Project - Shoehorn It In There - All Internal Lian-Li v351 mATX Watercooling - Done

[Polizei]

Not many people are around from when I frequented these forums two or three years ago. I got interested in watercooling not so much for the temperatures (it's a bonus), but for the fun of modding a case and the planning involved. I'm a hands on person and like to think things out, which is why it has probably taken me so long to get to this point.

Back when I first got into watercooling, I wanted to put a 120.3 radiator in the roof of my Thermaltake Tsunami, and possibly a 120.2 in the bottom. That never materialized and I got rid of the case. Replacing the Tsunami was the legendary Rocketfish, which could've housed 17 loops for all I know. I was planning to shoehorn a 120.4 in the top (or try to) and a 120.2 in the bottom and make a single, big loop. I don't exactly subscribe to dual loops for temperature sake.

Big problems came about with my Rocketfish when I gave it to a friend to powdercoat it. He had showed me samples of stuff he's coated and it looked awesome. $50 for materials and labor, I couldn't go wrong. I handed him my case. He sand blasted it with either nuts and bolts or gravel, and then put a dusting of powdercoating on. It was so thin, that it didn't really cover up the craters he made when media blasting it, or even the metal itself. I told him to re-do it and he said he would because he wanted me to be happy. That never happened, and 3 months later, I got the case back in a cardboard box, untouched, when he nearly filed for bankruptcy.

I ran it caseless for a while, and then bit the bullet and bought a Lian-Li v351 black on the cheap from newegg - $90 with free shipping, down from $120 plus shipping.

Between him messing up my case and the Lian-Li, I upgraded my hardware as well, and to get it into the Lian-Li, I was forced to use the stock cooler. 7,100 rpm, +/-100 from the 70mm HSF wasn't going to last long, so I sold off my old parts which to my surprise, funded my entire watercooling project minus misc screws and nuts.

Enough blabbering.

Hardware:
Processor - AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
Motherboard - MSI 890GXM-G65
RAM - Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 CL9
GPU - eVGA GTX260
PSU - Silverstone OP650 (with my half-ass sleeve job)
Case - Lian-Li v351 black
Harddrives - Currently an 80GB WD SATA1 for OS/programs and 2x Hitachi 1TB for storage. Planning on getting an SSD or 7200rpm laptop drive for an OS drive, because I can easily hid a 2.5" drive in a case meant for 2x3.5" only.

Cooling:
CPU - EK Supreme HF (nickel + acetal)
Pump - Laing DDC-3.2 (pump top still to arrive, asking for a refund because it's been 3.5 weeks since I paid for it )
Radiator - HW Labs BI GTX240
Fans - Panaflo FBA12G12M (noise doesn't bother me)
Tubing - Primochill Primoflex Pro LRT, white, 3/8-5/8
Fittings - Bitspower compressions, sparkling silver
Res - Swifty MC-Res

Now for some pictures. I'll post a picture, and then put my comments immediately below it. I've resized them to 1024x768 for those of you still on a 15" monitor. They were taken with my girlfriend's point-and-shoot with no tripod, so you'll have to just make do. I don't care so much about the pictures as I do about the work I've done.

This isn't a full worklog either. I'm going to show you guys everything I've done in the past 2 days. I didn't take any pictures until everything started coming together.


Got the radiator mounted in the front of the case. There was no wiggle room whatsoever. The radiator is 277mm tall, and the space I had to fit it in was 279mm. That's why you see the radgrill hanging off the side... the fans were off-center and there was no way I could correct it.


A back view showing the radiator mounted with 38mm fans.


A more overall view.


Frontal shot.


Told you guys it was close.


Shot showing how much the rad-grill overhangs the edge. I don't like it, but I will deal with it until I decide on a color scheme for the case and sleeve. I'm going to have a different friend paint it for me, inside and out, so the cut on the radgrill won't be noticeable.


Credit to Crazy V for this idea. She's the first I've seen that put the rubber edge molding around the cut. It makes it look a lot better, I think. I had to cut this because my EK backplate and screws stick out quite a bit from the bottom of the motherboard, and since the standoffs are short, the backplate screws hit the motherboard tray before the motherboard rested on the standoffs.


I know, I know, finger prints everywhere.


Pump mounted on the I/O plate


Pump inside. I made sure to leave clearance so I can install the pump and still be able to slide the tray in and out.

The plan:
Reservoir: I'm going to mount the Swifty MC-Res to the last two PCI slot covers.
Pump: The pump is getting screwed to the back plate above the I/O shield.

Tentative loop order is Res > Pump > CPU > Radiator > Res, which makes my tubing the simplest.

[Polizei]

Got everything finished. I never knew water could be so heavy.


Pump on the motherboard tray with my block. Sexy EK, sexy.


Another angle of the previous picture.


Before routing the tubing, I put my GPU in the motherboard and slid it into the case. Yep, they touch. If the card was 1mm longer, it wouldn't work. The motherboard tray goes all the way into the case without any pressure on the card. They just barely touch.


