Hi OCN members,
I am a long time member and frequent reader but not an avid poster. I decided to create my own build log. It seems like fun to share your progress and learn along the route.
I am a noobie on posting in forums. I actually don't even know how to post in a forum; all the styling etc. So bear with me
I have been using water cooled PC's for the last 4 years after I acquired someone's prebuilt system with Zalman reserator. I learned by studying the loop of the PC which is made perfect for this purpose. The case was made from full acrylic by DangerDen You can watch and learn. Then I build a few PCs by using Koolance cases. It was a good starting point to get the basics without dealing with any case mods. I used both PC2 and PC3 cases. I still have a PC4-1000BK which is in pristine condition, never been used. I should say I love the finish on Lian-Li cases and how lightweight they are...
Basically I have some experience but this will be my first serious water cooling build. I am actually in the middle of it so this is going to be a little bit retrospective. Let's start ....
GOAL
I have no specific goals; I don't game a lot. If I do, it will be simple games like Diablo or Civ. Time is the limiting factor here not the desire though
I don't have ambitions around folding or other distributed computing tasks. I think these tasks are great way to heat your house but I'd rather use my furnace.
I spend my entire day in front of computers as a profession but all those HP/Dell machines get the job for me. At one point, I was forced to make software compilations but that's over now, Hence I have no reason to have a powerful system or anything better than my aircooled core 2 quad with 5850.
My goal is to have fun with building a water-cooled PC. While doing that, build an expandable system which I can upgrade over time. Expandability is the key point for me.
I love overclocking. It makes you to get the best out of your hardware with some extra energy/investment. Spending money on long living investments like pumps, radiators etc to get most out of short living chips (due to upgrades) is a great idea!
I like photo editing and managing huge media so make sure that there is enough disk spindle for space/speed. At least 6 3 ½" disk space is required. 8 is preferred…
I care about the looks but I can forgo the looks easily for saving significant money or technical capability.
I also want the PC to be quiet when doing regular work but have the extra headroom for high overclock and performance.
Basically my goals are: Expandability, High overclocking, High disk capacity.
BUDGET
I didn't set a fixed budget. I am planning to spend around $1000 but I don't mind spending $1500. I don't want to spend more than $2000. That's too much money for spending on fun. I also have various parts staying around. Budget is the key challenging point for me. With no budget, there is really no optimization problem to solve. Then it is not fun for me
COMPONENTS
Platform
I loved AMD as they support upgrades. I built my first AMD PC 12 years ago with Athlon Duron. I used that PC for 11 years. It was my main desktop computer for 6 years until I replace it with a Core2Duo. I started the PC with Duron, then upgraded to T-Bird and finally to Athlon XP. Thanks AMD for the amazing upgrade path!
I was quite compelled with going AMD again. FX was not a great CPU though
FX might be a compelling architecture for servers but not for desktops. I also couldn't find any good motherboard for FX which was the main turn off. I was going to buy UD7 but then I heard about the vdroop problem and gave up on UD7 and AMD platform.
Now, I am forced to go with Intel who changes the sockets every 2-3 years. Intel is definitely not a good platform for my taste in general but Intel is the only platform that offers non-server dual socket motherboard which is a great expandability point. I also love that I can use their server CPU's since I can find them much cheaper than their desktop CPU's as the server's retire.
On Intel, I have 3 options:
- LGA 1155: Amazing price/performance but limited capabilities. Limited PCI-E bandwidth is a major turn down with someone who is into expandability.
- LGA 1366: Aging platform. Offers triple channel memory, I can have all the memory I want (48 GB per socket) and with 36 PCI-E lanes, I can easily add extra expandability like a SAS card. Actual prices for the CPU's are also very low for their performance since the 45nm's xeons are getting dumped. I think it is still compelling platform for their price. Today you can go buy a good refurbished X58 motherboard for $100. Get i7 920 or its equivalent xeon for $150 or less. That’s way cheaper than LGA 1155 and you get a more capable platform with slightly slower CPU.
- LGA 2011: Amazing platform but my budget is too low... I am also completely disappointed on overclocking is not possible with SR-X.
So I decided to go with LGA1366. If I was lucky to find a good motherboard, I would have gone for 990FX as well.
