Riff Tamson

[AlienALX]

Looking sweet dude.watching this one

It's never going to be what I would like it to be sadly. It's just very awkward and poorly laid out. It's definitely function over form, this one. To make it anything else would take me weeks and weeks and I just CBA. This is my workhorse PC

 

[AlienALX]

Last (I think, because you can never be sure with water cooling !) order is in. Again I used OCUK and again I did some digging. First up I decided on a rad. Nice and fat, with multiport. This should really help on the return feed.

Not sure about the logo, makes me think of brushing my teeth. Will cover that no doubt.

To give it the Heatkiller look I bought this for £3, again last one on clearance.

I will not be running push/pull this time. There is just no point.

I bought two of these to cap the multiports because they are infinitely more attractive and were only £1.99 ea.

And finally this was on sale for 99p.

Which should help a lot with the inlet into the rad. Or the return feed from the rad? not sure yet but I am pretty certain it will come into play at some point.

Other news.. Res/pump is here. Not tested the pump yet will do that today. Desperately needs cleaning as it's foggy, not sure if I have vinegar here.

Hose arrived, and made me LOL really hard. It's 11mm, I am used to 19mm. It looks like a straw haha.

For coolant I am (hopefully, providing it's OK and I have enough) going to use the green stuff I have. I will know if there is enough once I get it out, and even though the build has no green in it at all I just think it will look kinda cool. I dunno, it's only £8 or so for red if it looks stupid

Sadly my back is properly out. Was hoping it was a one off, but today I am in just as much pain as yesterday.

 

[AlienALX]

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

I just got the fittings about twenty minutes ago. They're very nice, but I still can't see how they are worth what they cost new (about £19 each). Still, £1.99 was much easier to swallow

For some unknown reason I really fancied a flow indicator on the GPU loop. Given my back is out working on it for now is out also, so I did some digging and came up with this.

For £4.20. Problem is you then need more fittings, but thankfully PC Modders (AKA Specialtech) had these for £2.42 each.

It would have been rude not to really.

 

[AlienALX]

Took the bay res and pump apart. Tested and braided the pump, took apart the bay after an overnight soak in vinegar. Reassembled.

And what would you know? the XSPC holes line up with the Alpha's.

Now whether or not they will still line up when both reservoirs are pushed together I have no idea. Sure I can come up with something, though. In the part between the two res (where you can see the glue lines for example) I will simply put a piece of vinyl. The aim is to see both res's fluid levels. As long as I can see that I will be happy

 

[AlienALX]

Spent some time earlier preparing wires.

Will make up some GPU extensions (new ones to replace the tatty ones) over the weekend

 

[AlienALX]

Done. Will get onto braiding them this afternoon

 

[AlienALX]

Finished.

They will be fitted to the PC on the fly one at a time when I get access to it. I am going to wait until tomorrow before I start moving stuff around, or I won't be able to watch the footy today.

 

[AlienALX]

OK quick update. As you guys can see, the rad is a multi port design. Not a cross flow, just has two sets of ports (and a lower drain plug which is pretty cool !). Any way, I originally ordered two white BP caps to snazz it up a little, as the ones on there are just OK. Sadly it seems somewhere at some point OCUK mislabelled the plugs and I got this instead.

That's what I ordered.

^ that's what I got. Seems some one stuck the wrong barcode on that tube part.. Any way I contacted OCUK customer service via their forums and they are sending out two of these.

Instead. They are £5 each, and way nicer than the white ones

Very happy about that, another score for OCUK customer service.

Had some hose issues too. I accidentally ordered all of my hose in 10mm forgetting it was supposed to be 11mm. Doh. So I ordered some 11mm hose and it didn't look quite right. Got my vernier calipers out and it was actually 10.5mm. Crafty buggers. Any way, I got a refund on that..

Thankfully it seems the hose I originally bought for Dianoga is bang on 11mm. Talk about a save.. Tried it on a few fittings and it fits great so at least I can do that.

 

[AlienALX]

More done today. The first thing I did was take out the GPU and gut some of the wiring. It all needed to be moved in order to move the Tbalancer out of the way.

I then had loads of problems with the res/pump. The entire back comes off (which is ace for cleaning) but it has a jet plate that sits in the sandwich. Turns out when I cleaned the res I put it back wrong, cue loads of messing around. Eventually I got it pumping/looping water though.

I will leave it pumping over night to make sure it's good

Here is the rig looking rather sorry for itself.

But at least work is under way

 

[AlienALX]

:wub:

This thing is a frikkin fingerprint magnet. I cleaned it three bloody times during install !

 

[AlienALX]

One annoying thing about a case not designed to do what you want it to do is that usually nothing works first time.

I started out at around 9am this morning and the first plan was to basically fit the rad, and the grille for the rad. Sadly the rad did not fit due to the drain plug on the bottom (it was hitting the case as it went in) and neither did the grille. I kinda had a feeling it was going to be one of those days.

So the first thing I did was cut the top off of the rad carrier. This allowed the rad (and the fan inside it) to shift upward to clear the drain plug. Sadly to do that took around an hour, and then I had to cut the fan holes so it too could slide upward.

OK so it fits now right? no. Because I had cut off the top of the rad carrier there was nowhere to screw it in, so it was tipping into the case. Bloody annoying that !!

The fix in the end was a slotted bracket (see in the close up).

So rad in time to start work.

Note the red PCIE cables? watch...

Plumbing should commence tomorrow...

 

[AlienALX]

Bad news. Just a piece of advice though, always check what you buy second hand, even the solder points.

