Anyone else into Watercooling ?

[Joint hogger]

As the title say's, Anyone else into watercooling  ?  

 

I was alway's interested in watercooling but was hesitant as I didn't want to blow up a pc & all my info or myself for that matter so I got a simple Antec 620 Kuhler All In One (AIO)

to cool down my old intel i5 3570K& has lasted well (4yrs), so well it out lasted the z77 motherboard   

 

So I was faced with going for a 2nd hand board which would be 4 or 5 year's old & rely on the seller's the seller's word " Yes it's Never been Overclocked"   

so I treated my self to a new system, z270 motherboard, i7 7700k, 16gb ddr4 ram, 1070GTX & 5TB of storage, & I've the shame to say, the 7700k is running on the Antec 620 Kuhler 

 

Anyway, to get back on topic, I was considering on getting a new AIO but I've decided to go all in & go with a full hard line loop to give the system justice but my option's with picking a suitable radiator

is slightly limited due to the shape of my case, as I've mentioned previously elsewhere on the site, it's a Silverstone FT02 W, which is not in the usual pc design format, the board is reveresed round so

that the pc's window is on the right side instead of the usual pc case's window being on the left side & the motherboard is flipped 90' so that the back i/o panel is pointing upward's.

I could change the case for something more suitable but I just love the FT02.

 

Here's some pic's of my old system & case, on the left, there's 5 drive bay's & 5 bay's for hdd's, also,, the FT02 case work's on the positive pressure to keep thing's cool inside the case,

the air is pulled inside through the bottom of the case with 3 x 180mm fan's, the fan's are also fitted into removable air filter's, the out fan is 1 x 120mm fan attached to the Antec AIO in

the roof of the case, the psu's intake fan is pointed facing backward's to a air intake vent in the back of the case.

 

 

 

This is someone else's  pic I saw & I'm wanting something similar, *Notice in the pic the Hdd cage is missing.

 

 

Seeing as the PC part's already cost a fair bit & the 3 x 180mm fan's are noisily noticable & the AIO is a tempory stop gap & I need a quieter pc, I could have got a bigger AIO I know but I decided that

I'm going to treat myself to a full watercooled loop  

 

For the loop's layout, I wanted to try & keep it as simple as possible & I'm planning on running the loop with 13/10mm tubing from the res - gpu waterblock - (I was going to add a 120mm x 30mm radiator

& fan between the gpu & cpu in the roof vent)  - cpu - down to a Alphacool flow indicator then into the 3 x 120mm fan 360mm x 30mm Xflow radiator (they actually measure 410/420mm) & then back up to the res,

but due to the length of the radiator & the length of the graphic's card, I'd need to take out 2 of the 180mm fan's & possibly mod the top of the removable filter's bracket with the dremel to fit in a 30mm thick radiator

& 25mm fan's + 5mm gasket's & radiator guard as I only have 70mm to play with, if I take out the fan filter bracket's, I get 95mm of height to play with, I'd also need to take out the third 180mm fan - air filter bracket

& move it slightly by 10mm to 15mm to fit the radiator in.

 

So I thought fuck it, the fan & filter bracket's can come out & I'll up the size of the main radiator to a 360mm x 45mm & the tubing to 16/12mm PETG then maybe I could do away with the plan of using the 120mm

radiator in between the gpu & cpu, I was looking at a Xlow design of radiator by either Alphacool & Blackice, these have port's at each end of the radiator & save's me from having long run's of tubing, anyway,

plus a few folk mentioned elsewhere that the Blackice radiator's were the slightly better make so I was leaning toward's one of them until I found out that the Blackice Xflow radiator's only came in the 30mm thickness

& only had two g1/4 port's, one at each end, so I'd need to use a T piece to fit the drain tap & would be a bit awkward when emptying the loop, so if I wanted an easier drain tap to use I'd need to use an Alphacool

radiator as they have more g1/4 port's, the 360mm x 30mm radiator has 4 port's & the 360mm x 45mm radiator has 6 

 

So far, I've got the PETG 16/12 tubing + heatgun + bending mandrel's, Monsoon M2 twin bay res + D5 pump, Phantek's 1080/1070 GTX waterblock, EK cpu block & load's of black Alphacool fitting's including a drain ball cock.

 

Here's the Phantek's & EK waterblock's.

 

  

 

 

& here's the Monsoon M2 res.

 

 

 

So I was all set to order the radiator when I saw a few other pic's with a better layout if you just take out the three fan - air filter bracket's altogether & fit a longer radiator in,

I spotted that they also do a 420mm x 45mm radiator & I think this would be ideal as I'd have more room to operate a drain tap & could mount it either on the side or on the bottom

of the radiator, this mean's that I'd be able to drain the loop more easily & almost completely drain the full loop when it need's to get done, I'm also going to drill out the rivet's holding

the Hdd cage in & I'll mod it to hold just two Hdd's & rerivet it.

 

just need to order the radiator & fan's then it'll be a crash course in bending PETG tube's & remember to wear glove's 

 

tbc 

 

 

[F-E_Man]

I can't stop thinking about led's. My last one's were actually on cpu coolers. Not water, but the two go together perfectly.

 

I have an I5 Mini tower. I could barely fit my 16gig of ram in it. Both drives are 2.5" to share a bigger bay with a few ties. I have no hope of getting water cooling in. It shares the monitor stand for portability so I can't do it as an outboard either

 

 

Led's though... I just can't help thinking we will all be offered water cooled lights again before long. Perhaps a PC grow could be sealed for c02 with little thought

[Guest Key4]

I used to build pcs/mod cases for watercooling loops. This was back when a q6600 was the goto cpu and towers were huge (70 odd cm my last one). Im a bit lost with it all these days but it is interesting stuff. Could dig out some pics.

 

Ill tag along.

[GreenVision]

Unless your overclocking or its really needed then personally I prefer air cooling.

 

But don't get me wrong, its a great feature and not just for looks. But it can get expensive, so if you dont truly need water cooling I would suggest another SSD or Ram Upgrade rather than spend the money on water cooling.

 

But if you intend on going all out gaming mental then fire away. The Corsair kit is solid, but if your going all in one I would get the largest res you can fit in your tower. And then some. It will also help when you come to fill it.

[redbeard]

That's one nice computer!

Iv seen some amazing coolers in the far east for gamers, there's a lot of great stuff out there now.

[Kraken]

I so opened this expecting to see a beautiful landscape 

 

Nice tower though. I always wanted to build a monster boinc crunching machine. Maybe when funds allow. Or maybe not, don't wanna go sending the power usage too high now do I 

[Joint hogger]

Can I just ask why no one's mentioned that I started this thread in the entertainment section when it should have been in the computer section 

 

Edited July 22, 2017 by Joint hogger

[Jut]

I built a water cooled machine around 2001, Athlon 1g @1450 and almost completely silent. Only fans were for radiator and extra quiet psu.

 

It was a bit more difficult then, you had to order everything from the states and build it up yourself. I still have the rad and copper blocks in the loft somewhere. 

 

 

[Joint hogger]

Well, I've got most of the parts & just need fans & a radiator to get cracking.