Motherboard
I always think about Motherboard first when building a computer. SR-2 offers overclocking (though limited at 200 bclk), dual socket, 96GB memory and 7 PCI-E 16. It is price is lower now $480 after rebate. What is so great about SR-2 is that there is lifetime warranty. This is an amazing offer in my opinion.
With this motherboard, I can easily have 12 cores running at 4.2 GHZ. This is good computing power for the foreseeable future. I like that they use NF200. It might come handy when using I/O cards. Of course being able to quad SLI/Fire is a great expandability story.
So here is the motherboard:
Processors
My goal for processors is spend as little as I can but still get to 4GHz. I don’t need so much processing power so a quad core Xeon with 20/21 multiplier will do the job.
I was right about my processor assumption. Old 45nm Xeons are getting dumped on ebay in high numbers but there are also a lot of buyers. I am amazed how many people are still buying LGA 1366. I thought SB is the king of the realm for all the gamers out there. It looks like I am not the only who noticed cheap CPU and motherboard prices. It sucks that regular motherboard can also use Xeons.
For a while I contemplated on getting a low end quad core Xeon for $60-$70 but I was reluctant as that would be throw away until I get a proper quad core around $100, which is the price I want to pay for one cpu.
I saw a lot ES chips which were getting sold for a low price. I almost bought 2 B0 one for $200 but luckily I realized I cannot use them unless I update the BIOS. Finally, I found 2 D0 based ES chips on e-bay with 14 days money back. I bid on them, and get first one for $123. I was not going to buy the second one but I won the bid at $111 so what the heck, it cannot get cheaper than this for a long time.
So I got 2 ES Xeon 5550 chips for $246 shipped. Second cpu was definitely not in the plans. I am going way over my budget. Well, you set a budget so that you know how much more you spend.
Memory
NewEgg offered me %15 off coupon for memory after my purchase of SR-2, which was the first component I bought actually. Given that most memory is overclockable today, I didn’t see the point for spending too much money for high class memory. So I bought a 12 GB DDR3 1600 CL9 Wintec One for $55.
After I bought the RAM, I got a good deal on CPU as I mentioned above and ended up buying 2 CPUs.
I was looking for a good deal again. Luckily, Newegg again send me a list of coupon including %15 off on memory. I wanted to buy RED RAM this time for the looks but there wasn’t any for a low. So I was just about to buy wintec one again but priced got hiked $10 while I was contemplating. This is amazing thing for me, never seen price increasing on a component. I got upset and ended up buying 12 GB DDR3 1600 CL9 Mushkin which were also $55. I decided, in the future I will buy Dominator RAMS as they come in RED and BLACK flavors.
Case
Of course when you go for SR-2, case becomes a major issue. I saw these amazing semi-custom cases like Mountain Mode cases but again they are over my budget.
My heart lies on Lian-Li v2120B. At $300 when you catch it on deal, it is not very expensive. It has beautiful coating; professional look. I think getting Lian-Li v2120B and KIT-EHX1320CUV will make the best looking water cooling case ever. Simple and elegant. So I ordered a Lian-Li 2120B from newegg but there was a problem with the package so I ended up returning it. Thanks NewEgg and shame on Lian-Li. Lian-Li does not even have proper support in US.
Couple of things happened for me to reconsider my casing decision:
- KIT-EHX1320CUV is good looking but a radiator like XSPC RX would be a better solution with much quieter operation.
- Cutting the top of the case is not a simple task and I don't know how to do it. It looks like Quad rad does not fit into top of V2120B due USB/Power panel.
- No case is big enough when you get SR-2. With SR-2 inside all the cabling holes are getting covered.
- There is also not enough space for a thick radiator at the top. Now I am limited to a thin triple radiator, unless I mount a dual rad in the hard drive space which is really not a good option because I need drive spaces…
While, I am looking for a solution, I noticed that my Azza Fusion 4000 can handle the SR-2 although it does not officially support HPTX. Even the screw holes are all complete hence no drilling is required. This is good because I know nothing about case modding. The only drawback is having 10 expansion slots as opposed to 11. I think I can leave with this.
Fusion 4000 is amazingly big. The upper comportment gives me one quad and one triple radiator space. This should be more than enough for any system at high or low fin radiators. It also has 8 hot swappable bays and it is practically free since I already have it. I bought it for $70 from CL, unused. I thought I could use it one day with it is 8 hot swappable bays.
