800d Build Finished - Thoughts Needed

Hey all. I finished this build a couple weeks ago and everything turned out pretty well I think. The Parts I used:

Bitspower v2 top
2X Bitspower white led plugs for Res
Swiftech 655 with speed adjust
16 ft. of PrimoFlex Pro LRT White Tubing - 7/16in. ID X 5/8in. OD
Bitspower Matt Black G 1/4 - 90 Degree Dual Rotary
Bitspower Matt Black Rotary 90 degree G 1/4 adapter
10 x Bitspower G1/4" Matte Black Compression Fitting
Bitspower Quad Rad Guard
XSPC LCD Temperature sensor - white
Bitspower Matt Black G 1/4 Temperature Sensor
Bitspower Matt Black Rotary 45 degree G 1/4 adapter
[URL="http://www.jab-tech.com/YATE-LOON-120mm-Case-Fan-D12SM-12-Medium-Speed-pr-3770.html"]4 x YATE LOON 120mm Case Fan - D12SM-12 - Medium Speed[/URL]
4 x YATE LOON 120mm Case Fan - D12SL-12 - Low Speed
EK Supreme HF block
XSPC RX 480 rev.2
EK Advanced 250 res x2
EK 470 Block
PT Nuke but not sure If I should have bought this one instead
Bitspower D5 / MCP655 Mod
Black 6/32 screws for rad

This rad is huge, there was no way for it to fit in my beautiful lian li1010 case, but I may use it for another future water build when parts get waay more efficient.


Wasn't easy cutting into the case but it had to be done.




My yate low speed fans painted. The coats turned out kinda heavy but they look good. I will probably replace them soon with ap-15 typhoons.




This was the hardest part. I was only able to attach the fans to the rad with the radcover on by holding it up this way.






Almost Finished!


The white led's are very mild which I decided to go with this time because having a bunch of blue leds in a case can get quite bright.




I am sort of mixed on how it all turned out. The build went flawless, but the results are sort of meh. I am running my pump at about middle speed which I would say is around 2.5 right now. I just did some occt testing on the cpu while running kombuster for a half hour to get the water temp stabilized and the result are as follows:

Room Temp - about 18.5c roughly
Water temp - 35.8c note(the probe is in the reservoir bottom and this is the warmest part of the loop since the res is the final part before the pump and rad.) Haven't seen it reach 36 yet.
Gpu Temp - 53c
Cpu Temp - 63c-66c ish

My 470 gpu is running at:
vcore - 1.087
Core - 768
Shader - 1536
Mem - 1809

Q6600 is @ 3.2 with 1.35v

My delta seems high, but not bad I suppose. There is one major concern for now and that is the positive pressure of my case. The quad rad with 4 yate loon low speed fans in push config running around 12-1300 rpms as intakes with only one corsair 140mm exhaust fan must be screwing everything up. The fan above my pump is the same corsair which pulls air into the bottom, but again not much. Not sure what rpms they run at but I would say around 1000.

I can literally put my hand above my rad guard an inch or so and it almost feels like an exhaust port on the outer edge of the fan, which tells me there is too much positive pressure going on and it can't efficiently get enough air through the case.

This is where I need some advice. I am thinking of getting 2 140mm replacement fans that are still quiet but can pull more cfm out of the case. This will not remedy the extreme positive pressure though I fear.

Now that the typhoon ap-15's are back in stock at a few places I am thinking of putting 4 on the rad as either push or pull with a fan controller because at the moment the yates under the bitspower rad guard are too loud for me. I guess the mesh just screws with the fan noise. I am wondering if I put them in a pull config if this will eliminate the noise.

Lastly, other than the crazy positive pressure going on I need to figure out what to do about dust. The rad likes to pull in a fair amount of fine dust, which after 2 weeks is insignificant, but over time it will add up. Please suggest some sort of filters that will work with my radguard with the fans in either a push or pull config. I don't mind taking an air hose to the case once a month if not.

I hope this post isn't too crazy, but I would like to get lots of advice in the issues I brought up and let me know if my build seems practical after I spent around 1300 for the water setup with the case, lol.

Reverse more fans. What about the front of the case? Room for more fans?

The CPU is running a bit warm. You have the in/out ports on the CPU block right? With a Q6600 you should have better temps. Don't think you have to run the #1 plate in the CPU with just a Q6600. Maybe a reseat and reapply TPaste?

Low speed Yates don't push a lot of air through a rad. You really should have the mediums on the rad. Lows on the case.

You bought the PT Nuke made for distilled water, your good. PHN for distilled, PT for odd stuff.

Why run the pump so low? CPU block needs good flow. Crank it up rerun tests.

All I can think of for now.

I cut some openings in the side of my case so the upper portion of my case could have a large area to act as an intake for my rad which is configured to exhaust.


The right side of my case is cut for both intake for the rad and the powersupply, the left side is mainly for the hard drives and the rad. No additional fans on those intakes, the rad just draws what it needs and I now have metal mesh screens installed on the openings to catch dust. Works pretty well and isolates the top portion of the case from the bottom, regarding airflow. Bottom portion only has a Panaflo L1 120mm intake, open 120mm opening at the rear for exhaust. Build log link in my sig.

