Installing my water cooling config

[Vivoune]

Hello gents,

As some of you guys helped me out on a bunch of questions I had during my quest for information on water cooling I figured I'd post a little after action report on my setup here.

First of all here are the main specs:
Rad: XSPC RX360
CPU Block: XSPC Raystorm
GPU Block: XSPC Raystorm
Resevoir: XSPC D5 Reservoir (Combo)
Pump: XSPC D5 Vario with Tacho.
Tubing: 7/16'' (11mm)
Rad Fans: 6xNoctua NF-F12 PWM in Push Pull.
(and a bunch of NF-P12 PWM for the case)

That looks like some XSPC promotion article.. Sorry about that, I just like their product.

I'm installing it on a PC I've been building last Novemeber which consist of an
Asus P8z77-v Deluxe
Intel i5 3570K no O/C
EVGA GTX670 FTW no O/C
4X4 go 1600mHz ram
and 3 hardrives (1x 128Go SSD for OS - 1x 2To 7200rpm for Data and 1x 320Go 10 000rpm for Apps)
All of that in a Cosmos S I bought 5 years ago, I customed it a bit.


I tried to take some pictures on the way for the forum, but to install it all it took me quite some time (something like a full day work) so sometimes hours were passing pretty fast without me thinking about taking pics.

Here's most of the stuff I'll be using


Note that I Flushed the Rad a few days before using hot tap water 5 or 6 times, then once with distilled water and one last time filled with distilled water again after letting it sit there for 12 hours. Not much came out (still enough to recquire a flush) but at least now it's (supposedly) perfectly clean.


First thing I did was work on the Graphic card. I didn't go for a full body block so I had to work my way through a bunch of rather tedious additional steps.
I took the stock cooling solution off the card (obviously)


Needless to say I was very surprised at how much thermal paste there was! Doesn't look pretty, but I guess it works.


But nothing that ArctiClean thermal paste cleaner can't handle (very helpfull as it simply 'melt' the paste almost instantly). I also cleaned up the grease on the Vram and other pieces left out by the stock cooling fat thermal pads (easy to miss imho I had to play with the light orientations to highlight it).


Next step was to install the copper radiator to cool Vram and other components needing cooling. The big ones were very easy to install out of the box, just take off the protection plastic and hold them in place for a few secs and voilà. The tiny ones were an other story for the little thermal pads that came with were ABSOLUTLY not sticky enough for the radiator to hold anywhere, I don't know how or why, but the thermal pads were as sticky a soft rubber, which.. isn't. Hopefully I was kinda planning on using some Sekisui thermal paste I had ordered of Ebay a month ago and that worked very well.


I ran into an issue though, I got these low profile copper radiators thinking it'd be low enough for the fitting to passe above it but I was horribly wrong and I had to file it down a lot more. You can see the 3 filed down radiators in the right hand corner of the previous shot. I tried to cut them at first but they're too thin and were bending all over the place, don't do that .

I had gotten a backplate for the card too in order to better cool it, protect it and help in preventing any kind of card benting, an Alphacool GTX680 backplate (the EVGA backplate was out of stock) so I installed that too on the back of the card after placing the thermal pads on the right place. Note that it's supposed to be used with the Alphacool full body block, so I had to leave out the 4 holes used to mount the universal block open and also had to use tiny bolts to fasten the screws.


No the only thing left to be done with the GC is the actual Universal Block. Pretty straight forward really, applied some GC Extreme Thermal paste (a WHOLE lot less than EVGA's blot) only minor issue I ran into was I had to apply a bit more force than I would have wanted considering it's not been design with a backplate in mind, so I had to apply more pressure to the installing screw's springs but other than that everything assemble perfectly and I was done with the Graphic card. here's a shot of the back and front.



Next was the CPU block. I didn't take too much pics of that but it's pretty straightforward and quite fast. I just took off the stock rad and fan. Cleaned up thermal paste and apply a tiny bit of GC Extreme Thermal paste. Then it was only a matter of holding the 1155 backplate on the back of the motherboard, present the CPU block and fasten the screws so there's a good pressure. The only downside is that you obviously can only do that while the motherboard is completely removed from the computer.


