Project: Fortress

[rjkoneill]

this is a log of my build with its various revisions

it has taken me roughly a month to complete

special thanks go to my employer, OcUK for helping me get the parts i needed
the OcUK forum members who suggested changes/improvements
especially Smirnoff and Locky for all their help and advice

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the case i will be working with is a silverstone FT01 B-W

the aim of this build is for silence
the case, cpu loop, and VGA cooler have all been carefully chosen to cool my hardware down whilst keeping the performance i am used to

i chose the case for its black interior, solid build quality and because it would provide a challenge to watercool

after working on a large watercooling project at work i decided that i would implement a similar theme with my new case

the case looks like this


i was originally going for a lian li v1000z and my final choice was between lian li and silverstone
this caused split decisions at work where we have all been weighing up the pros and cons of both brands

the silverstone won in the end after i built a few lian li's and decided that they werent as 'solid' as i expected a £150+ case to be

i have also ordered some parts in - after doing a very special build at work i decided that some of the parts we chose for the front panel were going to fit well into my new build.
we had trouble sourcing these parts at work so i had to do a lot of hunting around the net for alternative sources as the parts were hard to find

lian li 120mm fan grille [this had a built in dust filter]
lian li drive bay radiator mounts



as well as picking up some readily available bits from work
sharkoon 120mm silent eagle fans
black 7/16" tubing
zalman fan controller


i plan on having the front panel look something like this...


now the rad will be bolted in place using the lian li rad mounting brackets i have ordered

the problem being is that i have a bay res/pump at the moment

i am wondering if i may be best going for an alternative due to the lack of free drive bays

[rjkoneill]

the Final, Full spec is as follows:

Hardware
Silverstone FT01 B-W Case
Asus P6T Deluxe Motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 Processor
3X 2GB Corsair Dominator PC3-12800 1600MHz
2X Asus Geforce GTX 280 SLI
Corsair TX750W PSU
2X Seagate Barracuda GT 500GB RAID 0
NEC DVDRW

Watercooling
TFC Xchanger 120 Radiator + Sharkoon 120mm Fan
EK Supreme Black Acetal CPU Waterblock
Laing DDC 10w Pump + XSPC Reservoir Top
Laing DDC 4 Point Anti-Vibration Damping Kit
Laing Damper Kit
XSPC Black Tubing 7/16"
DTek 1/2" Barbs
PrimoChill Pearl White Coils
Feser One Cooling Fluid
Rotating Elbow Fitting

Case Mods and Misc
Zalman ZM-MFC1 Plus Fan Controller
EVGA Black SATA Cables
Lian Li Fan Grille Module
Lian Li Radiator Brackets

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REV:1 first build attempt





here is how i mounted the pump as i have had a lot of email about that...



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REV:2 new pump arrangement using elbow fittings and black coolant




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REV:3 new graphics card installed



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REV:4 i7 Upgrade
i7 920
Asus P6T Deluxe
6GB Corsair Dominator PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit



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REV:5 modding the HDD cages to fit SLI



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REV:6 Finished

SLI GTX 280
modded hard drive bay so that the drives can be mounted higher up allowing the pump to be placed near the front of the case
and also making room for the second 280
added a 4" white cathode to give it some subtle lighting





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thoughts on using the case

the case is really silent when running off a fan controller
i cant hear the pc when its all on low
i think the soundproofing in the side panels helps too - its pretty good quality
to be honest the only loud fan is the rear sharkoon that i put on and thats only loud on 1/2 way or more

there are dust filters on everything which helps a lot

my northbridge used to get very hot to touch
now its nice and cool thanks to the airflow through the case
it seems the vga cooler and watercooling are getting more than enough cold air to do their jobs properly
looks like i designed the layout of my mods well as my temps are a lot better than my last case

this is the easiest mid tower case to build in by far - the quality beats lian li cases by miles - the panels are thicker and there are no vibrations

Check out the rest of the thread for all the details...

[barfastic]

nice build, but i have a question... you only have a single 120mm radiator cooling an i7? what temps are you getting? have you overclocked it? a screenshot with temps would be nice too idle/load

[rjkoneill]

nice build, but i have a question... you only have a single 120mm radiator cooling an i7? what temps are you getting? have you overclocked it? a screenshot with temps would be nice too idle/load

its running around 85'C at 4GHz [after 2 hours]

havent done any 8hr runs with screenies

im surprised at the cooling ability of the rad tbh
i was expecting worse

it really does encourage you to fine tune an overclock

for example i run 3.8ghz every day
turbo off, HT on, speedstep on
at 1.336V in windows and the temps hit 76'c max

its stable enough for me

will try to get you some screens

[NameTaken45]

is that 85c - 4GHz 2hours at orthos? or idle?

[rjkoneill]

using prime 95

im not bothering with 4ghz too much as it generates too much heat
i managed 210*19 which worked better as i used much less volts and it ran cooler

still i prefer to use it for benching etc
still 3.8 seems the max for 24/7

[norim_13]

Great work!
I really love that case

[rjkoneill]

heres half an hour of prime so you get an idea of temps on the single rad

[Grinch]

I personally would lose the coils around tubing.... other than that I lke how simplistic it is