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[Build Log] - Project: Tangerine Dream - First Time Build (900D, XSPC)

5K views 24 replies 10 participants last post by  bundymania 
#1 ·
I have been planning on taking the plunge into water cooling for a while now and I have been doing a lot of research over the past few months. I finally purchased all of my parts and I wanted to do a build log and share my experience thus far with the community here, since I have used this forum extensively for reference and I even asked a few questions here and there. I have been trying to come up with a name for this build and right now it is tentatively called Tangerine Dream (The Vandals reference from Sweatin' to the Oldies) .
Project: Tangerine Dream

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Main Components
Processor: Intel i5-3570K
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-77X-UP7
RAM: Corsair Dominator 16GB (4 GB x 4)
Power Supply: Corsair HX750 (Reuse from my existing rig)
Bluray Drive: LG WH12LS30 Blu-ray/DVD/CD RW Burner (Reuse from my existing rig)
SSD: Kingston SSDNow V100+ 96GB (Reuse from my existing rig)
HDDs: 2 x Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB (Reuse from my existing rig)
GPU: ZOTAC NVIDIA GTX 770 4GB

Case: Corsair 900D

Water Cooling
2 x Radiators (Top & Bottom): XSPC AX480
Reservoir & Pump: XSPC Dual 5.25" Bay Reservoir / D5 Vario
CPU Waterblock (Acetal Top): XSPC Raystorm
GPU Waterblock: XSPC Razor GTX 680
8 x Fans: Gentle Typhoon AP-15
Fan Controller: Lamptron FC5V2
3 x Fan Cable Splitters: Phobya Y Cable Splitter - 3-Pin to 4x 3-Pin (x3)
Tubing: XSPC FLX Orange UV Tubing 7/16in. ID x 5/8in. OD
Fittings: Monsoon Fittings (Orange) x 12 + 1 x 90 Degree Light Port Rotary (Used as a T) + 6 x 45 Degree Rotary Fittings + 2 x 90 Degree Rotary Fittings
Fluid: Distilled Water + PT Nuke Biocide
Cable Extension: Bitfenix Alchemy Orange Cable Extensions (24 Pin ATX, 8 Pin EPS, 2 x 8 Pin PCI-E, 2 Molex Extensions)
Misc: Orange LEDs, Tube Cutter, Funnel, Arctic Clean TIM Remover, Paint, Soldering Iron, Shrink Wrap, 6+2 PCI-E Connectors

The XSPC GTX 770 Full Cover Block is not compatible with the Zotac GTX 770 4GB, however the 680 full cover block is. XSPC customer service was great and they would answer any compatibility questions that I had within 1 days time. I am considering trying to change the logo on the block from 680 to 770 or maybe just blank out the 680 part and have it say just "GTX". Most likely I will just end up leaving it alone since that is the part of the block that faces down and will not be visible.

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I was going to use Cougar fans for the orange theme, but after doing so much reading on fans and always seeing the AP-15's come out on top when it comes to radiator performance (static pressure and noise) I had to go with them. I do enjoy that they are not simple black fans and I think the grey & black matches nicely with the stock fans that come with the the Corsair 900D.

I have more to post, but I just realized it is getting late so I will follow up with more in the near future.
 
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#5 ·
Thanks everyone for the nice replies, I will try to post some more pics and info very soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jameswalt1 View Post

DIS GON' BE GUD
And I am honored to have a nice comment from you Jameswalt1; I have seriously been drooling over your build log since I stumbled upon it while doing research... I think I read all 130 pages and I have looked at your completed build pics more times than I can count (might have also showed it to 1 or 20 people too
rolleyes.gif
).
 
#6 ·
If I get carried away with words and pictures, let me know and I will try to reign it in.

Made up my LED leads. Ordered some 3 mm and 5 mm orange LED's to swap out the generic blue ones that come with the XSPC water blocks.

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I tested the LEDs after I had them soldered and heat shrunk by plugging them into a molex cable on my existing rig. Realized that one of the LED's was the wrong color (yellow) and that some of the others were different shades. Sent some pics to Performance-PCs and they shipped me out all new LED's the next day. I need to pick 4 LED's that are the same color and brightness and redo these.
jealoussmiley.gif


Tip from me would be use a small battery (like the one that goes in your car remote fob) to test the LED's for color and brightness variations before you make them up permanently. Just do not leave them on too long with a 3 volt battery (at least these ones which are 1.7 volt LED's) unless you are using a current limiting resistor. A short test to check functionality and color should be fine though.

