My fellow AW brothers a look into my current addiction

Thanks you, Perfect Stranger..

Thanks for the suggestions and thoughts.

Did some work today.

Put the optional PSU support bracket in.



Since I am not using the 3.5 HD bracket in the bottom I removed the plate wight he slots for the bracket. I put the 120.2 fan blank plate that came in the front left intake fans int he boom to cover the two 120 fan holes. I now have a even smooth platform for cable routing and tie downs.



I moved the fans from the top of the case that were in pull down to a push position through the rads. This allows me to use the shorter top instead of the industrial looking extended top.



Going this route forces me to put my two reservoirs on the flex bay side. this is how i have come up with mounting them. Along with the 240 rad.









And this is the reason no 3.5 hd rack mount int he bottom The third 360 rad is in the bottom.



I will take more details/glamour shots when I start getting closer to finish and when I am finished. Thanks everyone for looking and following.

 

That looks unreal

 

that my pc not as good as the above

 

Nice build so far :thumbsup: Mines not quite as flash...

 

Got the motherboard blocks installed last night. I will work on getting all the GPU water blocks installed tonight. I am now also fitting the motherboard int eh case and will start deciding on tubing.


More Pr0n of the Asus, EVGA and EK.... Quite a few pics, sorry....

My Pentium II buddy I have had for many man years. I got it with my PII-400 CPU.. Wow.. He has never been in glamour shots before so he is happy.











The triple threat...















And last but not least... The Rampage..

 

Wow, that's really amazing. Especially the waterblocks on the Rampage.

 

Thank you Brother Fox!!

 

Love it. Really like the rampage water blocks. I can't wait to see this fully built.3 super clocked 780ti's.. Yum

 

That's art and loving it I run out of money to do water cooling after my 2 titan oc editions lol

 

Coming together VERY nicely indeed. :thumbsup:

 

I'm not sure, but my senses are tingling....but with all of those fans....and the cube shape...massive compute power....3D video capability......I think we are watching the assembly of an autonomous terminator cubedrone...something inherently evil about the looks of this as assembly progresses..skynet?....hmmm

I love it!

 

Small update... and please excuse the crappy iphone pics. Didn't have time to drag out all the dslr stuff.

Was home form work yesterday and spend all day working on the build.

Got the two SSD's mounted inside the hidden hard drive tray and my two mechanicals underneath.



After staring at the motherboard and trying my box of fittings for 2-3 hours I found a combination that fits, yay!





I will post pics of the video cards next. But being the first time cutting acrylic and using the monsoon hardline kit I bought. I spent probably 2 hours getting the sli links cut and edges shaved. I did learn a few things along the way. The most important thing learned was its much easier to cut acrylic if you have tape around the area your cutting. I do have the triple sli ek fc bridge but decided to do acrylic tubing with fitting instead.

The next big issue was the stupid rubber cord in the monsoon kit for inserting in tube for bending does not fit. I bought the 16mm (red monsoon kit) but it will NOT fit in the ek 16mm acrylic tube. I even tried lube!

The next thing I learned was you cannot bend acrylic without a tube in it. I pretty much knew that but I wanted to try anyway. So ANOTHER order to the online watercooling gods for more bending tools.

 

This is a tough case for me to work with while trying to keep it looking good. Soft tubing would have definatley been a lot easier. But no!!!! I had to decide to do acrylic... Anyways I got my EK acrylic kit today so now I did my first bend. So far so good.. Anyway, my first bend was beautiful. Something said make sure the bottom radiator will firing I go straight down in the opening. Well, hell no. Another road block and decision to make... Ugh..



The tube bend goes down into the hole in front of the motherboard. The issue is when the rad is in the bottom there it closes off half the hole so it doesn't line up with the pipe straight over from the gpu. So I have to try to bend a slight angle over and then down again. Or I might just bend it 90 over towards the 24pin motherboard connector just before the hole and then bend it down in the opening behind the flex bays.

 

Another update...

