Project Arc Reactor

[Ragnar_Mike]

Hey there, everybody.

This is where I shall chronicle the assembly of my first from scratch PC. I’ve upgraded plenty and even modded a bit, but I’ve never had the funds or requirement to build a higher end rig. Now that I’m studying to enter the world of CG and animation, having a desktop that can handle CAD and rendering will be a godsend at home and it will have the added benefit of allowing me to enjoy some of the modern PC games when they come out.

I’m using the Fractal Arc Midi as my case. It arrived a few days ago and man…it’s pretty. I was conscerned about the plastic front, but it’s a very nice finish and I like the stylings of the case in general as well as its features, hence why I picked it up.

The general plan for this rig is based off of my need for a home PC workhorse that can render HD resolution CGI for my work at school. I do a lot of work in Photoshop, Maya, Zbrush and After Effects so I need a system that can keep up with the types of performance I require.

So let’s get to the roll call, shall we?



Arc Midi case to jam everything into. As far as I can tell everything should fit in fine. I’m not going dual PSU or Quad SLI or anything so nearly any mid tower would probably have sufficed, but I love the minimalistic and well thought out design of Fractal’s stuff and I thought I’d take a crack at watercooling, so the ability to fit in a big honking rad into the Arc was a big selling point.

Speaking of Rads, I picked up an XSPC Rasa kit. 750 RX240, that’s the one with the 60mm rad instead of the 47mm, and a stronger pump. Got some blue steel PC Ice coolant as well since most of my parts are blue. I’m considering what to do about lighting. I have a pair of Bit Fenix Spectre Green LED’s for the front and I’m considering two 120mm Blue Cooler Masters to give the inside of the case a bit of a teal/blue-green glow, but for now the stock kit fans will suffice.



The watercooling kit will chill an i7 2600K. Maya’s rendering and a few other programs I use support multithreading so that’s a welcome addition.



For memory I got ahold of 16 gigs of 1600mhz Corsair Vengeance RAM for $98, which is ridiculous! I think that’s something like 65 Euro/GBP but who knows how much that really is with tax. Probably like 500 quid.

Driving the display will be an MSI GTX570 Twin Frozr III PE/OC.



All this will be mounted onto an Asus P8Z68-V Pro Motherboard. The integrated graphics/cpu support will help with my second monitor for working and when SSD prices come down a bit or I can find a deal on the right type of them, I plan on getting one for the SSD caching feature.

Speaking of storage, I put int two 1TB Hitachi 7k3000's in raid 1.

I went a little overkill with the PSU because I don’t know what I’ll be doing with this in the future. Seeing as how the Ivy Bridge chips will fit in this mobo and with that and new card(s) could push me over the 750 mark I just decided to go one step better and get an AX850. I was going to get an HX model, but I like the ability for the PSU fan to shut off during idle power consumption and that’s only in the AH models.

The Arc has two bays up front, and will be taken up by the rez and pump. However, I needed a way to burn CDs and read DVDs to install various programs, so I picked up an external drive.

I also just ordered Steel Series 6V2 keyboard and am shopping around for a 24inch monitor but I haven’t tied down what model yet. Currently, I’m leaning towards the Dell Ultrasharp U2410.

I didn’t realize the Arc comes with a fan control. That’s a nice bonus, it’s your basic controller: fits in an Atx slot, has a knob, a 3pin fan plug, a molex for power, and a splitter for 3 fans. Not sure which fans to hook up to that yet.





Tom didn’t quite show this, but I found it interesting. Fractal crammed a ton of choices into this case, but not all are available to use at once. For instance, the front mount on the roof can hold a 140mm fan, BUT just barely. If you have both 5.25 drive bays filled, it will literally just be sitting on the top bay and may not even fit because of the front panel cables. So, if you want to use the front fan for extra flow, you’re basically limited to keeping those bays open.

The CPU, Ram, and PSU finally showed up so, naturally I couldn’t resist starting to throw stuff in there.



I haven’t decided if I’m going to remove the second drive bay for airflow or turn it sideways for like a wind vein type thing, or just remove it altogether.

Had my first real experience tying down cables. Modular is so much more “fun” to deal with. It’s still a bit rats-nesty and nothing is cinched down because I still have to run fan and pump cables but it’s getting better each time I realize I messed up and redo it. =/



Also, here’s my 20 buck IKEA desk receiving the birthing pains of my rig. A little spit shine and she’ll be as good a new.



With any luck I’ll have more to post soon because the cooling kit should be in today.

 

[SieB]

I've been looking forward to seeing someone do a watercoold build in an Arc Midi, looking forward to seeing how it looks when it's all finished.

 

[Ragnar_Mike]

Wooo, watercooling kit has arrived! Pics forthcoming.