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I got this RAM from a guy at work who bought it but could not fit it under his giant air cooler, so he just bought some low profile memory. I was going to use my existing RAM for a little while to save some money until I bought some G.SKILL ARES orange RAM. He approached me at work with this in his hand the day after I ordered all my other parts and was like "You are into computers right? Interested in buying this for $20?"... I could not get my wallet out fast enough.

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Took off the heat spreader fins with a 3/32 Allen key and removed the TIM pads and set them aside for re-installation.

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Bought a good color orange paint that would match as best possible (turned out much better than I thought) and did a bunch of light coats with them hanging by Christmas ornament hooks.

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I bought 8 pin PCI-E cables instead of an 8 pin and a 6 pin, which is what my card uses. For $2 I bought some 6+2 pin PCI-E terminations and replaced the 8 pin terminations with these, so if I upgrade to a card that needs two 8 pin PCI-E connectors I am good to go. The nice thing about individually sleeved cables is i can tuck the 2 unused wires completely in the rear panel and not have them just hanging there doing nothing. I considered buying a $15 dollar pin removal tool to do this work, but instead I found an scrap piece of metal (like an old dipstick) and I just used a file to make it thin and small enough on the bottom few inches where I could slide it down the side of the pins to flatten the retention "thorns".

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Time to fit the water block on my GTX 770 4GB. I will be adding a second one in a few months. I have a some price alerts set to tell me if any of the 4GB GTX 770s have a price drop/sale.

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Removed the cooler and noticed that they put some cute little heat sinks on the VRM and VRAM modules; these came off with a little pry from a razor scraper (just had to break the suction of the thermal pads).

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Old thermal paste removed and cleaned with Arctic Clean

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New thermal paste spread out and thermal pads in place

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All ready for this pretty chunk of copper

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#10 ·
Flushed the radiators by filling them with distilled water and doing the "Radiator Dance" ( my Wife refused to help
rolleyes.gif
). I drained the water into a clear bowl and it came out crystal clear. I repeated this 2 more times just in case but never had any particulate/discoloration. Good work XSPC
thumb.gif


Bottom 480 mm radiator installed. If anyone was wondering if an XSPC AX480 would fit in the case, it does. It is the longest 480mm radiator I saw when looking at radiator specs by about 10-20mm. This is the clearance that you have at the front of the case with the lowest stock front intake fan and fan mount removed. Just a hairs worth, but it installed no problem.

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A couple pretty pictures with the lower door cover removed / open and my GT AP-15's installed

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Top radiator fit a bit tight due to the cases front panel wires being bundled together with a tie wrap. Once I cut the tie wrap I was able to move the wires enough to get everything lined up properly.
 
#12 ·
Build Complete

Drain port
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Flips out of the way with the rotary fittings so that it does not interfere with the front filter and cover plate
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Tubes for the pump and reservoir are coiled up in the 5.25" bay in this shot while I was waiting on a replacement. The XSPC dual bay pump and reservoir that I received were the V1 version that had the issue with the top warping and potentially leaking. I ordered mine from Sidewinder Computers under the assumption that it would be the V2 version since XSPC's site says all of the retailers have the new version in stock. Unfortunately the one that I received was an old version that XSPC had sent Sidewinder Computers (not Sidewinder's fault) and since they used the same packaging for V1 and V2 there was no way to know until I had it in hand and opened. Gary at Sidewinder was awesome and really did an excellent job getting me a replacement (really cant speak highly enough of his customer service skills!)
thumb.gif
. Waiting for the replacement was excruciating since I had finished the rest of the build while I was waiting for the replacement.
wink.gif

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Very happy with the way that I managed to get the tubing on this build; I wanted nice straight tubes and I think I did a pretty good job. I would love to do rigid acrylic tubing, but as this was my first foray into water cooling I figured I would get my feet wet so to speak with traditional tubing. Good thing is that I have something to look forward to on my next build.
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I bought three packs of the XSPC 7/16" tubing (ended up opening two) and with the first pack I used it was quite difficult to screw the compression rings on the Monsoon fittings down; I think I would have been in trouble if it was not for the tool that they give you with those fittings. At first I thought that maybe the Monsoon fittings and the XSPC tubing just were not getting along, but when I had to open the second package of XSPC tubing the fittings went on like butter. Basically there was some variance (very small but enough) in the tubing outside diameter to make things a little difficult. The inside diameter of the tubing seemed consistent between packages and fit nice and snug on the compression barbs.
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Close up shots of the RAM installed
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I really like having sleeved cables so I tend to focus on them in the pictures
wink.gif

