Fisrt water cooling build :)

[Admiral Huddy]

Originally Posted by Bigstan

Nice work Huddy.

I've always fancied doing this myself. One of the things I am wary of is modifying the case for the rad/fans. Is there a list of cases on which you can fit this stuff without having to cut any bits of the case out? I'm sure there are a few where you can just screw the rad/fans onto, it would be handy knowing which ones are suitable.

This was certainly the biggest dilema I had, as although the Kandalf case i had is a full tower, it's poorly designed inside. After hours of "googling" and research, I didn't find one person who had successfully installed internal water cooling in the Kandalf. As a last resort, I bought the radiator first to see if it could go anywhere. The only possible place I could see was on the floor but this meant some serious modification by cutting away the lower HDD bays and the fan holes.

I then saw the the Coolermaster RC1100 Cosmos Sport, which has room at the top to house a triple rad without modification. My thinking was to buy a new case (albeit an expensive case) and get some money back on the old. This would mean less time customising. It also meant i could start the build without breaking down the system until I needed to.

According to my work shop log, the build took 7 hours over a course of 3 weeks.

[Admiral Huddy]

Originally Posted by Zirax

Check for water again when it gets warm! The pipes will expand a little once the water gets warm. Just when its running keep an eye on it for the first few days. I have had some of my connectors weep when warm.

The real interesting bit will come when you need to drain the system

For me the main reason for doing it was my X1900XTX sounded like a small turbine when playing games, also you can overclock relatively easily without needing to go mad on air cooling.

Cheeking every day mate. Played my first game on it last night and the GPU didn't go above 34c

As for the draining, yes I'm not looking forward to this when it comes to upgrading. As of yet, I have no idea how I'm going to do this as the 7/16" is very tight on the 1/2" barbs.

Going for 3.6 GHz This weekend.. My aim is 3.8 GHz.

[MarcLister]

Huddy, what kind of difference have you seen in CPU and GPU temps? Would be interested in water cooling at some point if there was a significant drop in temps and it wouldn't be too hard for me to setup.

[Admiral Huddy]

On a Q6600 overclcoked to 3.2Ghz (9x356), the CPU has shown around 13c drop on load from 59c down to 46c, I so I have a litte more room for OCing.

By contrast, the idle temps are 3c higher..??? I've been told this is normal although it makes no logical sense.

The GPU was a shock really. At 621MHz, this was running around 61c but is now only 33c on load!

Once things have settled in i'll start increasing the FSB again.

[MarcLister]

So the load temps drop but idle temps are higher? Sounds weird and as you say not logical at all.

[Admiral Huddy]

Originally Posted by MarcLister

So the load temps drop but idle temps are higher? Sounds weird and as you say not logical at all.

The chaps at ChilledPC (the owner is really very helpful) where i got the bits said it's normal and not to worry about it. Checked it all out again last night and everything is still cool.

I'm very chuffed..