[ColdFusionWi]

Overview

I've been planning this project for over a year now. Originally I was going to go with a single 480 rad in the top of an 800D. After coming to grips that I'm not the most mechanically inclined person to build a PC I decided that I'd be much better off getting a case which would need no modifications. Once I selected the case I had no other option than to basically go all in. Everything is purchased and on hand. As of the time of this post I'd say it's about 3/4 put together. I've taken, and will continue to take as many pictures as I can but I must warn you I'm no photography wizard. The second post in this thread will be reserved for links to updates & pictures.

Without further adieu, here's the list of what this build contains:

PC Hardware

• CaseLabs TH10 with reverse ATX layout
• Asus Rampage IV Extreme
• Intel 3930K
• 2 x EVGA 670 FTW w/back plates
• 32GB Mushkin Redline 2133 ram
• 256GB Plextor M3 SSD
• 2 x Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2TB hard drives
• Western Digital Black 1TB
• Corsair AX1200 PSU

Water Cooling Hardware

• 2 x AlphaCool Monsta 480 radiators
• XSPC Raystorm water block
• Koolance R4E Motherboard Block
• 2 x Watercool Heatkiller GTX 680 Nickel Hole Edition
• EK-Multioption RES X2 - 250 Advanced reservoir
• Swiftech MCP35X2 Pump with heatsink
• 32 x Gentle Typhoon AP-15's
• Lamptron FC8 fan controller
• Duralene tubing
• DI water then switching to Mayhem's pastel white or red

My loop order will be as follows: pump > mobo #1 > CPU> mobo #2 > GPU's in parallel > rad > rad > res. Between the last radiator and the reservoir there will be a water temp sensor, flow sensor, and Koolance QDC.

For TIM I'm using Indigo Xtreme for the CPU and Phobya HeGrease for the motherboard and GPU blocks. Yes, I'm using 32 AP15's. Are they loud? Yeah, at full blast a little. At full blast are they quieter than the stock fans in my Antec 900 and my Sycthe Slipstream on my CPU heatsink all set to high? Most definitely yes. I have 16 as intakes using Silverstone fan filters and another 16 on the two radiators in push/pull. The intake fans suck cool air in from the bottom and front of the case and the push/pull fans on the radiators blow the warm air out the top of the case.

My goal is to get the CPU to 4.8-5ghz. In the winter my ambient temps without a space heater are between 18C-20C. In the summer it's much higher, 26C-32C, but we'll be getting A/C in our house this coming spring so then hopefully we'll be at a constant 22C. I don't think temps will be a problem unless I have to get ridiculous with the voltages to hit my desired over clock which at that point I'd throttle things back a bit. I loved tweaking the over clock settings on my Q6600, even though things were a bit simple, and it seems like there are enough settings and options with SB-E to keep me busy for a while. I'm thinking about using the custom BIOS for the 670 FTW that increases the voltage for over clocking; temps shouldn't be a problem but instead stability.

Purpose

I used to be big into folding and stopped because, well, life happened. In the past 3 years my dad died, I got married, and became a father of 4 girls; 2 from my wife's previous marriage and 2 new ones of our own. With this new build I'm hoping to get back into folding with a vengeance; my goal is 20 hours a day. My current rig will be relegated to 100% folding.

This will also be used to run VMs, more than likely 2-3 at a time. I'm an IT manager and former web developer who likes to tinker with things. My wife, who is a teacher, has a lot of older educational game CD's that require Windows 95/98. I'd love for my 17 and 3 month old daughters to be able to play these games in a couple of years and having an older Windows VM would work quite well. I'd more than likely also create a dedicated PS3 Media Server VM to stream out.

I do enjoy gaming though I don't often get the time to do so with two little ones running around. When I do get the time I'd like to be able to do so with most, if not all, of the eye candy turned on. My current rig has done a decent job but my 8800GTX's are really starting to show their age when trying to play games like Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 with medium/high graphics and decent frame rates.

