[Build Log] Obsidian 800 degrees Water Cooled

[givmedew]

EDIT: The new name of this build is going to be the Obsidian 800Degrees Sleeper. After the idea of modifying a car in a sexy and powerful manner but keeping it look as if it rolled off the lot like that and not and giving no hint to whats under the hood. Except in this case we have to use our imagination because the hood has a gigantic plexi glass window in it!
END EDIT:

This is my very first build log. I have built tons of computers since my first computer at the age of 12 18yrs ago. I will be making a build log for a second computer next week. It will be a Lian case with water cooling for my wife and an i7 for my wife.

The list:

Special:

• 2024 T-Class digital amplifier wil be inside the case and the case will have speaker wire terminals on the back to hook up my speakers.
• Bottom 2 hard drive mounts will be gutted to make room for 240 Rad
• Autometer vehicle water temp gauge to monitor water temps (just for looks)
• Custom VRM cooling and back of motherboard cooling leads to lowered CPU temps
• I have tons of super bright LED of all colors including ultra violet will be mixing white and ultra violet LEDs in specific locations
• No spill quick disconnects with a shut off valve between them will allow me to use an external radiator in a stand with the valve closed. After disconnecting the external radiator I can open the valve and the water can continue through the loop. The other option is I will make a 4 inch hose with quick disconnects on it and when not using the external radiator I can complete the loop by connecting the tub.
• 24Bit DAC w/ headphone amplifier will try to custom mount it so its just part of the front of the case.

Case and cooling:

• Obsidian 800D
• 3x CM excaliburs on a TFC X-Changer 360 Rad
• 4x CM Blade Masters on a EK 240 Rad
• XSPC 750lph pump/res combo
• Apogee HD CPU Block
• 3 Blue Antec 120mm fans for cooling the inside of the computer
• T-Balancer bigNG fan, pump, lighting controller.
• Bracket that will hover over the top of the VRMs allowing me to put 2 40MM fans over the VRMs
• High speed 80mm fan for behind the motherboard
• Bitspower 3/8x5/8 fittings
• Autometer water temp gauge (boost gauge in picture using as a template)
• EK GTX 580 water block
• EK GTX 670 or swiftech 82 universal water block

Electronics:

• Asus P8Z68-V Gen3
• Intel i5 2500K 4.4GHz undervolted
• Vengeance 8GB Dual Channel 1866MHz Red LP
• 64GB Crucial RealSSD used for Intel Rapid Response
• 300GB Velociraptor used as main drive with Intel Rapid Response
• 1TB Samsung Spinpoint 7200
• 1TB Western Digital Green
• Asus GTX 670 DirectCUII
• EVGA GTX 580 (for physx)
• PC Power + Cooling Turbocool 1KW PSU 83% efficiency
• Bigfoot Networks Killer 2100 Ethernet card
• eSata 600 Raid Controller with port multiplier capability can run 6 drives off 2 esata connectors. I use this for my thermaltake hard drive dock.
• no dvd-rom will use use esata when needed.

Computer Room Audio and Video:

• NuForce DAC w/ headphone amp
• Tripath T-Class amplifier 2024 chip
• Martin Logan Encore TF Speakers
• HP 24" 1920x1200

Living Room Audio + Video (HDMI cable goes through wall to computer)

• Pioneer Elite Receiver
• Vienna Acoustics Floor Standing
• Vienna Acoustics center channel
• Jamo bi-pole side surround
• Jamo rear surround.
• Hitachi Director Series 42" Monitor (1 single input) has game mode to turn off any processing that would cause latency

I'm sure I am forgetting something but I will fill that in when it comes to it.

Here comes the pictures

Picture of everything that I have right now. Still waiting on the water block gtx 580 and the radiators. You can see the Martin Logan Speakers and You can see the floor standing vienna acoustics.

A close up of all the fans and little parts.

