Liquid Cooled Thermaltake Level 10GT Build

I saw the new Thermaltake level 10GT case the other day and said, what the heck, let's rework my gaming rig (my older rig will be for sale.) I generally stink at build posts, but wanted to make an attempt.

While I am not going for all out performance, I wanted a blend of the best I could get across the board. In other words, I needed to spread the cash around the best I could, but still get a hot rig together. Please don't post "you should have done X here or Y there" those comments are really not helpful after the fact! I know I could do better in several areas - again it's about trying to get a little of everything in here. Let's start with the components:

Case: Thermaltake Level 10GT I went black since white seemed too Japanese Anime for my tastes and would look a bit odd in my home office. Although this is a bit out there by itself, especially compared to the monster rectangle that is the Corsair 800d (my current case.)



CPU/Motherboard: Intel i5 2500k and Asus P8P67 Deluxe I know the i7 2600k is a bit quicker with HT, but again I want a little of everything in this build (plus I can get 4.7 easy as I soon found out.)



Memory: Corsair Dominator GT



Hard Drive: OCZ Agility 3 Not the Vertigo drive, but at 240 gig I am happy. Also have a couple of WD Caviar Black 1tb drives I will take from my current rig for storage.



Video Cards: 2 x EVGA 560. Again, there will be some who say "Dude, why?" Well mainly because I wanted to run SLI, I didn't want to spend more than $400 to do it, and I figured I could wait until we get that shiny new tech next year and see what's what then.



Power Supply: Corsair Gold Series AX1200. Went over the top since I plan on upgrading the video cards next year. Although I estimate my power draw at max to be close to 1000 so this seemed healthy enough!



Cooling: Went Koolance, again opinions are like . . . well we all know the rest. Reason being is the CPU 370 is the dog's bollocks and I wanted it all to match (shoes to purse kind of thing I know.)



Video Cards - GPU 220



Memory - RAM-33 Not necessary, but looks, um, cool.



Radiators - 1 x 240 Black Ice (blue) Will cool GPUs. 1 x 120 Black Ice (blue) Cools CPU/Memory.



Connectors: Running all black Koolance compression, disconnects, and tank/pumps.
Tubing: White and Blue UV tubing.
Fans: 2 x Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe M12-P 120mmx25mm Ultra Silent and 1 x BitFenix Spectre All White 120mm





The case has 2 200mm fans in it and I modded it out to add the one 140mm that came with it at the CPU exhaust (pics below.)
TIM: Indigo Xtreme

Other: Using a UV cathode, blue LED run, cable sleeving, blu-ray DVD, mini card reader, and an Aerocool X panel. I may be missing some stuff, but I think I got all the important bits.



Here are a few mid-build pictures. Actually, this is mid-water build and my current state of progress. I couldn't wait for all the bits to come in so I ran it on air at first to see what I could get - and 4.7 stable through the ASUS program was sweet. Ran torture on it for 24 hours with no problems and the heat wasn't that bad either. Once I have this together I will re-run the overclock and do it for memory as well. Should be plenty quick for my needs. Waiting on a few more connectors and some colored sleeving (should be in mid-week) and then I can finalize the box and fire her up!

Sorry about the pic quality - from my phone since I didn't have a decent camera on hand this afternoon.










Edited by ScribbyDaGreat - 10/21/11 at 9:12pm

You know you are so right! I recently started to read this site religiously over the last month or so as I just went about building rigs willy nilly! I am kinda kicking myself that I didn't research memory more.

Not sure, but I think the Koolance RAM-33 are universal and should work. Just need to remove any stock heatsink that may be on the RAM. The RAM-33 come with a contact pad that you apply to one side of the module to get a good, tight fit and there are no other adjustments. So I assume these would work with any of the RAM listed on the website.

I received the needed connectors this afternoon for my water system and finalized getting that all put in (roughly.) Hot wired the power supply, connected the pumps, and . . . nothing. No flow. WTH?!?!? Double checked all the connections, the pipes, everything. I could hear the pumps working, but neither loop was running fluid. Very weird. Went ahead and disassembled everything thinking maybe the pumps are bad?

Here is what I found:





If you cannot tell what is happening here I will tell you. The outlet ports were never drilled out so they were closed! I never thought to check if the inlet and outlet ports where in fact open when I unboxed the reservoir. I suppose I will in the future.

Here is the inlet port - only halfway opened up.



RMA'd the reservoir back to Koolance. Of course, over the phone they were very apologetic and said they had never seen this before. Koolance sent out a replacement this afternoon so I should see it on Friday.

Since I couldn't test my water system, I went ahead with the tedious task of sleeving a bunch of wires. I have a few left to do, but I couldn't handle any more of the mind-numbingly boring work. Here's how far I got:







More to come next week.

Another set back on Friday. Was running my water system with a jumped power supply and installing the fan controller. Fan controller just FAILED! Piece o' crap! RMA'd is back to Tiger Direct and am using another fan/temp controller. Annoying! Also, I may have ANOTHER bad reservoir from Koolance. Not getting good flow from one side of the bay. Will check it out when I get back in the office tomorrow to see how things went. Really annoying little issues. I had sleeved ALL of the cables from the now dead fan controller (all eight of them) only to have to pull them all off to sleeve my other controller. What a pain! Hopefully I will have something ready for pics by mid week and can do some overclocking!!!

Waiting on a couple of fan connectors to <finally> finalize the water system. Man, I did not plan out my wiring needs very well it seems! Also, just got in my new fan/temp controller and will post pics once I have that sleeved and installed. I did a little modding on the side case to add a 140 mm fan. Really not needed, but I was a little bored today so went ahead and added it. This plastic piece is the side that covers the 5.25" drive bays above the hot swap hard drive bays.