Here is the result of 5 hours lastnight. When you think you've spent enough and ordered more than enough you don't! I ran out of 90 fittings and need a couple more. That's good though I am ordering some lighting I think. So I hope to have it filled and leak testing by mid-end of the week.

Either my 12th time measuring before marking and bending or I got lucky.



Test fit and mounted the aquacomputer flow meter and temp sensor mounted under the mid-floor.



Mounted up and the fittings with 90 up through the hole for the acrylic over to front then up to the rad with some bitspower flow bling for the cool factor







I'm converting so primochill advanced just in the bottom rad with a drain. I think the temp soft tube conversion in the bottom gives me some flex for pulling the rad out to do maintenance. Then the bitspower splitter converts it back to acrylic with the 90 coming up through the bottom.

I'll take more and better details pictures when it's all connected and ready for leak testing.

 

How is the build coming along?

 

It has been incredibly hard for me to resist the ROG impact board with full cover water block and a 295x2 all under water cooling *sigh*

Hopefully this system has not burst when he tested it

 

That's an apocalyptic build mr vulcan
those reactors fans then, I wonder if your pc will take flight as you turn them on

Waitin for a brotherpath update now

 

Yeah its a fine build indeed. That tubing is so damn clean. Well done.

 

HEY BROTHERS!

After a long 3 weeks of fixing some tubing issues and a couple leaks and changing some acrylic tubing fittings to the new EK acrylic compression fittings I now have it up and running.

ALWAYS ALWAYS leak test with just pump/pumps plugged into PSU and jumper your PSU to come on and leave all other components unplugged. Anyway start filling with distilled water for the first time to leak test with and got it 90% full and soon as the pressure form my two ddc pumps buily water sprayed out of the tube coming up out of my pump tot he first memory water block. DAMN!!!!! got to test my drain vavles I put in place. Got it all drained. Discovered that acrylic run form the pump tot he first memory water block was slightly short and wasn't seated all the way down in the fitting coming out of the pump. Tried of it for the day. Took me a couple days and got a new piece bent and cut.

Started filling with distilled water again. Got it all full and it ran beautifully.. Ran leak test for 4 hours. Decided to go ahead and drain and put my blood red coolant in. Got it all filled rand for a few minutes, shook pc around, turned pumps on and off a few times, AWESOME no bubbles. WARNING and thank god I was on the dinning room table with hard wood floor. I was sitting on the couch, system leak testing for 5'ish hours, I hear a pop and gush of water! I YELL F%^k and flew of the couch. Caught it before res tubes ran dry so the pumps never got dry, thank goodness. !!!!!!!

The same tube I just replaced popped out on the top this time form the memory water block. It just popped out like someone grabbed a hold of it and pulled it out. The tube was cut perfect and beveled just right. My only guess is have the original EK acrylic fittings they are just double o-rings and theming straight out of the dual ddc pump top was to much pressure. At this point my wife is like get this the hell out of here. Off to the garage I go with my tail between my legs.

At this point I am just tired of looking at this thing, want to start using this again, contemplating putting it all back on air and just having fun with it. Bright idea, ill just switch over the main runs to soft tubing. Spend 6 hours switching it. Absolutely hated the way it looked.



About this time, Performance-PCs emails me with new products in stock, low and behold 16mmm EK acrylic compression fittings. So another $500 order for fittings and few other things I needed a order was placed. LUCKY I kept all my acrylic tubes I spent hours on bending. I pulled them out, cleaned them up stuck it all back together. Flushed all the blood red coolant you see out and leak tested with distilled water for 5 days straight in the 115 degree garage, NO LEAKS!

Discovered that blood red coolant just wasn't going to match anything, cables or fans. Bing another light goes off, Mayhems pastel red! Performance-PC's here I come again! But wait have to order other stuff to so another few hudred more for demciflex filters, tools, cooland and led lights I decided to do.

Drained the distilled and filled with pastel red, leak test another 4-5 days.

