Still working on my Sketchup model while my parts are starting to show up on shipping manifests. They are coming in from the UK and Netherlands. (I'm in Denmark).

My first piece of equipment arrived yesterday and its purpose is all about the looks.
It is a very nice black backplate for my EVGA 750 ti SC Card, which, aside from hiding the PCB in a nice fancy manner, also should lower temperature by 3c. Not that the Card is ever very hot to begin with.

Here are some images of before, after and images of installation instructions + materials (screws and springs)

 

Just recieved my Waterblock for the Graphics Card and drew it up in Sketchup.

EK-FC750 GTX

 

So, recieved some more stuff. A new top for my Laing DDC-1T pump. I guess I'll only be using it for testing and rinsing, but at least I'll have two working pumps this way:



Also been busy on my Sketchup plan of the Core V1. Only really need to make the window cutoout and hexagonal holes in the sides:

 

The very first change I made was to flip the case around.

I just did not like the standard view from the side. I wanted to see my motherboard instead, hide the PSU and have gfx at the buttom.


So, as everyone might know, the sides, top and bottom are all interchangeable. But not completely.

The front also have the right dimensions to turn around to fit the alignment you choose of your top and buttom.
Ie.: if you choose to turn it on its side, and not flip the front as well, the logo would standard be on its side and the IO panel would be on one of the 3 other sides, including the bottom, which would be rather.. unhandy.

I wanted to view my entire motherboard and gfx through the side window, and not see the PSU, but I couldn't do that without moving the IO panel, as the IO panel would end up on the bottom unless I made a few changes:

In order to be able to turn the front though, including the IO panel, we need to modify two things:
1.For the front to actually be able to turn we just have to cut off the two little plastic "pins" placed in the middle of the top and buttom of the front.
2.Make new notches for the front IO panel in the metal chassis.

Here I have removed the two "pins" from the front, turned it, and see IO hanging Loose out the top - what will be out front.


After the cutting and putting together the hardware, we now have a nice full side-view of the hardware installed.


Edited: Making the images smaller.

 

Got another shipment today, where my nice radiator was included. It's really very nice, but unfortunately the description was not correct regarding fan mounting brackets. There should have been 2, but only 1 was premounted.
To make matters worse, I actually bought a matching fan grill to protect the radiator from the inside, and to make it look nice, but the Measurements are totally off, as you can see in these images:



Fan shroud sizeing all wrong.

 

Here are some more Pictures of unpacking and test fitting of watercooling Things:

Alphacool Plexi Pump Top and Plexi Reservoir Combo.
To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm going to use the reservoir, but I'm still not sure about reservoir placement in the cabinet, and this one is a very small and nice alternative for a bigger reservoir. I had hoped to use the top hole as an inlett, but the threads are incompatible with my fittings (very large hole)

• Alphacool Laing DDC Pump Top Plexi
• Alphacool Laing DDC Reservoir Top for the Alphacool Laing DDC Plexi Top

Swiftech Apogee Drive II disassembling.
I just need the pump part of it, which is a Swiftech MCP 35x
The blue pad is a thermal conductive pad. The stuff that looks like Water on some of the images is some sort of heat-transfer oil (thing) - As you can see, there is a LED attached to this pump, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with this yet.
The led is placed under the top of the pump under Swiftech logo with a blue plexi block. There is a green and a red block in the pump assembly as well.


Mounting the EK-DDC Heatsink Housing.
Notice the size-cut thermal pad. It was actually a bother making this one fit, as it stretched a lot when taking away the protective plastic, and had to nudge it into the proper size before it fit properly.
The long screws going through the pump housing and latch onto the pump-top has countersunk threads in its head. Meaning you screw the long screw in and then can screw the vibration-killer feet onto the heads of the long screws.
The final image shows the pump with the Alphacool Laing DDC Plexi Top.


Monsoon ID/OD 10mm/13mm (ID/OD 3/8-1/2) fittings
As you might guess from the images, I bought 2 packs of these, so i have 12 in all, which should be plenty for what I have in mind here.
There was twice as many O-rings as needed, which is very nice. Just have to remember putting them on before usage!
Hare are some images of these fittings, and a testfitting on my 10/13 White tube (blue uv reactive)

 

Ekwb is by far the best looking and performance wc parts i've seen on reviews.
Your project looks amazing man.
One question about whole system water cooled: Supose you want to remove your graphics card, how are you going to make it, considering the water loop?

