Hi djtniz,
I have not put together any systems for the last 8 years and never dealt with water-cooling in way before in my life. But then I love to try new things.
I put together the system you see in my signature and my build log just over the last 2 months. As I had no clue about water cooling I first got the EK HFX 360 kit which contains everything you need for a CPU cooling setup. Some people say the pump is noisy. I have not noticed that and it gives enough pressure. I added on a GTX-780Ti Reference card and bought the full block cooler for that also. Then with a few additional adapters I had a complete setup for getting CPU, GPU and VRM's cooled. Well so I thought anyway. Ofcourse the tubing was not really meant for such a full length cooling solution but I managed to get everything together and got my 4770 up an running to 4.5 GHz on all cores easily. The system worked like a charm but I saw some kinks develop on 3 tubelines after a few days due to the bends and overall heat here. I could still run 4.5GHz no problem and the GPU full time on 1179Mhz base speed/ I flashed the bios, but nothing would help to do more than that. Next I purchased the EK- M6F kit to get the chipset cooler also and got some more tubing and a few 45 and 90 degree adaptors.
With those pieces I then re-pulled some tubing to get what I thought was a better flow. Thus Pump- radiator - CPU - VRM - GPU - Chipset - Reservoir - Pump. I replaced almost all bends with 45 or 90 Degree angle adaptors so it almost looks like I have hard pipes instead of tubes. Back on line the pump had a much easier load and could pump more water through the system easier. When I look at the scores I have posted on HwBot knowing I am in a country with 27 Degrees C even at night time and only use one XTX360 radiator with 6 fans in push pull configuration on it I am amazed at how well my system works. Dont regret going custom loop one bit. Putting it together was quite easy checking leakage was also easy. It was a bit of a trick to figure out how to fix the tubing on the adapters since threaded part kind of need to go on before the tubing in some parts due to the twisting that otherwise will be done when tightening things together. But nothing really difficult.
The only word of caution I have is that if you use the EK CPU kit. Dont bother to change the Jet plate inside as it is a major pain to get the block back together. Thus unless you really want to squeeze out the last drop of speed it wont matter.
Since I took my system down once I realized I had not thought of a good way to empty the system of water so spilled a bit here and there but no harm done just to dry up get back in business.
Working with the guys here on the forum to get help while tweaking has been great and hmm its kind of addictive to see what I can squeeze out of my machine now 🙂 So next will for sure be to add a radiator or two and maybe do a split system to cool further 🙂 So according to me the only mistake you really can do is to go with a closed system 🙂
It started with a VIC-20... and now it is. Maximus Formula VI Intel 4770K 4.6GHz ASUS GTX780Ti 3GB Corsair Platinum Dominator 16GB 2400MHz Raid Express 240GB Samsung EVO 512 GB SSD Corsair 900D EK watercooling Corsair RM1000 ASUS PB278Q
I have not put together any systems for the last 8 years and never dealt with water-cooling in way before in my life. But then I love to try new things.
I put together the system you see in my signature and my build log just over the last 2 months. As I had no clue about water cooling I first got the EK HFX 360 kit which contains everything you need for a CPU cooling setup. Some people say the pump is noisy. I have not noticed that and it gives enough pressure. I added on a GTX-780Ti Reference card and bought the full block cooler for that also. Then with a few additional adapters I had a complete setup for getting CPU, GPU and VRM's cooled. Well so I thought anyway. Ofcourse the tubing was not really meant for such a full length cooling solution but I managed to get everything together and got my 4770 up an running to 4.5 GHz on all cores easily. The system worked like a charm but I saw some kinks develop on 3 tubelines after a few days due to the bends and overall heat here. I could still run 4.5GHz no problem and the GPU full time on 1179Mhz base speed/ I flashed the bios, but nothing would help to do more than that. Next I purchased the EK- M6F kit to get the chipset cooler also and got some more tubing and a few 45 and 90 degree adaptors.
With those pieces I then re-pulled some tubing to get what I thought was a better flow. Thus Pump- radiator - CPU - VRM - GPU - Chipset - Reservoir - Pump. I replaced almost all bends with 45 or 90 Degree angle adaptors so it almost looks like I have hard pipes instead of tubes. Back on line the pump had a much easier load and could pump more water through the system easier. When I look at the scores I have posted on HwBot knowing I am in a country with 27 Degrees C even at night time and only use one XTX360 radiator with 6 fans in push pull configuration on it I am amazed at how well my system works. Dont regret going custom loop one bit. Putting it together was quite easy checking leakage was also easy. It was a bit of a trick to figure out how to fix the tubing on the adapters since threaded part kind of need to go on before the tubing in some parts due to the twisting that otherwise will be done when tightening things together. But nothing really difficult.
The only word of caution I have is that if you use the EK CPU kit. Dont bother to change the Jet plate inside as it is a major pain to get the block back together. Thus unless you really want to squeeze out the last drop of speed it wont matter.
Since I took my system down once I realized I had not thought of a good way to empty the system of water so spilled a bit here and there but no harm done just to dry up get back in business.
Working with the guys here on the forum to get help while tweaking has been great and hmm its kind of addictive to see what I can squeeze out of my machine now 🙂 So next will for sure be to add a radiator or two and maybe do a split system to cool further 🙂 So according to me the only mistake you really can do is to go with a closed system 🙂
