My first WC adventure w/ pics.

After a week of planning, testing, building and frustration ... I finally have my first WC rig up and running. Here is my setup, cooling rig 1 in my sig.

D-tek TC-4 Rev.2 waterblock - $40 shipped
Clear 1/2" ID tubing from http://www.easypckits.com - $10 shipped
VIA Aqua 1300 pump - $17 shipped
Cube Radiator - $20 shipped from a guy on the forums here

I couldn't find enough room inside my case without taking out a bunhc of hardware, so I decided to build a simple external box. This weekend I'm going to enclose it with sheet metal and paint it. They didn't have any sheet metal big enough at the local Home Depot, so I have to take a small road trip for that.

I took my case apart, painted the inside black and drilled 2 small holes in the top for the tubes. I'm also planning on making a custom window and putting in some lights soon as well.

Well, here are the pics:





My temps right now are 37C - 40C idle and 42C - 45C under load. It's significantly cooler than my stock Intel HSF that was on there before. I want to cool my video card as well, but I'm not sure how much that will increase my temps. I figure about 4C - 5C which is getting close to or into the 50C range. Still not too bad I suppose. Does anyone know of a good cheap video card block that would work well in a system like this?

Total cost including tools and supplies = $110

Thanks for looking

Looks very nice. I painted the inside of my case too - looks almost exactly like yours. You used a flat black, correct?

Joker76 : Nicely done...I like the black paint. How did you get the tubing that copper tint?

Hm, very nice. Gotta love the black case with red-ish water.

Your temps seems pretty high to me, since only your cpu is in the circuit. What are your ambient temps, and are you sure your cpu block is seated correctly?

You could have easily put that inside your case by loosing one of those drive racks on bottom

Thanks for the kind replies guys!

Yes, I did use a flat black paint with a light coat of "flat" clear coat to protect it from scratching too much. I really like the look of it now

The tubing is a copper tint because of the coolant I used. I'm using Havoline Extended Life "Dex-Cool" antifreeze and it's an orangish color. It looks more copper in the pics because of the flash, but to me it's a lighter orange.

Ambient temp hovers right around 35C most of the time. I think the reason my temps are higher than they should be because of the cube radiator. It has double the resistance of a normal radiator, so I think the water flow is being reduced quite a bit by it. And, if you can tell from the below pic ... the copper tubes of the radiator are much smaller (about half the size) of my 1/2" ID tubing which is no doubt causing alot more resistance.

The radiator also has aluminum fins which don't dissipate the heat as well as copper fins would.





** EDIT: I also added a custom fan shroud that I made out of a coffee can and some duct tape. It dropped my temps a whole 2C !



Yeah, I could have put it all inside if I cut the drive rack holder out and moved my hard drive up to one of the empty 5.25" bays. But that's just not as fun as cutting a bunch of holes and building an entire external enclosure from scratch Once I get some money to buy some "top of the line" WC stuff, I may put it all inside the case. Only time will tell though.

So, does anyone know of any good inexpensive GPU blocks out there? I saw the Koolance ones for like $20, but they don't look like they work very well ...

I wouldnt reccomend going the cheap route with water-blocks. DTek makes some nice ones, its what ill be using soon.