 

So, today I wanted to execute my interior mod plan.

First the planning part:

• #1 we can see that I need to remove one of the harddrive brackets.
• #2 I want to cut the MB strud at this point in order to remove the strut #3
• #4 move the remaining harddrive Cage to the "aux" placement as shown by the arrow. This should provide better structural integrity for the MB-tray, and add better cable management to the rear of the cabinet.
• #5 shows the (?) I need to drill out in order to remove the severed MB-tray strud.
• #6 shows how I hope to round the corners some, without getting too close to the hole under the mounting point
• #4 shows harddrive Cage in the right location.
• Last two images shows expected result/radiator placement.

Preperation part:
I have taped up the area for my cuts as I do not want to scratch the surrounding metal a lot.
I also test best angle to cut from, and end up using the flexible axle for my trusty old Dremel.


Execution part:
Here I start cutting.
An image shows the strud being severed and the location of the metal (?) I need to drill out to properly sever the strud. I have chosen to use small drills at 2mm and 2,5mm to loosen it, and then pull/twist it out the rest of the way, in order not to enlarge the hole any. There is a Photo of the severed strud, the metal part and the drills used.
I wanted to Draw the corners I wanted to cut, but I ended up removing the tape as I could end up cutting off too much.
After rounding the corners I smooth the edges down some.


End result:

• First image shows the rounded corners around the cut, and the moved harddrive bracket. Easy to see the extra space to the right of it.
• Shows a front view - I have stacked the radiator up some, so its a little skewed
• Last image shows the wrong sized fan-grill I recieved - grr. Would have looked nice though...

Large Interior view of the radiator: Phobya Xtreme 200 - Pure Copper V2.
Shows plenty space for cables etc between it and the MB tray.

 

Looks great, i was thinking of doing the same with a 200mm rad.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liquored

Looks great, i was thinking of doing the same with a 200mm rad.

Thanks.

The innermost holes/threads in the the fan-shroud on the radiator fits perfectly for the threads in the cabinet used by the large 200mm front fan.


I had planned to use the fan-grill to protect the radiator from the inside, but the size is all wrong, even though it is made for this particular radiator!

The two inner holes in each corner of the fan-grill fits on the fan-shroud on the radiator. The radiator only has 1 shroud though AND the fan-grill is much too large to even fit into the cabinet. Sigh.
Waiting for Specialtech.co.uk to get back to me on this fan-grill matter.

Edit: if you go looking for a 200mm fan, I think this is the thickest one you can find. I found some various 36mm thick ones as well (mine is 47mm).
If you are Lucky you can cram a 36mm one into the front space instead of the big front fan.
I considered one of the Alphacool NexXxoS Monsta 180mm Single 225 x 182 x 85mm into my macine with some custom front stuff to fix it in place. But then I found the 200mm from Phobya I bought instead

 

Very professional job you've done!
Darron i'm newbie with custom watercooler, i've ordered swiftech h140-x and some transparent tubbing to customize it.
I'm thinking in MAYBE expand it to the gpu, adding a second reservoir or radiator, but i 'm concerned about the maintenance. Ex: if i need to remove the gpu, will i need to take of the entire water cooler system?
Thanks in advance, and congrats again!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by svictorcc

Very professional job you've done!
Darron i'm newbie with custom watercooler, i've ordered swiftech h140-x and some transparent tubbing to customize it.
I'm thinking in MAYBE expand it to the gpu, adding a second reservoir or radiator, but i 'm concerned about the maintenance. Ex: if i need to remove the gpu, will i need to take of the entire water cooler system?
Thanks in advance, and congrats again!

