G20CB Water cooling project

[six4bravo]

Hi guys,

I've been bored lately and was throwing around the idea of water cooling in a custom loop on my G20CB,
or using an AIO type and modifying the case, or even making a base station for the custom loop to house everything in matching the design of the G20 with a PSU, fan
controller, radiators, reservoir, etc. I will be adding a GTX 1070 soon as I game in 1080P at 144Hz and find the 970 only slighlty lacking sometimes.
I was thinking of maybe waiting for a water cooled version of the 1070 or adding a water block from EK and into a custom loop with the CPU.

My CPU idles around 45C which is great actually, peaks at 65C gaming, the 970 peaks at 75C max with a custom fan curve. The cpu really doesn't even
need water cooling IMO, but like i said I'm bored lol. The graphics card I'd like to atleast do this to, my 970 sounds like a PS4 fan full boar, but it stays
decently cool, never seen it above 75C.

Has anyone attempted this yet on a G20?

I poked around in the BIOS, noticed that under the monitor section, it seems really really neutered for options. The fan control is just enable or disable q-fan control,
which if disabled just spins the fans up to max. The options listed shows in the info section PWM mode, DC mode, and a few more options,
yet you can only choose to enable/disable q-fan control. I wonder if this will cause issues with the AIO systems that have a 3 pin connector for the
pump and a 4 pin PWM for the fan on the radiator if I'm going that route plugging into the MB for the power. The MB has a cpu fan header, chassis 1 and chassis 2 which is
down by the gfx card, all 4 pins looks like and I know you can plug in a 3 pin onto a 4 pin.

[six4bravo]

Well everyone... I have decided to scrap the plan of a adding water cooled gpu and custom loop to the G20CB. I’m looking at my gorgeous Phanteks enthoo evolv atx tempered glass case brand new collecting dust waiting for a build. I decided to do that with a custom loop and the 1080ti with an i7 8700k instead. I’ll keep the G20 for what it is. A great 1080p and 1440p gaming machine. But overall I need a workstation for gaming and rendering videos too.

We can keep the thread going and I’ll check it now and then if anyone has questions, I’ll try to help. Thx for the interest and support.*

Also.... nvidia still has not shipped my 1080ti, still processing, it’s been like almost 3 weeks.*

[six4bravo]

Just wanted to share what I’ve been building, almost done, still waiting on a few more fittings I needed last minute for the custom loop. It’s an i7 8700k and 1080ti build, black and white theme.

*

[xeromist]

It's because standard connectors stand perpendicular to the PCB which is problematic for compact spaces. I'm not sure of the exact clearance in a g20 and whether it was entirely necessary but I'm sure that was the reasoning.

[six4bravo]

Installed the Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD yesterday along with the Gskill ram. Install was very simple and no issues at all with the 1TB SSD. I set the 2TB HDD as storage drive for downloads, pics, videos, etc.

This thing absolutely flies now. Can't wait until Tuesday for the H60 to get here. The arctic silver 5 thermal paste is working really well also with the stock air cooler.

[six4bravo]

Teaser time. Just a small update bc I'm so excited that I got to fire her up today, well, I have the first, I think, water cooled g20, and it runs very very cool. ~18C idle max 48C under stress test from 35-45C idle and 65-75C on load. I'm actually very impressed. Still cleaning up the build but it does work, and very well. I had to cut and solder the fan and pump to the Asus plugs, they are way smaller than generic CPU fan plugs, but my guesses were right on the wiring. Those temps are also on the stock corsair thermal paste which is actually good stuff. Disabled q-fan for the CPU since that's the pump header now and it's running exactly as it should at 4200 rpms. Chassis fan is the radiator fan and is still controlled by the bios PWM, I set it to 600rpm minimum and it's silent and still runs very cool. More details later. Just a couple teasers for now.

[xeromist]

Sweet! I think that's even better than I would have expected.

[six4bravo]

Did some painting and laser etching today on my fan/radiator bracket I made. Came out decent. FYI, the assembly simply doesn't fit inside the g20 case, I had planned on making a hole and mounting it inside but the depth and hoses on the h60 made that impossible. So this is mounted outside the case, some people like the idea of mounting outside, some don't. But imho it adds to the alien like look and is fine, the cooling air outside the case is also much better for the radiator too, you don't have to worry about inside case temps, venting or things like that. So I'm sure some people are going to not like how I did this when I reveal it in the next few days, but I don't care tbh, go try to watercool your g20 then lol. I didn't have to modify the case at all in this build. Just sayin.

[six4bravo]

Well here she is, this is the only way to do water cooling on this case, it must be outside. There is absolutely no room inside for the tubing to go anywhere but out the top where the old heatsink sat. You need to modify the pump and fan plugs to the stock fan ASUS plugs to get aftermarket stuff to work. On your stock fans, red is 12V+, black is neg, yellow is tachometer signal, and blue is PWM for fan control. Each fan header has 4 pins for the CPU fan header and chassis fan header but they are specialized plugs found in ASUS laptops, likely used for their small size. This was actualy pretty simple to do, the only interior mod is bending the tab that the CD readers screws to (single small screw) it is in the way of the water block. So basically your CD tray is going to stick out a tiny bit but its secure and theres just enough room for the water block. The water block mounting studs screw directly into the stock G20CB or AJ board, no aftermarket backplate require, we have a pretty beefy stock backplate because of the custom ASUS stock heatsink. I'm using the stock corsair thermal paste, its working just fine. You need to disable Q-fan control in the BIOS for the pump header and leave the Q-fan control on for the radiator fan header, the BIOS will control the radiator fan just like the stock fans. Mine never spin above ~900 rpms because the cpu stays so darn cold. The pump speed with the Q-fan control disabled in the BIOS is ~4200 rpms, this is perfect and what it is supposed to be. I went from having ~35-45C idle temps to about ~17C idle temps. under load it would get up to 65-75C before, now peaking around 48C under load. I never expected this mod to actually work THIS WELL. Is it necessary? Nope. I did it because i was bored and wanted a new project and I like doing stuff nobody has done before. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

This mod was done with the $59 Corsair H60 water cooler from Newegg and the fan is setup to blow up through the radiator.

[xeromist]

I've had a top mounted rad on a small case for a number of years now. It definitely works well. Only downside is you have to be very careful of the radiator fins because they bend easily. I'd recommend putting a fan grill on there just in case.

Also, for anyone else interested in this mod I'd recommend a Swiftech Radbox:
http://www.swiftech.com/mcb-120radbox.aspx

I'm not sure exactly how you'd place it but since it has slots for mounting it's very versatile. Basically as long as you can get a few screws up through the top of the case you can mount a radbox.

[six4bravo]

xeromist wrote:
I've had a top mounted rad on a small case for a number of years now. It definitely works well. Only downside is you have to be very careful of the radiator fins because they bend easily. I'd recommend putting a fan grill on there just in case.

Oh it definitely works great. I have a silverstone grill for it just have to find longer screws.

I don't know if I'll attempt to add a water cooled gtx 1070, I'd need the tubes out the top again and all the hybrid 1070s have the tubes out the bottom, so I may just leave that alone and stick with a founder's edition 1070 later this year, we'll see.

After a lot of use today rendering videos and some editing, It never got above 49C. Well worth the $59 spent.