Ok so here goes.. This could get long.
Firstly I've been meaning to put this for a while.. Big thanks to both Rob and Marcus at WCUK. Great offers for OC3D members and also a great service throughout with me pestering Rob quite often about the ETA on the acrylic supremes. Marcus was a great help to bounce my ideas off even if half the time I answered them myself. This was my first proper water cooling setup (had an all in one for my old 939 that was so pants and leaked) so having the help there when required has been great.
Now down to so pics..
This is just as I was about to take everything out of my comp ready to take downstairs and get started. I'd stuck a few filters in the case about 2 months ago. Anyway when I took it off I was amazed at how much dust went everywhere. Pointless pic but just shows filters are worth it
After i'd emptied the case and taken it down to the kitchen I cut an extra hole (the round one) in the mobo tray for easier cable management. also ground off some milliput that i'd used to line the bottom hold and used the black stuff I bought to line it. Left the top one alone as its mainly out of site.
Next I decided to take off the acrylic panel that holds the side fan inside the mesh on the side panel. I wasn't going to be using a fan there anymore and it looked ugly. It wasn't as easy as just taking it off as the acrylic actually acted as a spacer for the screws and the just wobbled about so I dug out 2 - 3 washers for each screw to space them. The mesh itself also used the acrylic to hold it in place so some super strength double sided tape did the trick here.
After that I moved on to putting the OC3D grill Marcus had sent me into one of the 3 blocks on the front of the 900. It went in fine but when it came to putting the block back together it wasn't so easy. The extra width that the grill gave it made it so the screws wouldn't sit flush. Had to counter sink these into the fan itself to get it back in.
Last image there has the floppy still in there.. I've decided to get rid of that and replace it with the 6 channel Zalman fan controller.
Now just a couple of pics of a couple of parts. DDC Ultra with XSPC top and PA120.3
Moving on.. I thought I'd take a look at when to place the 4 inch purple cathodes to illuminate the OC3D grill from behind. There were about 50mm too long to lay one under the HDD. They did however fit in from top to bottom so I put them at the front but this meant that the HDD no longer met up with its holes to fix it to the cage and protruded a out the back a little. As there was nowhere else for the purple cathodes I made new holes in the cage for the HDD.
I also drilled a hole in the bottom of the cage for the wires to drop down to where they would be powered and keep it tidy.
Here I was just having a play to see where to put the UV lights and where best to power them and also positioning of the Microres. Also just trying to get a picture of where all the wires were going to go later on when everything was back in.
Next up was deciding on how to position the tubing and see where it would all fit being a rather small case so I put in the mobo and microres and attached the rad to get a better idea.
This didn't make me totally happy as I couldn't gauge it properly without the PSU in the case. I put that in and rerouted one of the tubes so it wouldn't cover the acrylic supreme that I'd purposely waited for and came up with this for the final layout.
Attached fans to rad after braiding them all and also braiding 2 extensions for each and another for the front fan.
Now with most of the hardware back in the case I would start sorting out some of the cable. Basically route as many as possible through the back of the case.. Out of site out of mind! You can just see in this pic in the top right where I've cut a channel in the back of the case for the 3 rad fan cables to go.. Also had to cut the same hole in the panel for that side of the case. While doing that I also decided I would cut a couple of holes for the two switches for the for the UV lights and the purple cathodes so they can be switched off when the girlfriend comes over so she can sleep. Anyway I wired up the switches and put the back panel on.
Now it finally came to filling the system up. I put tissue around all the barbs and a j cloth under the res on top of the PSU. To fill the system I jumped the PSU with a paper clip and just used the PSUs on off switch to stop and start. This was so I could have all the hardware installed and minimize the risk if there were any leaks I.e. if the GFX card were to drown it wouldn't have any power so it would more than likely live to see another day.
As it turned out within about 1 min of starting to fill the loop there was a leak. It was the bottom barb on the microres. Lucky for the double protection on over the PSU or it would have gone boom boom. Anyway just a couple of extra turn with the spanner and problem solved. Filling the rest of the system went flawlessly and there were no noticeable leaks.
Switched on the UV and turned off the lights while it was leak testing in my kitchen for a few hours.
I was about to put the side panel / door on and leave it for a couple of hours to test when I noticed one last problem after I'd put all of my tools away. I was tired and it was quite annoying. Two of the legs that support the RAD from the case got in the way at the back. This pic shows the two cuts I made for the quickest remedy as it was getting late.
Left it leak testing for around 3 - 4 hours and not a drip anywhere so I decided to leave it at that.. Snapped a couple of pics before lugging the thing upstairs to my room. Its put of a few pounds. It weighs roughly the same as a small elephant I reckon (kinda).
One thing I failed to mention above was some problems I had half way thorough. When I was testing out the Zalman fan controller and one of the fans I couldn't make out why it got so hot as in would burn your finger within a second of turning it on.
After a little while of racking my brains to figure it out it came to me how dumb I'd been... When I braided this particular fan, after taking the pins out of the molex connector I didn't insulate them from each other well enough.. All the other fans were ok but it was the only explanation I could come up with. It turned out that this was the case and they had been shorting out every time I plugged it in.. Even little things can cause such headaches ay.
Anyway.. Hope ya enjoy reading some of this. It was bloody long to write. Its not as in depth as I would have liked but hey its my first try ay
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Next post will be pics of the finished rig.
so knackered.
