Extreme Watercooling the Corsair 650D - Advice needed

[josiahrulez]

Hey all,

I'm looking to watercool my gaming PC, I have very little experience in watercooling (I set up a Swiftech H20-320 for a friend), so I'm probably going to need lot of advice, any advice is good, if you think I'm an idiot for modding my 650D, let me know.

I'm looking for an all internal setup, I go to LANs often and we normally car pool and have like 4 PC's in the back + our fileservers, so i could see an externally mounted radiator getting damaged easily. I'm going to be doing a Blue/UV Blue/Black style, because of the colour of PCB on most of my components.

Here's a list of my current system, I want to watercool everything,
Case - Corsair Obsidian 650D
I will be modding this case (Pictures below) and once finished i will be getting sound dampening foam.
CPU - Intel i7 2600k
My CPU has been running at 4.8Ghz 24/7 for the last 6 months, so I'll be continuing to do that and occasionally push the OC further for benchmarks. I'm currently using the Corsair H100.
Motherboard - Asrock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3
I'm looking to watercool the Southbridge and Mosfet. No Water Blocks have been made for this motherboard, but i should be able to find some made for similar motherboards that will fit mine. Later I'll take off the Southbridge and Mosfet heatsinks to see what will fit.
Memory - G.Skill 1600Mhz 2x4GB
I wan't to upgrade my memory to higher clocked stuff and a model that has a water block made for it.
Graphics Cards - 3x AMD HD7970
I want to OC these once water cooled.
Power Supply - Corsair AX750 Watt
This power supply is awesome, rated at 750watts, but easily powers my system. I will be upgrading to the Corsair AX1200 Watt because I want to stop using molex to 6/8pins (Corsair 750AX only as enough PCIe power connectors for one GPU), and i will get the blue Pre-sleeved modular cables for the AX1200.
SSD/HDD - Crucial M4 128GB (OS) and Seagate Momentus 2.5" 750GB (Steam HDD)
These can both be mounting behind the motherboard tray


Memory -
Power Supply - Corsair AX1200 Watt $341
AX1200 Individually Sleeved Modular Cables — Blue $104.99
CPU Water Block -
Southbridge Water Block -
Mosfet Water Block -
GPU Water Block -
Top Radiator - Koolance Copper Core CU1402V Dual 140mm $65
Front Radiator -
Bottom Radiator -
Back Radiator -

Yellow = Radiator
Pink = Fans

I will be using the Silverstone Air Penetrator fans because they have the UV blue reactive fins which will go with my colour scheme.

Now with my Case, i will be removing the front 5.25" bays and HDD bays. I want to try fit a Phobya Xtreme 400mm Radiator or Magicool Extreme Dual 180mm or a tripple 120mm thick, high FPI rad? What would be better? a high surface area, low FPI or a thick, high FPI rad with lower surface area?

Phobya Xtreme 400mm Radiator 448x200x36mm - 13FPI - 3.6cm thick
Magicool Extreme Dual 180mm 400 x 180 x 35 mm - 13FPI - 3.5cm thick

For the top radiator, I'm limited to 7cm before the motherboard will get in the way, so I'm going to go with the Koolance Copper Core CU1402V Dual 140mm - 30 FPI - 3cm thick

I can't decide on the back radiator yet because I'm not sure if I'm water cooling my Mosfet yet, if i am water cooling my Mosfet I'll be limited on space.

For the bottom radiator I'll probably go for thick (6-8cm) 120mm or 240mm radiator (High FPI). I'll just have to decide on the front radiator first.

I will probably mount a Pump/Reservoir Combo on the motherboard tray (Picture above), will any size reservoir be ok? and for a big loop like this will one pump be enough? (I'm thinking of getting Laing D5 pump)

Still deciding on Waterblocks so i will post back later.


So will this be enough rad for what i want to cool?

