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Building a workstation with water cooling.

Fasttrak

Fasttrak

Staff member
Moderator
I finally received an email from Caselabs that my case parts are shipping!!

w00t

Finally...

Time to make a mess out of the coffee table and get to assembling this bastard!

Big, expensive graphics cards and water, those block are sexy! What could possibly go wrong?



Thankfully the Strix cards came apart super easy and even the EK water blocks went back together... super easy. No drama sad to say :-P



Getting some of the case done and wiring laid out but need the lower bay mounts to get the Aquaero installed and wire length's determined.



Top mounted radiator is together with fans and break out PWM boxes installed.



This is going to be the bulldog build, short, stout and heavy. LOL



Finally moving forward and seeing some actual progress. Even better is I actually think I have everything to get this done once the Caselabs part show up in the next couple of days.
 
Fasttrak

Fasttrak

Staff member
Moderator
Finally got all the parts delivered Friday morning and got to work destroying my house and building a computer. This is always the tedious stage as getting everything to fit together cleanly is a time consuming chore. I can not count how many times in the last couple days all radiators installed and uninstalled along with the motherboard tray. I still have plenty of small tasks to get done, build and install the custom wire looms, find a suitable USB cable that connects the Aquaero to the main board, clean up some of the tubes that ended up a tad too long and general layout clean up.



I am glad I went through the process, was something I always wanted to do going back to the days guys were custom building cold plates and using copper tubing to connect their setups, that was some custom shit and I wouldn't even consider trying. I have learned a ton that would definitely make the parts build and assembly sooooo much easier. There just isn't any replacement for hands on experience, Youtube included. I can remember the first few times I researched the hardware for water cooling and just wrapping my head around what the hell worked with what and what the hell are all those numbers pertaining to?? LOL, some pretty funny shit especially considering I have built every computer I have ever owned going back to 1991 and the only one I ever purchased built was the shittiest brand to ever hit the market, I need to thank them for pushing me into building my own systems except they are long out of business, Packard Bell Computers; My You Rest In Peace!



Although it was pretty costly going with fittings over tube bending I can definitely see the benefits of both and would probably go with tube bending on my next build just for sheer cost savings, I think I spent about $400.00 in just Bitspower fittings :-P Do not even think of going down this path as any sort of cost saving idea, it isn't and it isn't really that cheap. There are some new companies getting into this business that bring alot more bang for the buck then what the standard barers of the water cooling industry have been offering so far, especially with regards to pumps and radiators.

Here is the initial layout of water blocks on the main board.




A top down look at the layout of the motherboard and water blocks.




Side shot of the RAM and CPU mono-block.



The scary moments of the first liquid being added to the system, lot's of nail biting and pouring of sweat from every orifice.



Thankfully, the towels stayed dry and a serene calmness settled in over my soul. I could envision a million different places liquid could leak from and there just wasn't enough paper towels to make much difference but since everyone adds them I decided to join the party too.


Side shot during the 18 hour run in to test for leaks, make the sure the pump holds up and develops no odd noises.



She isn't done but she is up and running nicely so far. I am going to give a couple days to settle in, keep an eye on coolant levels, noise levels and general health of the system but so far she seems to be running pretty well.

Once I get the pedestal built and the new desk setup I will update with a complete gaming center setup.
 
kaM

kaM

The 47 Ronin
Looks very good.

I downgraded my system a couple months back to all air for the first time in years. So much easier to maintain.
 
Fasttrak

Fasttrak

Staff member
Moderator
Thanks guys, it was really a fun experience and very glad I took the plunge to finally build a water cooled PC. So far it has been dead nuts stable with no issues, to the point I have not bothered to do the post build partial breakdown for inspection purposes or to add the water flow meter. Once I see what Intel\Amd do with their multi core war and in a year or two add some monster 24 core behemoth as an upgrade :-P
 
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