Midnight Smurf: Watercooled Edition

Thanks yassar :D

Today's the day everyone! Home from school, nothing else to do today and I have a 3 day weekend. Hopefully I'll be done tonight, not sure if I'll post one biga mega update or little ones as I go along. Here we go!
 
First Update of the Day:

After looking at my Raystorm for a while, I wasn't sure if I wanted to carbon fiber wrap the XSPC plate, since I knew it would look good but I also like the aluminum and how it matches the front of the 650D. So in the end, I took the harder option and wrapped the block itself!

I put down a sheet of the wrap over the top, then carefully cut around the edges so only the top had a layer on it. Here it is after all the edge cutting with one hole cut out and the other halfway done:
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All done! Let me know what you think:
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I felt like I needed to hit something with the carbon, since the radiator probably won't even be seen unless I do the fans in a way I don't want to do... How do you guys think this looks???
 
Thanks everyone, I think it's cool too. Everything is now leak tested and wired up, just played BF3 for the first time in weeks, it was glorious. Not gonna show the final product yet, I didn't do any cable managing because I'm going to be swapping out the PSU in a couple days or so, so you're all gonna have to wait again (as am I).

Here's a quick teaser though:
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Just when I said I wasn't going to order anything else...

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Moar RAMz:
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Hey, what's that carbon fiber thing is the background? That looks pretty good...
 
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRayStorm mod, eh? hehehehe
no CPU block lighting, yet?

looks like someones gotta upgdate their sig...

airdeano
 
OK one last thing, not going to sell the OCZ ZX just yet. Even at $130, buying the AX is out of budget right now. I'll do it eventually, just not now. SO expect a final photo shoot sometime tomorrow night.
 
Update: After running the rig for the past week or so I've noticed the tubing starting to get cloudy (again). I took it all down (again) as a part of the final completion which will hopefully be tonight, and sure enough it looked like plasticizer build up, mirroring that of the pictures found in this thread on OCN. I'm a little sad because I read a lot of that thread and it sounded like silver was causing the buildup, so I was careful not to put silver in the loop and only PrimoChill products. Well, it didn't matter and I got some buildup anyway. Here are some pics.

Tubing out of the system, as you can see the section where water was running is much cloudier than the section where the tubing was attached:
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A look down the tube, you can see the stuff:
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Cleaning em out:
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I found that wadding up a paper towel then pushing it through with a long rod I found cleaned the stuff right off. I did a couple runs in each tube to be sure.
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Now the tubes look brand new again, but of course they'll probably cloud up again in another week. Hopefully I got a majority of the stuff out, and it won't be too serious (don't want to break the loop down again unless I upgrade something).

That's it for now, I have stuff to do from 7-10 EST tonight but I should be able to get it done after that (depending on how late I stay up). If not tonight then tomorrow for sure.
 
Ended up getting home later then I thought, but managed to find the energy to get everything done. The rig is now 100% complete (atleast for the time being) so I'll show you all my accomplishment! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

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That's all for now folks, let me know how you like it. I'll be sure to post any other changes I do, small or large, to this thread so you can track my progress (if I make any). Hopefully you guys had just as much fun following this build as I did actually building it! Time to go update my sig!
 
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Oh and one last thing! We don't only do water cooling for the coolness factor, but also for the temps, right? Well I have good news and bad news there. The good news is on a cold boot my idle temps have dropped from ~40C to ~30C from the 212 EVO, and my load temps have dropped from ~70C to 60C! A 10C drop is really nice, but here's the bad news. Because the fans I'm using on my rad aren't exactly meant for it, and I spin them farely slow anyway, after about 10 minutes of load conditions my temps slowly start rising up to 70C, and no further. So I'm back to where my Hyper 212 was... Oh well, overall I'm really happy with it. Maybe in the future I'll swap out the fans with some SP optimized fans and get some LED strips to compensate for the loss of LEDs on the fans... That's not an immediate concern now though, my main goal for now is to stop spending money!
 
Because the fans I'm using on my rad aren't exactly meant for it, and I spin them farely slow anyway, after about 10 minutes of load conditions my temps slowly start rising up to 70C, and no further. So I'm back to where my Hyper 212 was... Oh well, overall I'm really happy with it. Maybe in the future I'll swap out the fans with some SP optimized fans and get some LED strips to compensate for the loss of LEDs on the fans... That's not an immediate concern now though, my main goal for now is to stop spending money!

humm, i have heard that somewhere...... LOL..

yeah, fanage is killing the cooling perf Papa..
those skinnies need air-flow for that performance.
you'll prolly drop the 10° and possibly more getting some blowers in there that move air.
so far LED and static pressure aren't being made. yeah, there are some 1.5-1.89mm'h20
LED fans, but if you undervolt them they barely will flicker a candle on the other-side of
a radiator.
but you got some blue-ness going there PaPa.. looks freekiuosly cool..
im working on a watercool NiBlack heatkiller and soft lighting it to match the corsair platties.
finger im gunna cave on either the MSI Z77-65 or MPower or blow the major and squeeze
for a 2011... dunna know yet..
got these 360 rads to get wet with and no real base to make it "kool"..

airdeano
 
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