 

[andrewmchugh]

D5 will be fine, Rads don't add as much restriction as you think. However I would maybe not bother with the floor rad and have everything else exhausting otherwise the case will be really warm. I wouldn't use that 200mm rad. 120mm is the best because of the range of fans, larger fans generally have poor static pressure.

I don't think its worth cooling memory or motherboard.

Front rad RX360

Rear RX120

Roof Depends how much you are moding it, you can get a rx360 in if the rad is sitting left and close to the front. But I dont no what state that will leave the roof in.

 

[Jayjapanb]

Amount of rad will be fine. Keep in mind you will need a bit of room for the sleeved cables to come out of the psu. They don't curve as easily as sleeveless so the bottom rad will be a tight fit.

Also the AX 1200i is out now however the cables are different and won't use AX1200 sleeved cables.(corsair cables are surprisingly not very interchangeable in pin layout) Not sure when they are gonna release sleeved ones for the 'i' version.

Also the pump/res combo might be a tight fit with the cards in place.
Difficult to isolate vibrations which is a pretty big issue with pumps, particularly with pump res combos. At least from personal experience.

You seem to be on the right track. I only have one custom loop worth of experience so others may have some ideas on hardware and such.
Good luck with everything!

 

[josiahrulez]

D5 will be fine, Rads don't add as much restriction as you think. However I would maybe not bother with the floor rad and have everything else exhausting otherwise the case will be really warm. I wouldn't use that 200mm rad. 120mm is the best because of the range of fans, larger fans generally have poor static pressure.

I was going to use the Silverstone AP181 or if these dont move enough air, they have an updated version which does 2000rmp Silverstone AP182

I don't think its worth cooling memory or motherboard.

I agree too, but i want to

Roof Depends how much you are moding it, you can get a rx360 in if the rad is sitting left and close to the front. But I dont no what state that will leave the roof in.

I dont want to mod the roof, because if i stuff up i can't hide it, where as if i mod the bottom and stuff up i can hide it easily.

Amount of rad will be fine. Keep in mind you will need a bit of room for the sleeved cables to come out of the psu. They don't curve as easily as sleeveless so the bottom rad will be a tight fit.

I'll keep that in mind but i think i should be ok, I will be ordering the bottom rad last anyways, after i get my front rad, so i can re measure everything.

Also the pump/res combo might be a tight fit with the cards in place.
Difficult to isolate vibrations which is a pretty big issue with pumps, particularly with pump res combos. At least from personal experience.

I was just going to get a mounting kit so i can attach it to the motherboard tray, but put some foam or something between them. and once everything's set up i was going to put a heap of sound dampening foam in

 

[OcSurfer]

if you look at my project coolsair i modded the front to fit a 80mm 240 rad that almost performs as well as a 60mm 360
i dont think u can fit the 200mm rad and then one in the bottom due to the fact that you have to mount the 200mm barbs facing the floor, unless you want to mod the optical bays, and if your gunna do that my aswell put an 80mm 240 in there and put high performance fans on it.

 

[josiahrulez]

if you look at my project coolsair i modded the front to fit a 80mm 240 rad that almost performs as well as a 60mm 360
i dont think u can fit the 200mm rad and then one in the bottom due to the fact that you have to mount the 200mm barbs facing the floor, unless you want to mod the optical bays, and if your gunna do that my aswell put an 80mm 240 in there and put high performance fans on it.

I'm planning on getting a Dual 200mm radiator in the front, i already removed the 5.25" bays. Took 2 minutes to screw out the rivets.

Also my Corsair H100

 

[airdeano]

MAINTENENCE!
this will get many hits on maintenence (or lack of)
prepare for the the melee of flames...
my suggestion would be invest in quaility intake filters and maintain them regularly along
with some high static pressure fans if this is an indication of the environment.
another reason for roof exhausting...

airdeano

 

[OcSurfer]

roof exhausting also makes sense with thermo-dynamics.
i was gunna point it out earlier but thought it too rude, you need to hoover that case out!