[Build Log] Fusion Reactor - First Water Cooling Build - Page 2

Now on to the radiators. Since this is my first build using water I don't have anything to compare the size of the Alphacool Monsta to anything else. These are pretty darn thick and feel quite solid. Like other's have said, having those screw guards is nice since I wouldn't have much of an idea of when to stop when installing fans or mounting the radiators in the case.









I only had two issues with the radiators and to be honest they really are not a direct fault of the radiators. First I didn't want to use the copper plated screws that came with the radiator since I didn't think it would look good/appropriate with my build. After contacting Reglar I was able to determine that he used 30mm M3 screws on his build. So off to Fastenall I went and ordered me up some black 30mm screws. Apparently they only sell them in 100ct bags which was fine because I'd need a lot of them for my build. Once I got home with them I went to test fit the radiator with the push fans installed. Well the 30mm screws weren't long enough to really screw into the radiator, or at least as much as I'd like them to in order to be comfortable. So I went back and got 35mm screws which worked perfectly. So for the record I'm using 35mm M3 screws for mounting the radiator to the case & top/pull fans and 30mm M3 screws for mounting the bottom/push fans directly to the radiator. I didn't need to use any rubber washers or anything as there is absolutely zero noise/vibration.

The second problem I had was actually mounting the radiators to the top of the case. This was a bit of a pain but because of mental mistakes it's something that I ended up doing over and over again. So by the time I did my final mount it was relatively simple. What makes it difficult is that it's hard to support the radiator and keep it still to get the fans and screws to line up. I ended up finding a slick way to just start threading two screws at opposite ends/corners of the rad to give it enough support to get the others in place.

One thing I failed to mention at the beginning of this thread is that I flushed out every single water block and radiator using the West Coast Mods Lazy Man method of flushing radiators. I know it's probably overkill do do that to the water blocks but I figured it wouldn't hurt anything and would give me a bit of piece of mind. The water blocks didn't give off that much junk, if anything at all. The radiators were a different story. I'll share pics of that later on but there was a lot of stuff that came out of the radiators. I'm glad I spent the time and money to flush them the way I did.

Here is what my radiators look like with the fans mounted on them. The fittings look a little different now as things didn't go as planned trying to get things lined up with the cable management holes. I used small, clear 3M Command strips to hold the fan cables and the Phobya 4 into 1 fan adapters to the side of the radiator. The open part of the hook is to the side, so if I ever need to get to the cables I simply slide the whole cable assembly towards the back of the case and the cables come down.





This is what they look like with both radiators mounted to the top of the case with and without the case's top cover in place.




Edited by ColdFusionWi - 11/2/12 at 12:15pm

The GPU water blocks were kind of fun to work with. I decided to go with the Watercool Heatkiller GTX 680 blocks. Since the GTX 670 FTW uses the reference 680 PCB it was a direct fit. The only thing that made matters a little complicated is that I decided to go with the EVGA 670 FTW back plate instead of the Heatkiller back plate. This meant that the standard screws that came with the water block wouldn't work. I followed Cheaptrick's guide which made things super easy. After a couple of minutes of using the Dremel I was flying. I tried using aviation snips to reduce the size of the screws to the desired length but it messed up the threads and the Dremel was almost as fast.

I can't believe how much more solid the card feels with the back plate installed. When I was test fitting the water block alone that made a noticeable difference but adding the back plate brought it up a notch or 3. I'll be running these in parallel using Bitspower Crystal Link tubes/fittings. You'll see this in later pictures.

I didn't make any progress at all this weekend; step daughter had 4 hockey games which took most of our time. I'm hoping to quickly hack together my temp tubing tonight in the hour of free time I'll have so I can start the first leak test. I'm also hoping to post up some pictures to get some ideas on how/where to mount my pump as my previous two ideas didn't pan out.

Anyway, here are my next steps as I see them:

1. Complete temp tubing
2. Leak test #1
3. Finish installing fans & fan controller
4. Indigo Xtreme reflow
5. Remove temp tubing on CPU/mobo blocks, pump, and reservoir
6. Mount reservoir & pump
7. Run final tubing and connect hard fittings to CPU/mobo blocks.
8. Leak test #2
9. Cable Management
10. Re-install Windows
11. Baseline benchmarks
12. Overclock
13. Final benchmarks

Edited by ColdFusionWi - 11/26/12 at 12:27pm

Finally, the first leak test is in progress. After one small leak on my T fitting things are looking really good. This has really given me a boost that I may be able to finish this build soon. With a little bit of luck I'll be able to do my reflow tomorrow night.

Well it's been over 12 hours now and no leaks so I think I'm ready to perform my IX reflow tonight. Once that's done I have a feeling things will really go fast. Hopefully I will be able to get more pictures up tonight including a picture of the nasty stuff that was filtered out of the radiators.
Edited by ColdFusionWi - 11/7/12 at 10:22am

No new pics last night, barely had time to do my IX reflow but I was able to get it done. I didn't see the temps dip as much as I was expecting but there was a definite dip and rise back up to 90C. Upon shutting off Prime, it took a long time for my temps to drop with the pump off. After about 3-4 minutes my temps dropped to 67C but started climbing back up to 75C. At this point I turned my pump on and my temps instantly dropped to 24C. With a really nasty kink in my temp tubing I was getting idle temps of 24C-26C and under full load I was between 48C-53C. Again this is bone stock so under load I was only at 3.8ghz. I'm not sure if this is to be expected or not so I created a thread in the Water Cooling forum.

I started draining my loop last night so I could remove the temp tubing and put the hard fittings in place. It didn't go as well as I had thought but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that my pump and res are not mounted and basically sitting on the floor which which made it difficult for the QDC's to be the at the lowest point. I got most of it drained out this morning but there's still a little in my CPU block and radiators.

I more than likely won't have time to do any work tonight but if I do it will probably be simply removing the temp tubing and installing the hard fittings to the CPU/motherboard blocks.