There are a few different ways depending on your setup.
You really have to ask yourself a question before starting on watercooling your hardware:
"Do you often need to remove GPU or other watercooled hardware?"
If you often do replace watercooled hardware, you have to ask yourself if the following things are going to be a fun hobby/learning curve, or just a huge bother;

If you need to take out graphicscard for some reason, and intend to put it back or put in another card that match the GPU-waterblock:
You might be able to loosen the waterblock from the Graphics-Card and just remove the Card and leave the waterblock hanging (literally). This depends on the lengths of tubing you have at your disposal in your build.
Be aware that you can get different kinds of graphics-cooling blocks: From full-cover waterblocks that cools everything from GPU to ram to powerstages on the Graphics Card, and other blocks that only cools the GPU itself. Some blocks cool GPU and RAM only.

If the above solution isn't viable, you would normally drain out the Water from your loop.
Either through a drainhole or simply just pull the tubing from one of your fittings - Power removed of course and proper precausion taken not to flood your hardware.
When you see the flow is really slow when draining it, you can open up another "fitting" somewhere else in the loop (at the top, or at another suitable place) to let air in

To be realistic though: if you need to take out the Graphics Card for some reason you can always do some general upgrading of your loop anyways (putting in flow-meters, temp-sensors and what not) in which case you would drain your loop anyway

 

If the setup is going to look like these, you might not want to remove hardware all that often!

These are made for quiet run. Looks weren't really important back then, hehe.

Vintage images warning! hehe

Homemade everything 2007-08 -
Before I made any changes to PSU location or even installed watercooling.
Can see a rewiring of CPU-power. Made a hole through the MB tray for that wire.
Case insolated for silence.


With watercooling running and draining - of the above setup.


Notice how I had moved the PSU from top position Down in front of MB to make room for radiator in the top.
Back when custom cases weren't bought, but build

Custommade everything 2008-09
I got tired of the messy setup shown above and bought myself a bigger case. I also wanted to play with CrossFire
What you see here is a setup with 2 parallel flows. The thick tubes goes to the two Graphics Cards and the CPU, while the smaller tubes go around South and northbridge, and around flowsenser, Water temp sensors, and even watercool my Aquaro from Aqua-computer (I think I had the first one at this date).
The smaller tubes also cools the some of the Graphics Cards, as I couldn't get full VGA Cards back then, so had two blocks pr VGA instead. I glued the smaller yellow blocks on for VGA.

 

So, today is the day for fitting the big 200 mm radiator to the front.

Preparations:
I made a model of the fan-shroud from the radiator, and fixed it to the front of the chassis.
Then I put tape in either end of the different cuts.
Unfortuantely I had to cut away some of the motherboard tray, but it couldn't be avoided if I wanted to use the original 200mm fan thread holes.


The Cut
Here you can see the how the edges has been removed from the desired areas.
You might Wonder why I don't just remove a larger part of the front for added airflow, or just for the ease of it.
I want to run this semi-passively with just a 120mm silent fan, so I really need the vertical bars for installation of the fan. Also for structural integrity.
I did smooth out the edges before proceeding, but I seems to have lost the Photos I took.


Testfit:
Here I testfit. First with the paper model, and later with the actual radiator.
I noticed a potential source of damage to my radiator from the cut on the MB-tray.


Screw adjustment:
I didn' have any screws in the right size to go through the front case and just Mount the radiator
4x 3Mx5mm were supposed to be included with the radiator, but they weren't in my box.


Real fit
I made the cut into the MB-tray slightly deeper and installed a rubber edge to prevent damage to the radiator when installing and removing the radiator..
I have installed the G1/4 plugs and the nice Monsoon fittings.
Also fitted a 120mm fan to the front. On this image you can see the front IO holes I made as well. Located on the left side of the fan.
Final image shows the case in its final position.

 

I also found "time" to trade out the existing tall round and hard feet with some lower rubber feet.

The original feet splinters when removing them, which I first learned when I removed one of them in order to measure it for Sketchup.
So, I had low expectations of the survival rate of the rest of them. The concern proved valid.


Installed:
Here you can see the new feets installed and the case with the new feet. Final image shows the old feet next to the case. You can see they are quiet a bit higher - 8 mm to be exact!

 

Today I wanted to address a few nagging issues:

1. I found that it is impossible to buy an original fan-shroud for my radiator, or even just a fan-grill!! So I have to make one. I'll try to design one that can act as a pump-Mount.
2. I still havn't decided on pump or reservoir placement
3. I want to take action on an idea I've had to hide the rear IO ports with some black acrylic plate. It needs to act as a pump-Mount as well. The IO-shield, will function as an actual shield, as I will put EMI/EMC shielding tape on the backside of it.

