Triple rad in a P180 - worklog

[Ic3man]

Fed up with the summer temps and my 'Bigwater' watercooling kit I decided to get into 'proper' watercooling and bought the following kit:

Alphacool
Nexxos XP Solid CPU block
Nexxos Pro 120.3 Radiator
3 Mtr UV blue 10mm tube
Capecool Reservoir
AP700 Pump

All for under £100

Obviously I am doing this on a budget so I also had to use my current case, an Antec P180. Now the P180 is designed for Aircooling so adapting it to watercooling (especially a triple rad) was going to take some modding.
I had some concerns on how I was going to fit the rad to the P180 as it is cramped at the best of times and after alot of thought and head scratching the only place it was going to fit and not be too obtrusive would be the top. With this in mind I grabbed my jigsaw and dremmel and stripped the case to the bare essentials.

My first job was to fit the rad which was made a hell of alot easier thanks to the rad box as it has a handy template for such a task.



Cutting circles aint easy with a jigsaw and I wasn't gonna pay £30+ for a 120mm holesaw but I smoothed them out as best I could, taking off any rough edges with the dremmel. I wasn't too concerned as they would be covered up with the fans and rad anyway..function over form.

While I had the case stripped down I also decided to do the bottom fan mod, enabling me to fit a 120mm fan in the bottom section in front of the HD rack.

[Ic3man]

With the modding done for now (I intend on doing a window mod at a later date) I began to fit the goodies.

I won't bore you with the build as it was pretty straightforward but I gotta show you a pic of the finish on the XP block as it is the best I have seen..totally mirrored!



With all the build done here is the (almost) finished article.





With my X23800 @ 2600 - 1.57vcore I am getting 35c load temps! Where as with the bigwater/Bigtyphoon I was in the high 50's - massive improvement.

I know its a restrictive block and the pump aint the best in the world, that along with 10mm tubing I wasn't expecting such a great improvement in temps but I guess 'low-flow' really does work well

[Ic3man]

Reserved (window mod)

[nealh]

can you take a closer pic of the rad in the top of the case, please

BTW do you think you could fit the fans on the inside as well

[Ic3man]

I could easily fit the fans inside the case BUT it would meen sacrificing another drive bay which is used for a fan controller. I'll be redoing the loop again once I get kentsfield so I can also take some more pics then regarding the rad fitment. In hindsight a double rad would have been neater and would fit with fans inside without obstructing the drive bays but I wanted a triple rad coz I'll soon be cooling the 7950GX2 aswell which will add quite a bit of heat to the loop.

[tommrussell]

man u did a nice job of the mods always have liked the uv ccfl

a little more wire management and u'll have on schweeet box

[Ic3man]

Thx

Unfortunately 'Wire management' and 'Antec P180' are two phrases that don't go well together. The P180 sux for wire management...period! I put a good hour into attempting some form of hiding the wires but there is simply no where for them to go, mainly due to all of the kit I have inside the cramped case.

With the rad fans set to 'blow' rather than suck the temps in the case are great and arn't that hindered by wires anyway. As stated I'll be re-building it soon so I'll try and come up with something that hides the cabling.

[Moonraker™]

Ic3man. can you do a close up of where you have the blue cc's? (in daylight) and also maybe a linky of which ones you have.

It is exactly the look I want (at the front) where you can just see some light creeping out of the "front grill" things on the side.

[nealh]

BTW..very nice setup

[Lurid]

Wow...thats almost hard to believe, after having owned that case. I must say thats quite the accomplishment, now rangle those cables :p

[Nanometer]

I would direct the fans the opposite direction, but thats just me.

[Ic3man]

Ic3man. can you do a close up of where you have the blue cc's? (in daylight) and also maybe a linky of which ones you have.

It is exactly the look I want (at the front) where you can just see some light creeping out of the "front grill" things on the side.

The blue glow coming from the side grills is from the muskateer fan controller (blue) which sits in the 5 1/4 bay.



The CC's are not blue they are UV (black light) by Sharkroon. £5 for 2. One is on the 'roof' infront of the rad (conceiled) and the other is infront of the pump. Once I have done the window mod they won't be visable so only the light that they emit will.

I would direct the fans the opposite direction, but thats just me.

Yeah I tried in the pull configuration but temps were actually worse. Also having them blowing into the case keeps the pwmic cool and feed some much needed cool air to the GX2.