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I read a lot about water cooling before jumping in and I always heard the same thing about assembling the fittings on the blocks: Hand Tighten. So I followed that methodology when building my rig and for the most part it worked out fine. The only leak that I had when filling and leak testing was with the blanking covers. I think that it comes down to the fact that since they are so narrow depth wise, it can be hard to get a good grip on them with your fingers. When I went to tighten the one that was leaking up I used a penny for leverage and it was only then that I noticed how loosely they where installed. Tightened them all up with the coin and I was leak free after that.
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Really would like a backplate for this card, but I have been unable to find one that is verified to fit. The EVGA 770 backplate looks like the hole pattern would match up with my Zotac 770 4GB card, so I think I will give it a try when I add my second card in a few months and have that part of the loop tore down.
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I noticed while writing this post and looking at these three shots, that my 24 pin ATX connector cables got a little messy while I was doing the final wiring of the power supply inside the case. I know what I am doing tomorrow...
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Was thinking about stitching my sleeved cables for neatness, but I really do like the more "natural" look (just not this "natural"
biggrin.gif
)
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Very happy with the way that the orange LEDs worked out. I think I may need to get an LED lighting strip for the case and wire it up to a toggle switch installed in one of the expansion slots. The 900D is so big it is like trying to light up a cave.
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Things still left to do:
  • Overclocking
  • Case lighting
  • Second GTX 770 card and water block (in a few months or if I find a really good sale)
  • Backplates for the GPU(s)
  • Buy another 900D drive cage with the built in SATA back-plane when they start selling them
I also might make a plexiglass panel using translucent orange plexiglass and opaque black plexiglass. I would use a router to cut a geometric pattern or some lines in the black plexi and then epoxy the orange plexi to the back. Add a couple LED holes on the edge of the orange plexi and then only the areas that had the cutouts would have an orange glow. This piece would be mounted to the right of the motherboard and to the left of the drive cages to fill in the empty area. I was thinking a simple clean pattern would look nice and this would also help light the case.

Now that I have the rig up and running I am very happy with the performance thus far and I really have to say that I love water cooling now that I have tried it. Two words: Cool & Quiet

Cool
I do not have anything overclocked yet but with the CPU and GPU stressed to 100% and the fans on 1000 RPM the GPU stabilized at 52 C and the CPU never goes above 45 C (turbo boost at 3.7 GHz). Played Final Fantasy XIV for the first time on this machine and it was super smooth at 2560x1440 on max settings and the GPU was hovering around 37 C. When playing games with my previous build my GTX 460s would run at around 88 C and would be laggy and display funny things due to the 1GB VRAM.

Quiet
With the fans cranked all the way to 1850 RPM on the fan controller the thing is still very very quite, but 95% of the time I will be running them at 1000 RPM and at that speed they are basically silent. Coming from an air cooled build with two GTX 460s in SLI that sounded like jets taking off when I was gaming, it is like night and day. I have my D5 pump set to 4.5 / 5 and it is pretty darn quite. I was nervous because I wanted to go with a bay reservoir and pump combo for simplicity on my first build, but I was reading about pump decoupling after I had placed my order. It turns out that the pump and reservoir really do not resonate with the 900D so I am very happy. I think for my next build I will go with a tube reservoir to fill up the case a little more (I plan on using my 900D for quite a few years to come!). XSPC just released this one, which had it been out before I placed my order I may have been tempted: http://www.xs-pc.com/reservoirs/photon-270-tube-reservoir

I would like the say a big thanks to the OCN community for the inspiration and for answering my questions when I was planning this build. I also want to mention how great martinsliquidlab.org was when learning about this stuff; it really felt like a one stop shop for everything you need to know. Being new to water cooling, the stuff that I learned from these resources was invaluable.

Let me know what you think, I look forward to reading your comments.
 
#14 ·
You might wanna try and see what white L.E.D's look like in the blocks, you wouldn't wanna drown out the orange! If you get a nice white glow, it'll accent the bright orange!
thumb.gif

So. Damn. Clean.

-Zepp
 
#15 ·
Love orange builds
smile.gif


Needs one of these:

 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by ledzepp3 View Post

You might wanna try and see what white L.E.D's look like in the blocks, you wouldn't wanna drown out the orange! If you get a nice white glow, it'll accent the bright orange!
thumb.gif

So. Damn. Clean.

