Quick WC setup in an Antec P160

[Leeghoofd]

lo lads, Cube mod is on a vacation, I need the system, till my 2nd build is completed...

Having recently bought the Maximus Formula SE from Asus and messed a bit with it it kindda shocked me how high the NB temp got when doing some number crunching... as Asus had foreseen the fuzion block for a WC setup it was time to get this mobo out of the Aplus case and into my good old favourite lightweight Antec P160...

I needed a setup to cool the NB and CPU, at first I thought a dual rad was gonna handle all the heat but I finally opted for a single and a dual rad...

Dual rad was foreseen to be installed on the top , though it's a tight fit with the PSU in the rear and all the cables of the front panel in the front...

After some measuring I cut out the top to fit the GT Extreme Flow rad, I also opted for an Ac Ryan top to hide my bad cuts :p



Behing the top plate you see the rad and it's particular in and outlet being diagonal accros eachother... this was specifically chosen to avoid the outlet to interfere with the PSU cables...

Next up the pump placement, I had a Laing Ultra pump as a spare for the 2nd loop in the cube mod, though as I replaced the Striker with the P5K DLx and the 2nd loop was no longer required for the NB/SB, it was getting all dusty...

I opted to place the pump where the floppy was as I no longer use that drive since USB stick can be bootable...



Cut out done for the pump inlet on the Petratech top...



Pump in position...

Another shot of the pump with room to spare for the 2nd Elbow to go straight to the NB...

[Leeghoofd]

For the placement of the rear rad I ran into trouble with the support of the case, it needed some trimming to get the rad into position...



Flash was a bit too strong , but what do you want on a 4 year old digital camera, but the cutout is clearly visible

Top rad placed, fitted nicely , just one hole that was misaligned ( I always have that due to my fast working method ) thk GOD for the AC Ryan coverplate



Rear rad also in position here and tubing going nicely









Still loads of work to do and hopefully the QX6950 comes around soon, getting pretty tired of waiting ( 5 weeks already) and my brand new EVGA GTS 512 ( Juppie StepUP rocks !!) that will make my pc bulletproof for 2008 !

[Leeghoofd]

Placed today the little EK reservoir type 100, I needed a little on eas I stil wanted good access to all components

Here's the little critter :


I used the heavy duty mount from Ek waterblocks as I find the Acryl version a bit too fragile when you pop the reservoir on and off often... I just drilled a 4mm hole into the reinforcement bar and placed the reservoir clamp on it



Front view ( you can see the clamp clearly here)



Little place between PSU and Rad too bad Antec doesn't have a PSU mount that can be pulled out via the rear...



Cable sleeving and co can happen now, tomorrow I need to cut the screws to the appropriate lenght to fix the top rad permanently... now I just need a CPU and GFX card and we are off for some cool gaming...

[Pub_Randy**]

very tidy! i'm tempted to go to 3/8" tubing... but for the sake of aesthetics and slightly easier to work with tubing.. $40 worth of new barbs doesn't seem worth it on a windowless case.

nice work

[Leeghoofd]

Thx for the nice comment Randy, I fell in love with these barbs as the hoses never come loose and if you want they pop off very easily... I used to have 1/2 but they are very hard for tight bends as they kink and put so much strain on the waterblocks fitted... and I sacrifice a few degrees for easier working

Started to leak test, after that I rip everything out again, cleanup and hopefully next week my GFX card and CPU will arrive...

[neoman]

Nice work there m8.

[disruptfam]

very nice clean setup your have there

[noroger]

Very very clean, nice work.

[Leeghoofd]

Thx lads, you're too kind

Did some cleaning up today, first up was my horrendous cut ( though it was doen in a jiffie ) , I filed some to get it sort off right :



Due to the heat of my pump ( I have done this too in my cubemod ) I drilled another hole beneath the pump so it can "breathe" :



Up next the wiring, damn I really hate it, I cut some parts away from the support plates to make routing easier and just to make sure the wires don't get clamped between the supports and the sidepanel... added the top control panel too...
Only thing that needs to be done is to install the powercables for the HD/DVD and Gfx card... and to hook up the dual rad fans and the front fan to the hardcano... the rear fan is hooked up to the CPU power connector...

Front view :



Hardcano wiring ( 2fans and the USB cable are prepared )

The messy side :



I love that Patex powertape

And the mobo/windowed sidepanel side :



Both the cables you are still seeing are from the old powersupply hooked up to the pump for the 2nd leaktest as I slightly shortened some tubing...

Well that's it for this year, I wish everybody a happy 2008 , lots of fun , good health and many many Mhz at a cool level...

