[Coldon]

Okay, i finally took the plunge (pun intended) and invested in some high end water cooling for my rig, i placed the order for the stuff at various US stores and am still waiting for most of the components. The first package arrived yesterday so i figured i might as well be proactive and start the thread for the case mod to get that water in there...

The case is a Coolermaster stacker 830 evo, its a pretty well known case so i'm not going to show pics of the case or of me stripping it down. If you interested just google for "stacker 830 mod"...

This first post is basically the planning post, i've pretty much got most things planned out and so with skidd's help this project should take off pretty soon.



The first of many packages, the bulk of the water cooling stuff, love you PPCs. It also proved a good point that order things late at night is never a good thing cause you end up missing things, more on that later...



All the goodies



The func Surface 1030 archetype: The Greatest Mousepad Ever!! This is the second one i own now, thats how much i love them.

The watercooling components



The alphacool DDC ultra pump with the alphacool top and unfortuneatly a mini-res (what a stupid stupid purchase)... This pump is monstrous! The guys over at xtremesystems really down played the pump's power...



I got the swiftech mcr320 triple radiator and 3x yate loon medium speed ultra thin fans, fans are beautiful, super quiet pushing out around 65cfm and only 20mm thick.



I bought the mcw60 with the g80 retention bracket, but i forgot to add extra heatsinks, i need around 16 for the GTX and i only have 8. Now i have to try and source vga heatsinks locally, if anyone has some vga sinks lying around I'd be grateful if you gave/sold them to me...

Case Mod Planning

Okay so i stripped down the stacker last night, its now lying in a million pieces all over the house. I love super clean case mods so my goals are simple:

• clean up the case (a couple of stock parts suck)
  
• hide all the cables
  
• mount the radiator and the pump

I'm not planning a complex mod, i just want something clean and neat (and quiet)...

[Coldon]

Case Mod Planning: Sections to be cut



the bulk of the cutting work is on the motherboard tray, i need two opening cut into the tray for the usb and 12v power cables to come through, I will be routing them behind the motherboard tray...



The radiator will be mounted at the bottom of the case with the fans mounted externally under the case blowing air in... I bought case feet for the case and they added around 6mm to the bottom giving me a good 1.5cm of clearance between the fans and the floor...



The next thing that needs major attention is the support at the bottom of the motherboard tray. If i mount the radiator at the bottom of the case as i want to, i'll have to trim the support down.




the above two images as my proposed mounting method for the radiator and the pump...



As you can see to raise the pump above i'm going to have to either build a plexi platform for it, or use the 3.5 to 5.25 converter rails that came with my case to mount the pump in the drive bay, not sure what option i'll take yet...

[Coldon]

Case Mod Planning: Plexi Work

Below are some mockup's of what i want to do plexi wise...



first thing is to cover up exposed the motherboard tray and the crossflow mounting with a plexi sheet, i'm going to give it around 2.5cm clearance so i can route the power and sata cables under it



Next step is covering up coolermaster's abortion of a top blowhole, for a really expensive and sexy case they dropped the ball here! The stock blowhole is off center, stock aluminum and just plain fugly! I'm gonna correct this with a single sheet of plexi




The other two things that i need to do is cover up the drive bay channel on the right side and the rear of the motherboard tray, i will be running my cabling through there and since the case is open on both sides, i cant simply leave it!

[Coldon]

Case Mod Planning: Other



I really dont like the cabling for the IO panel that Coolermaster has, the usb cables use 2 super thicks cables per header, this can be reduced to a single cable, as can the flat ribbon IO header cable, i'll sleeve both of these and reduce the cable clutter. I tried stripping the plastic cabling from the usb cables but it turns out that its shielded and now i'm going to have to rewire the entire thing! sigh...

I'm also planning to add some lighting courtesy of UV leds, but that will come later

Wish me Luck !!!

[Coldon]

Water Cooling Trial Run

I figured i might as well test everything, which made me almost want to cry several times!




first i mounted the GPU water block! sexy aint she Then i attached the tubing and filled up the pump's resevoir and held thumbs!





