[Work Log] Switch 810 Water Cooling with Full Sized 420mm Radiator: Black/Green Machine

My first ever Water cooling build. Also my this is going to be my first major case modding/personalization project in over 8 years. I have always been interested in doing a water cooled build going all the way back to the days before where it was 100% full custom build from the blocks to using car radiators. Today companies such as Koolance, XSPC, Swiftech, Alphacool, Bitspower and many others have made it easy to build a water cooled system and make it look clean internally. I think that now has never been a better time to get into water cooling.

Objective

Take my current system and build a very expandable Water cooling system that is geared towards performance. The system will be a CPU only loop to start with and later on I will be adding a Video card to the loop when ever the next generation comes out which will most likely be the GK110 or whatever islands AMD has to offer.

Water Cooling Parts

XSPC Raystorm Full Copper w/AMD mounting kit (sold separately)
Bitspower Tank-z Multi 150 res
Alphacool NexXxos 420mm Radiator
Swiftech MCP 655 w/ G 1/4" threads tapped
1/2 - 3/4" Monsoon Compression Fittings
140mm Bgears B Blasters
Lamptron Touch fan Controller
1/2 - 3/4" Durelene clear tubing
Mayhems Green dye (for later)

Coolant: Good old distilled water with silver coils

Major System parts


Switch 810 Gloss black
AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black
ASUS M2N32 SLI Deluxe Motherboard
EVGA 570GTX SC
Edited by Agent_kenshin - 9/24/12 at 6:49pm

Revision 1







It was pretty hot that day.....






Revision 2 Final







Edited by Agent_kenshin - 4/11/13 at 3:13am

Reserved

Unboxing Day.








AMD Raytstorm upgrade kit that's needed to mount on to a AMD motherboard. Purchased from Sidewinder Computers. Story with is part is that Sidewinder sent me the wrong item which was another mounting bracket for Intel. I contacted them on a Friday about this mix up and I received the correct part on Monday. Talk about great service




All of my Monsoons had this on them and first I thought that they were all scratched up. No worries it was just some left over grime I'm guessing from the manufacturing process. Comes right off with a little rubbing alcohol.

Fabrication Part 1 - Preparing the radiator for mounting.

First thing on the list is to break out my new rotary tool which is my Black and Decker RTX 3 speed and take out a large portion of the top of the non-removable 5 1/4" cage which is riveted in. I have seen many switch 810 build logs with 420mm rads with this part taken out or left in. I deiced to take some of this out since this will block some airflow around the 3rd fan closet to the front of the case and this will especially be the case I am putting in a 60mm thick rad which is going to come very close to that cage.

I also took this time to also drill some holes to mount my rad at the top of my case. For the Switch 810, you have to drill a few holes for most 420mm rads since there is no standardized spacing for radiators with 140mm fans. The Switch's fan hole spacing is 20mm and the NexXxos is 15mm. The only 420mm rads that line up perfectly is the Black Ice series rads.

Before



After



Painting Part 1

Stock NZXT fans that came with the case. Accidentally broke one while removing it from the case



All Painted.





Ever seen a green rad......





Priming the trim on the front and top panels of my case. I did not have time on this day to paint the final color on them but that is planned for this weekend.

Decommissioning of The Old Case

The day has come to retire my old Antec 900 or dust bowl 900 as I like to call it since it was such a chore to keep clean. I would have to spray away dust just about every month and do a full blown cleaning of the HDD bays and everything about every 6 months. After over 5 1/2 years of service, it's time to retire this case.







This is just bad. This is what one of my HDD bays looked like after 9 months. I was late with cleaning because of a bad leg injury and could not lift my case to do a proper cleaning of the whole case. Not going to miss cleaning out this case one bit.



My motherboard with the Zalman CNPS 9900 MAX. Have some cleaning to do here.

Radiator Mounting

After painting my rad, I proceeded to flush out my 420mm UT60 NexXxoS with hot distilled water and some vinegar and let it sit in there for about a half hour. That mixture came out pretty clean except for lots of metal debris which went away after about a good 8 flushes. It took over 3 gallons of distilled water worth of flushing.

The new holes that I drilled lined up great but there was a problem that caused my rad started to sag down into my case towards the back. It did not sit flush against the top part of my case because of the top G 1/4" plugs at the top of the rad. The gap was less then 1/4 of a inch but it bothered me enough to do something about it so I took out my rotary tool and cut some open slots for the G 1/4" plugs.



Fans Installed



Mounting The CPU Water Block

The installation of this part went very smooth after I found my OEM back plate and having to take the pliers to a part that was left over from my Zalman back plate. I don't think I was suppose to put the sticky part to my motherboard it was hard to get off



All mounted up with IC Diamond applied



Filling The Loop and Tube Routing

For this part, I needed my system to be somewhat operational until I can get the time to get more painting, lighting and wire management completed which is planned to get done this weekend. I had some problems with the Monsoon fittings getting the compression part to thread onto the barb after I installed the tubing on the barb. I had to apply a lot of force just to get them threaded a little bit so I could use the tool provided to get them tightened down. Once I got past that barrier, they are on there very secure. I have some mixed feelings about the monsoon fittings and I don't know if it was due to the stiffness of the Durelene......

The beast is hungry it says FEED ME!





It has been 5 days since this was all filled up and it has been working great The system still looks like this right now. The bleeding with the MCP655 Vario was easy with the pump setting on 5 and tipping the case every so often. The system was free of major air bubbles in less then 1 hours and the micro bubbles were gone in less then a day. I currently have my pump set at the number 2 setting.

I leaked tested for about 12 hours un powered up (well with just the pump on of course) which goes against all of what i read of at least 24 hours. I figure that big leaks I could catch within the first hour if there were any and small slow ones over much longer time. I felt that 12 hours was good enough for a short power up trial. The paper towels were dry and I used my flashlight to check for any leaks around the fittings and everything was good. I fired up the system for about a couple hours and shut it back down again since i had some things to do. It stayed off this time for another 12 hours and same story no leaks During the power up test I learned that some of my pull fans were scrapping against the top part of my case in certain corners when I crank them up to full speed and I still need to come up with a fix for this.

I still have a lot more work to do so stay tuned.