Corsair 540 Air Black & White custom water loop

Hello all,

Well I've been planning this for a few months now and after some long delays with the parts being delivered and Christmas, I've finally made a start on my custom loop in my Corsair 540 Air rig.

You can see previous pics of the old rig here http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=58962

This is my first attempt at doing at custom loop and I'm hoping to get a relatively quiet rig with more of a focus on lower temps for a moderate overclock on the CPU and GPU. I'm also planning on adding a second GPU and also adding that to the loop at a later date. I've ordered an additional 240 rad to fit into the current loop in preparation.

Initially I planned on having a black, white and red rig and ordered clear tube with red coolant but I have now decided to go with a mainly black rig with hints of white in places. I will still have a few hints of red, mainly from the motherboard but it isn't that noticeable. I may go with either clear tubing and clear coolant or solid white tubing with clear coolant. I'll decide what colour tubing/coolant I want later in the build.

The spec at the time of writing this is:

- Intel i5 4670K - over clocked to 4.4ghz
- Asus Maximus VI Formula
- 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133mhz
- EVGA GTX780Ti SC
- Corsair AX760 PSU
- Corsair Carbide Series Air 540
- Corsair Force LS 120GB SSD
- Corsair Force 3 480GB SSD
- Western Digital 2T HDD
- Corsair Link Commander w/Cooling & Lighting Node

Current loop setup:

- XSPC RayStorm D5 Photon AX360 WaterCooling Kit
- XSPC Razor GTX Titan / 780 / 780Ti w/backplate
- XSPC 7/16 compression fittings - black nickel
- XSPC White LEDs

Here's a few shots of the parts I've bought and my GPU with the block on and ready to go in the rig. I'll uploads a few shots of how far I get with the build a bit later.

Oooh, xspc and a 540, sounds promising..

Right... Some progress.

Sorry for the double post but this is a fairly big update.

I've decided to wait until the AX240 for the roof turns up before I fill the system and do a proper leak test so I've decided to start by setting out all the parts in place where I'm happy and cutting the tube to suit.

Heres the AX360 with its foam gasket applied.



More bits stripping out.



To get the rad in place and have access to the ports I had to remove the side of one of the floor drive bays. Shame, but it only had the Corsair Link Commander in, which I will probably do away with anyway as its a pain in the arse.



Rad mounted in place. I realised a while ago that you can mount fans behind the slid off grill at the front which has enabled me to have the second rad in the roof. I've lost the dust filter but I can live with that I guess





H100i now gone...



Fans mounted in place and with front grill on...





CPU AND GPU blocks in place





First sections on tubing cut and put in place temporarily. Routing out of GPU is slightly changed later. I will also probably get some 45's to go between the CPU & GPU...



Reservoir mounted in place and tubes cut. This also changes slightly later on and I will also get another 90 to make the loop neater. It will also change again once the other rad arrives. To mount the reservoir I removed to of the rubber cable gromets to make a flat surface to work on and have crudely mounted it using small strips of metal banding. I will hopefully get round to getting a some kind of metal plate made up to fix it properly in place and make it look a lot neater.



Res plumbed in



Changed the SP120 rings from red to white. Much better...





Once Id done everything that I could I had a bit of a play about with putting the new AF140 LED fans in place and testing out the lighting on the water blocks. I was quite pleased with the results.









And thats it for now. More updates in the coming days...

This looks awesome fella. The hose from the top of the mobo would look better through the other grommet though and use a 90 degree fitting on the res for that too

tinytomlogan said:

This looks awesome fella. The hose from the top of the mobo would look better through the other grommet though and use a 90 degree fitting on the res for that too

Click to expand...

Thanks man, Im pretty happy so far. Yeah, that whole section will probably all change once the other rad turns up. I'll definitely have another 90 coming out the res but XSPC are out of stock of 90's and 45's and having OCD like I do, I can't get the fittings from anywhere else

That is freakin' sweet! Nice job dude.

Looks very clean!

Looks great..

Saved you fron the double post too

Conchubair said:

Looks great..

Saved you fron the double post too

Click to expand...

Haha, cheers dude!

Wow , I envy your build !


