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) , 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):
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
- 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. (A 3x120mm rad fits fine though)
- A little headroom, for well, who knows
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! 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.