Week and a half vacation inserted here. Jet lag, recovery time, get back in to the swing of things..

Brings us to the next post:

 

SLOW INTERNET WARNING!!!!!!

My friends I am nearing completion finally! These are some detailed shots on the inside and some on the outside without the case labs skins. I am working with a local client of mine on some ideas got the outside of the case so he has the skins in his shop working no ideas for me. I will update final pictures with the outside of the case snapped on when that is complete.

I am not showing detail pictures behind the bottom rad. But it consist of another drain valve like seen on the other side, the aquacomputer flow meter and temperature gauge going tot he Aquaero 6xt. As well as all the excess cables from the fans, swiftech pwm splitters etc. Once I have time to try to straighten them out and if anyone is interested in how I did the tubing underneath I will take some pictures.

I talked with 3 cable guys and showed them my layout. They pretty much all said doing custom cabkles with color stripes or whatever would be of a big benefit in my situation. It is to cramped to try to curve and keep straight 9 gpu cables and the atx cable. So I will just leave the bundle pulled together as is for now. The biggest eyesore in my opinion but it is what it is.

Maybe some redundant pictures but I will upload them anyway.

Thank you everyone.. More to follow after these with full case shots and the lighting.















































Last but not least, something to enjoy all the FPS with.

 

That's some mighty fine hardware... an addiction worth having, indeed! You've done an awesome job! +1 Rep

 

That is truly impressive.....what an awesome job you've done. I've watched all along, my hat goes off to you, Sir......simply amazing work!! repped big time.

 

Thank you very much Brother Fox and Brother steviejones133. It has been great journey, lots of cursing, sweating and near mental/nervous breakdowns but I live for that stuff. I have learned ALOT from this kind of build. So if anyone is planning or wanting to start a water-cooled build and has any questions or wants to bounce ideas off me ill be glad to try to help in any way i can..

 

Just have to post again so i don't end the night on post 666..... Well nevermind its 686... My eyes are failing me from all this tedious work haha. Sucks getting old... Getting old isn't for sissies ill tell you that...

 

No, it's definitely not for sissies. You know you're getting older when stuff like this starts to sound like common sense...

 

Lol! Very true.

 

Wow....that looks a million bucks...very very nice...congratts:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

You have done a very nice job. I see x99 in my future. You have inspired me to do the same thing. I can build computers, but can't plumb. Question . How much does it cost for a water cooling setup like that? How do you know what to order? Fittings, tubes size, reservoir . It's driving me mad.

You really did do a good job. Now let's overclock that thing and see what the temps are.

 

Man that's some insane dedication, I'd never have the patience for a full loop, much less acrylic tubing. My hats off to you sir.

 

Thank you all for the great comments and feedback.

I am finishing this one up as much as I am going on it this week and have already preliminary started planning my next build. Gets addictive, wife is going to kill me.. If I am not on the boards within a few days call the police, she probably has done me in.

Ill be glad to help anyone out as much a I can with questions, advice and just to bounce ideas off of.

pa2806n - First thing I learned is get the case in hand first to see what you have to work with. But if you know how many GPU's etc you will have then you can gauge the amount of radiators and space you need. Typically ive read you need at least 120mm of space per waterblock. So if you have a cpu and two GPU's in sli you need at least a 360mm rad. This seems a little weak to me personally especially if your going to go mad overclocking. I would opt for a larger 480 if the case would support it, if not two 360's.

Fan time!!! Decide the fans you need. Now I like the customization of the corsair fans. I ordered 30 fans. Then after muich reseach found out Corsairs implementation of their PWM signal is strange and not standard. So only options were just let them run at full speed all the time (HELL NO! for me anyway), run them as DC rans and get a crazy powerful fan controller to control them. I wanted a more automated approach and Aquacomputer has a new version of the Aquaero 6xt controller that can control 8-10 fans per header and there is 4 fan headers. Awesome found my answer! well now this thing does a heck of a lot more than fan control, it will monitor water flow, water temp and other temps around the case. So $450 worth of fan controller it became. But decide on the fans you want and how many.