So, that was a lot actually. The first part here will show some of my thoughts on these issues, as they presents themselves in Sketchup.

Theory
In the first image I have depicted the fan-shroud and a pump located on it.
The second image shows the IO-shield/pump-Mount combo, and the
Third image shows a frontal (side) view of the computer, displaying how the IO-ports will be hidden behind the black acrylic.
One of my issues are that the pumps seems MASSIVE here in sketchup, but not so when I put the pump in. It must be something to with depth-perception or something, so I really have to do some testing of the actual hardware in the case.


Preparing items
Here I have already drawn up the fan-shroudh and show up needed tools. The yellow "thing" (don't know English Word) is for making straight cuts with my knife. In later phots you will see I use a large metal ruler instead.
And so you might ask what do I do with a knife? I use the ruler as a guide to cut about a 0,5mm cut along the break-lines.


Breaking the acrylic using hands (controlled)
The first images shows a cut I made to break off some excess material.
The second image shows how I lined the cut up with the edge of my table, which is really nice for these kinds of things, as it has a very Sharp Aluminum edge.
The third image shows how it breaks nicely when pressure is Applied.
I have mounted the acrylic to the table as you can see.


Strap it Down tight
If you don't want to risk a finger or just a stray cut over the acrylic, you might want to use some tools (?) to hold the ruler down, as showin in image 1.
The second image shows how I have attached my 2 wrenches (?) and use them for much better leverage than just by hands,


Error, stray cut
Here you can see how I accidentially cut a stray line, and sure enough, the break followed suit.


Drilling and cutting
Drilling and cutting acrylic really isn't that hard, you just need to take it slow.
First you see the tools I'm going to use: a 2mm drill to make the first guidehole. a 4mm drill to enlarge the hole enough for the large 20mm drill to get in place. I use the 20mm to get a nice big hole for the actual cutting blade. Here I use one for metal. You can get special blades for acrylic, but mine is still in the mail somewhere...

Ohh, the drills are metal drillsas Wood-drills would rapidly carve its way down and crack the plate. Even though you use metal-drill bits you still have to hold it off some, or you might crack the plate anyway. You need the drill to scrape away material, not cut away material. There is a difference, and it is important.

As you might be able to see, I only drill part way through with the 20mm drill. As soon as it starts scraping the acrylic with the level plane between the "teeth", I stop drilling from that side. I do the rest of the way from the opposit side to minimize the risk of fracturing the acrylic plate.
Cutting/sawing: when sawing in acrylic is is very important to do it on a stable surface. To minimize the flexing I only left a gap large enough for my saw-blade, as you can see in the last image.


Done
As the Sharp reader might notice, there is an inconsistency between my sketchup fan-shroud and the actual one I made. It's because I did some adjustments afterwards to allow for the 24pin cable which I forgot in the first go...
The two smaller pieces are going to be the left hand IO-shield and pump-combo.


Tomorrow I'll get my hands on a heat-gun and start bending the materials to be useable - at least I hope I find the time to do so.

Ohh, the clear acrylic here are just scraps I had. I'm going to use black 3mm and 5mm acrylic instead

 

Didn't have time for any modifications today, but I did get my shielding tape. Seems I loooked it up wrong, when I ordered it, as it is only 5mm wide. I can still use it though, just have to make a lot of strips to cover the IO-hiding plate

I also borrowed a heat gun. It has two intervals: 300c an 500c (that's just insane), so I have to be really carefull not to overheat the acrylic. At least it comes with a lot of different heads to manage how the heat-flow hits the material.

 

Sat down to model the removable front-cover in Sketchup when I noticed how my Radiator prevents the latches from the front-cover to get through the holes to latch onto the case.


I had two options:

1. Cut off the latches from the front-cover and figure out some alternative way of attaching it.
2. Find a way to get some distance between the radiator and the front of the case.

I really did not want to ruin the front-cover. Especially since I'm still not sure about the internal layout regarding pump and reservoir, so decided to figure out a way to get the radiator 8mm back from the front.

