Just finished my WC rig, opinions? *pics*

Hey all! I posted a thread a little while ago about building an external rad/pump/res thing to sit on my case, and I'm going to do that soon. I just got all the Lexan I need and some extra tools and stuff.

However, I couldn't wait. After more than two weeks of daily work, and 8 hours of non-stop complete work today (not counting bathroom breaks and lunch), I finally finished my WC project! I'm still sort of a watercooling noob so don't expect too much from it! I'm still waiting for my Coolermaster window to arrive VIA UPS and some other misc stuff, besides finishing the external rad setup. Here's the pics and specs:

http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/1.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/2.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/3.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/4.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/5.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/6.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/7.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/8.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/9.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/panel-on.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/nightshot1.jpg
http://www.plastickeffect.com/rebirth/nightshot2.jpg

- Athlon 64 3200+ @ stock speeds
- Gigabyte K8N Pro
- 512mb (2x256mb) PC3500 Mushkin Level II DDR BH-5 + 1x512mb PC3000 Kingston HyperX DDR
- Hercules 3D Prophet 9800 Pro @ 485/380
- Two (2x) 74GB 10,000 RPM SATA Western Digital Raptors (RAID-0, stripe size 64k)
- Creative Audigy 2 EX
- 48x Memorex CD-RW/16x DVD-ROM Combo Drive
- 500w Logisys PSU acrylic casing, actual powersupply swapped inside is a 550w Antec

The Watercooling setup:

- Dangerden RBX A64 Waterblock (with default nozzel installed)
- Artic Silver 5 on all components
- Dangerden Maze 4-1 GPU block (pelt and coldplate removed as I have no PSU to run it on right now)
- All 1/2" fittings
- Clearflex UV Green tubing
- UV Red plastic hose clamps
- Dangerden 12v Inline Magpump
- Black Ice Micro 2 w/ two Coolermaster Quad-LED (white) 38CFM fans
- Bayres Dual 3.25" Reservoir ( so far so good, no airbubbles at all )
- 91% Distilled water, 8% RedLine WaterWetter, 1% blue UV dye

I made my own shroud out of the 3.25" drive bay enclosure inside the case. I layered some Pax.Mate sound dampening pads around the corners of the Black Ice (which is at a slant because it wont fit upright with the bayres), so the only air the fans suck out the front is air that's pulled through the radiator. It seems to be working great thus far.

Idle temperature: 25C
Idle temperature after 2 hour load: 34C
Full load temperature after two hours: 37C (wont go above that)

Few questions:

Can I overclock my FSB while these Raptors are on the on-board SATA controller? I've heard horror stories about the 34gb raptors and overclocking (lots of data corruption), but I'm still not sure.

Comments appreciated!

F'n droool.

VERY nice.

Very nice setup. Why did you add the blue UV die? It doesn't look like it's working with that green tubing.

Oh almost forgot

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!!!!!!!!

CAPiTA said:

Very nice setup. Why did you add the blue UV die? It doesn't look like it's working with that green tubing.

Click to expand...

The camera sucks (Sony Cybershot DSC-P32 3.2mp), I need a new one. In real life it actually looks bright green with a dark blue liquid running through the tubes, looks quite nice. And thanks for the welcome!

That looks awesome! A+ job on that.

Great Setup man. It looks good. I'd like to see some daytime pics

jenkx said:

Great Setup man. It looks good. I'd like to see some daytime pics

Click to expand...

dame nice how much did all cost

I have a question about your MUSKETEER. Do you think it would be possible to tear the thing apart and implement the guages in your own way?

I've been looking for analog panel meters for awhile now but can't find any that will work the way i want em to. this seems like it might be a cheap alternative.

That case looks sexy with them fans on the front, did you have to manually mod anything for that, or just move stuff around ?

Ta..

Nice cooling.

Wow, sweet rig.

BTW, could you please call the pump a Laing D4, since that's the real name of it?

Cyrix_2k said:

Wow, sweet rig.

BTW, could you please call the pump a Laing D4, since that's the real name of it?

Click to expand...

Oops, sorry.

I'm not sure about the musketeer manual gauge placement, as I've never ripped one apart before. I'm sure they're mounted to the PCB and probably would be hard to remove (may require some soldering).

The total cost was...bah, too lazy to add everything up. I will later

the one thing i would say other than looks nice is that your getting a kink in your pump outlet tube. you can try slightly moving te pump or shortening or lenghtening the tube to get rid of it or use some zip ties.

thorilan said:

the one thing i would say other than looks nice is that your getting a kink in your pump outlet tube. you can try slightly moving te pump or shortening or lenghtening the tube to get rid of it or use some zip ties.

Click to expand...

Maybe the pictures look weird, but there's definitely no kink

Well, just got finished building the external rad setup. (has two Black Ice Xtreme's inside with a large 147CFM Sunon fan.

I haven't heard anything about the 36G raptors and data corruption, but that might be because I never really considered buying one. Anyway, I was under the impression that the southbridge ran at the same frequency as the PCI bus, so as long as you have a PCI/AGP lock on your board, (duh) I don't see how you'd have any problems, at least with regard to frequency overclocking.

the frequency for pci is 33/66

the thing is you have very low band width for pci compared to other onboard built in features. a good example of this is raid 0
the only reason to use pci raid cards is to do 3 AND ONLY 3 disk raid 0
2 disk does not use all the band width and 4 disk clogs the band width to slower than 2disk .
but 3disk raid 0 uses all the availible band widh that is availible.

all of this will change with pci express btw

sorry for the highjack

sweet job on the case =P i hope mine looks that good

wow if i ahd a case to start with... don't know bout all of you but me i change my hardware so often my mobo is on my table without any enclosure on my main rig...
[/IMG]