I also think this would be really interesting build. I don't see many builds around with Fusion 4000. Being different is good Case is really functional but not good looking, not well made so not a good choice for enthusiastic crowd but I care about functionality more than looks...
So here is the case:
Power Supply
To save money, I decided to use my old power supplies . This will also give me time to figure out how much power I really need. So I put this old 750 Watt Thermaltake Toughpower W0117RU for the system. I put a very old, 12 years old to be precise, 300 Watt power supply for the power water cooling, disks etc.
I want to buy a power supply with at least 1200 Watt and multirail 12 volts. Antec 1200 HCP looks like a good candidate. I am hoping to get that one or any multirail 1200 watt power supply under $200.
Radiator
I didn’t know so much about radiators. I learn enough that I should get copper and there are two types: high fin and low fin. I went through several reviews. A particular good one:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?250927-REVIEW-Quadradiator-Roundup-11-Models-tested-ENGLISH-Version-!
I like the fact that XSPC RX 480 is in top 3 in all fan speed ranges and it is one with highest flow of top performers. I assume that the trick is its size. It is one of the thickest radiators out there. As a result it has lots of cooling surface and less restriction. Given that I have huge case with dedicated section for radiators, I decided to go with this one. Note that I can always add another high fin triple radiator internally if I need more cooling performance. I believe this will be a necessity when I started to watercool graphics cards.
Price on XSPS RX480 is really good for what you are getting: $115.
I don’t want to have dust build up on my radiators so I will set them up in push and from inside to outside. Not so many cases can take SR-2 with approach. Of course I need some good intake fans to compensate that…
One major disappointment was the finish of the radiator. It is beautiful black matte finish when you take it out of the package but it gets scratched so easily, there is no way to keep it like that. Just to give an idea, my nail scratches the radiator when I am grapping it. If I touch the fins accidentally, they bend and eventually drop their paint.
Here is the radiator:
Pump
I understand that D5 and its equivalents is pretty much the king of the realm with their high flow, especially the 24volt variants. On the other hand, they are large and I want something much more convenient in terms of pump.
I love the idea behind Koolance pumps. They monitor temperatures and adjust fans accordingly. They also control the pump speed and measure the flow rate. Best part in case of emergency, they shut down the computer. I see so many posts where people express their worry on running their water cooled computer when they are away. I know that you can configure speedfan to shut down your machine but no software would be reliable enough as dedicated hardware. Of course price is the concern here.
Luckily I got a great deal on ebay. For $200 shipped, I got a new RP-1200. This is an ok price given that raw pump and reservoir costs around $100. I think the MSRP price on RP-1200 is too much. While looking for supplies, I bid on a pump and get a used RP-1050, same pump with slightly less functionality, for $90 shipped. I thought, I can get 2 of them and run them at the lowest speed to keep the noise down while keeping the flow rate good. With these purchases, I realized that my budget goal of $1000 is not going to be enough. Let’s hope that $1500 holds. Water cooling is an expensive hobby
Tubing
I got some 10feet 13mm ID/16mm OD black Koolance tube for $9. I also got 10 feet 10mm ID/16mm OD red DangerDen tubing for $25 shipped. Red & Black will be my theme as much as I can. I am planning to use the red tubing for CPU’s and black for the rest. I had some 10 mm fittings and got some for good price.
Coolant
I decided to go with Distilled Water as coolant and Silver as biocide. I definitely don’t want and need any coolant with dyes. My tubing is not transparent as it is. I bought Bitspower silver nozzle and cap from Jab-tech. What do you guys think about coolant choice?
Koolance offers following coolant with no dyes, that is another alternative I was considering.
http://koolance.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=0_58&product_id=553
I ended up lucky and bought that one for $5. Do you think is this better than distilled water as it prevents corrosion? Should I use this one?
Water Blocks
I decided to with blocks without any nickel coating as I wanted to use silver as biocide. As far as I see, XSPC Raystorm is the best option out there. It is cheap, high flow and pretty nimble. So I bought 2 of them from Jab-Tech for $100.
To be continued with the rest of the parts....