 

[chris8224]

Looking good

I'll defiantly be keeping an eye on this one

 

[yassarikhan786]

Can't wait for it to be finished. Lookin' forward to more updates.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Really impressed with the effort youve put into the build log so far dude, keep it coming

 

[Ragnar_Mike]

After a long day of working on a school project I noticed this beauty sitting outside my door. It was filled with boxes. But inside these boxes were things! Wonderful things. If you’ll note I ordered some premix in a color called steel blue. However I received a clear premix and a dye bomb for said color. I don’t know if I would be miffed about that if I knew more, but for now that seems neat. Also, I picked up a couple 140mm bitfenix specre's because I like the style.



Installing the CPU block was a since thanks to the kit’s instructions and various OC3D videos.



As was the case with Tom’s review, a 60mm rad does indeed fit. It covers quite a bit as you can see…including a fan pin that I didn’t notice until I wanted to plug one in there. There’s clearance, I just have gigantic bear hands. A pair of pliers works, though. You can also see in the second picture below the clearance for a bay mounted rez. Mainly, that such clearance exists. =)



I had the beginners water-cooling videos playing in the background while I worked and I’m glad I did. Thank you for talking about having enough slack to pull out the rez to top it up.



I’m sure the loop could be a bit tidier, but my logic prioritized avoiding kinks and having some slack to let me pull out the rez when needed. Some angled fittings in this case would be so much cleaner, but for my first time, it gets the job done. Oh, and in case it doesn’t quite make sense, it’s rez/pump > cpu > rad > rez/pump



As I said, clearance is snug, but manageable. Oh, and you can see the PSU jumper that came with the kit down in the corner there. Very nice addition. Filling was uneventful. Shook her around a bit and bubbles started pouring out. Kept and eye on it like was suggested and everything checked out nicely. Installing it was a lot more intimidating than it actually is, so I'm glad I decided to try.



The kit comes with a nice bright blue led to stick in the back of the rez but I forgot to put it in. And I’m kind of glad for that. As you can see below, the spectre’s (which just snap into the front bezel, so I didn’t take a pic) have sweet light that bleeds up into the rez from below. It’s hard to see here, and much more noticeable in person, but that little hash mark above the fans is the coolant level. Something in the surface tension just lights up from that angle, which I think is sweet.



I would love some suggestions are far as what to do about the fans. IE what should go to the board controls and what should go to the manual controller. I have the two spectre in the front, two rad fans on top, one 140mm stock in the back and the option for another 140 in the side panel.

Should be getting in my keyboard and a copy of windows today so if I have time I’ll set up the bios and install the OS.

Cheers.

 

[SieB]

Looking good

I'd say have the rad fans on the fan controller and all your case fans on molexs strait from the PSU, if you have some 3pin to molex adapters.

 

[Ragnar_Mike]

Looking good

I'd say have the rad fans on the fan controller and all your case fans on molexs strait from the PSU, if you have some 3pin to molex adapters.

Hmm, not sure if I have any, but shouldn't be too hard getting a hold of some.

 

[cbiltsouris]

hey mate,

Ive also recently purchased an arc and I absolutley love it, thing is do you think I could mount a 360 in the top with the barbs on the other side so they dont get in the way?

also do you think it would fit with a duel bay res in the optical bays? btw wonderfull looking build you got there bud

cheers

 

[Ragnar_Mike]

hey mate,

Ive also recently purchased an arc and I absolutley love it, thing is do you think I could mount a 360 in the top with the barbs on the other side so they dont get in the way?

also do you think it would fit with a duel bay res in the optical bays? btw wonderfull looking build you got there bud

cheers

Thanks!

There's totally enough clearance with the rad turned around to run down to a rez and pump. In fact with the second drive bays pulled out you have quite a sweet areas to mount some stuff that would be lit up by the front led fans.

However....with a dual bay rez, the angle to get to the optical bays would be 90 degrees and something like 5 inches away. So you would need angle pieces to make the bend. After that your biggest issue would be fitting hose into what's left of the optical bay with enough slack to get the rez out to top it up. With some creative angling of the tubes, it MAY be possible, but it would be a pain. It's really snug there. There is however enough room to fit all the tubes through IF you could get the slack for refills in there. I'll light it up and see if I can get a pic that shows the clearance you have to work with. I agree, it would look much tidier that way, I just can't see an easy way to cram all that stuff into 1/3 of an optical bay.

EDITED:

Looking at the rad now, it think it will depend greatly on how far off the mounting screw the extra bit of the rad juts out. this XSPC one looks like it can only fit with the barbs in the back because it would hit the back of the optical bay. Maybe only an inch of clearance is needed so if you're handy with a dremel you could make it fit. But referring to my earlier statement and summarizing: barbs in the back easy to do stock, barbs in front is a custom job.