[Project Log] NeverMore

[TerranBrackiatt]

plaid.... hmmm, cross weaving. somehow i knew that skipping that class would come back to haunt me...

anyhow, received a few more parts today, stayed up way too late, but at least it's starting to look like what it will:



yes, i decided to use those clear 20" swiftech hoses from earlier as a fill tube and drain port. i ended up using the front plate from the dual bay kit to mount the bullseye res from above. since the holes didn't quite line up with the 140mm fan mounting holes, i just zip tied it in place. i'll get a pic of the top of the case later, as i really should hit the sack so i can drive some 550 miles tomorrow / this morning for deliveries. PSU should beat me home. and i decided on blue for the cables. maybe eventually i'll install a window in the top half of the side panel so i can see all this stuff...

and the other new part is the LG BD-R, here. i realized that my DVD-burner still requires IDE cables. and the big bang mainboard obviously has no IDE ports... so... new optical drive.

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

We have a forum for PC decoration...... Ohh maybe we don't.

Wouldn't that be the case modders forum and the wire management picture stickie?

 

[MattMan657]

Looking very cool! What is the fill/drain port/tube connected to?

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

aha! leak testing! finally!



you'll notice i swapped the tops of the two hoses on the right. i had to. trying to bleed the sytem with the old setup, air kept collecting at the pump outlet. i had it set up that the pump would push water into the top of the rad, then out the bottom, then up to the res. oops. all the air from the res simply followed the path of least resistance toward the pump, not the res. simple fix. drain the system, walk away for 36 hours. eat some baocn. watch some movies. eat some more bacon. come back with a fresh head. swap the hoses so the top of the rad goes to the res.

filling the system, i laid the case on its side, and used the drain plug (from the rad) as an air vent while i filled from the clear tube attached to the res. then i turned it back upright to make sure all the hoses filled. then tilted the case 30 degrees to the side to fill up the res again. turned on the pump and it bled out pretty quick. one air pocket collected at the top of the drain tube. so i made it rise to the end, then loosened the cap til the air was gone. (i used one of those 4-way blocks with 3 stop caps, just to be different) tilted the case 30 degrees to the side again and the air quickly collected in the fill tube. when the fill tube was empty i set the case upright to check the fluid level in the res, then tilted the case to fill it up again.

as an aside. wow. i can barely hear that pump. had to lean in real close. those fans on the GTX 670s drown out he pump rather easily. ("earth" is running for PC addiction purposes while "nevermore" is being assembled, of course)

you'll notice that the fill tube appears to be completely devoid of water. inside the reservoir, however, the water level reaches about 1/4"-1/2" from the top. i used a triple swivel joint at the base of the fill tube, so i could angle it up up and away! zip tied the tube to the ceiling of the case so water won't flow into it. the end is capped by a danger den fill port.

for the wire management folks: you can see i got those bitfenix sleeved cable extenders. the GPU cables will be vertical strait through the hole up to their connector plugs on the GTX 670 4Gs. yeah, i'm taking them from "earth," which will get the old GTX 480



here you'll see how i mounted the res. i attached the tank to the front panel of the dual 5.25 bay kit. then i slipped it into place. over the forward fan hole. the 5.25 plate happened to fit perfectly between the mounting stands for the fan controller. two zip ties through the 140mm mounting holes and it ain't going anywhere.

 

[Culbrelai]

So that's what a Cosmos II looks like when all of the right-of-the-mobo wire management slots are open

I had no idea

XD

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

So that's what a Cosmos II looks like when all of the right-of-the-mobo wire management slots are open

I had no idea

XD

dude. i gotta see pix of your dual xeon setup. the only other Cosmos 2 build i've seen pix of on OCF is:

View attachment 105720

View attachment 105721

View attachment 105722

Hope i did it right...

P.S. it's been 3-4 hours now on the leak test. passing with bubbling colours! the blue LED in the res gives an interesting effect due to the ripples on the surface. the convex window on top magnifies that effect, too. gonna leave it running all night, and if still no leaks in the morning, tomorrow i'll move the GPUs and Disk Drives over. i'm considering using http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html to not have to start from scratch installing windows. i've already made an image backup through macrium reflect just in case i botch it up.

 

[Culbrelai]

It's my own lil baby mainframe... so cute

A Big Bang would've been my second choice, so many PCI-E slots its ridiculous

Does the side door close all the way with those red tubes pushin on it? Or are those temporary locations?

And wow, that build you posted is purty too with the fans where the lower HDD cages would bee...

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

yeah, the door closes all the way with those hoses there. they're only 3/4" outside diameter. which happens to be a little bit smaller than the lower HDD fan rack. i placed a hose next to the rack to make sure before i relocated the radiator down there.

wow that motherboard is huge. (insert "that's what she said" joke here) and simple case mod cutout to access the backplates. once i got started, i began to doubt whether or not i wanted to keep the cosmos 2. but that's when i found the other water-cooled setup in the case, and now also seeing your build, i realize just how versatile she is.

however, may NEXT water-build will probably use the obsidian 900d, if i can ever get a hold of one. and that build just might be a 100% water-build. CPU, RAM, mobo, GPUs, everything.

 

[Culbrelai]

however, may NEXT water-build will probably use the obsidian 900d, if i can ever get a hold of one. and that build just might be a 100% water-build. CPU, RAM, mobo, GPUs, everything.

Hehe make sure you take pictures...

Why not go with one of those crazy custom built cases from like Caselabs or MountainMods that are designed for watercooling and do so really well?