This is the T-Class chip amp. Sound quality wise they are almost on par with multiple thousand dollar A only amps and tube amps. I will be installing this inside the computer using the 12v power supply to power it and will be adding speaker terminals to the case.

 

[givmedew]

TFC X-Changer came in Friday.

Lapped my CPU Block saturday

 

[hokiealumnus]

Ooo, this looks like fun. Subscribed!

 

[xZEROx]

Subscribed too.

 

[givmedew]

So I am changing the name of this thing to "The 800Degrees Sleeper" Does anyone know if a MOD can change the title of the thread? Also in the tittle I would like Obsidian 800D and WC at the end so that if someone searches for Obsidian 800D WC they will get this as results! EDIT: Right after editing this I saw edit tags? So I guess just the name change is needed.

UPDATE: Today I got my Apogee HD Water Block. I would start getting this thing going but I am waiting on one very important part before I can start! I do not yet have TFC X-Changer Triple Radiator.

I don't want to start because I could not tell from the pictures if this had the normal fan spacing or if the fans all have a gap between them. The oldest ones from this manufacturer had gaps between the fans and eventually they stopped doing that. If it does have gaps I don't know what I am going to do! I may do some cutting but I doubt it. If I am going to CUT to get a radiator up top then I am to make a quad radiator fit. If I do the quad it will NOT have 4 fans up top still just going to be 3 fans on top 4 fans on the bottom. I do not want to compromise the factory look on the outside.

I want this case to kind of be a sleeper. Like all the sports cars I have ever owned the exterior never screamed aftermarket. The most I would do is buy the optional body panels from the manufacturer. I always tried to keep it from being to loud! Then when you pop the hood BOOM bigger turbo large fmic large BOV with BOV exhaust re-routed to the intake.

 

[givmedew]

Still NO RADIATOR!!! I am waiting for the TFC X-Changer Radiator to get started. I was expecting it on thursday at the latest since it was quoted as being delivered by wednesday or thursday. Because of monday being a USPS holiday I was ok with it being thursday but now it looks like I am going to be waiting till tomorrow or monday. If monday I am upset. I kinda got screwed by 4 people at once with this monday being a holiday thing. It is on everyones top list of excuses as to why they didn't get my stuff shipped on time. When everything was paid for last friday they could have shipped it all on saturday and some of these people have waited till wednesday to get around to it.

OH ERRRRR DING DONG!!!

Speak of the DEVIL!!! Radiator is finally where it belongs. Now I can get cracking on this thing.

Wish me luck!

 

[givmedew]

Ooo, this looks like fun. Subscribed!

Recognize the motherboard?

 

[hokiealumnus]

Why yes, I do.

 

[givmedew]

I am having problems figuring out how to mount the radiator to the top of the case with the fans on the top of the radiator. Putting screws through the top then through the fan and into the radiator seems impossible I cant line everything up that easily. Any ideas?

To make maters worse the fans are coolermaster excaliburs and the holes for the screws are connected to each other instead of tabs with holes in them so it takes away the idea I had to use short screws on the lower tabs and fan screws on the upper tabs to hold it to the case.

 

[hokiealumnus]

You might need to ggrav some screws from the hardware store. My memory isn't great, but I'm fairly certain standard radiator screws are 6-32. Take one of yours to the store to compare. I keep a variety of lengths on hand just so I don't have to go back and get more.

(If screw lengths are your problem of course.)

 

[givmedew]

Even just getting the screw through the fan and into the rad is a problem. I need studs but turns out that I think I have #4 threads not M either but # like what goes into a cd-rom drive. If I had studs I would be able to put the fans over the studs push the rad up through the holes and bolt them down.

 

[givmedew]

Well it turns out that the threads where M3 and I found a hardware store that had them. Now I just have to figure out how to hold the radiator up will I screw through the top of the case through the fans then into the radiator.