As I said, this is my first water cooled build. Everything I know about water cooling came from this site. I started by following the Water Cooling Essential Threads then moved to following various build logs. After I felt I knew the direction I wanted to go I started asking questions. Not all of them resulted in the answers I was looking for but even then the responses were enough to get me to change my way of thinking or take other things into consideration. It never hurts to ask questions, even if you feel they are dumb or noobish, that's what this site and this community is here for. If you are new to water cooling and don't know where to start or want to maybe pick up a couple of pointers or things to look out for feel free to ask and I'll do my best to help.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and my build was inspired by this build. I'd also like to thank the following members for their help:

Juggalo23451 - For organizing all the Water Cooling Essential Threads
Reglar - For the Pandamonium build log and answering my questions about radiator fitment
Stren - For your great water block review and your insight with IX & Raystorm
Cheaptrick - For the EVGA GTX 680 backplate & Heatkiller GTX 680 waterblock tutorial
cpachris - For the BBBB build log

 

[ColdFusionWi]

Build Updates

1. Koolance MB-ASR4E Rampage IV Extreme water blocks installed
2. Bottom intake fans installed and tested Lamptron FC8 fan controller
3. Alphacool Monsta 480 radiators installed w/fans
4. Watercool Heatkiller GPU water blocks installed w/EVGA back plates
5. Hard fittings installed

What's left:

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

 

[freitz]

Waiting for some updates subbed.

 

[47 Knucklehead]

This ought to be good! Anyone who uses more Gentle Typhoons than me has my attention.

 

[ColdFusionWi]

Well the first thing I decided to do was to install the Koolance R4E water blocks onto my motherboard. This really wasn't a difficult thing to do but whatever TIM ASUS uses for their stock cooling was a pain to remove. It was like normal TIM plus a metal foil. Removing the stock heat sinks was easy and the most difficult part of installing the water blocks was trying to hold the larger one in place while flipping the whole unit over to screw everything in place. Most people will agree that mobo water blocks aren't really needed but the RIVE does see a benefit from using them. I didn't want to not get them and be disappointed later that my over clock was being limited by high VRM temps. And I wont lie, I do like the way they look.

After looking for over a month for any retailer in any country who had the Koolance block I ended up lucking out catching a brand new one on ebay minutes after it was listed.







I think by now most of us have seen one of these...



This is what the RIVE looks like with the stock heat sinks removed.



A close up of the weird TIM that was being used. You can see some of the foil like material in the lower left corner.



And here we are with the water blocks installed.

 

[ColdFusionWi]

I then decided I was going to have a little bit of fun and test out the fan controller. Each of the 8 channels will be powering 4 Gentle Typhoon AP-15's. This controller has more than enough watts/channel to make this happen and shouldn't over burden anything.









Unfortunately I never got any pictures of the TH10 in a 100% empty state which is a shame because this is such a nice case. When I ordered it I thought I had a good idea of just how big it would be. I was wrong; it was much bigger.

The bottom of the PSU side of the case without the fans installed.



Motherboard side of the case with one of the fans installed. If you look closely you can see some of the Silverstone fan filter showing. I mounted the filters to the outside of the case and screwed them into the fans through the case. The supplied screws were just long enough to do the job.



Here's another shot of the motherboard side with all bottom fans and filters installed.



The fan controller worked great but made an annoying half squealing half ticking sound if the speed/voltage was turned down even a hair. At full speed/voltage the controller was absolutely quiet. Another thing I noticed is that when things were dialed back to a little less than half speed the LEDs would start to flicker. I got a hold of Lamptron support who were very helpful and understanding. They wanted me to send the controller back to them so they could determine what went wrong and send a new one back to me. Unfortunately it would have been cheaper to buy a new one than to ship it back to them plus it would take another 4-6 weeks to get my replacement. So I contacted FrozenCPU and explained the situation. They authorized an advanced RMA no questions asked. I got my new controller two days later and the new unit has none of the noise or flickering issues that the last one had.

 

[odin2free]

This looks sweet..
I need to make
Money to start my build of a power house
..