[tommrussell]

even if your not able to do much more with those cables u still did a hell of a good job

[Ic3man]

I'm gonna have to do something with those damn cables now that its been mentioned.

Thx very much for the words of encouragement guys

[tommrussell]

I'm gonna have to do something with those damn cables now that its been mentioned.

Thx very much for the words of encouragement guys

i knew we could get to ya tehetehe

spiral wrap works well or even the old fashioned zip ties
i used automotive loom wrap black of course seems to hide the wire well

[Moonraker™]

Good learnings from you here 1c3man. I'm gonna get a window in my P180. But it's the last thing I'll do in there.

I'm getting a Sunbeam Rheobus controller, and my plan was to have 2x blue cathodes down the front sides vertically and 2x green at the back vertically.

But I may just go for one colour now. Possibly green to be different! lol. Although my chipset cooler will have blue LED's on. lol. ummmmm. blue it is then!

I'm modding the lower fan grill to fit a 120mm there to push air over the HDD's as I think it's far more efficient that sucking air over with a 38mm whopper. The PSU doesn't need it as much as the HDD's would benefit from cooler air and on top of that, you'll know yourself how little space there is with that 38mm installed in the middle of the lower chambers for PSU wires to come through.

[Ic3man]

Always good to share ideas m8. If it wasn't for me reading this and other forums I would never have bothered so I hope in turn it has inspired some other people to do some modding. It is a little nervy when you jigsaw your kit but the satisfaction you get from it is great imo.

Yeah, life is a little easier with the lower fan infront of the hard disks rather than behind. Green and blue can work well together aslong as you don't over do it and its always better to hide the cathode as it cuts down the glare. I was contemplating on having smaller, green 3" cc on the HD's but that would mean even more wires to hide. I like UV as it isn't too bright and it will give a good effect without blinding the user. Green with UV looks sweet and I was considering doing it that way but I didn't want it to look like alot of the swiftech kits available that use green.

I have some spare blue UV reactive perspex that will be put to use over the coming days if I get the time. I wanna make a window and a shroud for the rad fans aswell as hide/disguise the wiring. Time, unfortunately, is something I have little of

[nealh]

I placed a 1200mm YL in front of the fans but no matter what I did I need to dremmel the fan thinner or my HDD sort of touch and created noise but tempsare 7C-10C+ cooler

[vcas5]

ic3man..i have the same setup exactly and it does a gret job m8 although i am thinking of upgrading my pump now.

great mod btw i am just collecting parts to do the same thing to my p160

[Ic3man]

Yeah I think I'll upgrade the pump when I get a 7950GX2 block as they look very restrictive. The pump does a damn fine job atm though keeping my OC 3800 cool @ 21c idle 35c load with 1.57v so its fine for the time being. Tbh I wouldn't know where I would put a bigger pump such as the D5. Maybe the Alphacool plexi top ultra would be a better option.

The NV card has raped my CC though so it'll be xmas before I upgrade the pump (along with CPU, mobo, memory etc etc)

[Moonraker™]

Ic3man,

How did you remove the steel rivet things on the lower front of the case. like in this pic: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/webbo10/2.jpg

And how is that green fan secured / stuck on?

[Ic3man]

The steel rivets are easily removed using a 4mm drill bit, just drill them out from the outside. The fan was stuck to the case using a glue gun but it probably wasn't needed as it is such a tight fit that the HD cage actually wedges it in anyway..but for completeness I glued it aswell. I would have liked to create some new holes and screw-fit the fan but the grill is actually wider than the fan so this wasn't possible.

When you drill the rivets out be sure to grind any rough edges off as this will effect the flush fit of the fan. A dremmel is idle for this.

Oh...and I didn't use the green fan, that was just for illustration purposes, I used the spare 25mm Antec tri-cool taken from the topmost position instead.

[ripken204]

well for me i used normal fan screws with washers to keep the screws from going thru the fan grate.

[Moonraker™]

I've just gonna stick my down with pads! lol. I don't have the cash to balls things up (if I was to). But if the sticking down thing don't work (this is with an 80mm fan btw) then I might just think "f-k it. I'll give it a go!"

[Istasi]

Very good work on this Ic3man, it's partially what inspired me to undertake WC'ing myself. It proved to me that P180 watercooling was feasible, which is just what I needed.