Another water cooling thread

i would love to see some pics.

I've got most of the parts. They sent me the wrong CPU block, and I still managed to order the wrong size tubing. Oh well.. with that said, the correct items are being shipped. Already piecing what I can together. Just an update.

The guy means your fan choices are great for case air flow.not so much for a radiator. They're okay. So don't worry about it much. thread tape is a bit of a waste. As long as you're buying good quality compression fittings you should be fine. I use more than 12 in my setup and have never had a leaking issue.

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I ended up getting different types of fans... doing a push/pull type of setup.
Thread tape is always handy whether I use it in this system or not. Not really planning on needing it unless something proves extra difficult.

The compression fittings are very high quality. No wonder they were $10 - 20 dollars a piece. Wow.

Yeah I paid 7 usd each for mine. Let us know how it goes.

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Please go easy on me. This is just in testing phase!

congrats, looks pretty good for a first

maybe shorten that one tube that goes from rad to res, it's sagging a bit down.

leak tested yet?

how do you like the rad mount?
how do you like the fans?
did you end up getting the shroud as well?
how do you like the pump?

Yea. I only leak tested for a few hours before i couldnt stand it anymore and turned on my PC.

I will shorten the tubes all around, definitly.

The rad mount is very nice, it's good quality and its easily detachable, so I can take the radiator off and easily fill it or empty it.

I have a shroud, and I'll be able to show off more pics soon. Edit: The shroud seems a bit cheap for the price, and the also feels like a low necessity.

The pump is very silent and seems very powerful. Looks like I have room to expand with this pump as well.

Good work. I hope you enjoyed putting it all together, and it serves you well.

The shroud is simply an icing-on-the-cake type piece of equipment. It's there just to ease the low airflow hotspots that are caused by localized limited airflow around the fan hubs. Any cooling difference depends on the fan blade characteristics and fan static pressure vs. radiator fin density.

The D5 pump is about as bulletproof a piece of mainstream computer componentry as you'll likely to find. It will handle pretty much any possible future expansion to the loop that is in keeping with a mainstream desktop watercooling solution.

I notice that the room is carpeted. You may want to invest a few dollars into some fan filters -although some brands can be fairly restrictive and clog up very fast.
SInce attaching and removing conventional filters would be a pain in the a*s, you could look at magnetic filters for ease of use. If you decide to go with this option I would check temps before and after fitting to make sure they were not being too restrictive of airflow. Virtually every wc system I put together has the rads inside a filtered chassis so the problem is alleviated somewhat.
I would definitely invest in some canned air/contact cleaner or a small compressor and air-gun attachment. Radiator efficiency degrades very sharply once dust buildup occurs over the cooling tubes and fins.
On that note. Keep a record of your install date, and set up a maintenance timetable (at least yearly, if not shorter) for flushing the system, replacing fluid, checking of connections. An overlooked part of maintenance for a lot of people is the CPU block-especially the O-ring that seals the two halves of the block together. O-rings have a pretty long life in general terms but I would still, as a matter of course, give everything a good visual inspection and disassemble/clean where necessary.

Are you suggesting to replace the rings or that they could go bad without maintenance, or to just actually open up the CPU block to clean it out thoroughly, and to do this at least once a year?

Here is the lastest pic Ive taken:

As routine maintenance on the systems I put together for customers, I would as a matter of course give everything a good visual inspection. Every year for systems with a high cycling rate (gaming) I would lift the CPU block, clean off the old TIM and reapply new thermal grease. While the block is out of the system, I usually as a matter of course, disassemble the CPU block and (very carefully) flush out the cooling channels in the block and then reassemble. If the O-ring is not elastic (showing signs of stiffness or brittleness) then it needs to be replaced.
Depending on the cooling parameters the owner is experiencing I might also change the jet plate in the block (You should have 3 or 4 alternate jet plates with the EK block, including a blank should you wish to machine you own).
The water channels (in the EK), or microfin block (other blocks including my Apogee) can quite easily become clogged over time due to deposits that sediment out from even the purest coolant (worse when some ready-to-use coolants are used).
So, your maintenance regime will probably fall into one of three categories:
1. None. Fill and forget. A surprising number of people who build a system never change anything unless a core system component is upgraded. Not necessarily a recipe for disaster, but cooling efficiency will drop away over time. More so if the radiator isn't cleaned regularly.
2. Routine loop flush. Probably the most common form of maintenance. Drain the loop, fill with distilled water and run (system obviously doesn't need to be running), drain and repeat if desired. Refill with new coolant, replace antibacterial/anticorrosive if used, bleed. Good to go.
3. CPU block teardown, check for signs of brittleness/discolouration in tubing (not a problem with Tygon in general unless the system is getting a lot of UV (Sun) exposure), check fittings and drain/flush/replace coolant.

