New case! Upgrading from huge chieftec fulltower to Lian Li midtower

**=ACID RAIN=** · 03-17-2008, 08:57 PM

Time to get rid of ol' reliable. I need something LAN-worthy, and a 26in tall steel case isn't gonna do it. So the plan was to get this:

into this:

Here's the case, Just came in yesterday:

Fitting the heatercore with the power supply. Damn close fit! I measured before I bought and got this case specifically because it would fit my stuff in this manner.

I have a little trick up my sleeve that gets me 100% surface area usage without a shroud

The block is...BLEEDING! Nope, it's a household acidic solution - ketchup! Cleans copper perfectly, as you can see from the fuzion block on the left, which was black and looking pretty rough beforehand.

Here is a picture of my 8800GT. Believe it or not the ram STILL gets warm. No wonder the ram on these cards fails if overclocked.

And the desk...poor desk. It went from this:

to THIS:

This is the finalized gasket install. Notice the ziptie? I used zipties under the rad to bridge the gap and hold it up, then 2 straps above to pull it down tight. What you end up with is a suspension that doesn't move AT ALL. Yes I could have drilled holes across the case, screwed in dowel rods, or any other oddball way of mounting this, but I chose this way because it required no modification to the inside of the case. Even the pump is taped down with double-sided tape, which works perfectly.

Here is a shot of the clearance between the top and the rad. It's less than 1cm. I would have liked it a bit lower so there was more clearance, but this is good because it keeps the foam gasket nice and tight.

Here is a picture of the finalized system. I would like to clean up the wires a little more, but for now I am just glad to have my computer back in one piece haha. Tweaking, for me, comes with time

Shot from the front, with rheostats for the fans. I'll get some matching nuts and bolts later for the fans, and bolt them down tight. Also, it runs a little warmer since I no longer get the rad air directly from the room, idle is 36C on the hottest 2 cores. Room temp is a bit warm though, around 76F. For now, this will do!

**[XC] NetburstXE** · 03-17-2008, 09:02 PM

UGH - A white drive in a black case. Other than that, amazing job fitting everything into a small case. Definitely looks a lot better than the old full-tower did. What temps do you get on the GPU?

**=ACID RAIN=** · 03-17-2008, 09:42 PM

Yeah I know, I'll deal with that white drive soon, TRUST ME lol....

The GPU hardly budges as far as temps go. 36 idle, 38 load according to rivatuner. It never gets warm on the top of the card over the GPU. I know because I've benched and checked with my fingers.

If the CPU is loaded, it affects the GPU temp more than the GPU can affect itself on this loop