Drakhorn Report post Posted October 8, 2016 (edited) I tried water cooling for the very first time this weekend. Here's some pics and thoughts. For me this whole project was mainly for the love of tinkering. I already had a beastly air cooler and low noise fans so the number 1 benefit I got from this was aesthetics. Later I will be adding the new 1080 TI into the loop and with that I might actually gain some performance buffs as right now my 780 TI overclock is being restricted by the reference cooler. Parts I used: Alphacool NexXxoS ST30 Full Copper 360 radiator EKWB 120 x 120 x 25mm EK-Vardar F4-120ER fans EKWB EK-XTOP Revo D5 PWM pump EKWB EK-Supremacy EVO CPU water block Nanoxia CF1 Cooling Fluid Pro, UV Acid Green EKWB HF 16/10mm fittings Tygon E3603 tubing 15,9/9,5mm (3/8"ID) clear Alphacool Eisbecher 250mm Acetal reservoir some Monsoon screw plug G1/4 - Matte Black Alphacool connection terminal TEE T-piece and some other non-essential bits and parts... My case is Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ATX Tempered Glass Edition Thoughts after my first build: If you're thinking of water cooling your pc do your studies. There's a ton of information out there but also quite a lot of BS from misinformed people. I'd recommend staying away from forums unless you're searching for answers to a very specific question. Best way to get accurate information would be to read the manufacturers instructions and watching videos from some reputable water cooling builders. Good ones I'd recommend are: JayzTwoCents LinusTechTips SingularityComputers Measure everything, I mean EVERYTHING! and prepare to alter your plans when some parts still don't fit where you wanted them to. Be ready to do periodic maintenance on your build. Sooner or after you're going to have to drain your system, clean it, refill it and this takes time. Rule of thumb around is that you need to drain your loop every 6-24 months. If you're living in a larger market area than nordics shopping for parts isn't a problem. Getting the part you want to somewhere like Finland is pain in the ass and can make you wait for those last parts for weeks. I'd recommend checking what's available in stock of your retailer before ordering anything and if there's some very specific part you want that's not available locally I'd recommend going straight to the manufacturers site. Future plans: - UV-led strips are coming from china as soon as their holidays are over next week. After installing those I can move the RGB led strip to the back of the case to give out a green glow against the back wall - Gigabyte G1.SNIPER Z170 motherboard and i5-6600K - 1080 TI and water block - green cold cathode light embedded on the roof of my case above the radiator, should give out a nice green glow through the exhaust vents. - monitoring bits, something that would show the flow rate and temperature of the fluid - possibly another 140x140 radiator and a fan Here's one more pic from my kitchen table during first leak tests. (one last tip is to agree on the use of common areas as your work space with our SO before you begin...) Edited October 8, 2016 by Drakhorn Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cogency Report post Posted October 10, 2016 Something I want to do also at some point. Is it high maintenance? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted October 10, 2016 Something I want to do also at some point. Is it high maintenance? Depends... You have to change the liquids every so often and possibly clean your parts. How often depends on many factors. - How clean your system is. If your liquid doesn't have any biocides you can have growths in your loop or if your system wasn't cleaned properly before filling that can cause unwanted particles in the system. Also I wouldn't use normal tap water. - I've heard some died liquids can cause clogging as well, especially really fancy ones like pastel colors or stuff like Mayhems aurora which has nano particles in it for visual effect. - You might get color disfigurations in your died liquids which could make you want to change it. This can be caused by many things I've heard, could be because of too low or high PH-levels or from too high temperature of the liquid. Some people say they refill the system every 6 months, some people say they've had the same liquids running for couple of years. I've tried to minimize the hassle of maintenance by adding a drain port on the bottom of the loop and also by taking care that filling the system won't require me to remove half of the components in the rig. On air cooling I cleaned my PC with canned air every 12 months or so and I thought refilling the system as often shouldn't be too much work. Other than refilling it every now often I don't see any other maintenance procedures involved. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kunasha Report post Posted October 10, 2016 no it is not high maintenance once you have sorted it out. I only have to top up every few months. Drak, I would add the 140 in when you do the GPU, so you have more overclock room. