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Watercooled system number one... start to finish, bunch of pics

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tsintse

Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Location
Warshington!
As recommended by a couple of friendly individuals I am reposting this in a more appropriate section :)

I also made this a bit more complete as far as describing what exactly I did. A little background, I have been working on computers and networks for 15+ yrs but this is my first watercooled system…looking at all the very nice ones here made me jealous heheh.

3 goals initially, looks, noise level, and size. I wanted the system to look clean while remaining quiet and restrained within the confines of a single midtower atx case. This is the case I started with :

before1.jpg


It’s an AMS G-Tower from Newegg (insert random Newegg owns comment.) Ordered it and three days later I had everything hooked up and running on my desktop to get a feel for whether or not I liked the case. I really liked the look and since the plexiglass was very thick and heavy (planning on doing some etching later) I decided to ignore a few major design problems and keep it.

I pulled everything out of the case and gathered all my loot to start assembly. We have a Swiftech MCW-5002 waterblock and MCP-600 pump, dangerden waterblock for my video card, clearflex tubing, nylon clips, evercool 120mm fan, UV reactive bay reservoir and a dtek heatercore.

parts1.jpg


First I started with the PS. I am using an Antec TP 550. I replaced the 80 and 92mm fans with a Panaflo 1A and a Papst respectively. I also sanded and painted the shell white but I didn’t grab a pic of that before I put it in the case. I moved the grill into casing as well and then sleeved all the wires.

Heres what it looks like before sleeving.

before.jpg


And after:

after.jpg
 
Do I need to mention sleeving is a total pain in the a$$?

Next I attached the dangerden waterblock to my Hercules Radeon 9800 Pro. Those wuckers at Hercules decided to bridge the heatsinks on each memory chip for some reason so I had to dremel them off.

Here is the card with the stock heatsink removed, notice the bridged heatsinks.

videobefore.jpg


Here it is with my new waterblock minus the bridges:

videoafter.jpg


Next up is the mainboard and CPU. I have an Intel PERLK with P4 3.0C processor I picked up at the last Intel IPD conference.

Before with the stock heatsink removed.

mbcpubefore.JPG


Now with the heatsink mounted. I used AS3 some screws and a few washers. Much nicer than the standard clips I think.

mbcpuafter.JPG
 
Now the fun part, getting the case the way I like it. I had a vision in mind to try and make the water tubes glow blue....hehe I wanted them to look like a scene in Aliens, where Bishop goes out through the sewer to uplink with the satellite. The tubes were glowing bright blue and I had that in mind... didn't come anywhere near it lol.

First everything is stripped out of the case and surfaces are sanded with a 320 grit sanding sponge...hehe broken cutting wheel :-O

sand1.jpg


I then masked all exposed surfaces as needed:

masking1.jpg

masking2.jpg


Next all case components are primered. I did two coats of white metal primer over a 48 hour period.

Primer1.jpg
 
Primer2.jpg


Finally the real stuff. I used a white paint made for coating appliances like fridges and ovens. Very thick and nice to work with. I did one base coat and then I did another to give it texture. It's hard to see in the pictures but the interior is a very clean white that has an even texture like a fridge.

Here are all the components painted and ready to assemble:

Finalcoat1.jpg

Finalcoat2.jpg


Time to start putting stuff together! I am going a little stir crazy at this point...almost a week without my main system and the laptop just isn't cutting it. My wife is also starting to give me strange looks, "Wtf are you doing again? Painting your computer.......?"

The fan for the radiator is fitted with some home made rubber gaskets to prevent vibration noise.

gaskets1.jpg
 
All the items are gathered here in the living room for assembly so my daughter can help.

assembly1.jpg


My wife brings me some tofu corndogs to snack on... yum!

assembly2.jpg


Mainboard is installed here:

assembly3.jpg


Next is the radiator assembly, reservoir and hard drives.

assembly5.jpg
 
Here is what the back looks like with the radiator assembly bolted in.

assembly6.jpg


Everything is now installed and my tubing is starting to get into place. I can't believe what a b!tch this tubing was to work with in such a small space but somehow I got all the 1/2" stuff in there. The powersupply is ready to be installed after getting a nice new paint job.

