Help me create my masterpiece.

SUMMARY AT BOTTOM OF POST:

Ok, so here's the back story to my situation. I've been running an Abit IC7 board / 2.6Ghz P4 / 1024Mb Corsair XMS extreme pc3200 / Ati Radeon 9800Pro AGP system for somewhere in the nature of two years now. Last year I began military school at The Citadel in S.C. and brought my rig (which before upgrades was an Alienware Area-51 Aurora with one of the first P4's at a whopping 1.7Ghz) with me. The barracks I'm living in are older than my grandfather and dust is a HUGE problem. I have a dragon full-tower which I have been can-airing almost twice a month to clear the DUST BUNNIES out of my computer.
Two nights ago I was playing WoW and I hear a "pop" from inside my computer, game crashes, and an Ati warning message comes up "your VPU has recovered from a serious error, please tell Ati about this issue." After reboot didn't help. I immediately shut down the PC, unplugged, hauled out from under my desk and opened to see just what the heck was going on. The small (northbridge?) fan on my mainboard has a black char mark on it, and the plastic fan has flash-fused to the surrounding metal (not the board, just other pieces of itself).
Pulled PC apart to see what still worked.. determined Mobo is fried but my Corsair XMS is still A.O.K. (wouldn't matter if it wasn't either thanks to Corsair's unparalleled LIFETIME warranty / replacement plan.). Also working is the processor and 9800 pro. I logged on to newegg / pricewatch / monarch etc. looking for a new mainboard. IMPOSSIBLE to find an AGP supported board that would suit my needs, so i bit the bullet and decided it was time to upgrade. (the fun begins here)
I have a generous (though not unlimited) budget to work with in the creation of my new PC. I am frugal so the splurging will be kept to a minimum if possible. Proposed new setup to follow:

Mainboard: DFI Lan Party UT NForce4 Ultra-D Audio/GB-LAN/IEEE-1394/PCI-E/SATA3G/DDR/ATX 64 939

RAM: I will be upgrading my existing 1024Mb to 2048Mb by adding two more sticks of, 1 GB (2 pcs 512) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair XMS (TwinX1024-3200C2PT)
This is as close to what I currently have in my rig as can be, aside from batch and serials. Can anyone see an issue as to compatibility?

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 1MB 90nm Rev. E San Diego (939)

Video: One of these, not sure yet, would like feedback from the members as to which to go with / what else is out there at around $200 that would work.
THIS:
PNY Geforce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3/PCI-E/HDTV-Out/Dual-DVI
OR:
Asus GeForce 7600 GT 256MB DDR3/PCI-E/HDTV-Out/Dual-DVI


I teamed up with user tyshy back in high school and we developed a pretty sweet water cooling “box” setup. The school I went to just decided to get rid of the setup and my friend is willing to let me have it, so I plan to use that the water cool my PC. Here comes the question of questions.
--> As it stands now, the WC setup is designed only to incorporate a CPU water block. Would it be feasible to cool my graphics card and mainboard as well as CPU? As I mentioned earlier dust is a major problem for me and I was as little airflow in my case as is needed. (ie: RAM + HD should be only other items requiring cooling correct?)
--> Is it possible (feasible) to do this based off a single pump, single reservoir design?
I will get the data on the pump when I return home on spring break Mar. 24th
--> Does anyone have and ideas as far as loop setup goes (ie: placement of rad. In loop, recommendation for a water block other than this: MP-05 Pro CPU Water block

I am a college student so money isn't growing on trees, however I am contracted with the USAF so I have a steady income and am not short on cash. I want to do this project RIGHT, I want to do it as COST EFFECTIVELY as possible, and I want to create a “work of art.” This in mind, I am willing to hack up my case if need be, already designed / cut / installed a window a few years back.

I am considering trying to fit the water cooling setup inside of my Dragon Full Tower, I do not have an internal floopy drive, so the rack mount bay there is clear for a res. If I opt to go with this option.

