Diving headfirst into the Watercooling deepend!

[SimsReaper]

So, I had been wanting to try watercooling for years, but always had other projects on the go that came before it. Finally I took the plunge 😛

Here are a few pics for everyone, sorry I didnt take more. I got so caught up in the work that I forgot to take the time.

Started out with my base system. Entrylevel gigabyte board for an i5-2500k and an NZXT Phantom case. I had bought and installed the 2 extra 200 mm fans


Then I bought a reference GTX 780. And a week later an 240GB SSD.... the and the upgrade bug bit me.... This was all just 4 weeks ago.
One week after the 780 and SSD, I had a custom watercooling loop purchased and in the mail... A Black Ice Stealth 360 rad, three Noiseblocker XL2 120mm Ultra Quiet Fans, an Alphacool VPP655 Variable Speed Pump with the clear top, an XSPC Razor GTX Titan Full Coverage VGA Block w/ the backplate, an XSPC RayStorm CPU Block, and a Swiftech Maelstrom 5 1/4" Dual Bay Reservoir, among other lighting and fittings and what not purchases. This was not a cheap order. But hey, it's better than a drug habit... isn't it?

Buuuut, it gets worse... lol. Shipping time was approx 2 weeks, and I needed my upgrade fix... so next was... the mobo. A nice shiny new ASUS ROG Maximus V. And of course, the next day, G-skill TridentX 2400 ram, because, well if your gonna go big, why not replace the old ram, and these had the matching colors to boot.

So now I'm in deep... But, the Phantom case has no windows... so how can i see all my work... unacceptable. Ok 2 options. Buy the windowed panel from NZXT, or... have a little fun. I choose to have a little fun. So, time to get busy. I scope it out, get the materials at the Local Rona, and hit the work bench... window creation...

[SimsReaper]

So now I have a nice large windowed case. And my water cooling kit arrives soon after. If you didnt know ( i did do this on purpose btw), the NZXT Phantom on has double 120 Rad support, so with the new rad came so more case mods. Which I may still adjust by curving out the mounts, so they cover less rad space. But with some aluminum, a couple cuts and some drilling later, radiator is mounted. I also had to cut the drive bay moutning bracket just a little to allow the rad to sit in. I placed it as far away from the mobo side as I could, to avoid any interference with Ram installation or wiring.



Now I dont really have a lot of pics of the rest of the build... got carried away once everything had arrived... but I am now waiting on a wiring kit and sleeving. I want to individually sleeve all the wires and I will really focus on cable management once that is done. I will post pics of that when its ready. But here are a few of the new system as it is right now... not perfect, but still decent.

[SimsReaper]

LEARNED NOOBIE KNOWLEDGE!!! (and for vets too)

A 700 W PSU will not run a Formula V, i5-2500k, a 780 and a water pump. Not even at stock.
I just about had a melt down with this problem. Everything was working perfectly at idle, and websurfing, but Heaven 4.0 would crash everytime. At basic settings, it would go for a 30 sec or so, but on extreme it was 1-2 secs in and complete shutdown/restart.
I worked at this for 3 days, even swapped back to my 560 card, which worked great again, and had me worried that I may have damaged the 780 with the water block install somehow. So I was ready to pack it up and try for an RMA when I decided to try one more thing. I needed a new power supply, it was next on my hit list, but I had planned to put it off a bit. ( I had spent a "little" bit of money already this month) But oh well, I talked to my parts supplier, and they found me a smokin' deal on an XFX 1250W modular PSU. Only 240 after the mail in rebate that they handled.
The new PSU solved everything!!

Now I have overclocked to 4590Mhz (CPU), 2176Mhz (Ram), and +200/+175 on my 780. Fairly respectable, though I havent actually pushed for actually maximums yet, as I'm also fairly new to overclocking.

Best of all.... My new water loop keeps all these cool. My absolute max temp hit after 2 hrs of looping Heaven 4.0 on extreme in 1080P fullscreen.... 42 degC. 6 hrs of Prime blend test only got me to 40 on my cpu. Oh, and thats with the fans at a med-low setting, and barely barely audible at all. Normal use and gaming I have them on low and they are perfectly silent, better than I had hoped.

So in the end... Success. But I hope that my little problem can help someone else.

[Zka17]

SimsReaper wrote:
LEARNED NOOBIE KNOWLEDGE!!! (and for vets too)

A 700 W PSU will not run a Formula V, i5-2500k, a 780 and a water pump. Not even at stock.

He-he, I could tell you that if you would ask... 😄 It's not necessarily about the wattage, but the amperage on a single rail...

Good job, mate! Now run some RealBench... 😄 Or there is an ongoing Challenge on this Forum, the Summer Sizzler... - you could try your system there... 😄