After tons of research I have personally determined in such a higher end water build push pull fan setup will make 1-3 degrees difference, well depending on the radiator you choose. The EKWB coolstream rads and the alphcool rads have wide spaced fins so they have better air flow. Only one set of fans was needed IMO. This worked out because push pull in my s8 case was just to tight unless I went with the extended top which killed my esthetics vision I had. So another point I ended up with 17 extra fans. So plan that accordingly.

So now you decided on a case based on the hardware youll have and researched max radiators and sizes. I would highly recommend getting the rads and test fitting them in the case with the motherboard, gpu and psu etc. This will let you visualize the everything better. I made the rookie mistake of looking at measurements of the case and rads and went crazy ordering everything before I had the case. It takes CaseLabs generally a week to get a case build and shipped. So even with the EK rads and not monsta thick rads I was pushing it to fit three 360mm rads with all the other extra hardware I chose. I also ordered a 240 rad to go up front and it just would not fit because I chose two 250ml reservoirs. If I had ordered to smaller 150ml res and moved them to a undesirable place for my vision then it would have fit.

Next decide brand and type of fittings. I first bought the smaller 12mm tubing and fittings. After looking more around the net I just hated how small it looked so I ordered all 16mm fittings and tubing. Then decided I want acrylic so I ordered 16mm acrylic tubing and fittings. Between all this weeks passed by so I could not return NOTHING. So I have enough extra stuff for two more builds From my experience so far I will not use anything other than compression fitting for acrylic or soft. Gives me the piece of mind that things are as tight as they can be and hopefully wont pop off and or leak like my leak testing did before I replace the acrylic fittings with new compression fittings ek just came with.

Choose the pump type, top and reservoir that will work for your case. I almost is a matter of space you have and the looks you like at this point for that. D5 pumps seems a little quitter ddc pumps a little more powerful. I am running dual ddc pwm pumps and you cant hear them at all unless the fan controller kicks them up higher to cool more. But they are still way quieter than air cooled systems.

I think the trick to choosing tubing and fittings are just make sure you buy the same name brand for both. Ive read some bitspower acrylic fittings will not work with ek tubing even though they are both 16mm, if you so choose 16mm as your size. So I would look at going all EKWB or all bitspower or primochill etc and stay away from mixing them up. I think this will help with compatibility and other strange issue sin the future. Remember you need TWO fitting for everything that's inline in the loop. So in my case I have 3-360mm rads, 6 waterblocks, one aquacomputer temp probe, 2 flow meters, the pump top has in and out and two reservoirs. So that makes 34 fittings needed.

Here you visualization even more and as usual I tried visualizing before I had stuff in hand, case, components, rads and waterblocks. So I have crap tone more 90 and 45 fittings than I needed. But you need to go ahead and lay all this out get the blocks installed and everything in the case. this will help you see how many 90degree, 45, 5-10-20-30-40mm extensions, and any other odd fitting to make things work together. That way you don't way over order or under order and have to order more paying extra in shipping etc. Also decide on the type of drain system you want. I used two bitspower mini ball value's. Find a place in your loop that you can possibly mount them. Generally you want to keep the drain line the lowest point in your case. I have a t-type splitter coming out of my pump with the drain line and the other part going up to my first waterblock. another on the otherside split off my tube goingt o the bottom rad. I needed two because the horizontal layout of the MB and the rads being in the ceiling, it basically split the system in half. Tycnically I only need one on the bottom and I could tilt and turn and shake to get more out, but I tried to make maintenance easier.

So now you have a Case, components with waterblocks installed, pump and res picked out, decided on the fitting types and counts. You can gauge how much tubing you need. Soft tubing I highly recommend one of the tubing cutters form xspc, phobia or house brand of PPCS. If acrylic, stay away form the monsoon cutting kit. I wasted $100 on that things. The soft tube you need to insert for the acylic bend is to big.. I ordered the 16mm kit but the bending tube will not fit into the 16mm ek acrylic. I ended up ordering the $15 acrylic EKWB kit form PPCS and using the acrylic reamer form the monsoon kit. You can get just the reemer for $5 and the ek kit for $17 and have about all you need. I did opt to get the Primochill Rigid bender, that thing worked amazingly well.