As promised: SUMMARY
I browsed the stickies and the FAQ for a few hours and came across some helpful stuff, but nothing really to the same scope as this. What I am looking for is help redesigning a water cooling setup. I will upload pictures of my rig / space I have to work with once the new parts I mentioned above arrive.
1)I want to minimize INTERNAL airflow in my PC (I have no problem cleaning the vents on my radiator, but watching a dust-bunny the size of my fist form across two capacitors on my motherboard scares me) Dust breeds like bunnies where I am, if possible I want to isolate the inner workings of my PC from the hostile outside world that is my room.
2)Noise is not to big of a concern, (roommate has a Gateway E-machine that we have to turn off at night to sleep).
3)Size is an issue, I would prefer an internal setup as going to military college leaves me little room to display “fun stuff.”
4)Cost needs to be kept to a minimum, but I will not sacrifice quality parts to save a few bucks.
5)I need advice on the concept of cooling my graphics card and mainboard with water blocks.

I have to get some sleep now, but I will return tomorrow and over the weekend to try to get some pictures up. Thanks in advance to the OCForums community.

if you have a good enough rad with good fans it should be able to cool both your gpu and cpu. if youre using the dragon full tower ive seen people take out the hard drive rack on that and fit a dual 120mm heatercore with air intake and outakes on the sides of the case. if you want to cool both the cpu and gpu a 2x120 rad would be youre best bet. otherwise a single 120mm rad would work if you had some high cfm fans on it.

Your choice on a motherboard and added memory seems good to me. Your video card, assuming you want to stay under $200, seems pretty good. Like the guy above said, as long as you have a decent enough heater core and a strong enough pump, water cooling all three of those components shouldn't be too bad. I am upgrading to water cooling and I am going to be cooling my cpu and gpu with one 250gph, 5' well head pump and a 76 chevy corvette heater core

Changing it up a little.

Slight chage in my original plans.

I have deemed the preservation of my PC's health to be of top-priority. This in mind, I will attempt this summer to construct an internal system to watercool the CPU, graphics card, RAM, HDD, and mainboard. I've been working on the logistics of this off and on today but will need some input as to the order of the cooling loop. This is what I have for now:

1) Start at reservoir, 3/4" tubing exiting to pump entrance. Y-connecter at the pump exit to split the flow into two (3/4"?) tubes. One flowing directly to the CPU, the other to my graphics card.
The tubing exiting the CPU will be rrestricted down to 1/2" to enter the first RAM cooler. the tubing will exit the first RAM cooler and enter the second, upon exiting it will connect to the inlet of a y-connector.
The tubing exiting my graphics card will be restricted down to 1/2" and enter the mainboard cooler. After exiting this it ill enter the HDD cooler. From there the 1/2 tubing will be connected to the second y-connector mentioned above. the outlet of the y-connector will enlarge to 3/4" and proceed to the radiator. from the radiator water will be stored in the reservoir .. and the process starts all over again. See diagram 2 for a better illustration.

2) See diagram 2 .. same tubing issues...

By splitting the flow up that much, and with so many restrictive blocks in the system, your cooling probably will be very poor. Honestly, if you are not going to be putting excessive voltage through the processor, you might possibly get away with a passive air cooler. Athlon64s really do not put out much heat. My X2 overclocked 25%, with an undervolted panaflo on a Freezer64 ($22) runs about 40c with both cores @ full load.

My suggestion: Get a nice case, like maybe the TT Tsunami, and replace the 120mm fans with some high quality ones, perhaps Yate Loon or Panaflo. You don't need a lot of airflow either, if the airflow is properly directed and unrestricted. Buy a large tower heatsink, like the Scythe Ninja, for your CPU. Put on a low-speed 120mm fan like the ones in your case. Get a Zalman VGA cooler, and don't worry about your ram. With good case airflow, even heavily overclocked and overvolted ram will not get hot.

Use the money you saved to upgrade to an X2 3800+ (or Opteron 165) and perhaps a faster video card.

EDIT: I know, it won't be a work of art... but it will be a lot faster and require less maintanance.