How involved you want to get is entirely up to you. When making suggestions on your loop I factored in that not everyone adheres to a fastidious regime of tinkering/tweaking etc., hence pointing you towards a low-maintenance EK block, and virtually no maintenance Tygon tubing and fittings.

I see, and I've seen this before in other water tight products now that you mention it.

I was totally clueless on myself for this. Which one would I want to use? I am a big gamer and I'm getting my OC around 4.4Ghz as well as a slight OC on my graphics.

For the rest of this, you are actually making it sound easier the more you explain. I will probably fit in between the 2 and 3 category you listed. I tend to my PC a lot, considering its a major hobby of mine.

When you do things, you want to do them right and sometimes that costs a little extra money.

A personal story of mine when building this system:
I was posting here as well as another forum not so directly aimed for public help. I was asking for help and I was posting about all the parts I was listing and the video cards I was considering buying and any advice on them. More than one of them actually were treating me very bad, saying I was a ******* for buying 10" of tubing all the way to saying that as soon as I spend all this money on a water cooling system that my PC will be out of date and I will have to upgrade anyways... and that I was trying to be "cool" in posting pics of my PC and all the parts that I was "supposedly" buying. I heard all kinds of things that were hard for me to believe... but you helped set most of that straight

Anyways.. that story is quite fragmented and I'm not sure what the point of me typing this out was except that they were jealous and could not afford nice parts for their PC and had to go the cheap route, so their advice was somewhat poor purhaps. I dont visit that forum anymore.

Also, what temps would you say I should be getting with this system? Room temp around 26 degrees Celcius (I think)

Also, how would you rate my system on overall? 1 - 10, 10 being the highest.

Be completely honest, you did provide a major part in this liquid cooling system build.

With the system in "new" condition, a normal/heavy gaming load would probably be in the order of 40-45°C (normal) to 50-55°C (heavy/stress test). A lot would depend on what kind of Vcore (CPU), MCH core (chipset voltage-since you're oc'ing the RAM), Vcore/VDDC (Graphics) are running, the fan rotational speed and the relative humidity -since the latter is a big determinate on the radiators cooling efficiency.

I am loathe to "rank" a system. But from expected cooling ability and expandibility I would say a 7. Where 1 is a Tt 760i Bigwater, a 9 is something like this, this (or this) and a 10 is a full-on WC system (watercool specific chassis, pro level pumps etc.)


(@red1776...Hey G, check this one out !!!)

Thanks for your opinions.

On a stress test I seem to be getting around 57°C - 60°C

GPU gets around 53°C - 55°C during a furmark burn-in test, but CPU raises to 62°C - 63°C

These tests were taken with CPU @ 4.22GHz (38%)
GPU @ 845MHz (6%)

Please dont miss this.

After a few more minutes these temps increased to CPU @ 64°C - 65°C GPU @ 56°C - 57°C
Seems pretty steady at that right now.

The temps don't seem to bad considering that they are at 100% usage.
A lot will depend on the Vcore of the CPU, although the temps seem ok since you're dissipating 450+ watts of heat. I would also check that the rear of the chassis has access to adequate airflow. Having the chassis close to a wall or the corner of a room will seriously hinder the rad's cooling ability- remember it cannot take most of it's air from directly in front (since the chassis is in the way) and if it's pulling in relatively still air then a portion of that will be PSU exhaust.
I would assume if you are running close to 1.4v vCore then your temps won't differ too much from the chart/review below. CPU's aren't created equal so 4.22GHz can be gotten at a variety of voltages/. Likewise memory controller hub even if the RAM is running at stock voltage (1.6-1.65v I assume).

The single slot jet plate will offer the best cooling. Most HF's ship with Number 3 plate (as indicated in the pic), or sometimes Number 2 plate already fitted since these cater for virtually any watercool loop.

Here's Xtremesystems testing of the relative jet plates. As you can see, plate number one (single slot) offers the best cooling. The test setup appears to be of moderate flow similar to your loop. As you can also see the temp difference is not huge...but my motto is, if the performance is free then why not use it.

Thanks, I never posted back?

I must have typed it out and never hit Post.

I am going to change this jet plate after a bit of time, hopefully I will think of a few other reasons to disassemble everything again and drain other than just to change the jet plate.