Honestly, the low speed yates are loud enough on my bitspower radguard, and if I went with 4 medium speeds with no fan controller it would drive me crazy I'm sure. I mentioned I am looking into buying 4x gentle typhoon ap-15's with a single fan controller than can control all of them with one knob, preferably inside the case out of view. As of now, adding higher rpm fans will only worsen the positive pressure.

Short of adding a fan on the front of the case as an exhaust everything is reversed at this point.

I'm positive the intake port is correct on my ek block, it's on the left, not the right. I was a bit worried of the seating on the cpu because of the damn thumb nuts which tighten the block down, I'm not even sure how far to tighten it down. The mobo is slightly warped, but I'm pretty sure that is expected, it's not drastic even with the backplate.

Lastly, making the pump go faster will obviously make it louder and this is not what I want, I wanted the pc to be as quiet as possible but even with the rad fans this is not the case, my old case with all air was quieter except for the 470 stock cooler and the temps on the cpu were the same.

Okay, looks like you got it how you want it, and some ideas to try. I thought my old D5 was silent at 5.

You want silent, so keep tweaking. The GTs will help somewhat.

My testing was a bit extreme though, I used linpack in occt at 90% mem and 100% cpu for a half hour while running kombuster on stability test with maxed settings, lol. I put the pump at around 4 which sounds fine so far, will post what my results are in a bit.

Just finished after having the test run for a half hour.

room temp around 12.7-15c
cpu max - 54-60 across the 4 cores. the variance is:
core1-60
core2-59
core3-54
core4-54
Gpu max-49

Water temp-32c

Almost forgot, the pump is at around 4 now.

Wow! Pretty cool ambients. I can see why your GPU temp is so low.

At 25C My 470s load at 47/46. But my 120x3 fans, just 3 GT 1850s are at 1020 RPM. My CPU loop is seperate from my GPU's.

Your temps are good. And you ran it exactly like you should for max load. Gaming etc temps will be very very good.

And thats a pretty darn high DT water temp. Almost 20C diff from ambient to water temp. Decent for the GPU but the CPU sure would like under 10C DT. Crank up those fans on the rad, leave the side off the case and run it? Just curious.........

I'll try that and see how big a difference it makes a little later today. I live in the bay area and don't use the heater much, so my ambient can be anywhere from 55f to 70 day to day, it's totally random, lol.

Oh yea, my idle right now is:
Gpu-35
cpu-26-32
water-26

Room temp right now I think is still like 60f or about 15c.

Maybe you put too much thermal paste on your blocks? That is a very very common mistake people make when mounting any cooling. Most thermal pastes (like my personal favorite, Arctic Silver 5) only require about a uncooked rice sized blob on the middle, which you then push the block on to and move around while applying pressure in order to get a firm mount with little air. What type of thermal paste did you use and how much did you put? Less is more with TIM's.

Also, you might want to look into running two loops instead of one if you think it is really worth it. 10C+ above ambient at idle for a CPU is not that good at all. I'll let the more experience water coolers comment on the dual loop scenario.

Omg 15C ambient? Do you wear your jacket inside?

Can you get the side panel mounted now that you are running a hose on the backside?

Wega! said:

Omg 15C ambient? Do you wear your jacket inside?

Can you get the side panel mounted now that you are running a hose on the backside?

Click to expand...

That is the reason why the hose is so long in that one pic of the side of the case with all the wires. There is actually plenty of clearance even with all the wire bunched up. If the tubing was 3/4 od I bet it would still fit all right, but it would probably be alot more difficult to bend around in there.

Someone suggested I get a couple of these noiseblocker fans to replace all the 140's in my case along with a fan controller. Would the back fan, which can also be a 120 be better replaced with an ap-15 or a noiseblocker 140?

I am thinking of putting these on my bitspower radguard because the mesh is making an annoying turbulance noise with the fans and makes my low speed yates loud.

Reversing all the fans, including the rad fans seems like a good idea since it will pull air through the rad, even though my case will be getting lots of dusts, it should help, will test it out sometime this week or next.

I did put more than a pea on the cpu and it's sort of mixed arctic silver 4 with the brighter gray arctic silver, not sure what it's called. I may redo that eventually but my idle temps are awesome right now with my water temp at 25c and the cpu at 24-30c across the cores and gpu at 32. I think they would be much worse if the cpu was mounted really bad.
Thanks for all the feedback guys.

do you even need mesh with a radguard? For the fans...140's are good for case airflow, but since you're water cooled it's not gonna make much difference at all, I'd go with the quieter of the two (and noisblocker deflates their db numbers, so you'll need objective testing)

I just need a fan that pulls in enough air to keep up 4 typhoons at low rpm as my top exhaust, while remaining fairly quiet.

I fully reversed all the fans so the rad pulls air out of the case and the rest are intakes, and also took off the mesh over the fans to make a little quieter, results:

Idle Temps:
Cpu-24-30 across cores
water-24.6
Gpu-34

Crazy load:
Cpu-54-60 across cores, which was 60, 60, 54, 54. Kinda odd but 6c difference not bad I suppose.
Gpu-50
Water-31.9 it kept going from 31.2-31.9 over and over again in probably a 10 second cycle, thought this kind of odd.

I am thinking if I get those typhoons and a fan controller and a couple good 140 fans the airflow will be even better and the temps will go lower, just reversing all the fans to create much higher negative pressure instead of positive pressure made a huge difference.

seeing that case makes me think.......maybe I should have just bought it haha.