Now the problems started!

That pump is monstrous! I couldnt for the life of me bleed the system, it created a mini vortex in the res. I just checked and the res seems to negatively affect performance and is extremely hard to bleed...



if you look at the above pic, the dotted red lines indicate where the vortex forms, and if i fill the res to the top and run it the bubbles still dont dissapear, i tried leaving it open at which point the force of the pump sprayed water across the room

I think i need to remove the res and buy a decent EK res or maybe even just use a t-line and a fillport...

sigh! I didnt think bleeding it would prove that hard!!! The flow rate seems ridiculous to me too, the water rushes through that loop like a bullet train, guys were telling me that my loop would be too restrictive and that i should get two pumps! two pumps?!??!?! what are they smoking? the fuzion CPU block is less restrictive than the mcw60!

I did notice that if i reduced the pump speed by clamping the tubing and restricting the flow rate that it seemed to start bleeding properly.. That's not right... I'm a little broke right now so i can really buy a new reservoir, maybe next month... sigh...

This post has been edited by Coldon: 14 February 2008 - 11:47 AM

[DAE_JA_VOO]

Hmmm, interesting problems indeed.

I actually helped Nawu build a very similar setup a few months ago... triple rad at the bottom, etc etc.

If i were you i'd ditch that res and get something better like one of the EKs something like that. Just my opinion

Other than that, looks good so far

[Coldon]

DAE_JA_VOO, on 14 Feb 2008, 01:12 PM, said:

Hmmm, interesting problems indeed.

I actually helped Nawu build a very similar setup a few months ago... triple rad at the bottom, etc etc.

If i were you i'd ditch that res and get something better like one of the EKs something like that. Just my opinion

Other than that, looks good so far

pics?

[DAE_JA_VOO]

Look for it. It's somewhere in the project logs section, or in the system builds section. His username is nawu

[Juju]

Don't forget to add cooling solution to the RAM on th GFX card, you don't want to fuxxor it up.

This post has been edited by Juju: 14 February 2008 - 03:14 PM

[AllBrain]

Subscribed.

[Coldon]

AllBrain, on 15 Feb 2008, 01:30 PM, said:

Subscribed.

small update: the majority of the cutting work will only happen in two weeks time, poor old skidd has had his wisdoms removed and is in pain, so we need to give him a chance to recover. Big thanks go out to him for lending me his tools and expertise

So until then i'll be buying plexi, sleeving cables, and other fun things

oh and waiting for the rest of my packages

[Coldon]

Okay i received my package from petra's tech shop (absolutely fabulous service from these guys! i highly recommend dealing with them)...



one d-tek fuzion block, one nozzle kit and two syringes of mx-2 TIM...





The d-tek customs fuzion water block





the nozzle kit and the 6.5mm nozzle installed...

I'm glad everything arrived...



Now i've been having major problems testing everything as i cant get the loop to bleed with the stupid alphacool res top... i thought adding the d-tek block would add restriction to the loop and help it bleed, i also tried coolermeister's (from xs - modding god) advice on freezing the cap to remove any air in the system and neither have worked...

The fuzion block is super noisy mainly cause i have tons of stupid air bubbles in that keep growing rather than bleeding, so i've stripped the res from the pump and i'm going to buy a t-line and try bleed the system with a t line, hold thumbs...

[Takumi]

goodluck with that T-line. I dont suppose your raddy has a small vent hole on the top sealed by a screw?

Have u made the res the highest point when venting? What I find actually works quite well is to spin up the pump for a little bit, then stopping to vent. and continuing the process for a while till its vented. The thing with running the pump is the mixing of the bubbles in the fluid throught the system. The spin and stop method works well as it moves whole bubbles along the loop until u can manually manipulate the piping etc to get the bubble to move to the res to be vented.
btw: its a method used in power stations called dynamic venting. works a charm

ANother thing i've noted, is that if u are struggling for a long time to vent your system, it might indicate a very very small air leak INTO your system from one of the joints. Its hard to see if u dont have some sort of colorant in the system, and its normally a very fine line of small air bubbles that you will be looking for.