Moooooommmmm..... He's touching me....


I connected the pump to the CPU first.


Then the CPU to the radiator.


Another look at how tight it is. The tube going over the GPU is going to the radiator.


And into the radiator it goes.


I mounted the reservoir, and connected the radiator to the reservoir, along with running a tube from the reservoir to the pump.


Tubing is done. Just need to install the PSU, connect everything, and I'm good to go. I live dangerously like that.


With the PSU inside and everything connected.


Money shot.



Things I've learned through watercooling this computer:
1) Holy hell mATX cube cases are small
2) Holy hell 38mm thick fans take up a lot of space
3) 3/32" aluminum is pretty hard to cut through
4) 1/8" wall tubing does not play nice
5) 1/8" wall 3/8" tubing does not come off the stock pump top's barbs without being cut off
6) Water is heavy
7) Water is heavy
8) Water is heavy
9) Bleeding is a lot harder than you think it is when the case weighs 40lb+.
10) "Measure twice, cut once" doesn't apply all the time. For me, it was more like "Measure twice, think about it for a week before acting, measure again, and then go balls to the wall."

I must've gone through the build in my head half a dozen times, contemplating tube routing and part placement. This was a challenge, considering it is my first watercooled computer. I jumped right into mATX internal.

[Russ_64]

Man, that is a small case. Where does the PSU go?

Nice job so far, good luck.... that is going to be tight

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

I hope your pump top problem is fixed soon. I can't see you going with the stock top.

Looking good so far. Maybe in the future, there'll be a better res top for that pump of you could do a custom one. Then you can fit SLI in there. I know I'm spoiling it for some people since we discussed it, but they'll see where the res will go soon.

Btw, the case looks more comfortable than I do. Makes me want to nap ASAP.


@RUSS 64, it goes above the CPU. Look at the last picture and notice the cut out above where the pump was mounted.

[ScottALot]

I spy... something orange.

[Polizei]

I spy... something orange.

Yeah... I was going to do an all orange and white build in my Rocketfish, but that fell through after I sleeved the PSU.

I think I'm going to have my case painted white internally, leaving the black anodized panels, and then have white and blue sleeve.

I'm cutting half of my PSU cables off completely and cutting/soldering the other ones shorter. It won't be such a mess after.

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

The cables look crazy in there. Cable management will be epic once it's done. At least an epic feat!

Still running stock?

[Johnny87au]

new top polizei new top!

[Waterlogged]

Polizei, are you getting any vibration noise from the pump being hard mounted like that?

[Rise]

nice job! next I think you should strip it down and paint the whole inside of the case

whereabouts in ohio are you? i'm in medina

[Polizei]

The cables look crazy in there. Cable management will be epic once it's done. At least an epic feat!

Still running stock?

Sadly, yes. I haven't had time to fool with overclocking. Stock seems to be fine though. I'll see what I can do.

new top polizei new top!

I'm trying. I paid for a top on 6/27/10, the guy shipped it 6/28/10, and it still hasn't arrived. He's not responding to PMs either.

Polizei, are you getting any vibration noise from the pump being hard mounted like that?

Not that I can tell. If I put my hand in the back where the pump is, I can feel a slight vibration, but nothing inside the case is rattling because of it, or I can't hear it with the two Panaflos at full tilt, 42ish dB each.

nice job! next I think you should strip it down and paint the whole inside of the case

whereabouts in ohio are you? i'm in medina

Thanks. I'm planning on painting it, just haven't decided on colors yet.

I'm in West Park, which is an informal name for the far west edge of Cleveland. I can spit across the border into Fairview Park.

[Waterlogged]

Not that I can tell. If I put my hand in the back where the pump is, I can feel a slight vibration, but nothing inside the case is rattling because of it, or I can't hear it with the two Panaflos at full tilt, 42ish dB each.

Ah, OK. Silly me, I forgot about the Pana's. Well, if you hear anything in the future, one way to get rid of it would be to drill your holes larger and use the grommets that came with the pump, or if you didn't get any, you could drive over to Mcmaster and pick up a bag of "9311K139".

[monst0r]

Funny, I was thinking of a very similar build. I do have a question, though. Is there any room if you remove the 5.25" drive bays for another 240 rad? Thanks.

[Polizei]

I could've put my radiator in the 5.25" bays, sure. The 5.25" bay area is the same width as where I put my radiator, 279mm. Swiftech won't fit... it's 284mm.

[OC Maximus]

And I thought I was having a hard timing trying to fit everything in my Mini-Tower. This is crazy. Can't wait to see it 100% finalized.

Truly inspiring!

[Johnny87au]

looks nice mate, Do you know if a venomous air cooler or say a megahalem would fit? im going to be building a htpc similar to this except im not gonna watercool the little sucker so i need to know if it would fit hehe

[Polizei]

No. There's less than 120mm of clearance between the motherboard and the bottom of the power supply, so no tower cooler would fit.