Gallery Water Dragon

[xilocient]

Yeah, I know it's a cheezy name, but here's my box (a lancool K60 "Dragon lord" chassis) freshly rigged up with WC gear.

First time I do a gallery, so feel free to leave any comments at the bottom about improving this post.
I apologize in advance for the crappy pics and the mess.


So Here's what I started with. The K60 Dragonlord:


My case of choice for my first build. It was rather spacious 2 years ago with great cooling and tool-less mounting (other than for the 5.25" bays).

Throw in the bare minimum guts of a P67 system (minus my 5870) and I got this:


Now this machine was great, but as time went on I've tinkered with it.

Between then and now, I added 4 2 TB drives in RAID 5, attempted to watercool the 5870 with a coolit OMNIT (gone horribly wrong, Optix you still owe me a refund!), RMAed the 5870 and replaced it with a GTX 580 under water cooled with a single 120mm rad.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of these middle stages, but I bring you the latest update.

Machine Specs:

i5-750 (stock for now, but was running at 3.8 Ghz on a 212+)
12GB G.skill RAM
MSI GTX 580 OC (folding at 900 MHz, gaming at 980MHz easy)
120 GB intel 320 SSD
1TB Samsung F3
4x2TB Seagate LP green in RAID 5

Cooling gear:

Supreme HF Acetal
Heatkiller 580 block hole edition
TFC 120mm rad (not sure which one, but it's pretty thick) GT AP-15 Push
XSPC EX 120 AC F12 Push/Pull
XSPC RS 240 GT AP-15 Pull
Laing D5 vario with EK X-top V2
Swiftech Microres V2
White Primoflex Pro 3/4" -1/2" tubing

I managed to stuff all this gear in without drilling a single hole in my case!

Front:



Overall I think it turned out fairly well, if I do say so myself. I wish I could have used more elegant 3/8"-5/8" tubing instead of the big honking 1/2"-3/4 stuff, but the compression fittings were so much cheaper (about $4/piece new) for the big stuff.

Getting the res and the pump in the right place without drilling in any holes required a bit of plexiglass for some custom mounts. I just got a sheet, cut it to size and drilled a bunch of holes. A few pieces of leftover 1/2"-5/8" tubing to help with isolation and voila! I could have turned the pump 90 degrees so that the inlet faced the res, but I wanted to be able to access the speed control for the pump easily (I'm thinking of turning the pump around now since the other side panel is tricker to get on with the cables). For the res, it's the same game. Cut to size and drill some holes. In this case the holes were a little smaller than the threads of the machine screws and I tapped the holes with the screws so that they fit tightly. Drill holes very close to the thread diameter, be gentle with the plexiglass and you'll be fine.

Socket Detail:


The tubing routing isn't as clean as I wanted (straight vertical line between the two rads) in part due to the huge fittings, but it's the best I could do without right angle fittings and spacers. I had to put two 45 degree elbows off the top rad just so I could get the tubing to loop around.


Top Detail:


Instead of mounting the rad directly to the case, they're hanging off the fans. The stock cutouts for the 140mm fans give just enough room to connect the 8 Pin power connector on the top of the motherboard, and plenty of room for cable routing through the side. I was lucky enough that just behind the USB connectors there's a space just big enough for an SSD.

I love the gentle typhoon fans!, but they buzz a lot at full speed when exhausting vertically. Anyone know of a way to get rid of this? My temporary solution is to put them on a fan controller, but I would like to get them up to full speed.

SSD Detail:



Sorry for the dust. I took some 1/4" ID tubing leftover from the failed 5870 watercooling and used it to lift the SSD off the metal to make room for the 90 degree SATA cable. A few cable ties later and the SSD is gently secured in place. Enough so it won't move around, but not too tight either.


Performance:
I 've been a little paranoid with the watercooling (~24 hour leak testing/spill evaporation), so I haven't had much time to test things, but so far everything is looking good.

I've been running prime and kombustor for the past 45 mins or so and the CPU temps are topping in the high 40s/low 50s. Core 3 always seems to be 3-4 degrees hotter than the others, but I presume this is normal.

On the GPU side, running kombustor with prime 95 isn't pushing the GPU nearly as hard as it can go, but I'm getting fairly low temps in the high 30s/low 40s.

I'll add folding temps later this week.
For reference with the GPU on one 120 rad, I was getting temps of 65C on hot days (as hot as they've been this spring). The CPU was getting in the low 70s under air while folding.

[Prolab]

Looking good man.

Although, im sure you had sore fingers after 30 mins fighting with the tubing. That is, tight!

[Father Fuzzy]

looks Great!
dig the tubing
Are you gonna do the cables?

[xilocient]

My fingers were alright after fighting with the tubing. I read that the BP compression fittings really beat up the fingers, so I wore leather work gloves.

As for the cables, I'd love to do them but I doubt I'll get around to doing them since this is the only real computer I've got. Next on the list is a case upgrade. I'm thinking of going custom for the case, but it'll probably have to wait until I get settled down after school finishes this summer. By that point I might just have to build a new machine.

[sswilson]

Looks great!!! I love the SSD mounted to the top, and the fact that you shoehorned in 3 rads total w/ 1/2" tubing.

[iLikeGreeeeen]

it's a bit busy for my personal taste with the three rads, but it still looks amazing! well done, mate!