If I hadn't bought a Cosmos II before I knew about Caselabs I'd have probably bought one of their cases, they seem to be of very high quality, yet quite expensive. The 900D is pretty nice looking too, and like the Cosmos II, so many fan slots for rads...

wow that motherboard is huge. (insert "that's what she said" joke here) and simple case mod cutout to access the backplates. once i got started, i began to doubt whether or not i wanted to keep the cosmos 2. but that's when i found the other water-cooled setup in the case, and now also seeing your build, i realize just how versatile she is.

LOL, Nicki Minaj's booty is dwarfed by the size of my motherboard =P. Bah, if only I had a dremel I would cut a few holes in the door covering the CPU backplates, the fan cooling the VRMs I believe is really small and noisy when you really get power flowing through it.

Alas, it really is an amazing case that nobody on this site besides that one you posted, me and you have, it seems.

What exactly do you cool with motherboard watercooling? VRMs? Power Phases? I know cooling RAM doesn't really matter much but sure looks fancy XD.

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

Why not go with one of those crazy custom built cases from like Caselabs or MountainMods that are designed for watercooling and do so really well?

i love MountainMods cases. i've had my U2UFO since i originally built "Deep Thought" back when socket 939 was the big thing. used it for "Earth" too. trouble is, i'm not that good with wire management, and MountainMods' cases don't offer any help in that regard. here's "Earth" before i strip out the GPUs and Disk Drives:



not exactly what i'd call "pretty," especially after browsing the wire management stickie over in the case mods forum. there's also a lot of dust in there, too. 4 iXtrema 120mm and 3 iXtrema 80mm intake fans and only 3 iXtrema 120mm exhaust fans. the 120s move about 90CFM each at 18 db. both of those reasons are why i switched it up this time. besides, to fit that big bang in there, i would have had to order a whole new case anyway.

i didn't realize i was gonna water cool "NeverMore" until i looked at the evo air cooler. UG-LY. then i looked at the Zalman 12x. looked a lot better. but it weighs 1000g. and it blacks access to the innermost DIM slots. at least one on each side. and it cost 100$US. the All-in-one water kits are at most 140$. then the WC bug hit me and i spent easily 500$ on my loop. all those triple swivel elbows, compression fittings, reservoir + accessories, the push - pull fans, and the h20 220 elite kit added up faster than i anticipated. my opinion: well worth it!

What exactly do you cool with motherboard watercooling? VRMs? Power Phases? I know cooling RAM doesn't really matter much but sure looks fancy XD.

you can get waterblocks for anything it seems nowadays. check out the water cooler picture thread 2.0. you'll see a few examples in there. basically, the mobo waterblocks cover the parts that are normally under those great big monster heatsinks surrounding the CPU socket. wouldn't surprise me if there's blocks for the northbridge and southbridge, too.

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

Assembly is finally complete! windows (Edit: i ended up just doing a fresh install of Win7 pro 64b on the SSD) has finished updating, and i'm tired, so here's a few pix:

assembled:


it's alive!!




wire management:

yeah, it's not the prettiest. those pcie cables are rolled up on top of the PSU. the EPS cables are rolled up in the bottom corner. the molex cables are 1250cm in length! and so is the sata power! at least eh main compartment is presentable (almost) enough that i could actually not be embarrassed by a window in the side of the case eventually...

 

[MattMan657]

Looking good! What are you getting for temps?

 

[Culbrelai]

Why do you have two SLI bridges?

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

okay, here's the first shots:



i used the OC Genie button on the mainboard, but as expected (even though i hoping i'd get an exception) the SB-E didn't like XMP profile of 2400. so i customized the OC Genie button (there's a setting in the bios) to run the RAM at 1866 (for now). i've seen lots of 2133s on SB-Es, so i'll try that and 1T command rate a little later. and the GPUs are stock.

as a reminder, ambient temps in my room are a little on the warm side (75-80F easy) so OC'd @ 4GHz running 3dmark 11, max temps of 52c, idling at 40C. and i forgot to install a temp probe into the water loop. so i can't even check delta T. oops.

Why do you have two SLI bridges?

they came with the motherboard... so i figured it couldn't hurt to add more redundancy to the system. i think it looks cooler, too. Nvidia says it doesn't hurt either, so, why not? https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ridges-noob-as-question/post/3125974/#3125974

 

[Conumdrum]

Lookin darn nice! Try P95 small ffts for 30 min then we'll really know about temps. I see no issues at all.

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

how's this?

30 minutes:


yeah, i cropped off all the other workers, reckoned y'all all would accept that they're there.

60 minutes:

 

[MattMan657]

Looks like you're in great shape! Quick question, are you OCing at all in those pics? Forgive me if I'm blind and missing already stated specs.

Something I am curious about with the Apogee Drive II is the scalability. From the sounds of it the pump is a modded MCP35X, and which from what I assume can handle two radiators and a res of course. From your temps I would say this does not look like it is an issue, but have you found any limiting factors from having a double rad with the block/pump combo? I ask because I'm always thinking about ways to improve my build.

 

[Conumdrum]

That is a 35x with a block attached. It's plenty powerful.

 

[TerranBrackiatt]

Looks like you're in great shape! Quick question, are you OCing at all in those pics? Forgive me if I'm blind and missing already stated specs.

you're forgiven, but it'll cost you 3 pounds of thick sliced applewood smoked bacon... yeah, it's OC'd to 4GHz in the P95 tests. so far nothing else pushes it over 50C-ish.

 

[MattMan657]

you're forgiven, but it'll cost you 3 pounds of thick sliced applewood smoked bacon... yeah, it's OC'd to 4GHz in the P95 tests. so far nothing else pushes it over 50C-ish.

Acceptable punishment. I too am a fan of bacon.