Always put that 45 edge on the tube before putting into the fitting. But I always do one and measure how far the tube goes in the fitting so I know how much to cut between fitting and allow for the seating of the tube in the fitting. Also for strange and weird bends I started using a wire coat hanger and bending it to my taste then it gave me a template to bend the acrylic with.

Get it all plumped up. I did hours and days od research on coolant. I would personally recommend EK coolant or Mayhem pastel or x1, depending on your build color scheme. I started with blood red but it was to dark and then fell in love with the pastel colors. Ek has new pastels but they are a collaboration with Mayhem so I think either name brand coolant is fine. After getting it all plumped, take a role of paper towels and start puttinh one sheet under every fitting you have. Either buy a jumper or jump your PSU so it will come on without being plugged into your motherboard. Plug ONLY your pump in. I recommend leak testing with distilled water only. Once you know it is leak free than you get to test your drain setup. drain all the distilled out and fill with whatever coolant you decide. I would recommend coolant over just distilled water, it has nice antifungal and bacterial elements in it allowing you to run the system longer and with mixed metals better than distilled water. That's my personal opinion.

PREP to all this, clean the crap out of your rads. I filled shook and emptied my rads with boiling water several times. I then mixed 1:1 white vinegar with hot water filled and let them sit for 3-4 hours then flushed again with hot water a few times. Did two final rinses with distilled water. This is per rad. I wanted to make sure they were as free from manufacturer debris as I could.

Also build the system on air either in your case, tech station or on a table somewhere and do a proper burn-in and testing to make sure all hardware is working properly before assembling with water parts.


I tried to be detailed as I could. I am sure there are lots of spelling and grammatical errors, sorry. I can still answer any questions or try to help with the design one you give me the component types, case etc.

Take your time, don't be in a rush, triple check everything. Measure 4 times before cutting and bending tube!

GOOD LUCK

 

Hey Pathfinder. Thanks for the response. There was loads of useful information. Thanks . I am going to go with the Corsair 900D or the really tall one from Case Labs. X99 rampage v with the 5960x. Can't resist .Corsair DDR 4 2800 MHz. 2 780 kingpins. I think that I want to try 2 different loops . 1 for the CPU and one for the GPUs 250 Rez with 480 RAD for each loop. I have been watching this guy on YouTube . Singularity Computers. Have you heard of them? This guy is worth giving a look at, he is a master builder, an artist. I recommend anyone to see his videos.

I am hoping that I can get away with a $ 2000 budget for the water cooling part. I will be going with hard tubing 12mm on the water blocs and 16 for everything else.

Thanks again. For the help. I can't wait to see some benching and over clocking on that thing.

Cool, ultrahd I watch singularity, jayz2cents, mnpctech linus and couple others. Yeah man I'm a caselabs guy from this point on. My next build plan is going to be pretty crazy I think.

Good luck with your build, shoot me link to pics or build log. Check out Overclock.net - An Overclocking Community forums days of reading for watercooling...

This is the next build case.

EK put my rig on their FB page. pretty cool...

https://www.facebook.com/EKWaterBlo...77684.182927101761329/721000411287326/?type=1

 

Not sure how my post ended up in pa2806n's post.

but

Well damn, EK put by rig on their FB page and I didn't even know!

Thanks EK!


https://www.facebook.com/EKWaterBlo...77684.182927101761329/721000411287326/?type=1

 

A Mod must have decided they matched.

Nice mention

 

Yes that I strange. I like the black and red theme your going after in the picture. I am sure that you are really proud. Very cool.

 

very nice and clean look!

congrats on going with these tubes, more work, but the result is... wow!

 

Thanks guys!


