Ok, so after my first skirmish with watercooling a v2000 (which went nicely) didnt turn out exactly how I hoped (whilst modding I had half a dozen ideas I wanted to implement), I found my v2000 a loving home and sold her on....
The replacement? Another v2000 of course!! This time 'Twister' was back with a vengance. The watercooling kit was upgraded - out went the old thermochill he120.2 with 2x 120mm sanyo denki's, eheim 1048 pump, dtek LRWW cpu block, tygon 7/16th tubing and air cooled graphics....... In came the new - Swiftech Storm waterblock, Thermochill pa120.2 with 2x 120mm akasa ambers (as well as pa160 later sold), Laing D5 pump, Maze4 gpu (with ocz sinks) and 7/16th masterkleer tubing.....topped off with coolsleeves (explained later) and t-piece with DD fillport.
With everything to hand it was time to get'a cutting and fitting!!
Goodies all lined up ready - note the blue foam...i got it from a supermarket, god knows what it was for, but youl see how I used it later! The fan grills in the pic were later ditched for something nicer....
The first step was obviously choosing a spot to mount the radiator...I seriously considered having both a pa120.3 and pa160 in the base together, but I decided to leave the bottom compartment clean in the end - mainly so that in future when I have more money I can hopefully ask GrayMole to make and fit a custom phase change unit in the base for me. Heres hoping anyways!
So in the end I decided on a pa120.2 rad mounted up top and a pa120.1 in the bottom front (more on why the pa160 was never fitted later)....
Having carefully measured everything out, I cut 2 round holes BY HAND - drilling a large hole with a drill in the center of each circle, then cutting out to the edges by hand and then round the edge, using a hacksaw blade taken out of its mounting (use gloves if doing this or youl make your hands bleed). I always cut by hand...Im not great with tools and find hand results are often best. I mounted up the fan grills shown in the first pics, but decided they just didnt suit the look I wanted...so I ended up choosing a thermochill series 120.2 grill - it looked the business after I sanded the edges and polished it up (its a bit rough from the factory)... only problem was - the holes in it arent circular!!!!! Noooooooo...
So...out came the blade and hand file... and after 4 hours of carefull alterations I was rewarded with this:
The holes in the top of the case match the grill EXACTLY, so from above the grill looks like it could be a fused part of the roof!
Next up for the chop was the case inards and the front and rear fan mounts... The motherboard tray got the usual clocker2 inspired treatment - a nice large hole to allow waterblock removal and to improve air flow over the rear of the mobo socket. I also cut an additional hole in the compartment floor to allow tubing to pass down to the inlet of the pa160. The front and rear fan mounts were quite restricted by stock grills, so these were tin snipped out and then filed smooth by hand...the front fan filter (a metal frame with wool inside) was replaced with a better alumium filter. The psu plate was customised with dual 80mm fan filters (and 2x 80mm panaflos at 7v) and the psu mount itself had to be recut to allow my 700w fsp to fit...for some reason the holes and psu fan didnt align?
PA160 tube management:
Rear Fan mount (no pics of front, but same thing):
Mobo Tray Hole (edged with rubber trim - taken with mobo mounted for effect!!):
Mobo and rear fan mounted (i kept the rear duct, as there is now no grill to stop fingers going in it! its really not restrictive and now blows cool air over the back of my monitor too)
Next task was obviously to mount the radiator! Having had a fight to get the barbs in (was a tight fit, especialy with ptfe tape), and a trauma finding screws to mount the fans to the rad and rad to the case, I got the rad nicely screwed in.
Rad mounted - the fans blow air into the case, rear fan pulls the air over the mobo and out the back:
Ok, now youl notice the rad in that pic has a black coloured in sticker (it came like that...) - all futher pics of the setup have a rad with a white sticker... the reason being that I got everything plumbed in and then disaster struck!!!
When the pa120.2 rad first arrived to me it had been damaged in the post - despite having leak tested everything before fitting (all fine), I got all the kit in and fitted, jump started the psu to run the pump (with nothing else in the case hooked up, only a few old hdds to provide load to stop the psu getting damaged)... all ran fine for about 5mins....and then POP!!
Something in the rad gave out, and a lovely stream of water peed everywhere from between the fins. Panic ensued, but thanks to my gf's swift application a towl over vital pc parts all that got wet was my dvdrw and cdrw drives.....
Iv checked the rad over many times, but I cant see the leak...i didnt puncture it with any screws at all...it must be a nasty hole tho. Anyways...the drives went in the airing cupboard...and due to the busted rad I had to sell the pa160 to fund a replacement pa120.2! I was not happy. Hence why Im only running one rad now...
The new rad came, and I got everything plumbed up nicely. The coolsleeves were an after thought - I needed them to be able to make half the bends in my loop - without em it wouldnt have gone in!! Also, remember the blue foam board from the first pic? Look under the pump
The foam is double sided taped to rear and base plate of the D5 pump, and then double sided taped to the floor and mobo wall of the case! for extra security i drilled 2 holes in the mobo wall, and passed a loop of two black cable ties through the d5 mounting holes and strapped it in place. Sounds ghetto, but there is NO vibration at all - not even if you touch the floor right next to the pump... and yes the pump is set to max 5 speed!
