Shazza's MM Cube Water Cooling Worklog (pics)

[shazza]

Finally got up enough courage to post my worklog here, after having spent the last month reading everyone else's. Not much exciting here for you experienced folks, but I'll try to share some of my frustrations and learnings along the way, which may be of interest to other first-timers.


HERE ARE FINISHED PICS, for those of you who may have just happened on this thread and don't want to slog through the detail:















Now, a little intro - I did my first build about 3 months ago, which was actually just an upgrade of my 3 yr old Alienware desktop:



(I know there are few Alienware fans in DIY forums, so no need to bash. The desktop served me well, as does my Alienware notebook).



I used the parts from the rebuild to make a spare computer from the ground up. Used the Lian-Li A05B for the build and loved the case and the quality:






Liked it so much, I decided to search for an appropriate Lian-Li case to try my hand at water cooling. Then, I remembered DarthBeavis (who has helped and encouraged me through our association on another forum) had mentioned Mountain Mods, and that's where I ended up. I chose the U2-UFO Opti-1203 in brushed Aluminum. The Opti because I liked the symmetry of the front cover, and Aluminum because I wanted it to match my Dell 2707 monitor (stuff must match ).

The case arrived, and I like it. I knew it was going to have that industrial look and that's fine for this build:













Now that I had the case, I just stared at it. "OMG", I thought, "what have I gotten myself into?" Prior to the builds I had just completed, my hardware experience was limited to installing RAM and a Hard Drive. I had to get some action going, so installed the feet:


(Does this count as "case modding?")



Oops, almost forgot to list the system components:

Intel Q6600
EVGA 680i A1 SLI MotherBoard
EVGA 8800 GTX
PCP&C 750W Quad Silencer PSU
2 GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 RAM
WD 750 GB 7200RPM HD
Samsung 183L SATA DVD R/W optical drive
Mountain Mods U2-UFO Opti-1203 Case


Water Cooling Odds & Ends

D-TEK Fuzion CPU Water Block
EK Full Cover GPU Block
Alphacool Laing DDC Pump (12V)
Thermochill PA 120.3 Rad
EK RES-150
7/16 Tygon Tubing
Yate Loon Fans

and lots of bits and pieces - more than I ever thought possible!


When I first decided to try water cooling, I looked at all the various kits out there because I was overwhelmed by all of the choices. But, as I spent time researching and reading info here and other places, I decided to put together my own parts list. The biggest problem I've had is finding some of the stuff in stock - seems water cooling is the thing to do these days, and things like the Thermochill PA120.3 and barbs were in short supply. Got the rad from Mountain Mods, and ended up getting the fittings directly from Thermochill in the UK.

Other parts came primarily from Performance-PCs, Petra's Tech, and Frozen-CPU. All have provided great service and been very patient with my odds&ends orders.



Putting it all together: I did a quick build just to get a feel for the case. I put the MB, HD, and essentials in to see if everything booted - it did! But I had a problem with the EVGA 8800GTX card - it won't seat properly because the I/O plate sticks out too far, so I used a 7800 GTX to make sure all is well. Here are a couple of shots of the build in "test mode" - just threw it together to make sure everything was working:







As an aside, doing this build is also going to help me with my photography skills, as I've already started researching how to do better shots!