Project DD01 - Corsair 900D, Asus Maximus VI Formula Custom Water Cooled

[DavidNSY]

Update Final Pics


Hello from Australia! 🙂

I'm totally new here and also a beginner in building water cooling system and case modding as well. I've just done my first build recently and decided to make a build log to share with you my long but very excited journey. Yeah that's my first water cooling build ever, first time modding something, first build log so far.

Also English is not my first language so I'm sorry if you found something funny in my post. However I'll try to post as much detailed pictures as I can hopefully that will cover me well.

Ok, here we go! Components:

Core:
CPU: i7 4770k
Motherboard: ASUS Maximus IV Formula
RAM: 2x 8Gb G.Skill Trident X 2400 mHz
GPU: 2x HIS Radeon R9 290
PSU: Silverstone Strider Gold 1200w
SSD:

• Samsung 840 EVO 250Gb
  
• 2x Corsair Force 240Gb
  
• ASUS Raidr Express 240Gb (optional)
  

HDD: WD Green 4Tb

Cooling:
CPU water block: EK Supremacy Plexi/Nickel
GPU water block: 2x EK Radeon R9-290X VGA Liquid Cooling Block - Acetal
2x EK R9-290X VGA Liquid Cooling RAM Backplate
2x EK Coolstream PE 480mm Radiator
EK Coolstream PE 240mm Radiator
Pump: 2x Swiftech MCP655
Fan:
Corsair Air Series AF140 Quiet Edition Red LED
2x Corsair Air Series AF120 Quiet Edition Red LED
8x Corsair Air Series AF120 Quiet Edition
6x Corsair Air Series AF120 Performance Edition
Reservoirs: Bitspower Water Tank Z-Multi 250 Clear
Bitspower Dual D5 Mod Top
2x Bitspower D5/MCP655 Shining Silver 2 Pump Mod
Bitspower crystal link
E22 acrylic rigid tubing
Coolant: Mayhem X 1 Red
Bitspower fitting: too many to list

Other material and stuff:
ModMyToys Power Distribution PCB 3 and 8 way
Red and White LED strip
Some MDPC-X sleeving
1.2mm Aluminium Sheet
3mm Frosted and Clear Cast Acrylic

And the Show of course 🙂

The Giant






Sorry for the quality, those pics have been taken by my phone, I'm going to get a DSLR Camera for the next shots.

The ROG 😄









Armor

HIS R9 290



Two little devils

Fans

Rads



Pumps





All together

CPU Block

GPU Block

Fittings








I'm also running this build log on overclock forum at the same time (which suppose to be the original one).

Ok, that's just for now. Too much pics for a post? Correct me if I'm wrong, any feedback and suggestion would be much appreciated as my lack of experiences. Hope you enjoy guys and see you in the next update which will be posted very soon, Cheers!

[DavidNSY]

naj1991 wrote:
verry nice work... the downplate looks realy good... 🙂 need to see the plate of the 5.25 slots when its in position... 😄 *godlike cutting man...

abvolt wrote:
great job looks really good..

Thank you 🙂

MeanMachine wrote:
GDAY DavidNSY, Welcome to ROG and Congrats on a top albeit ambitious project for your first build.:)
Make sure to benchtest your MB and major components prior to assembly, not only to pre configure Bios settings but to ensure everything works just fine. It would be a pain in the proverbial should you have to disassemble your water cooling setup to get at stuff for a simple issue. This has happened to others regularly!!!.
And your English is just fine, keep us updated and Good Luck.

