Black In Control

Welcome to the start of an upgrade to my existing build. There will be no hardware upgrade, at least none planned anyway , and the minimal of modification to the case. This is purely about watercooling my pc and adding in a control system for the watercooling and case fans.

System spec:
Intel i7 2600k
Gigabyte P67-UD7-B3
EVGA 670 GTX 4GB SC (x2)
8GB Patriot Viper
Coolit Vantage CPU Cooler
Corsair AX1200 PSU
Silverstone FT02 case

Those folk familiar with the Silverstone FT02 case will know that it’s a bit of a pain to fit watercooling to. It can of course be done with some modding, but it’s not an ideal setup imo. Here’s what I plan:




Here are a few images of the system before work begins:



The NZXT fan controller you can see here will no longer be needed.



A bit of a dark shot with the cover removed. Ignore the time and date on the NZXT fan controller, it's so inaccurate I stopped correcting it.



Some internal lighting. A little too bright and distracting but still useful. I'll be doing something to tame it, as well as the switching of it (see below).



The discrete switch for the lighting. This will be removed and replaced with the Aquacomputer Aquaero relay output.



You can see here the Coolit Vantage cpu cooler, been pretty reliable since new, but it's starting to gurgle a bit now. It's a shame Corsair didn't design anything similar to the Vantage when they swallowed up Coolit .



EVGA 670 GTX 4GB in SLI. These will be watercooled too, but not the usual way...

Cheers for reading, and I'll update soon!

A selection of bits...

Oooooooh shiny :drool:

keep the pics coming

Plenty of shiny shiny!

Here are some more pics of the components:

This is the external radiator, the Watercool MO-RA3 4x180 PRO, or as I call it, the HFR (Huge Fooking Radiator)!



It still has it's protective film on it, but I've attached the feet. The mouse is next to it to give you a sense of it's size.

It is a pretty dense radiator!



As the radiator will be external and I need a way to move the PC and the HFR without growing another limb, it will be connected through quick disconnects. When I need to move either the PC or HFR I'll just separate them (when it's switched off of course).

I've labelled them so you know what you're looking at:



QDC's and fittings assembled below. The QDC's will be fitted below the power supply so will only be partially visible.



When editing the image above I noticed that one of the 10mm push-fitting is different - the top one is different from all the rest I have. Typical that I didn't notice it until the pic was taken .

Here's the Aquacomputer Aqualis system that I showed in my schematic. It consists of the USB D5 pump, the Aqualis pump block and the reservoir. It is surprisingly heavy once assembled. This will be attached to the side of the radiator, the mounting of which is still to be determined.





This will give me control of pump speed and monitoring of coolant fill level.

My water block of choice for the CPU is the XSPC Raystorm in chrome. Got to have some bling in the case .



Any thoughts or questions let me know!

Nice watercooling gear ! control it! ;p

first off great start cant wait to see more. Secondly I understand the desire for what appears to me to be automated control of your system. But imho totally unneeded a simple fan controller will do about the same albeit manual control. imho the extra wiring for those sensor will muck up a clean build. And automation seems to fail at some point costing time and $$$ to fix But as I said i cant wait to see more pics.

Love the shinies!

I have a MoRa2, and they are indeed rather dense, especially considering that they're pretty thick
as well.

The chrome raystorm looks bauce! :dribble:

Thanks for your interest guys, plenty to update!

The Silverstone AP181 fans that I'm using for the radiator have a switch already wired to alternate the speed between two settings. I won't be using the switch so rather than remove it I'll hide this cable and switch in the rad box, but set to full and taped up. The Aquaero will take over the fan speed control duties.





Time to mount the fans to the radiator. One fan:



Four fans!



Fan grill in place:



It's a monster...



So, a little masking tape, marking up, centre punching, drilling etc, to mount a bracket. I drilled the fan grills because it was convienent and worked well. You need to be careful where you drill in a rad!



Aquacomputer Aqualis reservoir pump base and USB D5 pump mounted:



Reservoir borosilicate glass and auto-pressure relief installed. Very happy with how this turned out!



Time to bend some copper pipe! Rather than test and waste the good chromed tubing, I got some normal 10mm copper pipe to practise with first, always wise!



I was testing how to connect the reservoir/output of pump to the radiator. I'd appreciate your thoughts on the three options:

The complex bends:



The two 90 degree up-and-over bends:



Or the simple flexible tubing (10/13mm, ID/OD) with two 90 degree rotary fittings:



The last option is the easiest and greatest flow, but the copper pipes do look good. Need to perfect the bending tool as it did mash up the copper pipes a bit!



