My first and most uber watercooled rig
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/849eaa4131.jpg
Situation:
Here is my current system, without any water cooling, and I'd like to water cool it now. I've been a fan of air cooling for a while, and have never even touched touch on water cooling before. Right now my specs are:
E6600 @ 3.2GHZ (hot CPU :( )
EVGA 680i SLI
4GB XMS2 DDR2 Corsairs (don't remember model)
2x 8800 GTS 512MB (EVGA over-clocked by 20Mhz core)
1KW SilverStone Strider (overkill I know)
Asus Xonar D2X (the one in the picture is an X-Fi extreme music i replaced with this one)
7 HDD's
Zalmen ZM-MFC2 Fan controller
etc, etc...
All in my favorite Lian-Li PC-V 2010.
These specs are not important, because I'll be upgrading my whole system now (minus case and PSU of course)
Requirements:
I'm looking at getting and water cooling the following if indicated:
- MSI X58 Eclipse Plus (this can change) with
- [WATER COOLED] a Core i7 920 (perhaps to 4 GHz?)
- 6GB of Corsair Dominator GT DDR 3 2000 (No major OC, will I need a fan?)
- [WATER COOLED] Keeping one of my 8800 GTS 512MB (G92 of-course) for PhysX calculations, with no over-clocking necessary
- [WATER COOLED] HD 5870 X2, or 'Hemlock' (when it gets released (danger den already showed a block for it)) so let's say just over 310W TDP we can expect. Over-clocking will be likely, if not now then in the future.
- and 2x Velociraptors 150GB's in stripe configuration (RAID0) :D , 4x 500gb HDD's in RAID 5 and another HDD for extra Operating system and playing around.
To be clear, I am not including these components in the pricing of the 'system', they're already sorted.
So all in all heres a map of roughly where the key water cooling components will go (note my in-experience and poor knowledge of water cooling means this map may be incorrect):
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/509509b446.jpg
Green: Water blocks (The upper GFX card block is roughly where the new card will be located)
Red: Rad I'm thinking of some sort of triple 120mm rad, but thats where I want to try and put a rad. see 'Solutions'
Blue: Pump and Reservoir/T-line (though still I'm not sure what the difference is between the 2 yet and which is better). These are just where I roughly want to pur the rest of the components.
So more or less your standard meat and potato water cooling arrangement
Constraints:
- No 'Wind tunnel fans' needed. The system needs to be quiet, if not silent, thats one of the reasons that I'm going water cooling.
- Case modding is ok but is limited to a bit of hole and cutting and similar light jobs, and only If I can keep the appearance up to Lian-Li standards, so nice and pretty.
- Home DIY Tools, so no lathe :P
- I live in South Africa, so the retailers will be limited, but I already emailed Petra's Tech and I'm happy with they're shipping costs. I ordered from Frozen CPU before, but they're shipping costs are criminal. I mostly order PC-Parts from Sparco.com, who can specially order components from almost any company they don't stock for me, but I refuse to abuse this service and I will only order High value components I can't get from any other store at a sane cost. Local stores here in South Africa are of-course more limited, but they might have some stuff, so I can look around. An excellent price engine is pricecheck.co.za.
- The costs are not too limited but I will not go EXTREME, so the base costs for the full system Minus the GPU's should be no more than $320? Lower if the GPU blocks turn out to be murderously expensive.
Criteria:
- I would like to control fans and monitor temperatures using my existing Zalman fan controler.
- I don't need to see the water level from the outside of the case (not really a criteria I know).
- Appearance should match the existing theme, so I'm thinking either a UV red (I like the color but there isn't any UV light) pigment or Tubing. Preferably Tubing so I don't have to worry about buying new pigment additives all the time.
- Again silence. Not complete silence, but I would like the system to be able to humm at a nice, pleasant low noice when idling.