So basically I fitted the loop on Thurs and it was all working OK. Then I noticed that when I had pushed the bay res back in one of the hoses was quite badly kinked. It did not affect the flow it seems because temps on the Fury X were fantastic, but there is no way I could live with it. After thinking about it I realised I needed a fill port. Basically to fill the res you simply must take it out as the fill cap is blocked by the other res once you push it in.

So I moved the rig around and booted it up to inspect the kink closely. All of a sudden the volt meter dropped to 5v and the screen on the temp gauge started flickering, closely followed by the smell of burning. Everything that was on the molex run was fried, apart from the pump (in the res bay I bought) and my pump for the other loop.

I could not figure out what had happened. I checked the molex plug it was all powering from with a power meter and it was correct. The 12v was not switched with the 5v. Completely puzzled I put it down and left it. This was on Friday afternoon. I vowed that I would remove the loop, drain it all down and basically start again this time fitting a fill port just before the pump intake so I can fill it once in situ.

So I cleaned out the res bay and removed the pump. When I tested the pump it was dead.. So I took a closer look and popped the cap off of the back of the pump. Sure enough, pigeon crap solder. Some one had clearly bodged the wires as they had snapped previously. Well now they had snapped again, causing a short.

So the £25 res bay I got from Ebay has killed a £90 Tbalancer, £6 temp gauge and a £5 volt meter.

I have filed a claim..

I took another look at the pump and after some pretty severe cleaning and solder removal using a solder sucker I managed to get the PCB clean enough to solder the wires back on and it is now working but as you can imagine I am not very f*****g pleased.

Parts for the fill port are on order, and I have spare fittings (a first) so won't need much else apart from new coolant.

 

[Bartacus]

Damn man, sorry to hear that, that sucks! I guess that's one of the few pluses of buying brand new parts. You were doing so well on the budget modding front too!

 

[AlienALX]

Damn man, sorry to hear that, that sucks! I guess that's one of the few pluses of buying brand new parts. You were doing so well on the budget modding front too!

Yup. Thankfully I was not using the Tbalancer to full effect and the volt meter and temp gauge would likely have come out any way. Still very very annoyed though. Why do people sell crap? why even be dishonest? if that were me I'd have either kept it or chucked it in the trash.

Ah well. I guess I will start putting the loop back together tomorrow. Rad is a bit crap too, paint literally falls off so I have had to touch that up also.

 

[Dawelio]

Damn man, sorry to hear that, that sucks! I guess that's one of the few pluses of buying brand new parts. You were doing so well on the budget modding front too!

Yeah, I agree. It will certainly cost more, but any PC related thing, I always buy new... I never buy used. Just because of all of the reasons it can go wrong. Don't get me wrong, new stuff can be faulty as well, but the risk of being in any way, shape or form, in comparison to a used one, is far smaller.

Still, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have to experience these kind of things. Really sorry you got stung by it and have to process all of it (with claims etc).

 

[AlienALX]

Tonight I made the 45' fill port. If you don't know what one looks like it's the white thing that tilts back into the case 45 degrees and it has a red cap in it. It feeds into the intake line of the res so I can fill it with the res where it sits. It's been a lot of messing around, some complicated work but the loop should now be ready to fill.

It's all plumbed and ready to go pretty much.

 

[AlienALX]

Just when I thought I was ready to fill.. The bloody flow indicator came. I'd totally given up on the bloody thing. Any way, I straightened up a piece of hose and it is fitted. I am one fitting short though (the silver type as they are rotary allowing me to drain by removing GPU) so I have ordered that.

I've got the coolant now.

 

[AlienALX]

Afternoon all. Last night when I returned home from holiday the last fitting I needed had arrived. I immediately fitted it and love how the loop arcs in and out. However, all was not as it seemed

I promised my wife I would leave it alone yesterday and unpack etc. So I did all of that and then we watched some TV. I came out into the living room to watch Master Chef and when it was ending my wife came in to tell me she had a bad headache and was going to bed early. Yay, I can fill the loop !!!

Firstly one big mistake I made was that I did not connect the fill port to the intake of the pump. I connected it to the outlet like a complete . This meant that filling it was painfully slow, and for each 30ml of coolant or so I would have to run the pump and tip the rig back and forth to get it where I wanted it.

Then, after about filling it half way disaster struck. I looked down and there was a puddle of coolant around the flow meter I panicked and immediately tipped the rig to stop the flow of coolant to the flow meter, totally forgetting I had a funnel and intake hose full of coolant. It went absolutely everywhere, and I wrecked two tea towels cleaning it up.

I inspected the flow meter, it was fine. I then looked at the O ring on the last of the fittings I had bought and it was hard and shrunken. Replaced the O rings on both, BOOM no more leaks. However, all told it took me nearly two hours to fill the rig as the flow was backward from the fill port. A complete nightmare.

So that's where I am at. Please excuse the nasty wiring everywhere, I am waiting on parts. Very happy with the loop, but the pump is very noisy so again, waiting on parts. Here is what I have ordered (some is here some not.)

That is to reduce the Acool pump to 7v.

Then, a little fun

1m EL wire with a 2XAA battery pack.

A3 5mm red trans acryl.

And 1.52m x 30cm of black brushed vinyl.

 

[Bartacus]

Ahhh, nothing like a late night leak to teach you something about water cooling eh?

 

[AlienALX]

Ahhh, nothing like a late night leak to teach you something about water cooling eh?

haha yeah. TBH I am amazed it all still works.

That Oring was bad though man. Have complained to the seller who shall remain anonymous unless they want to start being a D-bag. Annoyingly this is the second fitting I have had from them that has leaked. I bought two 45' fittings for Dianoga and they both bloody failed.

Gotta say though I hate the sound the pump makes at 12v. It's this horrible whirr. Can't wait to get it back down to 7v.

Temps are fantastic. Here's an hour of Superposition.

That's with the max OC too.