Airflow

My goal is to have virtually no active airflow through my case. The cooling properties aren't what I'm mainly concerned with. Like I said before I go to a South Carolina military school that's been around since 1842, I'm in one of the newer barracks but it's still older than my grandmother. We don't have AC so the windows are always open. The dust shooting around my room is what I can't stand. Two nights ago some lil dustbunny ruined my Athlon XP2800, Abit IC7, and a gig of Corsair XMS extreme. It shorted out two capacitors and I have a big char mark across the mainboard. I'm going to be here for a few years and when I get out I'll be going in the military, so this computer is only going to have to live for two years. Also ... I go to military college, they don;t let us out much, I have plenty of free time. I need a big project to occupy me or ill go crazy (We're the school that was on break.com with the guy running on the "marble courtyard of some sort" (our quadrangle) with his shirt and hair on fire...) .. He did that of his own free will.. we get bored..

I've been looking at diagrams of other setups and another idea has crossed my mind. split the load coming from the reservoir between two pumps, on for the CPU loop, the other for the GPU loop. Maybe add another rad ..

To summarize: My main goal is to not have any fans actively pumping the nasty air from my room over my precious PC componets; noise is no issue; and since they don't let us leave much this is all I have to spend my Air Force stipend on.
Anyone have any other diagrams they'd like to share regarding doing this? These points have been pretty much solidified in the design.
1) Reservoir will be at top of case to capitalize on gravity feed.
2) Loops will stay relatively the same, parts are cooled based on heat removal priority (number of pumps may change to 2)
3) Radiator I have now is from an ~87 Chevette.. if I need another for the possible other loop ill be getting another of these, they are spectacular.
4) ENTIRE system will be watercooled by the end of this summer.
5) PSU air intake will be ducted to outside of case.
6) Case will rely on passive convection type cooling for dealing with heat build up.
7) I'm prepared to buy quality parts to do this, this will be the most extensive cooling / modding project I've ever done so I'll be relying heavily on the forums for assistance. Who knows, might just start a work-log for this project.


Thanks to everyone that responded so far, this idea is evolving faster than I thought it would.

http://www.svc.com/12filguar.html



If you are really set on watercooling, and want zero airflow, you might need waterblocks on the motherboard mosfets, and maybe even your video card's.

Ugh....Watercooling your RAM and HD is really not necessary unless your running a furnace in there...most ram doesnt even need HEATSPREADERS even less a watercooled block...even though you want no airflow, a HD and RAM Waterblock will be overkill and it will probably add to cost considerably because you will need a bigger pump, RAD and loop in general to compensate for the extra resistance and heat. If you have a bunch of money you arent going to use anywhere else do it, if not use the money on something else (like a better CPU...Dual Cores are really the "thing" going on right now). Other than that everything else looks very good

If you are really set on watercooling, and want zero airflow, you might need waterblocks on the motherboard mosfets, and maybe even your video card's

Click to expand...

Another good reason why Total watercooling isnt going to be very easy...Zero Airflow is kinda impossible...todays computers rely alot on Air cooling for things like the Mosfets and Video RAM...If you THAT worried about Dust get a filter like Yuriman recommended

you could use a water cooling loop for most of everything, but i would still use a slow fan with 1 or two dust filters on it for some freakin air man..lol

Exactly. I don't mean to seal off my case from the outside world completely and create a static environment. What I am seeking to do is watercool the major heat producing elements (items that require active cooling ie: a constant "blowing" airflow) and eliminate the fans that are now blowing the lumbering dust bunnies of my room onto all my componets. My air cooling setup now is comprised of two 80mm Antec ball bearing fans pulling air in the bottom front of my dragon full tower, two 80mm Antec ball bearing fans blowing the spent air out the top of the rear of the case, and a random 40mm intake fan attached to the Aerogate II I got off a friend.

The intake fans are currently filtered by household screen I formed to fit in place of fan grills.

If I will not need to watercool certain items because they will be kept adequately cool by convection / non-aggressive cooling methods than awesome, I can save some cash.

I don't want to restrict ALL airflow through the case, just the active component. As long as I'm not sucking the dustbunnies from every nook of the room I'm happy.

If you guys think he RAM and HDD will be fine without active cooling that's spectacular, three pieces of hardware I don't need to beg/borrow/steal for.

Keep the ideas and feedback coming please, I greatly appreciate the input that has been offered thus far.

As long as you have SOME airflow your RAM and HD will be fine. Unless you are SERIOUSLY overclocking your RAM....