[Coldon]

Takumi, on 17 Feb 2008, 11:07 AM, said:

goodluck with that T-line. I dont suppose your raddy has a small vent hole on the top sealed by a screw?

Have u made the res the highest point when venting? What I find actually works quite well is to spin up the pump for a little bit, then stopping to vent. and continuing the process for a while till its vented. The thing with running the pump is the mixing of the bubbles in the fluid throught the system. The spin and stop method works well as it moves whole bubbles along the loop until u can manually manipulate the piping etc to get the bubble to move to the res to be vented.
btw: its a method used in power stations called dynamic venting. works a charm

ANother thing i've noted, is that if u are struggling for a long time to vent your system, it might indicate a very very small air leak INTO your system from one of the joints. Its hard to see if u dont have some sort of colorant in the system, and its normally a very fine line of small air bubbles that you will be looking for.

thanks for the advice, the pump res is the highest point in my system, i'll chek for leaks, i'm going to by a t-line and some thinner walled tubing as the stuff i have is so thick i cant get the clamps around the barbs.

check out this thread for more details on my problems : http://www.xtremesys...ad.php?t=177141

[Takumi]

hmm. u using those nylon hose clamps? hmmmmMMMMMMM. careful with small air leaks from those things.

and hwen i mean the highest part in the loop, i mean highest by some margin. WHen u rely on natural circulation due to buoyancy, u need some minimal head difference between the source of the bubble and the highest spot to overcome viscous friction effects, so that the bubble actually moves. Also, when u spin up the pump, just do it momentarily. quick on and off should suffice. u just want to nudge large bubbles from their nooks and crannies into the loop proper so u can see them. Having them coalesce is really the ideal here. Makes seeing them and herding them to the proper place for venting so much easier.

as for vortexing, its normally due to lower than minimum suction fluid pressure. once this happens, air/gases will automatically come out of solution anyways. Doenst mean your pump is cavitating, but does result in unintentional degassing of the liquid.
what can cause this? low system pressure (not the case most of the time as its atmospheric to begin with), high performance pump that solidly drops inlet pressure, sharp 90 degree pump inlet piping, kinked/pinched inlet piping to the pump. I had a problem with degassing due to the latter issue of pipe kinking. What was happening was that the pump inlet pressure drops quite nicely, causing the pipe to compress in on itself as the inlet pressure was obviously lower than atmospheric. So the pipe constricts, and the pressure drops even further, thus lower the pressure sufficiently for degassing to occur. This was observed to be a 'frothing' in the lines. Unkinking the pipe fixed that every time.

This post has been edited by Takumi: 17 February 2008 - 11:24 AM

[Coldon]

Takumi, on 17 Feb 2008, 11:18 AM, said:

hmm. u using those nylon hose clamps? hmmmmMMMMMMM. careful with small air leaks from those things.

and hwen i mean the highest part in the loop, i mean highest by some margin. WHen u rely on natural circulation due to buoyancy, u need some minimal head difference between the source of the bubble and the highest spot to overcome viscous friction effects, so that the bubble actually moves. Also, when u spin up the pump, just do it momentarily. quick on and off should suffice. u just want to nudge large bubbles from their nooks and crannies into the loop proper so u can see them. Having them coalesce is really the ideal here. Makes seeing them and herding them to the proper place for venting so much easier.

as for vortexing, its normally due to lower than minimum suction fluid pressure. once this happens, air/gases will automatically come out of solution anyways. Doenst mean your pump is cavitating, but does result in unintentional degassing of the liquid. Btw, what liquid u using?

Okay i'll try elevate the pump alot then, i was planning on not having it be the highest point but rather have my res, that was before every decent res was out of stock at PPC's, i'm hopinh some test runs with a t-line will bleed the system and my stress

That damn fuzion block with the nozzle is ridiculously noisy tho so i removed the nozzle and will test again, i feel its just the little air bubbles (well so i hope)... Otherwise my watercooling will be noisier than my air. I actually got to the point where i felt like i had wasted 4k and should have rather just gotten a TRUE...

