Pictures of first water-cooled build "The Valkyrie"

[owensct]

All,

I just wanted to post a few pictures of my first water-cooled build. A shout out to forum members GTXJackBauer and Maxfly for their recommendations in getting this build off the ground. I know I should have gone with a better GPU, but having a wife I had to cut costs someplace. A new higher end GPU is in this builds future and I plan to add it to the cooling loop. The only thing I don't like about it is its so quiet that whenever the ASUS Blue-Ray spins up its annoyingly loud. I also might have gone a little overboard with the lighting, at night it kind of looks like the Vegas Strip is living on my kitchen counter.

The only thing left to do is I am going to 1) add another 32gb memory, 2) Have my niece laser etch the name of the build into the top side of the case "The Valkyrie" and 3) I'm going to replace the Plexiglas with glass and have an opaque image of a Norse Goddess a winged Valkyrie dye sublimation printed on the lower half of the glass. It will be mounted on a floating shelf in my home office. Once I finish those last pieces I'll post some final images of the build.

Any questions, comments or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!!

Gordon

 

[EarthDog]

Nice! Looks good!

 

[storm-chaser]

Well done, looks very precise.

Especially love the see through water pumps... that's a nice touch.

 

[UltraTaco]

 

[MattMan657]

This is really impressive for a first build. Hell, this is impressive period!

 

[Blaylock]

Very nice build Owen, especially for your first WC build! Impressive.

Especially love the see through water pumps... that's a nice touch.

Those are flow meters, not pumps.

 

[storm-chaser]

As you can see I'm quite the watercooling expert...

 

[Blaylock]

 

[Silver Surfer]

Nice Build Job, Very Professional Looking!

(Love those see through water pumps! )

Sorry storm-chaser, couldn't help myself.

 

[owensct]

What Now, lol

Thanks Guys for the kind words, it was a fun project and gave my Brother in-law, (He's a street rodder and helped me with the bends) and I some quality time together.

Now what to do next, lol

Gordon

 

[storm-chaser]

Thanks Guys for the kind words, it was a fun project and gave my Brother in-law, (He's a street rodder and helped me with the bends) and I some quality time together.

Now what to do next, lol

Gordon

Other than me getting roasted, have you overclocked it yet? You certainly have lots of head room with the dual see through water pumps...



EDIT: Check out the benchmark competition in the Memory sub-forum! You're invited and we are down on participants so your admission would be appreciated.

 

[Blaylock]

LMAO look into the benchmarking team. See what that beast can do up against some stiff competition. See link in my Sig.

 

[don256us]

I like it. The pipe bends are crazy good man. Nice clean build.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

Well done.

Your next project will be adding a new added to the loop.

 

[AnimeMania]

I am too stupid to see where your radiator is, but I am assuming it is on the top. That pipe that says "Titan Rig", I am assuming it is a drainage pipe. That device above the optical drive that has the numbers, I am assuming tells you your temps, could you tell me what it displays, does it display different info on each screen and who makes it. I couldn't quite figure out your setup, do you have more than one pump attached?

 

[owensct]

Questions/answers on build

Guys,

I haven't had a chance to overclock it yet, not sure how well it will perform, but I'm game it's just going to take me a bit, but I'll check out the bench-marking.

AnimeMania no worries the UV lights kind of washed out the pictures. I actually have two radiators, a 360 in the top and a 120 on the front, (see additional pictures). Your correct the pipe marked Titan Rig is my drain line from the front radiator. There is only a single pump on the system, I'll post a picture with coolant flow shortly. The two LCD temp sensors are made by an outfit called XSPC xs-pc.com they also make the 5.25 bay for the sensors. I bought two of their flat sensors in blue and added two Bitspower temp sensors to them. One sensor checks coolant temp as it leaves the pump and the other checks coolant temp as it leaves the CPU water block.

Hope that helps.

Gordon

 

[owensct]

Coolant flow

Guys,

Here is a coolant flow diagram.

Gordon

 

[Blaylock]

Hey Owensct, you have your rear fan as intake. Was this on purpose to feed cool air into the top radiator? It's not typical but I like it.

Also, you have you front lower fan as exhaust and your upper fan as intake. You'll want to flip that lower fan around.

Outstanding placement on that drain line. Looks awesome overall.

 

[owensct]

Guys,

Just as an FYI I haven't pushed it at all, that's why the incoming and out going temps in one of the above pictures is the same. I have my old air cooled rig sitting in my office as my primary workstation and all I've really been doing with the new rig is getting all my applications moved over from my old rig, installed and configured, (software wise) so I can get it off the kitchen counter, (My wife will certainly be happy) and into my office. Once that is done my old rig will be setup as a PLEX media server and I can move my new rig into my office as my primary workstation then I'll have some time to play around with overclocking and bench marking it. I don't want to muddy the waters right now so that I end up wondering if a piece of software is acting wonky because its incompatible with the new build or if its acting up because I've overclocked it.

Gordon

Gordon

 

[owensct]

Hey Blaylock,

Yes it is setup as intake, (I'm still new to this), that was my Street Rodder Brother in-Law's recommendation. Rear fan is intake so it pulls in cool air into the case, which then (hopefully) gets sucked out through the top radiator and cooling it on it's way out by the three fans mounted there. The intent of the front fans was to be a push-pull arrangement, top fan to pull in cool air, bottom fan to suck it back out through the radiator and into the room.

So to make sure I understand, do I want to flip both fans, top = airflow out and bottom = airflow in or just flip the bottom fan so both are intake?


Thanks for the compliment on the drain line, I wish it worked better. I already had to drain it when I decided to add the second flow indicator and I had to push some air through the fill port on the top of the pump so I could push enough coolant out from the area around the CPU water-block to take it apart without making a major mess. What you guys are seeing is my fourth iteration of the cooling loop. It took me that many times to get it to look and work the way I wanted, except for the drain line of course. I figure I'm going to change the coolant once every six months to a year so its OK if the drain line isn't exactly super efficient.

Gordon