Parallel In The Black

Dicehunter said:

Loving the mod on the GPU's, Awesome !

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Many thanks mate

Another little update; experimenting with routing the pipework again.



I do think the manual bends look better than the 90 degree fittings. Not entirely sure on the diagonal approach to the pipes from the GPU, so I'm going to try the horizontal and vertically down look and compare.

The image below is of my sacrificial lamb .



No, I haven't bought a Titan, just the cooler of one. It'll be stripped for certain parts to continue with the modding of the 980Ti's.

Just a little update today, need to get moving! Thanks again for reading.

This looks so cool. Also, I dont think this has been done before, so Im looking forward to this!

Random Update

MadShadow said:

This looks so cool. Also, I dont think this has been done before, so Im looking forward to this!

Click to expand...

Thanks, I think you'll see a lot in this build that hasn't been done before .

I stripped down and cleaned up the sacrificial Titan cooler because is was seriously minging, the risks of buying stuff off ebay. One of the threaded tabs is broken but that doesn't matter.



Have you ever wondered how Nvidia get the 'GEFORCE GTX' moniker to light up so uniformly? Yeah, so did I, so thought I'd find out as I wanted to know if it would be useful for my intended mod.




There's no LEDs in this thing - I reckon it's an electroluminescent panel. You can't see it in the images below as my camera isn't good enough but there is a pattern in the very slightly flexible acrylic.

1. The EL panel lights up with 5 to 6Vdc, any less and it just turns off. That makes me think it's PWM controlled as you can vary the brightness of this strip via the Nvidia software.
2. On the other side of the EL panel you can see the copper tracks, not very complicated really but still very effective.
3. The signature glow.



Will this knowledge prove useful for my mod? Quite possibly .

Ooohh, I'm excited. So far I've only seen mods where they sanded the thing down

Been rather busy with lots of things and I don't have a lot of time tonight to illustrate what I've done, but I will leave you with a bit of a teaser .



No leaks and temperatures are great. The construction of the parallel loop has changed from my original design; adapt when needs must! At stock the 980Ti's are sitting at 29C idle and at 41C running the Heaven benchmark.

I'll post some more pics and progress tomorrow .

I have updated the water cooling schematic to reflect the changes to my original design. Shown below and also updated in the first post.

Update

Welcome back.

In order to remove the existing 780Ti's and install the 980Ti's for testing before modding I had to bypass the water cooling of the graphics cards and use the on-board graphics for a bit.



Here's a close up of the installed bypass from the XSPC Raystorm CPU block to the XSPC XPOWER motherboard block. The XSPC Raystorm is the chrome edition with chrome and clear acrylic mount kit, not available together which is strange as they are such a good match. Illuminated with four white LEDs and their brightness controlled by the Aquaero.



Talking of the Aquaero, you can see in the images above I've mounted it where I'm more likely to see it. I can see water temperatures, fan and pump speeds at a glance.

Case now stripped of all parts and I've marked out what I need to remove. I loose all but one CD-ROM drive bay and two hard drive slots. I don't have an optical drive installed and I've plenty of storage available on the network so it's no great loss. If you are wondering what the white tape is for - it helps increase the lighting of the motherboard by reflecting it back - those tracks that indicate the separation of the auto circuitry and MSI logo.



The rear of the FT02 is marked for the new placement of the Koolance Quick Disconnects. The other connectors will stay where they are. When I installed these previously I also dremelled out the PSU fan grill of the case as I found it a bit too restrictive.



Time to drill 18mm holes required for the new placement of the QDC's.

1. Holes marked with an automatic centre punch
2. Pilot holes drilled
3. 18mm drill bit at the ready!
4. Holes drilled, cleaning them up with my trusty deburring tool



The Silverstone FT02 has 7 accessible PCI slots with the 8th being blocked off with a plate, as if Silverstone changed their mind somewhere in the design process. Anyway, it was time to liberate that 8th slot as I needed it clear to improve the airflow from the far left 980Ti.