Also today partially lapped my CPU. I did this since I bought it used from a member and he did not tell me before shipping it that it had 2 deep nicks in it. The metal came up a little around the nicks as well. I am not sure if this was a major issue but if it has any chance of hurting the cooling I wanted it fixed as much as possible.

So I lapped the CPU and found that 1 of the sides was much higher than the others and that on side was higher but not as bad.

I could not get the nicks out completely but you can barely feel them now when running your finger over the processor. I wet sanded it with 600 then 1500 sand paper. Would have used 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 but the hardware store only had 600 and 1500.

This picture shows the dents or nicks or whatever you want to call them. Something sharp must have slammed into the processor pretty hard. I am a little upset that I was not told about this. I had another guy who wanted $10 more for the CPU which I would have happily done if I knew there was damage.

You can see in this image from where the coper is how much area was uneven. You can also still see both nicks.

 

[givmedew]

Friday night I had gone to the hardware store and swore up and down that #4 was the correct thread because M3 didn't seem to go in. Turns out all the holes are just slightly stripped not a lot. So I have to be careful. I went to a different hardware store saturday and bought some M3 bolts and they ended up working just fine. So now my 360 rad with 3 CM Excaliburs above the radiator pushing are into the radiator and case.

I know that a lot of people would tell me to put the fans underneath pushing air up and out of the case but air does not have much capacity for cooling so if you are pumping warm case air into the fans and radiator you will not get nearly the cooling. The fan on the back of the case will be a 140MM fan once I get around to making a trip to Fry's Electronics.

Some people might even try to say the pull is better but it is NOT.

If you guys have any ideas please let know

 

[hokiealumnus]

I pull out with my rad fans just for practical purposes. The fans needed to be external (you've seen my build & its complications) and I needed them for exhaust. Truth be told, "better" is very relative when you're talking ambient cooling. You're talking under five degrees generally. While that IS a difference, it's not going to make or break an overclock. In my experience, it takes going from one type of cooling to another to noticeably impact an overclock (i.e. going from water to single stage; then single stage to dry ice, then to LN2).

The only way to make the rad fans intake for practical purposes is if you reversed airflow in your case, using the front fans as exhaust and the rear 140mm plus the rad fans as intake, as the single 140mm rear fan probably can't exhaust four intake fans' worth of air very well.

 

[givmedew]

I pull out with my rad fans just for practical purposes. The fans needed to be external (you've seen my build & its complications) and I needed them for exhaust. Truth be told, "better" is very relative when you're talking ambient cooling. You're talking under five degrees generally. While that IS a difference, it's not going to make or break an overclock. In my experience, it takes going from one type of cooling to another to noticeably impact an overclock (i.e. going from water to single stage; then single stage to dry ice, then to LN2).

The only way to make the rad fans intake for practical purposes is if you reversed airflow in your case, using the front fans as exhaust and the rear 140mm plus the rad fans as intake, as the single 140mm rear fan probably can't exhaust four intake fans' worth of air very well.

I was thinking about having the rear exhuast still exhuast and putting a 140mm fan where there is a spot where the motherboard area is separated form the power supply area.

What front fans are you talking about? This case doesn't have any fans in the front of it? If it does I really overlooked something LOL

 

[givmedew]

Whoops I re-orginized my photos and the links all went dead.

As an update the reason I have not posted any updates as of late is that I totally got screwed over on stuff that I had ordered. Not only was it delayed, it was slow shipping, and then the nail in the coffin is that instead of William Murphy on the package it said something William's so the post office person was told no body lives hear by that name. Of course I wasn't home. So now it is all on the way back to the shipper.

So to keep myself and to give myself an actual computer to use. I went a head and installed most of the stuff. I have to wait on the amplifier because I ordered some very special parts that have to be custom ordered by the company than sent to me.

I also built my wifes computer. I'll post some pics of it too. Super sexy set up.

 

[txus.palacios]

Pwease, upload the pics to OCF system.

 

[givmedew]

Pwease, upload the pics to OCF system.

I didn't know that was an option. How do I do that?