Edited by simurg - 5/27/12 at 12:53am
I am a long time member and frequent reader but not an avid poster. I decided to create my own build log. It seems like fun to share your progress and learn along the route.
I am a noobie on posting in forums. I actually don't even know how to post in a forum; all the styling etc. So bear with me
I have been using water cooled PC's for the last 4 years after I acquired someone's prebuilt system with Zalman reserator. I learned by studying the loop of the PC which is made perfect for this purpose. The case was made from full acrylic by DangerDen
You can watch and learn. Then I build a few PCs by using Koolance cases. It was a good starting point to get the basics without dealing with any case mods. I used both PC2 and PC3 cases. I still have a PC4-1000BK which is in pristine condition, never been used. I should say I love the finish on Lian-Li cases and how lightweight they are...Basically I have some experience but this will be my first serious water cooling build. I am actually in the middle of it so this is going to be a little bit retrospective. Let's start ....
GOAL
I have no specific goals; I don't game a lot. If I do, it will be simple games like Diablo or Civ. Time is the limiting factor here not the desire though
I don't have ambitions around folding or other distributed computing tasks. I think these tasks are great way to heat your house but I'd rather use my furnace.
I spend my entire day in front of computers as a profession but all those HP/Dell machines get the job for me. At one point, I was forced to make software compilations but that's over now, Hence I have no reason to have a powerful system or anything better than my aircooled core 2 quad with 5850.
My goal is to have fun with building a water-cooled PC. While doing that, build an expandable system which I can upgrade over time. Expandability is the key point for me.
I love overclocking. It makes you to get the best out of your hardware with some extra energy/investment. Spending money on long living investments like pumps, radiators etc to get most out of short living chips (due to upgrades) is a great idea!
I like photo editing and managing huge media so make sure that there is enough disk spindle for space/speed. At least 6 3 ½" disk space is required. 8 is preferred…
I care about the looks but I can forgo the looks easily for saving significant money or technical capability.
I also want the PC to be quiet when doing regular work but have the extra headroom for high overclock and performance.
Basically my goals are: Expandability, High overclocking, High disk capacity.
BUDGET
I didn't set a fixed budget. I am planning to spend around $1000 but I don't mind spending $1500. I don't want to spend more than $2000. That's too much money for spending on fun. I also have various parts staying around. Budget is the key challenging point for me. With no budget, there is really no optimization problem to solve. Then it is not fun for me
COMPONENTS
Platform
I loved AMD as they support upgrades. I built my first AMD PC 12 years ago with Athlon Duron. I used that PC for 11 years. It was my main desktop computer for 6 years until I replace it with a Core2Duo. I started the PC with Duron, then upgraded to T-Bird and finally to Athlon XP. Thanks AMD for the amazing upgrade path!
I was quite compelled with going AMD again. FX was not a great CPU though
FX might be a compelling architecture for servers but not for desktops. I also couldn't find any good motherboard for FX which was the main turn off. I was going to buy UD7 but then I heard about the vdroop problem and gave up on UD7 and AMD platform.Now, I am forced to go with Intel who changes the sockets every 2-3 years. Intel is definitely not a good platform for my taste in general but Intel is the only platform that offers non-server dual socket motherboard which is a great expandability point. I also love that I can use their server CPU's since I can find them much cheaper than their desktop CPU's as the server's retire.
On Intel, I have 3 options:
- LGA 1155: Amazing price/performance but limited capabilities. Limited PCI-E bandwidth is a major turn down with someone who is into expandability.
- LGA 1366: Aging platform. Offers triple channel memory, I can have all the memory I want (48 GB per socket) and with 36 PCI-E lanes, I can easily add extra expandability like a SAS card. Actual prices for the CPU's are also very low for their performance since the 45nm's xeons are getting dumped. I think it is still compelling platform for their price. Today you can go buy a good refurbished X58 motherboard for $100. Get i7 920 or its equivalent xeon for $150 or less. That’s way cheaper than LGA 1155 and you get a more capable platform with slightly slower CPU.
- LGA 2011: Amazing platform but my budget is too low... I am also completely disappointed on overclocking is not possible with SR-X.
So I decided to go with LGA1366. If I was lucky to find a good motherboard, I would have gone for 990FX as well.