-Zepp
Thanks. LED leads are cheap so, I am thinking about getting a few different colors to just play around with. I think I am going to stick to the orange. but white might look pretty cool too.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wermad View Post

Love orange builds
smile.gif


Needs one of these:

Thought about that and decided that since it was my first water cooling build I was going to take it easy. I also did not think cooling the chip sets was really worthwhile. What benefits do you get with water cooling those vs just leaving the passive heat sinks on?
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveys93 View Post

Thought about that and decided that since it was my first water cooling build I was going to take it easy. I also did not think cooling the chip sets was really worthwhile. What benefits do you get with water cooling those vs just leaving the passive heat sinks on?
Not much gain unless you plan to push your cpu to extreme levels (5.0+). Some may argue it does but most boards don't have blocks for them. Some boards do need one (ie Asrock 4 X79) due to bad cooling. Mainly, its for the looks factor imho
smile.gif


Should match your xspc raystorm and razor
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Its actually a lot easier to install a mb block compared to installing a gpu block
wink.gif
 
#18 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveys93 View Post

Thanks. LED leads are cheap so, I am thinking about getting a few different colors to just play around with. I think I am going to stick to the orange. but white might look pretty cool too.
Well here's my old rig, I had red L.E.D's put into just about everything I could. I actually drowned the rig in so much red, it turned out badly
redface.gif
I'm just warning you of having orange L.E.D's with memory heat spreaders, motherboard, fittings, and cables. Still though.. So. Damn. Clean.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by wermad View Post

Not much gain unless you plan to push your cpu to extreme levels (5.0+). Some may argue it does but most boards don't have blocks for them. Some boards do need one (ie Asrock 4 X79) due to bad cooling. Mainly, its for the looks factor imho
smile.gif


Should match your xspc raystorm and razor
thumb.gif


Its actually a lot easier to install a mb block compared to installing a gpu block
wink.gif
I think I will try to put a price alert out on the chip set block. If I find one for cheap I can install it while I have the system down to add my second video card (when I get that
biggrin.gif
). I have to say that I am very pleased with the quality of the XSPC stuff. I think the new stuff they have come out with in the past year or so is really nice looking and from personally handling it I can say it is well built.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ledzepp3 View Post

Well here's my old rig, I had red L.E.D's put into just about everything I could. I actually drowned the rig in so much red, it turned out badly
redface.gif
I'm just warning you of having orange L.E.D's with memory heat spreaders, motherboard, fittings, and cables. Still though.. So. Damn. Clean.
Are you messing with me? I think that picture you posted looks really nice
biggrin.gif
. Seriously though I do understand what you mean by drowning the build with one color. In the future I may buy some gray cable sleeve and modify my cables so that they have some gray accents to break things up a bit. I also was thinking about maybe using white LEDs in the CPU block, which I think would look nice since there is actually a fair bit of white already in the case from the stenciling they put on the circuit boards.
 
#20 ·
One tip for anyone building with the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP7 motherboard or any Gigabyte motherboard with an LN2 switch: make sure it is in the non-LN2 position (unless you are doing LN2 obviously). Took me an hour to figure out why the cpu would not clock past 1.6GHz. The manual entry on the switches is confusing and the diagrams on the on/off position is counterintuitive (to me at least).
 
#22 ·
Quick overclocking of the CPU yielded the following results:

Turbo Freq: 4.5 GHz (x45 Multiplier set per core) [this was the overclocking session frequency goal]
All other settings left at default (VCore, Vdroop, LLC, etc.)

Results: Max core temperature = 63°C
Stable in Prime95 and IntelBurnTest after 30 minutes each

Pretty excited that I can reach 4.5 GHz on this chip with no power/voltage increases right off the bat and still have almost 20°C in headroom (trying to keep temps under 80°C). Will be interesting to see how far I could push it for a stable 24/7 overclock.

I am not used to having a CPU that will actually overclock, my previous attempts to clock my air cooled i7 920 where almost not worth it. I was only ever able to just barely get it over 3 GHz.
 
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by bundymania View Post

Awesome build ! I guess you can improve the look a bit with those nice orange cougar fans

http://www.cougar-world.de/produkte/luefter/turbine.html
Thanks!

You know, I really wanted to use the cougar fans since they are orange non-LED fans, however after hearing they noise profile as compared to the gentle typhoons it had to be a function over form decision in favor of the gentle typhoons.

There is also this German company that makes a great orange fan, but you basically can't buy them anyplace that would ship to the USA. I think they are called Alphen Fahn or something like that.
 
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