At first I thought I'd cut out a piece of 5mm acrylic I had like I did the 3mm the other day, sandwich them and that would be it.
You might have guessed, that I didn't go with this one, although I did cut out a 20x20cm 5mm acrylic piece from some scrap I had. Before I started carving the interiour out of it though, I figured I'd like to try using some stan-offs instead. You know the ones between your standard motherboard and motherboard tray.

I order to use the stand-offs i would have to use the 3mm acrylic as the threads in the stand--offs didn't match the fan-shroud that comes with the radiator.

I actually just used the Acrylic I did the other day. You know, the one with the platform meant for a pump, which I measured wrong. (forgot to take the 24pin power cable into account).

I actually cracked it some as you can see in some of the images. I will make some new later on if this is the design I choose to follow.


You might remember I've talked a lot about pump placement. Guess what, I found yet a way to Mount it.

 

Updated the first page to contain new and better images and description:
Quote:

Illustrated what's going to happen in short:
The goal is to be able to turn the case on it's side. Also turn the front and move the IO front-panel to be placed orienting the right way -> meaning we cut new holes to Mount the IO-panel and remove the middle pins/legs on the front-cover.

 

Bought an Anti-static service kit.
Lindy 43080 Anti-Static Service Kit - Mat and Strap
I just bought mine from ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/310332571718
I really should have bought something like this many years ago, but they easily cost like €100 for a proper mat!! Quick kits and travel-kits has started to emerge though, so now was the time

Prizes are just so low now, that everyone should get into the habit of tugging one of these along

It consists of:

• Anti-static mat
• Arm strap (1,5m)
• Grounding cord with crocodile clip (2,5m)

How it Works:

• You place the mat where you plan to Work.
• Find a point to attached the grounding crocodile clip. If you live in a house with grounding in your electrical installations, you might use one of those (care must be taken).
  If you do not, or just don't want to or know how to do it safely you can attach the crocodile clip to a radiator part. Just make sure there isn't painting on the part you clip onto - maybe even scrape the paint off of a small area you won't notice.
• Put the wrist strap on your arm.
• The strap and grounding cords are both attached using a clip-on bottom design. You can extend or change how these things connects.

Why use one of these? Nothing bad ever happened, and I have handled electronics for years and years!
So, you are a sceptical? I was too untill I did a course on handling Electronics and doing solder Work some years ago.

The thing is that you are propably not going to kill your hardware by handling it. No matter how much you finger your motherboard, ram or Graphics Card.

What might happen instead, is inner degradation of the circuits. It might be get 5% or maybe 10% weaker. It means it will stop working a literally years before its time.

You might not ever use your hardware for so long, but it's not only the longlevity, it is also comes Down to stability when doing things like Overclockcing!

So, to recap my initial point: Prizes are just so low now, that everyone should get into the habit of tugging one of these along

Images

 

Mounting waterblock on Graphics Card

Mounting GPU-waterblock EK-FC750 GTX and EVGA backplate onto my EVGA Ti 750 SC.

You might have noticed my tingy EVGA 750 Ti SC placed on the anti-static mat in one of the images of the previous post. I had it there, as I intended to Mount my waterblock when I got my anti-static mat.

Preparing the Graphics Card
First I dismount the backplate I had screwn on previously. Only 5 screws here to deal with.
Cleaning away Thermal Grease

1. I use a paper-towel to remove the worst of the thermal crease from the GPU and fan-assembly. Afterwards I use Isopropyl alcohol to clean off the thermal crease. I initially put it on paper-towel, but you can use a filt-pen or similar as well.
2. Ónce the thermal grease is cleaned away I use some soft cloth to polish it a bit.

Adding thermal grease and thermal pads

1. 1 long piece of thermal pad was included. About twice the amount of what I needed. I cut it up to 4 fitting pieces and keep the rest in a safe place - you always want to keep stuff like this somewhere for future uses.
2. I add a small drop of Thermal Grease. I always use my own Arctic Silver since I bought a 12,5g tube several years ago. The amount I add here is actual too much. Nothing bad will come from it, except added cleaning needed when/if I remove the waterblock.
3. The backplate it not standard equipemt, and the screws included with the waterblock just barely latched onto the waterblock through the backplate and the PCB of the Card. I couldn't even use the included plastic washers due to the short lengths of the screws!

