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.
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