All set up:
Now all that was left was to switch her on and test her....
The replacement? Another v2000 of course!! This time 'Twister' was back with a vengance. The watercooling kit was upgraded - out went the old thermochill he120.2 with 2x 120mm sanyo denki's, eheim 1048 pump, dtek LRWW cpu block, tygon 7/16th tubing and air cooled graphics....... In came the new - Swiftech Storm waterblock, Thermochill pa120.2 with 2x 120mm akasa ambers (as well as pa160 later sold), Laing D5 pump, Maze4 gpu (with ocz sinks) and 7/16th masterkleer tubing.....topped off with coolsleeves (explained later) and t-piece with DD fillport.
With everything to hand it was time to get'a cutting and fitting!!
Goodies all lined up ready - note the blue foam...i got it from a supermarket, god knows what it was for, but youl see how I used it later! The fan grills in the pic were later ditched for something nicer....
The first step was obviously choosing a spot to mount the radiator...I seriously considered having both a pa120.3 and pa160 in the base together, but I decided to leave the bottom compartment clean in the end - mainly so that in future when I have more money I can hopefully ask GrayMole to make and fit a custom phase change unit in the base for me. Heres hoping anyways!
So in the end I decided on a pa120.2 rad mounted up top and a pa120.1 in the bottom front (more on why the pa160 was never fitted later)....
Having carefully measured everything out, I cut 2 round holes BY HAND - drilling a large hole with a drill in the center of each circle, then cutting out to the edges by hand and then round the edge, using a hacksaw blade taken out of its mounting (use gloves if doing this or youl make your hands bleed). I always cut by hand...Im not great with tools and find hand results are often best. I mounted up the fan grills shown in the first pics, but decided they just didnt suit the look I wanted...so I ended up choosing a thermochill series 120.2 grill - it looked the business after I sanded the edges and polished it up (its a bit rough from the factory)... only problem was - the holes in it arent circular!!!!! Noooooooo...
So...out came the blade and hand file... and after 4 hours of carefull alterations I was rewarded with this:
The holes in the top of the case match the grill EXACTLY, so from above the grill looks like it could be a fused part of the roof!
Next up for the chop was the case inards and the front and rear fan mounts... The motherboard tray got the usual clocker2 inspired treatment - a nice large hole to allow waterblock removal and to improve air flow over the rear of the mobo socket. I also cut an additional hole in the compartment floor to allow tubing to pass down to the inlet of the pa160. The front and rear fan mounts were quite restricted by stock grills, so these were tin snipped out and then filed smooth by hand...the front fan filter (a metal frame with wool inside) was replaced with a better alumium filter. The psu plate was customised with dual 80mm fan filters (and 2x 80mm panaflos at 7v) and the psu mount itself had to be recut to allow my 700w fsp to fit...for some reason the holes and psu fan didnt align?
PA160 tube management:
Rear Fan mount (no pics of front, but same thing):
Mobo Tray Hole (edged with rubber trim - taken with mobo mounted for effect!!):
Mobo and rear fan mounted (i kept the rear duct, as there is now no grill to stop fingers going in it! its really not restrictive and now blows cool air over the back of my monitor too)
Next task was obviously to mount the radiator! Having had a fight to get the barbs in (was a tight fit, especialy with ptfe tape), and a trauma finding screws to mount the fans to the rad and rad to the case, I got the rad nicely screwed in.
Rad mounted - the fans blow air into the case, rear fan pulls the air over the mobo and out the back:
Ok, now youl notice the rad in that pic has a black coloured in sticker (it came like that...) - all futher pics of the setup have a rad with a white sticker... the reason being that I got everything plumbed in and then disaster struck!!!
When the pa120.2 rad first arrived to me it had been damaged in the post - despite having leak tested everything before fitting (all fine), I got all the kit in and fitted, jump started the psu to run the pump (with nothing else in the case hooked up, only a few old hdds to provide load to stop the psu getting damaged)... all ran fine for about 5mins....and then POP!!
Something in the rad gave out, and a lovely stream of water peed everywhere from between the fins. Panic ensued, but thanks to my gf's swift application a towl over vital pc parts all that got wet was my dvdrw and cdrw drives.....
Iv checked the rad over many times, but I cant see the leak...i didnt puncture it with any screws at all...it must be a nasty hole tho. Anyways...the drives went in the airing cupboard...and due to the busted rad I had to sell the pa160 to fund a replacement pa120.2! I was not happy. Hence why Im only running one rad now...
The new rad came, and I got everything plumbed up nicely. The coolsleeves were an after thought - I needed them to be able to make half the bends in my loop - without em it wouldnt have gone in!! Also, remember the blue foam board from the first pic? Look under the pump
The foam is double sided taped to rear and base plate of the D5 pump, and then double sided taped to the floor and mobo wall of the case! for extra security i drilled 2 holes in the mobo wall, and passed a loop of two black cable ties through the d5 mounting holes and strapped it in place. Sounds ghetto, but there is NO vibration at all - not even if you touch the floor right next to the pump... and yes the pump is set to max 5 speed!All set up:
Now all that was left was to switch her on and test her....
And could you not send it back for a replacement, if you didnt cause the damage.