Next I installed the mobo back and started working on the 360Rad which is placed on the top of the case but inside so I can place 3 fans on top and 3 fans down. Now it was manageable but the space was a little too clumsy for comfort and some cables or fans have some pressure on them that more modern cases would probably help to avoid. For example the CPU power phase is sort of in the way so I had to bend the cables quite hard along with applying some pressure on the fan above it for the whole thing to be assembled. But all in all it came out alright. Here's the rad, she's a fatty (that's what we want considering the high static pressure property of the fan we're using here)


here's a little placing teste I did with the fans on


Next was the pump and reservoir. Also quite straightforward. I just installed the pump in the back of the reservoir (making sure the pump's O Ring would stop jumping away at the last minute as it likes to). Then it's just a matter of installing the right fittings and presenting the reservoir in its bay.



All is now installed and ready for the final part, tubing.


Now I didn't take too much pics of the process of tubing as that didn't seem too relevant. I didn't care for the order or which component should be cooled first etc considering that, afaik, the water run way too fast anyway for any specific order to have any impact. I simply went for what felt the cleanest looking tubing configuration:
Pump up to --> Rad down to --> CPU down to --> GPU up to --> Reservoir combo --> Pump.


Everything installed I jumped the PSU and started pumping Distilled water in the system till it's filled. What came next was several hours of leak testing and bubble flushing followed by a night left untouched to see if it'd hold fine. In the morning I found a little leak that happened during the night. I worked on it, tested it some more and deemed it ready for field testing. I hooked up everything back and booted the computer. Apart from some issues with ASUS various DOS CPU fan detector and stuff that wouldn't properly detect the CPU fan configuration everything was working just fine.

I had to work a bit on the fan wiring configuration for it to work properly with the PWM system. (3 PWM fan on CPU fan header with only 2 yellow cables connected -- 3 PWM fans on the CPU_OPT fan header with only 2 yellow cables connected.)

Now the only thing I could do, after throwing a couple of pure silver coils in the reservoir, was testing its performance a bit. I didn't do any real benchmarkign as I've just been too lazy so far to do that properly. But I can tell you a bit about IDLE and LOAD temps before-after.

On Idle before:
CPU 34°C
GPU 36°C

On Load before (Farcry 3 Ultra 1920x1080 8XMXAA)
CPU 63°C
GPU 72°C on stock Fan Profil
GPU 66°C on custom Fan Profile (almost full fan speed 70%, felt like the sound of a jet taking off..)

Room temp is 21°C

On Idle now
CPU 25°C
GPU 24°C

On load now on the same FarCry 3 settings and play time (about 1 hour)
CPU 32°C
GPU 31°C
Note that these temps are using a custom dynamic fan profile and that these temps are achieved while the fans are at the dead silent minimum speed: 40% (700rpm) they're set to speed up with the temp but they just don't need to. Also the Pump is on speed 2 (of 5) which is pretty silent. What defines now the noise level of that Rig (i.e the noisiest hardware) are the Hard drives. Figured that when it comes to that you got a decently silent configuration.

Anyway here it is, I felt like sharing all that with you guys I hope some of you enjoyed it a bit and feel free to ask anything, I'm off for now

 

[musicfan]

Congratulations. Nice job and pics on the VGA card especially. Have fun.

 

[Jokerz]

Congrats m8, as said above especially on the graphics card. Now u got me worried about vram cooling, because I went for EK gpu universal block and ordered some akasa gpu ram radiators but they obviously come only in one size, just for the gpu ram. May I ask where you got your set? I live in Reunion Island, afaik nobody sells that kind of stuff here.

Cheers.

 

[Vivoune]

Thanks guys! As for Vram cooling, I think you can just order bigger radiator (longer) and just apply a large thermal strip over the tiny ram and just place a single but longer rad on it, it should cool about the same. I just went for one rad for 1 chip cause I think the more compartmentalized the heat transfer is the less likely it is to contaminate what is near it, hence a better cooling. But Vram don't run that hot anymore from what I gather. They barely even get warm when I touch them after a good session of intense testing.

