PROJECT: Cheap Case Stack for Water Cooling (lots of pics!)

**Spoiler** · 06-13-2009, 05:52 AM

New and old items for current mod:

Type: Qty: Description
Case 2 Apevia X-Master w/PSU
PSU 1 Corsair 620W HX
MOBO 1 Foxconn Bloodrage X58
CPU 1 Intel Core i7 920
RAM 1 G.Skill 1600 DDR3 (6GB kit)
HDD 1 1 G.Skill Falcon 128GB SSD
HDD 2 Raided 60GB OCZ APEX SSD
Video 1 ATI Radeon 4890

Water Cooling Accessories

2 Swiftech MCR 220 Radiators stacked
1 Swiftech MCP655 pump
1 Swiftech GTX CPU Block
1 EK X-TOP for MCP655 pump
1 XPSC 4890 GPU Block
1 Swiftech MICRE Resevoir
F1 - Feser One liquid
Various Bitspower fittings
bigNG T-balancer controller

So I just finished my latest minor mod of my CM690 case a few months ago and was extremely happy. I was pretty satisfied with it, but felt it wasn’t unique enough. Here is a picture.

IMHO, the case is what makes the biggest difference. Knowing that my PC was going to sit on my desk, I wanted a case that wasn’t going to be too tall. I really like the idea of having a small HTPC on my desk, but I wanted to expand my water cooling as well. I looked into some of the Mountain Mods cases, but thought the small ones were too small and expensive. After browsing Newegg for a few days, I came across this cheap and nicely laid out case…..

The case was like $60 and included a PSU. Why not have two? FYI- the PSU’s are nice, but I will end up selling them.

Here are both of them. One of them is gutted; the other is just out of the box.

Modding them for water cooling and stacking will take some work.

Here is the top half. I cut out the two areas for the tubing to come through. I then placed some protection around newly cut holes.

Here are the two Apex drives going in. The other one is the added waterblock to the video card.

Here is the PSU, hard drive mounting, and DVD drive going in.

I just added the mCubed t-balancer. I really loved the spot of this.

Ok, I originally planned and installed one radiator, but I didn’t like the thought have having my entire system on one Black Ice Stealth GT 240. I scrapped the idea, and went and bought two Swiftech MCR 220 double stacked together shown here:

So during the second week of building the lower half, I totally forgot to take pictures. I really wish I had because the layout looks awesome. Instead, I have created a drawing to explain the layout. Here it is:

Once the lower half was done, the upper half was extremely easy. Rather than explaining each one, I thought I would just show you the rest of them.

I intentionally placed the Falcon drive on the upper half so I can either add a second one later or change the SSD configuration out entirely. The only thing I am currently working on now is a custom case top that has a combination of an acrylic window and some A.C Ryan mesh.

I am also working on a customized desktop with Samurize for display of all my water and system temperatures. Depending on when I finish, these pics might be posted in a separate thread.

Hope you all liked the Mod! Comments?