- The size of the case, though Huge, cant fit for example a 4X140mm Rad at the top, I know, I measured it. :cool: (A 3x120mm rad fits fine though)
- A little headroom, for well, who knows :cool:
Solution
So Here's what I came up with so far:
I used Petra'sTech CoolKit Elite - Rev.3 as a base kit and modified with the following parts:
• (1) Swiftech Apogee XT
• (1) Laing DDC-3.2/MCP355 12V DC Pump w/Acetal XSPC Top
• (1) Swiftech MCR320-QP Triple 120mm Radiator (w/fittings)
• (3) Yate Loon D12SM-12 120mm x 25mm Fans
• (15') 1/2" ID (3/4" OD) Feser Flexible PVC Tubing - UV Red
• (1) 1/2" OD Translucent Polypropylene T-Fitting
• (14) Stainless Steel Worm-Drive Hose Clamps
• (1) Swiftech Chrome Plated Brass Fillport/T-Line Cap
• (1 bottle) Petra'sTech PT_Nuke -PHN Biocide
• (2) 1/2" OD, G1/4 thread Bits Power "Fat Boy" Fittings (for pump top)
• (1) MCW60-R2
• (1) Custom 8800GT/G92 Cooling Kit by iandh
• (1) iandh StealthGrille MCR-QP
For the Future: • (1) DangerDen HD 5970 waterblock
What I did was remove the radbox, since I'm installing it on the inside, swapped out the tubing for red UV tubing with 5' more of it Just in case, with a slightly larger ID but the same as the fitting's OD, So I should be fine (Will there be a greater probability of a leak?), Added 4 Stainless steel wormdrive clamps extra for the 2 GFX card blocks, Added the Stealth Grille, Added the G92 block and 8800 GT/S cooling kit to cool vRAM and added the HD 5970 Hemlock waterblock for a future purchase (november 16th anyone? )
So thumbs up or down?
Also the only thing I'm missing is a shroud... How much of a performance boost would I see with one installed?
I'm thinking of using Noctua NF-P12's for the Rad, as I already have a sizable stockpile of them, and I love the acoustics and static pressure of those fans. I compared them to some Scythe S-Flex S fans I already own and some other, more gimmicky fans making outrages claims that I just had to test for myself. But I will probalby order those Yate Loon fans so that I can compare them anyway. (note those in the list are the 'Medium' speed ones)
Now I'm not sure whether I should cool the Chipset or not. Will i need to to reach the speeds I specified?
Will I need to cool the memory? If so, I hate those tiny fans, horrible noise. I could use them though if they're silent.
Appendix
Thanks for reading this guys and gals! :o I hope you can help me build this new system. I actually already posted this in another forum, and we had a small discussion, but I wanted to see what more people think before I order it today.
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
MSI X58 Eclipse Plus (this can change)
I think you will want the Gigabyte X58-UD5 Extreme which has a watercooling block built into it for the chipset. The MSI X58 is a good board so, I have no qualms with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
[WATER COOLED] a Core i7 920 (perhaps to 4 GHz?)
Maybe 4.2 with the right setup. Aim low (3.8) to start, the magic 4 is a hard beast to obtain on the 920s.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
6GB of Corsair Dominator GT DDR 3 2000
No. You will not get DDR3 2000MHz RAM. You will get DDR3 1600MHz CL7/CL8 RAM. And you will not overclock it. Why?
- DDR3 2000MHz usually requires 1.8 Vs, which is danagerous and can damage your CPU.
- DDR3 2000MHz CL9 has no noticable performance gain over DDR3 1600MHz CL8.
- DDR3 has such good bandwidth that you will not need to overclock it. Even 1333MHz CL10 is overkill.
- Finally, and most important, faster clock means more heat through the memory controller, and since the memory controller is on the CPU, this reduces your possible overclock.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
[WATER COOLED] Keeping one of my 8800 GTS 512MB (G92 of-course) for PhysX calculations, with no over-clocking necessary
Not up with the news are we? NVIDIA have locked out using an ATi card with a dedicated NVIDIA PhysX card. All NVIDIA, or no PhysX. Sorry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
[WATER COOLED] HD 5870 X2, or 'Hemlock' (when it gets released (danger den already showed a block for it)) so let's say just over 310W TDP we can expect. Over-clocking will be likely, if not now then in the future.
First off it's called the 5970 now, and second of all, see the above point. Recommend you wait for a GT300 series card, or get a 295 and live with the lack of DX11 goodness. Single PCB 295s are really good for watercooling. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
2x Velociraptors 150GB's in stripe configuration (RAID0)
No. For your pirmary disk you will be getting a single (for TRIM, when the firmware patch is released) 80GiB or 160GiB Intel X25-Ms Gen2. And you will never mention Velociraptors here again. They are not worth the money. If you can't justify the expense of the SSD, I recommend the Samsung F3s which perform about 80% of the way of the Rapitors for considerably less.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
4x 500gb HDD's in RAID 5 and another HDD for extra Operating system and playing around.
Are you just behind the times? For storage I recommend 4x 1.5 TB Samsung F2 EcoDrives in RAID 5. Way more storage
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
To be clear, I am not including these components in the pricing of the 'system', they're already sorted.
As in bought? Because I'm sorry you just wasted a couple of grand. Let's get your spec stored, then we'll focus on the loops.
