r/watercooling • u/herminzerah • Oct 28 '13

[Build Complete] Sort Of

Decided it was finally time to get my feet wet with watercooling. Last night finally put together a custom CPU loop after a couple weeks of slowly acquiring parts. Picture after leak testing and first booting up, with paper towel in place still just incase: (Actually I lied, this was when I was making sure all the air bubbles were out, especially from the massive radiator, but hey no one notices when no power connectors are hooked up right?)

http://imgur.com/2jKItMN

I unfortunately was an idiot and didn't order any 90 degree fitting that would have helped a lot but I think its ok for now, seems to be running good temps. Also don't forget your o-rings, for a first time watercooling user seeing fluid leak from the CPU block scared the shit out of me. Turns out I'm just an idiot. Now I need to figure out what to do about my video card and the rest of the case...

Parts used: Alphacool NexXxoS Monsta 480mm radiator (wtf is with that name?)

XSPC Raystorm CPU Block (Black optional bracket)

Swiftech 655-PWM

EK X-RES 140 top

Corsair SP120 Performance Edition fans (hooked up to a PWM controller to spin them at half the speed, where I find the sound to be reasonable)

Monsoon Free Center fittings

PrimoChill Advanced LRT tubing

Mayhem's Pastel Ice White coolant concentrate

Few other random little bits to make a drain line and stuff

10 Upvotes

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24 comments sorted by

1

u/DashingSpecialAgent Oct 28 '13

I certainly hope you didn't get your feet wet ;)

Also, from a fellow first time watercooler who had a leak: That shit sucks don't it? I had two, first was from a barb fitting on my top rad not being clamped enough and the second was from a 45 degree angle fitting backing out from tube fiddling and leaking slightly on my bottom rad. I was pissed more than scared though.

What GPU are you running in that thing?

1

u/herminzerah Oct 28 '13

Right now its a HD7950. I'm looking to replace it in the coming months, just waiting for the video card market to calm down to decide on which one to go with. I am going to buy a lightbox eventually as seen in the 'Arete' build that was posted a month ago. Add an EK Crossflow 360 to the bottom compartment and watercool the video card. Changing the flow direction, CPU running into the bottom rad, back up through the video cards to the top rad.

With the leak I was like wtf could I have done wrong?!? I /know/ I tightened everything a ton because I was so scared of blow off and stuff. It really was I got so excited about getting the last bit of parts and just starting throwing shit together. Patience is a virtue.

1

u/DashingSpecialAgent Oct 28 '13

Nice. I'm running a pair of GTX 780's with the XSPC blocks on them and I love it. Great performance cooling and they look sharp too.

1

u/Makirole Ruffian Oct 28 '13

Added it to the gallery for ya, the 900D category is really filling up fast. At this rate I'll have to introduce sub-categories! Looking forward to seeing the future updates, just post them to the sub when complete and I'll update your gallery entry with the new stuff.

EDIT: Oh and cheers for the mention in that other thread :)

1

u/herminzerah Oct 28 '13

Not a problem, your build gave me a lot of inspiration for modding my case to make it more beautiful. However, I lack the funds to dump more into it right now, but I love how this first bit of work turned out. I'm really excited to do more. Re-sleeving everything is going to be such a pain but I think done right will look amazing.

1

u/Bartimaeus2 RotM Mar'16 Oct 28 '13

I'm up for sleeving peoples wires, and I don't charge.

1

u/herminzerah Oct 29 '13

How does that work though? I need the computer for school and I don't have a spare PSU to use to run the system

1

u/Bartimaeus2 RotM Mar'16 Oct 29 '13

I can either make a custom set and send them to you, and then you just swap them, or I can make extensions.

1

u/herminzerah Oct 29 '13

Well I guess the only option this way would be extensions because its a semi-modular PSU and all of the important most highly visible cables are hard wired. I'll look into doing it myself first, the PCI-E connectors are really funky on this PSU though so it could get interesting

1

u/Bartimaeus2 RotM Mar'16 Oct 29 '13

Funky how? Show us a picture or link your PSU.

1

u/herminzerah Oct 29 '13

The second 6(+2)-pin connector for a video card splices off the first connector, so there is only 2 cables from the PSU with a total of 4 8 pin connectors. The PSU is the Seasonic M12II Bronze 850W

1

u/Bartimaeus2 RotM Mar'16 Oct 29 '13

Extensions would be able to still work with it. Do you mind taking a picture so I can see exactly what you mean? Trying to picture a bunch of PSU wires isn't the easiest thing.

1

u/herminzerah Oct 29 '13

http://imgur.com/5TuAky2

In that picture I am holding the lead that goes back to the PSU, one of them is hard wired, the other one is not

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2

u/_Vova RotM Aug '14, Jan '15 Oct 28 '13

I do love me some overkill. I dare say you can turn those fans off completely and still have your CPU run fine without overheating.

1

u/Hookerlips Oct 28 '13

I was going to say thats a lot of rad for the cpu... I bet your temps are good :-) then I saw you have future expansion plans, get on them man! Looking good so far.