1. The plate concealing the 8th PCI slot, image from above
2. The plate concealing the 8th PCI slot, image from below
3. Rivets drilled out, plate removed and the 8th PCI slot is clear
4. Air blower connected to my compressor at the ready to blast all the cuttings from out of the case, goggles on!



Now ready for some dremelling of the optical and hard drive cages.



I didn't take any pictures of the dremeling as I was running out of time. Also apologies for the low quality of the following images.

Dremelling complete and taping up the edges.



Refitting all the hardware back in to case so that I can work out the best paths of the copper tubing.



Then I realise that the placement of the bottom pipe isn't ideal....

More soon!

Looking good mate, great idea for the tubing, I love the parallel look. I reconise that board though, you've taken your time using it...

paulstung said:

Looking good mate, great idea for the tubing, I love the parallel look. I reconise that board though, you've taken your time using it...

Click to expand...

Indeed you should . The board's been in faithful use ever since.

Update

When at the initial design stage I thought I'd try some 45 degree fittings but due to the varying height between the CPU and motherboard ports I noticed it started to affect the straightness of the main horizontal feed pipe. So I ditched the 45 degree fittings and set about bending the pipes to the correct angles myself.



Much better. If you look to the right of the image you'll notice another hole in the frame of the case. During the installation of the pipework I found that the distance between the two horizontal feed pipes was too little, so I drilled another. I'll get some blanking grommets and close of these open holes.



When I reached the left 980Ti I wasn't entirely happy with the routing of the pipes for it.



So I went with a kind of staggered overlapping layout which I like better. This is the final layout, well, until I replace the copper pipes with the chromed copper - the pipes fitted will be my templates so that I don't waste a lot of the chromed tubing.



Because I do get through a lot of copper tubing getting it just right!



Looking good I hope you'll agree . The masking tape on the three bottom intake fans provided me with a datum that I could use with a set square to get the pipework how I wanted it.



Time to leak test it . Blue paper towel placed strategically wherever there is a connector. Paper clip PSU jumper at the ready. When the PSU is turned on the Aquaero is powered which provides power to the USB D5 pump.



After a successful leak test (yay!) it was time to power on.



This is where I'm currently at. The system is running nicely with no ill-effects from having all the blocks in parallel. You may notice I don't have the flow meters in circuit as yet, I still need to make up the USB cable for them. I'll do this when I change the pipework to the chromed tubing.



Still lots to do, with further modding to the 980Ti's. Please leave a comment if you'd like and I'll update again soon!

CURSE YOU, STOP GIVING ME IDEAS WHICH MAKE ME WANT TO REDO MY LOOP!!!

Seriously though, I'm really, really digging this! The chrome Raystorm looks the business too.

alpenwasser said:

CURSE YOU, STOP GIVING ME IDEAS WHICH MAKE ME WANT TO REDO MY LOOP!!!

Seriously though, I'm really, really digging this! The chrome Raystorm looks the business too.

Click to expand...

He he, look away!

Cheers Alpenwasser, the chrome Raystorms are worth quite a bit now apparently.

Mysterae said:

He he, look away!

Cheers Alpenwasser, the chrome Raystorms are worth quite a bit now apparently.

Click to expand...

Haha, yeah they were a limited run or something like that, right?

alpenwasser said:

Haha, yeah they were a limited run or something like that, right?

Click to expand...

Not sure, but the normal copper ones have gone up in price too, probably due to the cost of the raw material.

Update

Another day, another update

First, a nice easy modification to the Silverstone FT02 - upgrade the USB ports on the top of the case to USB3.0. I bought the case so long ago before it came with USB3.0 at the top.



Next, is some retrospect, although you could consider it cheating . The next few parts are things I did last year (see my last project Black In Control) but are relevant to this build to illustrate the project as a whole.

I modified the Corsair AX1200 PSU and the air intake of the FT02 by changed the original fan of the AX1200 (because it was crap and making a high pitched whine) to a Noctua, much better, and dremelled out the restrictive fan guarding of the FT02. Made sure the filter still fitted though.



Again, another part done last year but this is more relevant - the cooling part of the build - the combination of the Watercool MO-RA 4x180 radiator and Aqua Computer Aqualis reservoir. I think that's enough radiator and fans to handle overclocked i7 4770K @4.7GHz, 2x 980Ti's and a motherboard chipset .