That said here's the refs and link of both rads I used (note that you'll need third party thermal strips/pads for the tiny ones):
-Enzotech Low Profile Passive Mosfet
-Enzotech Passive Mosfet Cooler

Edit: If you get the Vram mosfets, make sure to get some thermal stripes too like these as the stock ones barely sticks to anything from my experience.

If you're into Alphacool though, they also have tiny rads

But yea you can get some longer passive rads to cool several at the same time.

 

[Jokerz]

Thanks for the links m8, Ill have to wait a bit though, the ones which would fit the vram are both out of stock hehe, but on a positive note, they do ship worldwide. Gonna bookmark these links and wait for them to be available.

Cheers.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

Great Job! Must feel great once everything was going as planned. Thanks for taking the time to show us.

 

[Vivoune]

Thanks mate it's no problem at all. It felt great when I went to bed yeah, I started it at like 3pm and stopped at around 130am. It felt great when I hooked up back everything the next morning and it started as if nothing happened. But most importantly it felt great when I first launched a test and monitored the temps that wouldn't go higher than 31°C despite the fans staying dead silent. That, felt like a real reward for the effort and money put into this yea. My ears are grateful along with my components for less heat means less stress.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

Thanks mate it's no problem at all. It felt great when I went to bed yeah, I started it at like 3pm and stopped at around 130am. It felt great when I hooked up back everything the next morning and it started as if nothing happened. But most importantly it felt great when I first launched a test and monitored the temps that wouldn't go higher than 31°C despite the fans staying dead silent. That, felt like a real reward for the effort and money put into this yea. My ears are grateful along with my components for less heat means less stress.

Oh yeah totally. Thats the exact same feeling I got but only problem was it took me 2 1/2 weeks lol (All the parts were in until I realized the wrong tubing was sent, hense the long time). I had no PC (Have an old P4 that can barely run anything but ran a game to keep me occupied - CoD4) for that long and it was really uncomfortable but kept it together till I got it all going. Patience is a virtue when it comes to H20.

 

[Vivoune]

Indeed, it took me about a day in total I'd say, but the assembling, even if it can be a challenge, is merely the conclusion of days and days of preparing, info gathering and shopping all over the internet over the weeks, that's what matters from my experience, if the preps and intel hunt is done right, the assembling is then just a pleasant formality. I ran into a couple of issues that resulted in a few hours of delays and head scratching during my assembling, and that was the direct result of my misinformation, that could have been avoided.

I can only imagine how much the fact that you got 'stuck' on an old P4 during the process must have emphasized the nice feeling that comes with a successful modern build! That said, I find the idea of getting stuck on an old machine for some time somewhat reassuring for It'd give me a good excuse to play old titles I cherish, like Red Alert or Dungeon Keeper. But that's for another thread I guess.

 

[gvguy39]

I'm looking to do a similar loop as this. How do you plan on draining the loop when the time comes to do so?

 

[GTXJackBauer]

My guess is the Male QDC that is positioned downward on the GPU would be his way of draining and a slick move it is. Just connect a line with a Female QDC on the other end and wallah!

 

[Vivoune]

My guess is the Male QDC that is positioned downward on the GPU would be his way of draining and a slick move it is. Just connect a line with a Female QDC on the other end and wallah!

Exactly! I just placed a Quick Disconnect on the lowest point in my loop for easy draining. I'll be draining it next week for that matter, to change a few fittings that I'm not too happy with. A 90° compression fitting that doesn't compress well enough (average build quality) and a few 45° that I need to add here and there.

Here's the link to an example of them if you're curious about it
Male 1/4 threaded to Female for 3/8" ID

Also If you're planning on using the RX360 Radiator from XSPC in a push/pull config, bear in mind that you will need 12 additional 6/32 screws, only 12 are delivered in the box for 3 (2.5mm thick) fans mounting. I had to use 2 screws per fan to push/pull it instead of 4, it works perfectly fine though, but I'd still buy some more just to be sure and use it the way it's supposed to.