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

plz expalin to me why you used a 90 degree on the outlet of your pump when you could have just turned the pump towards the back of the case????? all those 90 degree bends are gonna kill your flow two-fold, on top of that you are using 2 extremely restrictive radiators as well.

Sorry to be the downer, it looks great and all, I just cant see how this will perform well at all.

[Leeghoofd]

Well I had one of these extreme GT flows before my thermochill ( in fact I used all my old parts from my first cube as they were just collecting dust), I also went from 8/10mm to 1/2 inch tubing, and it didn't bring me much mate...4-5°C max at load...it's all a bit overhyped, the most restrictive item in my loop is the Fuzion Nb block on the mobo, rest is pretty fine... I'm not looking for the best temps here neither... and to be honest the thermochill is the best rad there is with low rpm fans though if you use 1000rpm fans or such the difference between all these rads in temperature isn't much...

This rig is for day to day usage with a Q6600 at 3,3.6ghz for fun and benching nothing more nothing less... you know many of the german watercoolers even use 6mm tubing and still get good results.... as soon as I get my QX9650 the Q6600 that is in the cube goes into the Maximus with the poor performing waterloop... and I'll post some results then you will be surprised believe me...

[whattheschmidt]

nice work...that was my old case(with window) and I have the same cut on the support bracket for a radiator connected to the fan.

Your wire management is much better than mine was with that case.

[Leeghoofd]

Well I pissed of my girlie, as I continued working on the case as I wanted to see if how much influence all these components had on the cooling performance...( women will never understand the passion a guy has for it's pc's lol ) so I built out the Q6600 of the P5K, hooked up a new HD to the Maximus, DVD writer and an old aging Voodo1000 PCI card...
At first, when I setup the CPU OC, I already looked in the bios hardware monitor, I was shocked as I saw the CPU temp at 38°C ( first boot lol ) then I recalled I had flashed to 0701 before and it has a temp bug of around 8-10°C... Installed my Winxp, drivers for the mobo and then a quick run of Prime with coretemp monitoring the CPU temps... Taking the late hour into consideration I wanted to do a quick test. Idle CPU temps were around 30-33°c for the cores at 3ghz...



Another screenie, never mind the mess it's temporay :



And the Prime95 ( only 5 minutes though, look at the time : 01:43 ) screenshot with temps topping out around 45°C :



Taking into consideration that this is on an Apogee ( not GT nor GTX), a normal Laing pump , 8mm ID tubing, setting time of the AS5 and loads of elbows I don't think those temps are way out of bounce... and the fun part is the NB remained about 12°C cooler then without water ( hovered around 35-38°C )... If I had a thermochill, a D-Tek fuzion and co I might nible off a few more degrees but really not worth investing again as I had all these things at my place...

[Sc4mpi]

plz expalin to me why you used a 90 degree on the outlet of your pump when you could have just turned the pump towards the back of the case????? all those 90 degree bends are gonna kill your flow two-fold, on top of that you are using 2 extremely restrictive radiators as well.

Sorry to be the downer, it looks great and all, I just cant see how this will perform well at all.

90" barbs in a 10mm loop wont affect anything. hes got a ddc the water rate in a 8mm id tube will be eratic. as for the radiators there black ice gt stealths and again for a 10mm loop there not restrictive.

[Leeghoofd]

90" barbs in a 10mm loop wont affect anything. hes got a ddc the water rate in a 8mm id tube will be eratic. as for the radiators there black ice gt stealths and again for a 10mm loop there not restrictive.

Thanks for the input and I think my quick test confirms what you tell I put the Q6600 back into the Cube ( with the thermochill and co ) and temps there are 2°C cooler on the same run (just take into consideration same 8/10mm tubing, but an 8800GTX in the loop, CPU cooling by the D-Tek, stronger pump and the thermochill rad)

[Leeghoofd]

Rig has survived a scorching hot LAN party, I settled for that reason to only a 3ghz OC as ambient temps were around 30°C, and CPU idled around 39°C after some hours of hardcore fun...Nb temps stayed well below 45°C... and the rig didn't budge at all ( lucky me )...

I'll post some piccies of the rig ready for action tonite , last big thing I need to do is to modify my thermaltake fancontroller to be placed into the case... at the moment my old Abit Uguru panel is in there just for show lol... maybe amesh panel and repaint the dominator fan cooler

2 side views : cable management could be a little better, small mesh panel is gonna hide some more...





And finally a front view where the Abit will be replaced soon by my Thermaltake fancontroller... more on that soon...