assembly7.jpg


Tubes connected now, nylon clips in place...starting to actually believe I will finish this project...

assembly8.jpg


Power connectors are routed behind the mainboard as much as possible

assembly11.jpg


Time to fill and leak test this mofo and make sure its not going to just start spraying water everywhere. I plugged the MCP600 into a molex connectors from an old SV25 I have sitting around.
 
leaktest1.jpg


Wtf not, I plugged in the UV lights as well to see what it looks like

leaktest2.jpg


Awwwww no glowing tubes! O well that will have to come to fruition in another project. After about 36 hours I was pretty confident about not having leaks so I moved the box over to my desk and started plugging things in like LAN, monitor etc.

assembly10.jpg


The final nervewracking part... powering the system on with it's own powersupply..veeeery scary! ALL SYSTEMS SEEM NOMINAL CAPTAIN!

assembly12.jpg
 
The moment of truth OS INSTALLATION :-D

windowsinstall.jpg



Time to put it all together and call it finished. Unfortunately the fan controller I was using, a VANTEC NEXUS died killing 4 of the fans in the case the DAY after I finished... DOH! I lost 1 U320 drive and my RAID controller (weird things to die huh?)which were replaced the next day out of my pocket. I replaced the vantec with a Coolermaster Musketeer I bought locally and this is what the final product looks like:

Lights on:

finish1.jpg


Lights off:

finish2.jpg


A couple shots from behind:

finish3.jpg
 
finish5.jpg


Closeup through the side window:

finish6.jpg


Last few:

finish4.jpg

finish7.jpg


Currently I'm writing this post from the system and its been up and running for 2 weeks now flawlessly, going the gauntlet of BF1942, WC3, and a lot of AD administration work. All in all it was a fun experience and even my wife had to agree it looks pretty nice on my desk regardless of how many times she called me a total dork for painting my computer... lol for some reason that struck her as ridiculous. I still plan on etching something on the acrylic in front and cutting the pattern out on the aluminum plate behind it to let the UV light through, I need a break(and my computer) though! My 2 and half year old daughter gets a real kick out of looking at the reservoir and tubes while she is helping me work on whatever server I have opened up on my bench :)


The system specs are as follows.

AMS G-Tower
DD Video Card Block
Swiftech MCW-5002
Swiftech MCP-600
Clearflex60 1/2" Tubing
JR-120 Radiator from DTek
Bay Reservoir Rev.2 (wtf was Rev.1?)
Antec TP 550
Coolermaster Musketeer
P4 3.0C
Intel PERLK
1024MB Corsair XMS
Adaptec 29320 HostRAID Controller
2 x U320 Seagate Cheetah's 10k rpm RAID0
SI ATA 133 RAID Controller
2 x Maxtor 160gb 8mb cache drives
Hercules Radeon 9800Pro
Lite-on CDRW/DVD
3.5" Media card reader
3.5" Fdd (!)
WinXP Pro SP1 (I finally switched...damnit)
Flow: Pump out>Rad in>Rad out>Bay in>Bay out>Cpu in>Cpu out>Video in>Video out>Pump in

The temps idle are CPU 35 Chipset 34 case 35 using MBM5. checking them right after I get out of a game they all read around 40...not the best but I'm not OC'ing so not too concerned. After doing this setup I am tempted to get a more OC friendly board and see what kind of speeds I can get, maybe try some sort of external phase change type deal. I did meet my 3 original goals though.

Thanks to the people who contribute to this board regularly. Your posts along with the search fxn on this site answered *every* question I had along the way. Any comments or suggestions for improvement are appreciated!

Tsin
 
I couldn't find the particular metal clamps I was looking for so I went ahead with the plastic ones... I wish I had used the metal! I am using a water wetter/distilled water combo right now w/ some UV dye stuff, hehe I know its not the best :(
 
Very very nice setup!!

He said hes using WW for his coolant, which will stain the tubing sooner or later... When it does, just flush the system and refill it with different coolant. Yea metal clmaps would be nice but if theres no leak now... no hurries just get them when you drain/flush next time... (you might want to draink everything now and start again but you seem pretty exhausted.... If you leave it it might leave white residue all over including your heatercore.... which is hard to clean out)

P.S. Your corndog made me hungry.... Imma go get something to eat :p
 
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