[Coldon]

Okay so i fed up and the guys on XS pointed out some key problem i'd have with that setup. So i went down to the hardware store and for R17, bought 2 metres of tubing (which turned out to be better than my $2 per foot tubing from the states), a t-line and a stopper.

I hooked everything up for a test run, not really expecting much, did the pump on off trick a couple of times, went to answer the phone, came back and realised that i couldn't hear anything The system had bled perfectly...







I'm not going to bother using the res top, what a waste of money... It may be useful in another setup but i need to have the pump at the bottom of my case and so bleeding will be impossible like that, also my loop is too unrestrictive for is to work, if had a few more blocks in my setup and the pump was mounted higher up in the loop, the res would probably work beatifully...

If anyone wonders what my fluid is: distilled water, 2 drops algaecide (overkill since the bottle say 2 drops per ten litres), and 4 drops blue food coloring

This post has been edited by Coldon: 18 February 2008 - 08:40 AM

[mrbean]

Quote

The alphacool DDC ultra pump with the alphacool top and unfortuneatly a mini-res (what a stupid stupid purchase)...

and

Quote

It may be useful in another setup but i need to have the pump at the bottom of my case and so bleeding will be impossible like that,

Erm....why on both counts?

Firstly, you don't need/want a big reservoir - why would you - go and read up on equilibrium

Secondly, why won't the setup bleed with the pump downstairs? I would luv to hear your answer on this one.

Enjoy your watercooling....and please use the small res, mounted on the pump, and leave the pump in the bottom. It works, really.

Oh yeah, to assist in bleeding, just put one drop sunlight liquid onto the water.

[Coldon]

mrbean, on 19 Feb 2008, 12:12 PM, said:

Quote

The alphacool DDC ultra pump with the alphacool top and unfortuneatly a mini-res (what a stupid stupid purchase)...

and

Quote

It may be useful in another setup but i need to have the pump at the bottom of my case and so bleeding will be impossible like that,

Erm....why on both counts?

Firstly, you don't need/want a big reservoir - why would you - go and read up on equilibrium

Secondly, why won't the setup bleed with the pump downstairs? I would luv to hear your answer on this one.

Enjoy your watercooling....and please use the small res, mounted on the pump, and leave the pump in the bottom. It works, really.

Oh yeah, to assist in bleeding, just put one drop sunlight liquid onto the water.

Basically with the pump and res at the bottom the bubble get stuck in the higher tubing. It won't stop the system from bleeding but it slows it down a ton. The other problem is with the res is there is too much turbulence, it causes a vortex and sucks in air. Since the water comes in from the side it only helps the vortex.

I don't know if you have any experience with that res but the xs guys told me its a known issue.
I've run the system for a couple of secs. Filled it up. Run it again. Fill it up. Run again. And it constantly sucks in huge bubbles. Turning it off and letting the bubbles rise by tapping doesn't work since the res is at the bottom of the loop. If i try topping up the res while running to remove any excess air just sprays water all over the place.

The t-line worked much better and simpler. That res was nothing but trouble it also negatively affects flow rate. Read the post on xs...

[Coldon]

Remember the res attaches directly to the pump top. Just to clear things up, there is No prob with the pump being at the bottom. Thats where its staying its having the res at the bottom that screwed things up.

All in all Not many people have good things to say about that res. Wish i'd known this before i ordered it, i'd just have ordered a fillport. With the t-line system took around 5 minutes to fill and bleed compared to like 3 hours i wasted trying to get the other setup bled.

Don't get me wrong I'm sure I'll manage to bleed it with the reservoir but then i'd need to freeze the cap or epoxy it. And if i try lan and move the pc around, I'll only have problems... Occams razor situation right here.

I'm on my phone right now so ignore my grammar

This post has been edited by Coldon: 19 February 2008 - 02:28 PM