Motherboard
I always think about Motherboard first when building a computer. SR-2 offers overclocking (though limited at 200 bclk), dual socket, 96GB memory and 7 PCI-E 16. It is price is lower now $480 after rebate. What is so great about SR-2 is that there is lifetime warranty. This is an amazing offer in my opinion.
With this motherboard, I can easily have 12 cores running at 4.2 GHZ. This is good computing power for the foreseeable future. I like that they use NF200. It might come handy when using I/O cards. Of course being able to quad SLI/Fire is a great expandability story.
So here is the motherboard:
Processors
My goal for processors is spend as little as I can but still get to 4GHz. I don’t need so much processing power so a quad core Xeon with 20/21 multiplier will do the job.
I was right about my processor assumption. Old 45nm Xeons are getting dumped on ebay in high numbers but there are also a lot of buyers. I am amazed how many people are still buying LGA 1366. I thought SB is the king of the realm for all the gamers out there. It looks like I am not the only who noticed cheap CPU and motherboard prices. It sucks that regular motherboard can also use Xeons.
For a while I contemplated on getting a low end quad core Xeon for $60-$70 but I was reluctant as that would be throw away until I get a proper quad core around $100, which is the price I want to pay for one cpu.
I saw a lot ES chips which were getting sold for a low price. I almost bought 2 B0 one for $200 but luckily I realized I cannot use them unless I update the BIOS. Finally, I found 2 D0 based ES chips on e-bay with 14 days money back. I bid on them, and get first one for $123. I was not going to buy the second one but I won the bid at $111 so what the heck, it cannot get cheaper than this for a long time.
So I got 2 ES Xeon 5550 chips for $246 shipped. Second cpu was definitely not in the plans. I am going way over my budget. Well, you set a budget so that you know how much more you spend.
Memory
NewEgg offered me %15 off coupon for memory after my purchase of SR-2, which was the first component I bought actually. Given that most memory is overclockable today, I didn’t see the point for spending too much money for high class memory. So I bought a 12 GB DDR3 1600 CL9 Wintec One for $55.
After I bought the RAM, I got a good deal on CPU as I mentioned above and ended up buying 2 CPUs.
I was looking for a good deal again. Luckily, Newegg again send me a list of coupon including %15 off on memory. I wanted to buy RED RAM this time for the looks but there wasn’t any for a low. So I was just about to buy wintec one again but priced got hiked $10 while I was contemplating. This is amazing thing for me, never seen price increasing on a component. I got upset and ended up buying 12 GB DDR3 1600 CL9 Mushkin which were also $55. I decided, in the future I will buy Dominator RAMS as they come in RED and BLACK flavors.
Case
Of course when you go for SR-2, case becomes a major issue. I saw these amazing semi-custom cases like Mountain Mode cases but again they are over my budget.
My heart lies on Lian-Li v2120B. At $300 when you catch it on deal, it is not very expensive. It has beautiful coating; professional look. I think getting Lian-Li v2120B and KIT-EHX1320CUV will make the best looking water cooling case ever. Simple and elegant. So I ordered a Lian-Li 2120B from newegg but there was a problem with the package so I ended up returning it. Thanks NewEgg and shame on Lian-Li. Lian-Li does not even have proper support in US.
Couple of things happened for me to reconsider my casing decision:
- KIT-EHX1320CUV is good looking but a radiator like XSPC RX would be a better solution with much quieter operation.
- Cutting the top of the case is not a simple task and I don't know how to do it. It looks like Quad rad does not fit into top of V2120B due USB/Power panel.
- No case is big enough when you get SR-2. With SR-2 inside all the cabling holes are getting covered.
- There is also not enough space for a thick radiator at the top. Now I am limited to a thin triple radiator, unless I mount a dual rad in the hard drive space which is really not a good option because I need drive spaces…
While, I am looking for a solution, I noticed that my Azza Fusion 4000 can handle the SR-2 although it does not officially support HPTX. Even the screw holes are all complete hence no drilling is required. This is good because I know nothing about case modding. The only drawback is having 10 expansion slots as opposed to 11. I think I can leave with this.
Fusion 4000 is amazingly big. The upper comportment gives me one quad and one triple radiator space. This should be more than enough for any system at high or low fin radiators. It also has 8 hot swappable bays and it is practically free since I already have it. I bought it for $70 from CL, unused. I thought I could use it one day with it is 8 hot swappable bays.