Progressing onwards...

i like the tubing method, if you get better fittings....

did you know SilverStone came out with new 180s??? over 5.8mmh20 of static pressure!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220048

That external rad setup has turned out pretty nice. Personally I'm a sucker for copper pipes, so
I'd vote option 2 (the copper pipes with the simpler bends).

I think it might look great if you painted the silver fittings black though

Wow did you pilfer that radiator out of a car? :lol:

That's one huge effing radiator

badtaylorx said:

i like the tubing method, if you get better fittings....

did you know SilverStone came out with new 180s??? over 5.8mmh20 of static pressure!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220048

Click to expand...

I didn't know, and they look like nice fans too. Too late for me, but thanks for letting me know.

alpenwasser said:

That external rad setup has turned out pretty nice. Personally I'm a sucker for copper pipes, so
I'd vote option 2 (the copper pipes with the simpler bends).

I think it might look great if you painted the silver fittings black though

Click to expand...

I thought about black fittings but decided on the silver, because if I were to use the chrome pipe to connect, it would match. It's the slight restriction the pump will have right at the get-go that I am a little concerned with (using 10mm pipe instead of 10/13mm tubing, not a lot in it really). In saying that though, I think I already have a lot of restriction in the loop! The D5 will cope though.

AlienALX said:

Wow did you pilfer that radiator out of a car? :lol:

That's one huge effing radiator

Click to expand...

Yeah, if my neighbour asks, you know nothing!

Mysterae said:

I thought about black fittings but decided on the silver, because if I were to use the chrome pipe to connect, it would match.

Click to expand...

Ah yes, my bad, forgot about the silver pipes :banghead:

Not that black fittings would look bad with silver pipes.

Mysterae said:

It's the slight restriction the pump will have right at the get-go that I am a little concerned with (using 10mm pipe instead of 10/13mm tubing, not a lot in it really).

Click to expand...

Where you have the restriction in a closed loop does not matter (beginning, end, middle),
only the sum total is of relevance. Also, restriction from tubing/pipes is pretty negligible
in water cooling as long as you don't run something ridiculously tight.

Today was about sorting out the video cards. I decided not to get full cover blocks as I'd done that, and despite the Watercool Heatkillers looking nice, I opted to go for the Watercool Heatkiller GPU block only and refit the original fan shroud. What?!? You'll see...

The first victim:



Look at the sweating the thermal pads have been doing on the back, it's around the E in the pic below. The other sticky looking mark is where I've had a temperature sensor. Unfortunately the heat means they don't stick that well.



Cover off, and will you look at the excuse for a cooler. It does it's job I suppose. Notice that the ram on the front of the card doesn't have heatsinks; probably not needed with the air from the fan.



The size of the card hides it's power. A test fit of the Watercool gpu block.



As I said before, I wanted to refit the cards fan and shroud, and to do that I need to plug the fan back in. Guess what? The connector for the fan is blocked by the Watercool gpu block. You can see it a bit, the white socket between the Watercool block and the main power connector:



That means it's Dremel Time!



Part of the block dremelled (is that a word?!) away and I can now plug and unplug the fan.



Now, the shroud obviously won't fit back on without some modification. So here's goodbye to the warranty...



The insides need a little bit of work too. Look at the top of the shroud. I always thought the top legend was just a metallic sticker; it's actually reasonably thick metal. It does mean that I had to use my compressed air gun to make sure that all the metal filings are removed, and then another good clean. It would not be a good thing to have metal particles flying around a powered card.



All done.



Time to take the other 670 out and do the same again to that one. It does mean I need to install a backup card; AMD 4870. This thing idles at 72 degrees, it's the definition of a video toaster . I had this watercooled in a previous rig. It needed it.



Two 670's completed. Or two warranties no longer valid .



The intentionally blurry picture below is to draw you attention to the nuts that come with the Watercool gpu blocks. They are too long to enable the cards to sit right next to each other. Proabably due to the 670's back plate to be be honest. I'll search for some appropriate nuts tomorrow.



Getting the blocks ready to fit the SLI Multi-Link.



Twin 670 GTX's with the SLI Multi-Link installed. For more info on the Multi-Link follow this (singlular) link for a thread I made about it.



And that's aboutall I managed to get done in the short time I had today. Hope you enjoyed the pics!

holy shit that looks awesome
give us benchmark scores now !

That GPU mod is totally awesome imho! :rock:

Can you turn the fans way down? I assume their purpose is to provide some air flow for the power
system and RAM's on the cards, but that doesn't really need all that air which the GPU itself
would have required, right?

Ohgod, I love this mod

I never would have thought to do something like that with the original OEM shroud... huh... O_O. Looks almost like it came like that, turned out nice.

Looks epic so far mate! Nice work!