Oh and welcome to HEXUS. Sorry for being a little harsh, but I don't want you to waste your money. It is important to me you get the best computing experience possible, and with what you have speced up above I can assure you that you will not.
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
LOL, okay, very opinionated, thanks.
No, don't worry, I havnt bought this stuff yet :)
I'll take that stuff under advisment. What I'll do is drop the 8800gts and go for the HD 5970 only (I will refrain from saying HD 5870 X2 from here on out on this forum ;) ) so no physx and one less block to worry about.
I was worried about the ram being over kill, just wanted to get every bit of performance out of the rig. So i'll get Corsair dominator GT 1600 (TR3X6G1600C8D), so now I don't have to even worry about cooling it, so that was a good idea.
For the purpose of this thread we'll neglect the the hardrives, as the most important part is the watercooling and main heat producing components. But suffice it to say I'll take your advice under advisment and I'm doing some more research. As for the 500GB hardrives, the reason I'm going witht that size is because I already hava a couple of those and I dont need more than 2 TB right now, so I'm just using what I already got, just being smart. When I need to upgrade my storage space, I plan on doing the ~1.5TB HDD route.
Also I'm making sure I'm getting a D0 i7 920 to increase my chances of a good overclock.
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Good comeback P.
We're very gentle normally, it's just NK saw you spending Waaay too much and jumped in rather harder than he meant to.
What's your timetable ? Unless PhysX is a 'must have' It's ATi all the way until at least March 2010.
Oh, and welcome !
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Phage
Good comeback P.
We're very gentle normally, it's just NK saw you spending Waaay too much and jumped in rather harder than he meant to.
What's your timetable ? Unless PhysX is a 'must have' It's ATi all the way until at least March 2010.
Oh, and welcome !
I should be more careful. Jumping onto hard rocky ground hurts. :(
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Phage
What's your timetable ?
Actually I was going to try place the order today/tomorrow. A little tight but I was already planning the upgrading for a while, and the water cooling component since sunday. I was going a bit happy with he spending because I got a little bit of more cash now (economic crisis didnt hit me so hard, in very elastic industry).
As for ATI, I usually alternate between the 2 companies, I don't hold any favoritism, and I was fortunate enough to have only good experiences from ATI.
And for those spinpoint F3's, it's a mission to find them here. Even my main import etailer, sparco.com doesnt sell them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Phage
Oh, and welcome !
Thanks! :rolleyes:
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Unfortunately I know squat about water-cooling, so can't help you with that. But alternatives to the F3 include the WD Caviar Black or the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B.
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Is there a dedicated water cooling section at hexus?
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Sorry for double post, but YAY! here come the pictures. :devilish:
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
should I repost this whole thing, or put a link to here? what do the rules permit?
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PH03NIX-ZA
should I repost this whole thing, or put a link to here? what do the rules permit?
I would just leave it. People who follow the Chasis and Modding section should follow the main Hardware forum too anyway.
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Heh - I dunno either !
Split the difference and maybe post an intro paragraph with a link to this thread, and an apology in advance. (just in case)
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Right so let's clarrify what you've got so far, the motherboard, the MSI Elispse Plus... looks like a good board, but you want to push it over 4GHz I recommend actively cooling the chipset, which requires something with a waterblock for northbridge. I recommend the Gigabyte X58-Extreme because it's basicly a l33ted up UD5, what I have, with a watercooling block.
Using this board however would limit your piping choices, for the loop that contains the northbridge anyway. It says it requires 7.5/10 (mm, inner/outer) piping.
Here is the manual which has useful information, on page 16 is some useful information about the block.
I agree that the i7 920 D0 should be the best choice for this machine, and the 1600MHz RAM you suggested is a good choice. The only thing left is the graphics card. Since you can't get the 5970 just now, what do you plan to do? Stick with your 8800 GTS in the meantime?
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
The water block on the Gigabyte Extreme is rubbish. If you look at it side on, it doesn't actually make any contact with the IOH, it is supported by a number of thin aluminium fins and two thin aluminium plates and is mostly for gimmick value. The board itself is OK, I've had two of them, and neither were a patch on the Asus P6T Deluxe, this obviously doesn't have a water block for the IOH, but what it does have is a heat sink that screws off to leave a flat base to fit a water block to.
Re: My first and most uber watercooled rig
Quote:
Originally Posted by
nightkhaos
Since you can't get the 5970 just now, what do you plan to do? Stick with your 8800 GTS in the meantime?
Yup. :) I'm a patient man :D
I've actually looked at the Gigabyte X58-Extreme a bit more including reviews, and I think I may go with that, mainly because it's more available and cheaper, and will cool better. I think I'll make it with the tubing aswell.