Thanks mate! That's really helpful, I actually did it


And ran some benchmark including RealBench as well





I just wanted to make the build log short and clear, that would be a boring part 🙂

[DavidNSY]

Now come up to a very exciting part - Sleeving

These are some goodies from MDPC



And lovely drawing as always, thanks to Nils


Begin with PSU


It's a decent 1200w PSU for the price. Only downside is the bad cable layout, too much crossing cable which is really headache for sleeving


I use heatshrinkless method


For clean look







SATA cables are sleeved



Fan cables


140mm fan cable is shortened


Soldered and sleeved rad fan cables





Header cables

[eyeballer]

This is turning out to be one epic build! Loving the workmanship you have been putting into this. Very excited to see the end result - but don't rush 😄

[MeanMachine]

Well done DavidNSY, Your doing it like a real pro, Lovely sleeving.
I'm looking forward to the finished product and what you can achieve with an OC.

Just one other thing, Thoroughly flush out your radiators prior to assy.

[DavidNSY]

eyeballer wrote:
This is turning out to be one epic build! Loving the workmanship you have been putting into this. Very excited to see the end result - but don't rush 😄

Cheers buddy xD

MeanMachine wrote:
Well done DavidNSY, Your doing it like a real pro, Lovely sleeving.
I'm looking forward to the finished product and what you can achieve with an OC.

Just one other thing, Thoroughly flush out your radiators prior to assy.

I did it as well, thank you so much bro!


However, EK has done a great job on their rads, water comes out extremly clean 🙂

I've been taking this build very seriously and I know that preparation is most important, good preparation for good result. Therefore as a beginner, I have been reading, watching a lot. Lutro0 Customs's Youtube channel, million dollar pc's forum are great sources where I've got all needed information for my sleeving job, so thanks to them!

[DavidNSY]

Update...

Back to the 5.2" bay cover, I'm now cutting off some short LED strip then solder them together.


In place


And testing


LED strip for mid plate (this is a non waterproof one so I had to spray some liquid electrical insulation on its surface, just to make sure it won't get any short circuits)


I use two aluminium angles to support the mid plate



With LED strip


The build now comes very close to the completion, time to assembling some cool stuffs together :cool:






Cut, wet sand and polish the tube ends


Twin swords 😄




Bottom rads in place




This system is supposed to be OCed 24/7 mostly for gaming (Battlefield 4) so I want all the fans run at their max performance. Fan controller is not needed in this case, I use ModMyToys PCB for all fans and LED strip instead.

[DavidNSY]

Update and Finish

Tubing through mid plate





We're almost there, it basically looks like this


Leak test, will be running over night


In the meantime I cut off an alu piece, printed out a corsair logo stencil for spray painting on it. But what is that for? Please take a look at the finished product later 🙂


After some tests, I was not really happy with the CPU temperature under high load. So I decided to change the tubing layout a little bit. The CPU's temp dropped down 2-3 degree celsius with the new configuration, I'm now very happy with the result.

And here my pleasure to present to you guys the DD01 (please see next post)

[DavidNSY]

The original quality album is also available here: https://imgur.com/a/tntHr
Thank you very much for your support and hope you all enjoy it!

[MeanMachine]

A truly excellent and meticulous build, You should be so proud DavidNSY
This sets an example and inspiration to others, as to what can be achieved even as a first build.

Now set some benchmarks.

I advise you OC using your Bios and not Windows software, Don't rely on Asus Suite.
Download a copy of ROG Realbench, CoreTemp and its Grapher plugin, HWBot, ROG CPUZ.
For help to OC, just ask, There are top overclockers to guide you on this site,
Thanks for sharing David and Good Luck.:D

MM

[DavidNSY]

MeanMachine wrote:
A truly excellent and meticulous build, You should be so proud DavidNSY
This sets an example and inspiration to others, as to what can be achieved even as a first build.

Now set some benchmarks.

I advise you OC using your Bios and not Windows software, Don't rely on Asus Suite.
Download a copy of ROG Realbench, CoreTemp and its Grapher plugin, HWBot, ROG CPUZ.
For help to OC, just ask, There are top overclockers to guide you on this site,
Thanks for sharing David and Good Luck.:D

MM

Thanks bro 🙂 currently working on 4.4 will be trying to push it further up to 4.6 or 4.7 if possible. I'm still confusing about stability test, what tool should I go with? Are AIDA and Realbench enough?