beakersoft
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2015
(PART 1, I will update more later!)
After building my first gaming rig in ages last year (I was an xbox man for a long time!), I decided it was time to have a go at my first custom water cooling loop, and just to make things more interesting I decided to go for hard tubing and well!
This thread is a breakdown of what components I used, what I learnt and some pretty pictures of the different stages of the build. Hopefully people might find it interesting and it might help/inspire people as well.
Hardware Components
Watercooling Components
Extras
I also needed a few extra bits to complete the build as well
After building my first gaming rig in ages last year (I was an xbox man for a long time!), I decided it was time to have a go at my first custom water cooling loop, and just to make things more interesting I decided to go for hard tubing and well!
This thread is a breakdown of what components I used, what I learnt and some pretty pictures of the different stages of the build. Hopefully people might find it interesting and it might help/inspire people as well.
Hardware Components
- Case - Corsair Obsidan 350D. I choose this case as I wanted to do a smallish form build, and also have a side window to see the inner workings of the machine. This case seemed to fit the bill nicely
- Motherboard - MSI Z87M-GAMING Micro-ATX
- CPU- Intel i5-4690k. K series equal overclocking potential
- GPU- MSI Geforce GTX 970
- Memory- 8G Corsair Vengeance DDR3
- Power Supply- Corsair RM Series 450W
- Hard Disk(s)- 1x Kingston SV300S37A/V300 120GB (for OS) and 1x Crucial 500gb (for games/files)
Watercooling Components
- Radiators- Alphacool NexXxoS ST30 Full Copper 240mm (x2) (30mm thick as any thicker would not fit in the case)
- Pump- Alphacool Laing DDC310
- Reservoir- Phobya Balancer 150
- CPU Block- XSPC RayStorm CPU WaterBlock
- GPU Block- EK-FC970 GTX TF5 (seemed by far and away the best option for the 970)
- Tubing- Alphacool HardTube 13/10mm Plexi Clear
- Fittings- Alphacool HT 13mm HardTube compression fitting
- Fans- 120mm Corsair Air Series SP120 PWM Quiet Edition
- Coolant- XSPC E6 Blood Red
Extras
I also needed a few extra bits to complete the build as well
- Monsoon Hardline Pro Bender Kit - Really good kit for working with hardlines
- Heatgun - For bending the tubes
- After Market pump top - the stock one with the pump looked a bit naff so i replaced it with a nicer one
- Koolance drain value
- Alphacool Laing Silencer Set - To mount the pump on to try and reduce noise
- A filling bottle
- Mounting Tape
- Red LED strip
