Watercooling 101-A watercooling Noobs first try

[Fogey]

Well Lets see Tue. night from 1700 hrs. till 2300 hrs.- Wed. from 0730 hrs. till 2400 hrs.-Then Thur. from 0800 till 2230 hrs. and still only about 80% done on my water cooled Asus SLI SOON to be water cooled rig. Job type work beckons at 1500 hrs. so limited as what will get done today.

FIRST big mistake I made. I've built over a dozen high end gaming systems, so nothing to this I thought . So, why not work on the water cooling rig project plus I'll work on the P4 2.53 Folding at home machine at the same time. No Problem... I'll just use this old P3-1 GHZ machine for the P4-2.53 MB. Just need to take all the old-old MB + other goodies out of the case and put in the old- newer 2.53 MB and so forth. Then I'll take the Asus MB + other goodies out of it's case and put it in my brand new, new case for the water cooling project 101 noob. Let's see, parts all over my bed, floor, desk, kitchen table and floor. Yep, this looks about right. Where did I put that Danger Den Northbridge Cooling block. 20 minutes latter it's found under a box of other computer parts. Oooooops we're missing two of the four thick nylon washers for the all thread. Found some old thin red plastic washers and put them on the up side of the MB where there is only the pressure of the nuts holding the all thread to the MB. Had enough for now, I'm using the tubing that came with the koolance kit for this project. I'll look into more exotic tubing in the near future on another water cooling project. Thanks

[FZ1]

This is why I started with a kit. Got the Swiftech kit and it took me a just few hours to get it going. On a 42% OC"d dual core opty running 1.595v my temps never reach 40c at load. The custom kits might run a little cooler but it's not going to make a difference. I'm considering the new corsair WC rig for my backup PC.

[kenc51]

I feel your pain buddy!!!
On Christmas eve I got my current motherboard, I expected to spend ~20mins to get it all together......But I decided to add a second HX (rad) to the loop.....This should have taken me another 10mins.......

I started all this @ 23:00 christmas eve.....I eventually got everything up and running @ ~4am
http://forums.legitreviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=3971

Even the easiest thing on a pc can take time...........(I learned this the hard way LOL)

[Bio-Hazard]

A big thing to remember is to keep you tubing runs as short as possibe and cleanly run without any kinks. Longer tubes and kinks cause un-needed and un-wanted flow restriction.
Remember that the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line, also use as few fittings as possible (they are also a flow killer). Nice gentle curves are better than more fittings.
Just a little tip............

[Dragon_Cooler]

ahhhh yes the avatar is making more sense now. LOL

[Fogey]

Well, Watercooling 101 Noob style is going to be put on hold. Earn $ type work requires me at 1500 hrs. Due to overtime and callout issues and me being first to be called, I proably won't get to work on it much till next Fri..
Then I'll be on my 4 day weekend and I'll take two days vacation and get off the callout list, plus my youngest will be on spring break.

Bio: Thanks for the advice, I'm only watercooling the CPU and NV4 Chipset. Tubes are no longer than needed. Made for some interesting wiggle time getting my two GTX 7800 boards in their slots with the hoses short.

I'm now at 95% complete on this Asus watercooling project. It was in a full size Server case and I moved down to a mid tower. Only so much room. Made for some interesting "Fun".

FZ1: I got the koolance kit it's just that I added in the Danger Den chipset cooler as the cipset fan died on my MB. Since I neede to pull the MB out to put /install another cooler I thought what the heck, lets move it to another case and go from there. I got future plans for the old big Server case.

Thanks for the help/remarks/posts from the rest of you. Every little bit helps. I'll keep you posted on how this old Noob fairs out once I get it done. Thanks

[Fogey]

Yesterday My first try at a water cooling project was/is complete[after 40 hours]. I really like the new case, but its a tight fit to get inside the case to hook up various connections and so forth. I jumpered out a old Power supply to prime the watercooling system with fluid[mct-5] and let it run for an hour. Everything was good, NO LEAKS! The system is up and running and my SLI gaming rig is good to go. I have not OCed it yet as I'm still in awe and taking all this neat new toy, sorry, hardware in. I really like the fact of how quite this rig is now. WOW, what a difference. My old dual slot Leateck 6800s would not of allowed me to use the danger Den chipset cooling block. Good thing I switched over to the EVGA single slot 7800 gtx. I only have about 1/64 inch clearance between the screw holding down the cooler to the graphics card. Just for a test run I loaded the end of Doom 3 and played it out to the finish. For all you sharp eyed folks out there in computer land that can see it, Yep, I'm on the level, picture three proves it. Sweet. Ouch..... Damn, something just bit me. Dang, its a water bug. Thanks [/img]

[kenc51]

Sweet.....Do you have a camera? We'd love to see some pics!!!

Have you checked your temps aswell?

[Fogey]

Take a look at the Koolance manual for jump starting a Power Supply.

[pmanipole]

nice job.

you have a lot of stuff crammed into one case. do you have problems with airflow?

[Fogey]

HDD drive area-no. It's drawing air in from the bottom of the case through some vents. The two fans for the Kollance unit plus the rear case fan next to the cpu block generate enough draw that if I have the front case cover closed[hinged door], my temps go up by 3 deg. cel.. I think this is because the fans cause negative case pressure in the area of the MB and hence draw the warm air from the Powers supply/HDD area up into the case. Once I opened the front case door and let air in direct via the top bay slot which has the Koolance circut board in it, the temps went down by 3 deg. cel in about one minute. I'm going to modify the upper bay insert to allow air flow through it so as not to cause a negative pressure and the two fans for the koolance unit will have a direct path of fresh cool air to them along with the MB without sucking air from the HDD/PS area. Once one closes the front case door, theres no way for air to get in through it as the door is well sealed with rubber gaskets. When I'm using the rig, I'll just have the door open for better air flow. Not over Clocking while running Doom 3 yesterday the highest temp I got was 40 c. Idle doing nothing is around 31 c. Keep in mind, I'm up here in North Western PA and its been in the 20s outside and this is a old house. Air going into the case is about 68 far.. I got my long weekend coming up this FRI-SAT-SUN-MON- with TUE -WED for vacation. So six days off and it will be game/play time. Ohhhhhhhh Yeahhhhhhhhh...................... In a couple days I'll make the images smaller so it will load faster

[Bio-Hazard]

Man you have as much stuff in your system as my son does................. I can see why you were have a hard time connecting everything..............

[Fogey]

I took care of the Air flow problem in the MB area by using the top bay drive cover and drilling/punching out four holes and then cutting a Scotch Brite Pad to fit it for the filter element. Take a look-e see.

[Bio-Hazard]

That should help out............... Every little bit of air flow helps................

[smack323]

why even use a case - i just lay all my parts on the table and crank the AC - and hit the ceiling fan.