Love the lighting on the water blocks and those LED fans really make the whole thing pop !

It does look really good.

Could be made a little tidier still with more angled fittings as you'd get away with a shorter hose between the CPU and GPU, and GPU and radiator.

Also a tad disappointed you got one of the prettiest reservoirs on the market and hid it away. Oh well!

jamesriley94 said:

It does look really good.

Could be made a little tidier still with more angled fittings as you'd get away with a shorter hose between the CPU and GPU, and GPU and radiator.

Also a tad disappointed you got one of the prettiest reservoirs on the market and hid it away. Oh well!

Click to expand...

Thanks dude

Yeah, I did say in a previous post that I'm going to get some 45's and 90's to tidy it up a bit but XSPC are out of stock of both fittings.

I'm afraid I had not choice but to hide the rad away. I was pretty limited on space You're lucky I didn't get the white and black version

Awesome! I love the lighting on the waterblocks, looking forward to some more pics

Nice looking build, really clean and tidy. Well done.

ramoine said:

Wow , I envy your build !


Love the lighting on the water blocks and those LED fans really make the whole thing pop !

Click to expand...

RKJ said:

Awesome! I love the lighting on the waterblocks, looking forward to some more pics

Click to expand...

ShaunB-91 said:

Nice looking build, really clean and tidy. Well done.

Click to expand...

Cheers guys

Smallish update:


So the second rad arrived today, which was awesome. I also bought some white tubing but Im not sure if I will put it in. I am really happy with the clean look of the clear tube and also Id like to do something different as it seems that alot of people have coloured tube or coloured coolant but I'll see how I get on



Here is a shot with the side panel on. I tinted the side panel with car window film a while ago as I thought my PC looked too open and a bit like a fish tank
I like how you can just see the outline of the CPU and GPU...



So here it is finished(ish)... I'm going to fill it and leave it on test over night.



Filled and on test... No leaks so far



So once this has tested ok I'll put the rest of the rig together and see what temps I'm getting. Quite excited to see how it works out

I've got a load of 45's and 90 degree bends on order but I don't have a clue when they'll turn up as XSPC and all other places are out of stock. When they turn up I'll make a decision on the tubing but I think I'll leave it as it is.

So, testing passed and I managed to get the system back together. It was a bit of a mission getting the motherboard back in with the CPU & GPU in the way but it's all in and working excellently. I've got a few more things to do before I can say it's finished for now tho. I'll compile a list below if anyone's interested.

I've done a bit of testing so far and I'm getting, what I'd consider, some really good temps and extra headroom on my GPU overclock.

CPU - in general use (gaming etc) I'm getting temps around the 40*c mark and that's with an overclock @ 4.4ghz. I haven't checked the temps in OCCT yet.

GPU - previously I had my reference GTX 780Ti (bios flashed to superclocked) overclocked to +120mhz clock speed and +400mhz mem with temps in the high 60's. Now I'm able to get the card happily clocked at +160mhz GPU and +550mhz mem with temps around 37*c under full load. Very happy with this.

Things to do.

-Install second GPU and add to the water loop.
-Replace PSU cables with white braided cables.
-Replace a few loop fittings with 90/45 degree bends.
-May upgrade the PSU.
-Massive amount of cable management. :-(

Shame you didnt get the white rads really

tinytomlogan said:

Shame you didnt get the white rads really

Click to expand...

Yeah, I know. I wanted the white ones but they don't sell them as a kit and it worked out so much cheaper buying the kit :-/

A small update on my rig.

I bought some Corsair white braided PSU cables and get them installed. Started doing a bit of cable managment round the back but I don't want to go to far as I'm still planning on adding a second GPU and I also ordered the wrong 24pin cable

I have also cunningly managed to hide the HDD that was in the floor slot and spoiled the look inside the rig. I managed to squeeze it in behind on of the front panels (see photos below). This also will allow me to finally make plate to cover the horrible holes in the bottom.

Don't worry, the hoses round the back are just temporary as I ran out of 90's at the time of doing the loop. I will completely finish the loop when I can afford the second GPU.

Enjoy

That looks awesome !

Can you not get any more out of your i5 though ? Maybe shoot for 4.60GHZ ?