I also think this would be really interesting build. I don't see many builds around with Fusion 4000. Being different is good
Case is really functional but not good looking, not well made so not a good choice for enthusiastic crowd but I care about functionality more than looks...So here is the case:
Power Supply
To save money, I decided to use my old power supplies . This will also give me time to figure out how much power I really need. So I put this old 750 Watt Thermaltake Toughpower W0117RU for the system. I put a very old, 12 years old to be precise, 300 Watt power supply for the power water cooling, disks etc.
I want to buy a power supply with at least 1200 Watt and multirail 12 volts. Antec 1200 HCP looks like a good candidate. I am hoping to get that one or any multirail 1200 watt power supply under $200.
Radiator
I didn’t know so much about radiators. I learn enough that I should get copper and there are two types: high fin and low fin. I went through several reviews. A particular good one:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?250927-REVIEW-Quadradiator-Roundup-11-Models-tested-ENGLISH-Version-!
I like the fact that XSPC RX 480 is in top 3 in all fan speed ranges and it is one with highest flow of top performers. I assume that the trick is its size. It is one of the thickest radiators out there. As a result it has lots of cooling surface and less restriction. Given that I have huge case with dedicated section for radiators, I decided to go with this one. Note that I can always add another high fin triple radiator internally if I need more cooling performance.
I believe this will be a necessity when I started to watercool graphics cards.Price on XSPS RX480 is really good for what you are getting: $115.
I don’t want to have dust build up on my radiators so I will set them up in push and from inside to outside. Not so many cases can take SR-2 with approach. Of course I need some good intake fans to compensate that…
One major disappointment was the finish of the radiator. It is beautiful black matte finish when you take it out of the package but it gets scratched so easily, there is no way to keep it like that. Just to give an idea, my nail scratches the radiator when I am grapping it. If I touch the fins accidentally, they bend and eventually drop their paint.
Here is the radiator:
Pump
I understand that D5 and its equivalents is pretty much the king of the realm with their high flow, especially the 24volt variants. On the other hand, they are large and I want something much more convenient in terms of pump.
I love the idea behind Koolance pumps. They monitor temperatures and adjust fans accordingly. They also control the pump speed and measure the flow rate. Best part in case of emergency, they shut down the computer. I see so many posts where people express their worry on running their water cooled computer when they are away. I know that you can configure speedfan to shut down your machine but no software would be reliable enough as dedicated hardware. Of course price is the concern here.
Luckily I got a great deal on ebay. For $200 shipped, I got a new RP-1200. This is an ok price given that raw pump and reservoir costs around $100. I think the MSRP price on RP-1200 is too much. While looking for supplies, I bid on a pump and get a used RP-1050, same pump with slightly less functionality, for $90 shipped. I thought, I can get 2 of them and run them at the lowest speed to keep the noise down while keeping the flow rate good. With these purchases, I realized that my budget goal of $1000 is not going to be enough. Let’s hope that $1500 holds. Water cooling is an expensive hobby
Tubing
I got some 10feet 13mm ID/16mm OD black Koolance tube for $9. I also got 10 feet 10mm ID/16mm OD red DangerDen tubing for $25 shipped. Red & Black will be my theme as much as I can. I am planning to use the red tubing for CPU’s and black for the rest. I had some 10 mm fittings and got some for good price.
Coolant
I decided to go with Distilled Water as coolant and Silver as biocide. I definitely don’t want and need any coolant with dyes. My tubing is not transparent as it is. I bought Bitspower silver nozzle and cap from Jab-tech. What do you guys think about coolant choice?
Koolance offers following coolant with no dyes, that is another alternative I was considering.
http://koolance.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=0_58&product_id=553
I ended up lucky and bought that one for $5. Do you think is this better than distilled water as it prevents corrosion? Should I use this one?
Water Blocks
I decided to with blocks without any nickel coating as I wanted to use silver as biocide. As far as I see, XSPC Raystorm is the best option out there. It is cheap, high flow and pretty nimble. So I bought 2 of them from Jab-Tech for $100.
To be continued with the rest of the parts....
Edited by simurg - 5/27/12 at 12:53am
... do you plan to put an mITX server up top? cause that would be awsom 