How silent are thos fans?
Difficult time deciding between corsairs or scythes

 

[ColdFusionWi]

I'll be completely honest with you, I do have a bit of a hearing problem but at full blast they are noticeable but I wouldn't say that they are loud. The other day when I was testing the new controller I had 24 fans hooked up to it; 16 on the rads in push/pull and 8 on the bottom of the case. With everything at full blast I could still hear the stock fans from my Antec 900 and the Scythe Slipstream on my CPU heatsink, also all set to full speed, over the 24 AP15's from across the room. The TH10 had both side panels off and the Antec had one side panel off. When I turned the pull fans to a 12 o'clock setting on the fan controller and all other fans to the 3 o'clock position it was pretty quiet to me. My wife even commented how much quieter it was compared to my existing PC.

I was a bit torn too as to which fans to use. One of the main reasons why I was looking at the Corsair's is because with the red insert it would have looked cool with the colors in my build. But I went with the AP15's because they are tried & true, just work, and work well. At some point in time I'll probably paint them but I don't mind the way they look at the moment.

 

[47 Knucklehead]

Actually, your numbers shouldn't be too bad. I did a build where I had 18 AP-14's and was worried about how loud it would be. I found a web site that put my mind at ease.
Quote:

Originally Posted by 47 Knucklehead

You know you got computers on the brain when you are laying in bed at 2 in the morning and suddenly think to yourself ... OMG, how loud will this thing be? Should I have ordered 18 AP-13 or AP-12 fans instead?
Well, after running some numbers, it really doesn't matter much. Pretty much the most noise will be generated from the 2 MCP655 pumps, which puts out about 33dBA each.
9 800RPM fans AP-12 @ 9dBA = 18.54dBA (36.08dBA w/2 MCP655 pumps) = 28.25 CFM per = ~120 Watts @ 10C
18 800RPM fans AP-12 @ 9dBA = 21.52dBA (36.15dBA w/2 MCP655 pumps) = 28.25 CFM per = ~140 Watts @ 10C
9 1150RPM fans AP-13 @ 16dBA = 25.54dBA (36.37dBA w/2 MCP655 pumps) = 37 CFM per = ~160 Watts @ 10C
18 1150RPM fans AP-13 @ 16dBA = 28.52dBA (36.72dBA w/2 MCP655 pumps) = 37 CFM per = ~190 Watts @ 10C
9 1450RPM fans AP-14 @ 21dBA = 30.54dBA (37.08dBA w/2 MCP655 pumps) = 50 CFM per = ~215 Watts @ 10C
18 1450RPM fans AP-14 @ 21dBA = 33.52dBA (37.94dBA w/2 MCP655 pumps) = 50 CFM per = ~260 Watts @ 10C
For those that don't already have this site, you might want to book mark it. It is simply wonderful for calculating noise.
Combining decibels - up to 10 levels
Combining decibels − up to 30 levels

As far as having 32 of them at full speed, at 28bDA each, 32 of them will be roughly 43.02dBA.

While that isn't exactly "quiet", it does fall into the Center for Hearing and Communications category of "Quiet office, library" or "quiet residential area" (which is somewhere between "soft whisper" at 30dBA and "rainfall" at 50dBA).

 

[ColdFusionWi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 47 Knucklehead

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Actually, your numbers shouldn't be too bad. I did a build where I had 18 AP-14's and was worried about how loud it would be. I found a web site that put my mind at ease.
As far as having 32 of them at full speed, at 28bDA each, 30 of them will be roughly 43.02dBA.
While that isn't exactly "quiet", it does fall into the Center for Hearing and Communications category of "Quiet office, library" or "quiet residential area" (which is somewhere between "soft whisper" at 30dBA and "rainfall" at 50dBA).

Thanks for that information and for including those links. That may be useful to me some day. I think your description of what that sound level would be like is spot on to what I observed.

 

[ColdFusionWi]

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.

 

[ColdFusionWi]

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.

 

[odin2free]

Sick
I'm hoping some time to geta msi680 lightning and get custom
Plate for it in future

 

[ColdFusionWi]

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

 

[michigantoga]

Nice build. Love those GPU blocks.

 

[ColdFusionWi]

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.

 

[CalypsoRaz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColdFusionWi

SNIP
And here we are with the water blocks installed.

I think Koolance has some of the sexiest blocks. I loved the one I had on my old CIVE

Also, that being said, I'm jealous of your build.

 

[ColdFusionWi]

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.

 

[TSXmike]

subbed!

 

[ColdFusionWi]

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.