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31 Posts
Hello everyone. I've recently undertaken a pretty serious project and thought i would document it here. The goal of this was to take an SX57H7 and make it as powerful as possible while still keeping the form factor. I could easily have stuck a huge radiator on top and be done with it, but my goal was to keep everything inside the case except for the reservoir (for easy filling) and the graphics card which i already had sticking out of the side of the case.
Before i get to the w/c bits, this is the system i've been running for about a year now. It's been a great workhorse but it runs HOT and LOUD. perfect candidate for water cooling then :-D
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specs are as follows:
-msi gtx275 sticking out of the case to make room for a pci-e sata card
-i7 920 oc'd from 2.66 to 3.2ghz and undervolted slightly
-3x 2gb 1333mhz corsair ddr3
-2x ocz vertex 120gb ssd's in raid 0 for os and programs
-1x 1tb 7200rpm hd for media
-pci-e sata card for the dvd drive since the shuttle only has 3 sata ports internally and as you can see i decided to stick 4 drives inside of the case, oops!
now, for the shiny w/c bits i started installing today
-ek supreme hf water block
-ek 120mm radiator
- XSPC X2O 450 pump and reservoir combo to save space and simplify things
those of you who have owned shuttles will know that shuttle decided it would be a good idea to make their heatsinks mount to non-standard holes. people who have water cooled shuttles before have used some sort of bracket or cross-bar going over the water block. I decided that the most elegant solution would be to laser-cut an acrylic bracket to replace the sheet steel bracket that EK gives you. It also matches the acrylic waterblock top nicely.
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The plan is to have the radiator above where the stock heatsink was and have the now 120mm fan blowing up and out of the case to retain airflow the comes in through the sides of the case to cool the other components. besides the 40mm psu fan there is only the 92mm fan cooling everything in a stock shuttle. This gets very noisy and i'm glad to be putting a 120mm antec pwn fan in it's place. Since the air has to go up, i needed to cut yet another huge hole in the case to let air out. I got a nice grill to cover it too.
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shuttle is nice in that they already have a good solid plate on the back of the cpu. unfortunately it's not supported by anything directly. The rubber pad from the ek waterblocks backplate was the correct thickness to span the gap between that plate and the bottom of the chassis so i just cut it to fit and stuck it there.
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from that last pic you can probably see the next major mod that needed to be done, cutting, bending, and re-riveting one of the rails to clear the radiator.
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BUT, despite being ugly, the rad finally fits!!!
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now that the rad fit, i stuck everything back in the chassis for a test fit. sure enough the waterblock fits under the HD tray as i had calculated. the big problem is getting the lines in and out of the case since the gfx card pcb is actually taller than the pci card bracket. this i did not expect, so things are tight.
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another necessary mod to make room for the rad was to replace the unnecessary stock shuttle 2ft long sata cables with 8" long ones with 90" plugs. The rad butts right up against the dvd drive and gets very close to the HD so 90" plugs were a must. Another space saver was to cut down the 1.5ft long sata+molex cable from the psu which had a molex to sata adapter on the end. once it was cut to length i put 2 new sata plugs on the existing wires at the perfect length. no more adapter, no more clutter :-D
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that's all i have done up to today. I plan on finishing the project tomorrow so hopefully i can get more pictures posted in the next few days. please tell me what you think of the progress so far. I'll also happily answer any questions about the project. it was impossible for me to find some of the information i wanted about this shuttle without taking the thing apart myself, so if you have any questions whatsoever about it feel free to ask, hopefully i can make your life a bit easier.
ps: phew that was a long first post
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Before i get to the w/c bits, this is the system i've been running for about a year now. It's been a great workhorse but it runs HOT and LOUD. perfect candidate for water cooling then :-D
specs are as follows:
-msi gtx275 sticking out of the case to make room for a pci-e sata card
-i7 920 oc'd from 2.66 to 3.2ghz and undervolted slightly
-3x 2gb 1333mhz corsair ddr3
-2x ocz vertex 120gb ssd's in raid 0 for os and programs
-1x 1tb 7200rpm hd for media
-pci-e sata card for the dvd drive since the shuttle only has 3 sata ports internally and as you can see i decided to stick 4 drives inside of the case, oops!
now, for the shiny w/c bits i started installing today
-ek supreme hf water block
-ek 120mm radiator
- XSPC X2O 450 pump and reservoir combo to save space and simplify things
those of you who have owned shuttles will know that shuttle decided it would be a good idea to make their heatsinks mount to non-standard holes. people who have water cooled shuttles before have used some sort of bracket or cross-bar going over the water block. I decided that the most elegant solution would be to laser-cut an acrylic bracket to replace the sheet steel bracket that EK gives you. It also matches the acrylic waterblock top nicely.
The plan is to have the radiator above where the stock heatsink was and have the now 120mm fan blowing up and out of the case to retain airflow the comes in through the sides of the case to cool the other components. besides the 40mm psu fan there is only the 92mm fan cooling everything in a stock shuttle. This gets very noisy and i'm glad to be putting a 120mm antec pwn fan in it's place. Since the air has to go up, i needed to cut yet another huge hole in the case to let air out. I got a nice grill to cover it too.
shuttle is nice in that they already have a good solid plate on the back of the cpu. unfortunately it's not supported by anything directly. The rubber pad from the ek waterblocks backplate was the correct thickness to span the gap between that plate and the bottom of the chassis so i just cut it to fit and stuck it there.
from that last pic you can probably see the next major mod that needed to be done, cutting, bending, and re-riveting one of the rails to clear the radiator.
BUT, despite being ugly, the rad finally fits!!!
now that the rad fit, i stuck everything back in the chassis for a test fit. sure enough the waterblock fits under the HD tray as i had calculated. the big problem is getting the lines in and out of the case since the gfx card pcb is actually taller than the pci card bracket. this i did not expect, so things are tight.
another necessary mod to make room for the rad was to replace the unnecessary stock shuttle 2ft long sata cables with 8" long ones with 90" plugs. The rad butts right up against the dvd drive and gets very close to the HD so 90" plugs were a must. Another space saver was to cut down the 1.5ft long sata+molex cable from the psu which had a molex to sata adapter on the end. once it was cut to length i put 2 new sata plugs on the existing wires at the perfect length. no more adapter, no more clutter :-D
that's all i have done up to today. I plan on finishing the project tomorrow so hopefully i can get more pictures posted in the next few days. please tell me what you think of the progress so far. I'll also happily answer any questions about the project. it was impossible for me to find some of the information i wanted about this shuttle without taking the thing apart myself, so if you have any questions whatsoever about it feel free to ask, hopefully i can make your life a bit easier.
ps: phew that was a long first post
I look forward to getting those temps way down with this setup