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted October 10, 2016 no it is not high maintenance once you have sorted it out. I only have to top up every few months. Drak, I would add the 140 in when you do the GPU, so you have more overclock room. Exactly what I was planning. Can't have too many radiators Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted January 25, 2017 (edited) aaw yeah! z270 motherboard with RGB lightning ✓ i7-7700k ✓ 140mm radiator and fan ✓ m.2 NVME SSD ✓ 4 sticks of DDR4 ram with green plasma light tubes on them ✓✓ only thing missing is the 1080 TI... my resolve to wait for it might brake down now that I have all the other parts for my upgrade and I will probably just order a regular 1080 but I'm really really happy the Avexir ram sticks finally arrived. You can't get these even from abroad in Finland and most of europe, I had to order them from newegg to my brother who lives in USA and he brought them to me when he was visiting us. I saw they sold these nowadays in amazon.co.uk but the price was way higher and even they didn't deliver to Finland. Edited January 25, 2017 by Drakhorn Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kunasha Report post Posted January 25, 2017 nice, I got my i7-7700K on Monday, have it running at 5.1GHz right now, but it is delidded and the thermal paste between the silicon and IHS has been replaced Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cogency Report post Posted January 25, 2017 (edited) Did you buy one of those delid thingies? or just used a razerblade or something?Keep us updated Drak! Edited January 25, 2017 by Cogency Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kunasha Report post Posted January 25, 2017 I was going to buy a delid thing, but I weighed it up against getting a shop to do it and give a warranty, that won, costed me about 100 euro for the piece of mind that I wouldn't fuck it up delid tool: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/der8auer-delid-die-mate-2-hs-003-dr.html speedbinned and delidded cpu: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/intel-core-i7-7700k-5.0ghz-kaby-lake-socket-lga1151-pre-binned-processor-oem-cp-003-oe.html Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cogency Report post Posted January 25, 2017 (edited) For that money they open it up, put new paste in it and reseal it? Or do they just open it up? edit; ah I see you just bought one that already had all that stuff done to it. Nice Edited January 25, 2017 by Cogency Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kunasha Report post Posted January 25, 2017 yeah, and they remove the silicon lottery too, they make sure it is stable at 5.0ghz before they sell it... the ones that don't pass this go into their low spec office pc bundles Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted January 25, 2017 (edited) I haven't seen any service like around here and I'm not yet at that point myself that I would dare to delid a cpu Edited January 25, 2017 by Drakhorn Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted March 10, 2017 (edited) Edited March 10, 2017 by Drakhorn Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fastas Report post Posted March 11, 2017 That sucks Drak! Any damage caused as a result of the leak? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted March 11, 2017 Atleast one old HDD jammed up. Just assembling the system right now to assess the damage. I've replaced the cheap plastic caps with metal screws and the reservoir seems to be holding up again. Will be looking for anothet res though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fastas Report post Posted March 11, 2017 Suppose it could have been a lot worse then. That was a sudden fast leak, a surprising and worrying failure. Keep us updated mate. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted March 11, 2017 Appears that my latest 470€ 8tb hdd is not starting either anymore Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fastas Report post Posted March 11, 2017 Appears that my latest 470€ 8tb hdd is not starting either anymoreWell fuck! Get it in a bag of rice, they say if you do that overnight while you sleep Asians come and fix it, something like that! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cogency Report post Posted March 11, 2017 That fucking blows, its one of the main reasons I never dared to play with Watercooling (that and added maintenance, im lazy ) And yeah, put the HD somewhere really dry, maybe on a radiator even. Just a drop thats still in there can fuck shit up. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted March 11, 2017 I had it in my dish drying cubby with table fan overnight. Didn't help. Now I took off the pcb outside of the HDD and found lots of droplets of the water. There also was a thin cushion sponge between the hdd and the pcb which was still soaked. There was also some dried up residue from the die of my coolant, especially on the pins of the powerplug. I cleaned it all up and will let them dry on the breeze of the fan overnight. I'm hoping that there was some safeguard that stopped the hdd powering up due short circuit of the powerplug or some other part and that tomorrow I would atleast get my data back. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kunasha Report post Posted March 11, 2017 rice thing is a good idea to soak moisture Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cogency Report post Posted March 11, 2017 If the circuit board is fried they can probably still get the data of the actual drives, if you have any must retrieve stuff on it. Goodluck, hope it will work! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted March 11, 2017 Well the HDD is drying out in a bag of rice now but fortunately I found the backups of pretty much everything Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Kunasha Report post Posted March 12, 2017 I also save those little bags of stuff you get with things, they soak moisture too (I keep 5 or 6 in my camera bag) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted March 12, 2017 you mean silica bags? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Drakhorn Report post Posted March 12, 2017 yeah BABY YEAH! IT'S ALIVE! The tiny little Asian people must have come overnight and fixed it while it was in the rice bag Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cogency Report post Posted March 12, 2017 Haha nice! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fastas Report post Posted March 12, 2017 Good news Batman! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
