New Watercooling setup for Ivy Bridge and GTX680

[musicfan]

Air-flow pattern looks fine to me. Logical flow pattern will likely keep a positive pressure to lessen dust. You are also blowing air directly onto the motherboard, which is good. HDD air-flow should be fine to keep them < 45 - 50°C. Agree with you, that you are unlikely to need that exhaust fan as I have never used mine - that is where I hook on my 120.4 rad. Hope your VGA card arrives soon and works perfectly.

[NilsJohan]

Thanks Musicfan. Hopefully that should all be fine then.

The VGA card has arrived - and it is working well. I had a minor scare doing burn-in testing with Furmark, where my computer crashed, but I think it was just because it was a hot day and the card got to about 85C. I had to spend this entire weekend fixing my laptop though, so I didn't have time to set up my water cooling loop. Either way it's nice to run my computer a little while so that I can be confident it's working.

I figured out that the small power supply I took from a really old computer at work does not seem to be working well with my pump. It can't run my pump for any significant amount of time, so I guess I need to either get another power supply or use the one I have in my computer. I'm slightly wary of using the one I have in my computer, out of fear that it would somehow break. I don't think it should be a problem though, since the way you turn it on is just by using a basically digital switch.

I saw online (from a video linked in another thread here) that sometimes with old power supplies you need to put a loading resistor on the +5V, so I'm going to try that before I try to find another power supply.

[musicfan]

Using the PSU from the computer, there is risk to damaging pins with the paperclip jumper. For that reason, I use a cheap, off-brand (RaidMax) PSU on sale at Newegg for $25 that I dedicate to leak-testing. Wouldn't trust it in the system, but I don't care what tier PSU it is for leak testing or to POST a new motherboard. Your time is likely worth more than $25, so I wouldn't spend too much time on the old PSU if it won't run the pumps during a leak test.

[NilsJohan]

I decided you were right, so I found one on Amazon, since then I can get free shipping.

[apw63]

Here are some pics of the bench top power supply I built. You are correct when you stated the need for a loading resistor on the +5V. With out the load the PSU will shut its self down. The second pic is of the PSU running. I used to fast of a shutter speed and it froze the fans.

Andy

[NilsJohan]

That is very neat Andy. I might do that in a future project =)

Either way I ordered this on Amazon, and since it's a 12V supply it should hopefully be ok with just the pump.

Additional Comment:

Hi guys - after two long days everything is inside the case and I'm doing leak testing as we speak. In 24 hours we will know whether it's leak free or not. I'm really tired right now, but I have taken some pictures that I will post sometime tomorrow. The radiator fits incredibly snugly. I feel smug about that, but if it had been 2 mm wrong I would not be.. I had to take out one of the screws for the fan to fit the I/O of the motherboard. I'll give some more details about how I made it all fit when I post more tomorrow. It might be useful if someone in the future wants to do something similar.

[musicfan]

Good luck leak testing. Not too long now. Congratulations on a successful mod!!!

[Jahova]

Nice work on flushing.

Why is it that my Apogee GT came with an extra seal if it violates warranty when opening a Swiftech water block?

[NilsJohan]

Hi guys, sorry for taking so long to do this. I've been quite busy lately, but today I finally took the pictures and sorted out the last bits of 'cable management' (you'll see on the pictures that this is a lie, more like cable cramming).

So I wanted to summarize my build experience first. The hardest part was on fitting the radiator in there with all the fans. It was very fiddly to get the fans in there, and as you can see I had to use the rubber screws on one fan because the screws were too long to fit into that space. It is also very tight between the pull fans and the motherboard, but I managed to make it all fit in the end.

You can see on the pictures that the tube from the pump to the radiator runs via the cable management space at the back. There was enough space there for the tubing (though I am thankful I went for 3/8 ID 5/8 OD tubing, or this would probably have been impossible). While it is very tight there because of all the cabling, I am pretty sure the side plate does not squeeze the tubing when closed. The bend from the radiator is a little tight, but I could not see any deformation of the tube. All in all I tried my best to make it tidy, used a ton of cable tires to keep things in place.

The pictures of the aluminium (almost) square is just a piece I machined from scratch to cover the fan hole at the bottom so that the pump had something to stand on. I spray-painted it myself. I was pretty satisfied with the result, and you can see how it looks inside on the other picture.

As for the front part, this went quite well, though I did cut the tubing a bit short at times - the last bend might be a little too short as well, but it looks ok. The leak testing was fortunately uneventful. I was careful to check several times with dry paper etc. It took a while to bleed out the loop despite using martinm's trick with the extra tubing at the reservoir inlet, but now the water level is no longer sinking.

As for results, the highest temperatures I've seen on the GPU and CPU is about 33 degrees, with the fans running at 600 rpm. It is whisper quiet, and I am very satisfied with its performance. I have not started overclocking and so on yet. I will probably get to that when I'm back from my holiday. I will be going away for about 2 weeks, so I will not have access to the computer then. I will report back with more results on the overclocking front once I get there.

[Stridulent]

Originally Posted by NilsJohan

Hi guys, sorry for taking so long to do this. I've been quite busy lately, but today I finally took the pictures and sorted out the last bits of 'cable management' (you'll see on the pictures that this is a lie, more like cable cramming).

So I wanted to summarize my build experience first. The hardest part was on fitting the radiator in there with all the fans. It was very fiddly to get the fans in there, and as you can see I had to use the rubber screws on one fan because the screws were too long to fit into that space. It is also very tight between the pull fans and the motherboard, but I managed to make it all fit in the end.

You can see on the pictures that the tube from the pump to the radiator runs via the cable management space at the back. There was enough space there for the tubing (though I am thankful I went for 3/8 ID 5/8 OD tubing, or this would probably have been impossible). While it is very tight there because of all the cabling, I am pretty sure the side plate does not squeeze the tubing when closed. The bend from the radiator is a little tight, but I could not see any deformation of the tube. All in all I tried my best to make it tidy, used a ton of cable tires to keep things in place.

The pictures of the aluminium (almost) square is just a piece I machined from scratch to cover the fan hole at the bottom so that the pump had something to stand on. I spray-painted it myself. I was pretty satisfied with the result, and you can see how it looks inside on the other picture.

As for the front part, this went quite well, though I did cut the tubing a bit short at times - the last bend might be a little too short as well, but it looks ok. The leak testing was fortunately uneventful. I was careful to check several times with dry paper etc. It took a while to bleed out the loop despite using martinm's trick with the extra tubing at the reservoir inlet, but now the water level is no longer sinking.

As for results, the highest temperatures I've seen on the GPU and CPU is about 33 degrees, with the fans running at 600 rpm. It is whisper quiet, and I am very satisfied with its performance. I have not started overclocking and so on yet. I will probably get to that when I'm back from my holiday. I will be going away for about 2 weeks, so I will not have access to the computer then. I will report back with more results on the overclocking front once I get there.

Is this under load or idle?

[NilsJohan]

Originally Posted by Stridulent

Is this under load or idle?

That's under load - running PCmark or Furmark respectively, or after long sessions of Diablo 3 (which is not as testing as other games). I still have not tried anything that stresses both GPU and CPU at the same time. I guess 3Dmark might do that?

Edit: Forgot to say, idle temperatures hover around 25-30 degrees. Right now my GPU is 25 and my CPU is 28.

[musicfan]

Fantastic and congratulations. Looks great and sounds like a solid performer. I think we were both starting wonder about the hydro copper being vapor-ware. Hope EVGA catches up. Looking forward to you giving this machine a workout. See you in a couple of weeks. Please post back when you have some OC load data. Thanks.