no problem, I bought plenty of spare blue tubing.



Now the board and cpu are done, time to install the graphics card connectors.



OK, that's done. Next, the remaining fans and radiator.

Fan for the empty drive bay. No hardware to install this, so it'll have to wait.



Install the 120 fan onto the radiator, and the elbow fittings. I'll use the thin black gasket that came with the case so that I can use the hardware that came with the case to install the fan.



I need to re-route the wiring for the fan so that it doesn't go all the way through the fan, that requires me to remove the fan connector.



Here's how the 120 rad will look with both fans and the 140 to 120 adapter installed. Planning it out to make sure that it'll work and figure out how to do the hardware for it.



That's not quite fitting with the current tubing length.



But the 140 will fit on the back just right.



I can route the fan wire through the water cooling hole.



And then struggle to route it under the 360 rad on the top to get it to the back of the computer.

There, the tube's attached to the 120 again.



Not too bad. Now I just need to attach the hoses to the pump/res combo and to the 360 rad.





If I put the Blu-Ray in the top or second from the top spot, there's nowhere to route the tubing.



If I put it in the middle spot, then the tubing has to make harsh bends. Looks like it has to go either in the fourth or fifth drive bay. Here's a shot of the second spot from the other direction.



Time to leak test again.





Leak testing for 8 hours only, I think I've figured out the causes of the leaks in my system and all the rest of the components have already had leak testing for 24+ hours.

Leak testing passed, hooray!

[Bolas]

So now to install the Blu-Ray drive back below the reservoir. From the last time I tried that, I knew I needed to make some adjustments to the cabling in order to do so.



So I re-did the connector orientation for the power cable.



And the data cable is still a problem, with a horrible right angle.

Solution is to use a new flat to flat SATA cable and sleeve a new cable.



Now I remember what I forgot to do... I meant to sleeve the two long tubing runs with black sleeving. I guess that will have to wait.



Overall, it's looking good. Still needs better cable management (so that I can at least get the back cover on LOL) and still needs to have the lighting done.



I've reattached the front panel after moving the drive bay covers to the proper locations.



I also reinstalled the memory, the boot drive SSD, and the data drive HDD, and connected all the fans.

Not bad for a "before" and "after".

[Bolas]

When I booted it up, I was thrilled to see that the computer recognized all the drives -- boot, data, and blu-ray. However, after a little bit, it stopped recognizing the data drive. I suspected a problem with the wiring, so I moved it to a different hot swap bay, and it seems to work now. I still need to change the cabling so that it's plugged into a SATA III port again, since it's a SATA III drive. That will also help me narrow down where exactly the problem is with the drive and drive wiring.

I also need to get a flow meter and install it, as well as figure out how to do some temperature probes. I have two bays open still, I will most likely put an LCD display in one of them. Not sure about the other one yet.

[Bolas]

Idle temps look good (as far as I know).



Passes a simple stability test.

[Bolas]

Looks like I need to bump up the memory speed to the rated speed.

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1189066

[Bolas]

Yay! First successful stable overclock of my system, 4.16 GHz. Screen shots coming soon.

[Bolas]

So how does it do when overclocked? Here's the first stab at it.