A few pics with the Darkside LED lights. I started with white led's but it made the red pastel look pink. So I replaced them with Darkside red LEDs. I have them hooked up to the Aquaero and can control the brightness.

 

Looking real good. I have been checking out overclocker.net, cool place. How high can you get the 4960x to. I think you need a nice 4k monitor to top this thing off.

 

Its a great place for watercooling stuff for sure.


I will have a few finalized pictures in the next few days and results from overlocking/tweaking.


I am getting close to making my last decisions on my next build. It will be a x99/quad sli build. I will start ordering the case, mb and other misc stuff to begin with and will await the 980 release for the gpu's. Are you guys interested in me posting another build log here for my fellow AW brothers? If not I understand...

 

That's really odd. There is nothing I can see in a log that indicates that two posts were merged. It made no sense to me when I read what pa2806n posted, but that partially explains why it made no sense. Not sure what happened.

Congrats on the FB publicity... well deserved for such a nice rig.

 

How much money do you make per year before taxes?

 

Yes, sometimes I make no sense. It's more fun that way. X99. Cool . I was going to get the Rampage V at Newegg but they are sold out. They sold out in less then 24hrs after release of the board. Now people are selling them for twice what Newegg is. I will have to wait till they get more.

I think it would be a really good idea for you to post your build log on here, that way I can just follow your every move. Just kidding. I would love to see it. I think EK plans to make water blocks for the Rampage V. Don't know when tho.

 

Don't you really mean, how much do you have left after <del>wealth redistribution</del> taxes?

 

LOL wealth redistribution sounds so utopian and idealistic (not unlike socialism) when all it is is me paying room and board for convicted rapists and murderers for life. I don't get this country sometimes.

 

I can't say what I really want to because it is against forum rules and like your tag line says, "Big Brother is Watching" (and listening) and we dare not question the Der Führer und Reichskanzler.

Back on topic, and in accordance with forum rules, Brother patherfindercod, please do share more on this one and the next one.

 

lol you guys should try living in Canada for a couple years then complain about taxes and socialism (especially socialism)

love the country but the taxes and <del>Bolshevik socialists</del> egalitarians really kill me sometimes

 

Well, there is no utopia or nirvana when it comes to this...

...so, I guess "fair share" is defined by our level of tolerance and who is driving the bus, but the growing sense of entitlement, and catering to it, is unmistakable in both countries.

Further discussion belongs here: Off Topic and cannot devolve into a political discussion (and this could quickly turn into that). I probably should have either deleted your first post asking about income or just not responded to it.

 

Thanks Brother Fox.. I snuck home for a couple hours to put some heat into the system. I hope to get some solid performing numbers soon. Nice thing is no matter how hard I push the system none of the components exceed 38 degrees and I can barely hear it running.

 

Every time I look at this thread and see Path's results of the build, I want a desktop more and more. Honestly, I think I may build one after selling my AW 17. I've never built such an extensive water cooled system before, and I want to give it a shot. Path has inspired me to do so! It looks excellent, bro. Great work.

 

I'm right there with you. I'm running out of options. The M18xR2 is maxed out unless a GTX 980M SLI upgrade turns out to be a 780M SLI killer. I'm crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath about how that might turn out. The Alienware 18 has too many limitations, and the P570WM is discontinued. Plan B is a desk anchor and I would not likely be satisfied with anything less than the caliber of beast Brother Pathfindercod is causing us to drool over.

I saw the Aurora ALX went back on sale again with about a $1600 discount. I loaded my shopping cart at NewEgg with an equivalent spec component list and, contrary to what all the lying trolls would like everyone to believe about Alienware being overpriced, the cost to build my own was within $125 of the discounted maxed out config for Alienware Aurora ALX with a 4-year warranty. Ultimately, I decided to not spend any money yet. May go with an 8 core Extreme CPU in an X99 setup if I have to abandon the mobile scene due to the lack of available extreme performance laptop options.

 

The 980m does seem at least shaping up to be interesting.