Some images to showcase my small Graphics card
Here you can see how I have blanketed two of the inlet/outlet holes with the included plugs and mounted 2 of my Monsoon fittings in the two other holes.

 

Had some time to spare, so gave my Apogee II a workover. In a previous post I took out the Swiftech MCP35x pump from the assembly and attached an EK housing to it. Seems I can't remove that housing once its on, but it turned out ok anyway.

Notice the O-ring that has been used compared to a new one. It's all squeezed flat and full of marks after the pins. Also notice the "gnat" I removed from the pins.
You notice near the lower-middle screw that I had to remove some of the coppery material, as it didn't like my old motherboard!


I also had some time testing wheter the fittings from Monsoon could make a watertight seal with the tubing I had. Was a bit worried as I felt they didn't really go that tight against the tubing, but the test went just fine. I also wanted to see how the White tubing looked against the Black fittings.


I also wanted to try making some anti-bubble stuff. It worked as far as catching bubbles, but it was too soft for my comfort, as it seemed like it wanted to be sucked Down into the pump:
When your reservoir looks misty like mine here it is caused by bubbles being hammered into very small pieces. The only real solution is to turn off the system and let the air form into proper bubbles once more and try to catch them in a reservoir or similar.


Learned that my radiator, Graphics Card, pump+reservoir and a Little tubing was 600ml! Ohh, and the choices:

 

As it is going to be a couple of weeks untill I recieve my motherboard waterblock, I decided to test out the system as is, and get some temperature readings to go from.

I forgot to install my temp sensors in the waterloop (doh), but managed to plug them into the holes in in the Cold and warm Water chambers of the radiator, so worked out ok.

Aside from the Water I also put sensors on the pump-heatsink, the motherboard, ram and VRMs.




After mouting everything it became obvious to me, that making a Black acrylic plate to hide the rear IOs is a good idea.

 

Great mounting tests Darron.
You're very professional with custom water loops. While reading your posts i was thinking if in the future i want to use a water block for my gtx 970 with this hybrid aio swiftech h140-x it would be enought to cool the cpu and the gfx?
Do you think it would be undersized? This h140-x performs just like a corsair h110i for the cpu.
Thanks in advance!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by svictorcc

Great mounting tests Darron.
You're very professional with custom water loops. While reading your posts i was thinking if in the future i want to use a water block for my gtx 970 with this hybrid aio swiftech h140-x it would be enought to cool the cpu and the gfx?
Do you think it would be undersized? This h140-x performs just like a corsair h110i for the cpu.
Thanks in advance!

The short answer is: yes, it should be enough.

The GTX 970 has a TDP of 145w which isn't that much when it comes to Graphics Cards.
Intel® Core™ i7-4790K Processor has a TDP of 88w which is pretty low actually. Higher than smaller models, but low when looking a CPU heat over 5 years.

If you combine those two heat specifications you end up at having to deal with 233watt.

For some reason Swiftech hasn't made data available for the H140-X that I could find, but any 140mm should be able to dissipate that amount of heat.

It all comes down to how much money you want to spend. These AIO watercoolers, which can be turned into custom loops are great value. Just remember to add the adapter needed for the pump into the cost.

Try see if you can find some details on heat dissipation of the H140-X radiator.

Limitations of these sets are, as far as I can see, that you have to have the pump mounted onto the reservoir and radiator. Is that correct? Meaning that you can't use a different radiator or get rid of the reservoir? Is this observation true? I havn't spend that much time trying to find disassembly reviews.

You will find people WHO claim that you have to have 2x120mm radiator pr hardware you want to cool. That just isn't true. Yes, you have larger headroom and you might be able to run a more quiet setup, but it doesn't mean you HAVE to have that much radiator real estate. I've used an Corsair H60 to cool both my i7-3770k and an AMD HD5770. I later upgraded to a bigger radiator from EK and last of all I bought the Swiftech Apogee II drive.

I can't recommend trying to bleed out a system using id/od 6/8 cables with a weak pump (the H60) and not having a reservoir!

What I'm trying to say is that the system you have in mind seems like a very good option, but you have to make up your mind on future requirments.