In the image below, 1. Aqua Computer Aqualis and USB D5 pump, 2. the bracket mounted to the radiator, 3. the Aqualis base and pump fitted, and finally 4. the borosilicate glass reservoir fitted (the tubing was not the final routing).



This was connected to the case by use of some Koolance Quick Disconnects (QDCs).





Next is some maintenance to the above radiator and reservoir, then moving on to some more mods, thanks for reading!

looking very nice mate. Have you tried the 4 x 180 rad for and idea on it's performance ? I've been curious amount the 2x version, for that new Silverstone case with the HEPA filter

paulstung said:

looking very nice mate. Have you tried the 4 x 180 rad for and idea on it's performance ? I've been curious amount the 2x version, for that new Silverstone case with the HEPA filter

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been using the MO-RA for almost a year and it handled the load of an overclocked i7 4770K and two 780Ti's more than admirably. When the pc is idling it runs in passive mode if I have the window open. With the four 180mm fans it's very quiet too, and also makes an effective bug masher for any insects that get too close!

He, now you've just reminded me that I still have a MoRa laying around here somewhere with nothing to use it for. And two SR-1 240s. Curse of water cooling I suppose.

Mysterae said:

When I reached the left 980Ti I wasn't entirely happy with the routing of the pipes for it.

~snip~

So I went with a kind of staggered overlapping layout which I like better. This is the final layout, well, until I replace the copper pipes with the chromed copper - the pipes fitted will be my templates so that I don't waste a lot of the chromed tubing.

~snip~

Still lots to do, with further modding to the 980Ti's. Please leave a comment if you'd like and I'll update again soon!

Click to expand...

Really like the staggered tubing at the last card. This will look amazing in chrome.
I've never water cooled but do like the looks of parallel loops. Just look cleaner IMHO and if they don't affect performance what's not to like. Nice work! - very jealous!

Update

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates, life got in the way as it does but I have been busy modding behind the scenes. This post is going to be a bit wordy but with plenty of interesting pictures.

I really wanted to crack on and get the mods to the 980Ti’s that I intended. There will be destruction! I still wanted to use the computer so thought I’d only remove one 980Ti, mod it, then swap it. As the loop is parallel a simple bypass in place of the removed card would just have meant the water would go straight in and right back out again, so I had to “dead end” the pipework where the removed 980Ti once was fitted. I thought this would have done it, but oh no…



So I went with a simple return pipe and crushed the middle of it so that no water could flow through it. This worked



Here is a summary of my intended mods for the two 980Ti's, some of which I have already mentioned:



I shall cover each of the above mods in more detail when I get to them in the flow of the project.

First up, modifying the vapour chamber heatsinks. I first started on one from a Titan (non X) cooler that I got earlier, this type is bare metal, silver in appearance.

In reference to the image below:

1. The stock cooler from a Titan.
2. Marked up the required cuts using the mounting bracket from the water block.
3. Rather than use a Dremel I tought I'd save some time and use my circular saw. As I had no idea as to what was in the "vapour chamber" of the heatsink, I wore all the PPE - goggles, ear defenders, gloves and double filter mask - See no evil, hear no evil, feel no evil, smell no evil!
4. Unfortunately it's not the best quality cut finish.



Then I thought I'd use the circular saw to cut the thicker area of the heatsink that contacts the GPU core.... this didn't go so well!



The saw blade must have caught something; it ripped the heatsink from the clamp, almost taking my finger with it, thankfully wore my rubber coated gloves. Hey folk, always use PPE! Just as well it was the test heatsink, it's scrap metal now.



Scapped the idea of the circular saw and went back to the trusted Dremel.



Both Titan X sacrificial heatsinks cut. The masking tape was in place to see the marking for cutting but also to stop the fins from vibrating while cutting.



Have you ever wondered what's in the vapour chamber of the heatsinks? So did I, and I had to flatten them anyway for mounting, so time to open one up.





Emm...interesting..


That's all for now, more soon!