WIP SugarJ's "The Craven"

[mattlef]

Man that looks good.
Are you planning on sleeving the PSU? As well, take a look at the "gigabyte orange" Mayhems pastel coolant. I think it would look AMAZING in this with clear tube.

[SugarJ]

I'm going to re-sleeve some of the PSU cables when I get my stuff out of storage. I originally did it with a murdermods psycho-pak which sleeved 24 pin individually into 4 into 1, and I don't like the look of the 24 pin now that it's visible through the window. I also have lots of case and fan cables to sleeve as you'll see below.

So, my son found me an o-ring that would work, and I had 2.5 hours to run the tubing and get this machine up before Borderlands 2 went live. I logged into Steam at 9:04pm. I have a mess to clean up:



The task for last night was obviously not cable management. It was a flat out run so I could play some B2 before I went to bed (it's great so far).

I will say that getting the distilled water into the loop and flowing was an absolute cast iron b!tch. I've never had one of these bay res/pump tops before. Now that it's running I'm happy with it, but at 8:15 last night I was about to tear it out and use my EK tube res.

I wedged myself into the corner and took a shot of the loop in operation. I have to recable my desk to move my connections to the other side, as the TJ-07's window was on the left not the right.



So, it's operational. My idle temps are 8 degrees cooler vs. the Feser 360, and my CPU load temps are 5-6 degrees cooler. GPU is only a couple degrees cooler, but it sits in the exhaust of the rad fans so that can't help. You'll notice my paper towel leak test. I put them under or touching every fitting and check every couple of minutes for wetness. After a few hours of operation with no leaks they come out. Normally I recommend a 24 hour test for a new loop, but all these elbows and compression fittings were fine in my other case.

I'll spend some time tidying cables tonight, but my sleeving stuff is in storage so that will have to wait. This was all an experiment to see if the Rampage IV Extreme would fit, so this is really an intermediate stage. Once I've got the case sides on, then I'll make a decision on coolant color and fittings. I was thinking white would look good with some Black Monsoon fittings, but now Gigabyte Orange is appealing too. Not sure it how it would look with the Asus Red though.

Maybe a UD7 is in order......

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by SugarJ

I will say that getting the distilled water into the loop and flowing was an absolute cast iron b!tch. I've never had one of these bay res/pump tops before. Now that it's running I'm happy with it, but at 8:15 last night I was about to tear it out and use my EK tube res.

What's the fill port setup on that? One of the highlights of the myriad I used was a little funnel with threads that screw into a standard fitting port... as long as I've got an empty 5 1/4 bay above it filling is pretty painless.

[SugarJ]

It wasn't so much the filling of it (I have 2 empty bays above it, and use a turkey baster with the bulb off as a funnel) as getting the water flowing. I don't know whether I had a major air lock or what, but it was fill the res, tip the case on it's back and shake until it would pump into the tube. Rinse and repeat about 22 times. Now that it's filled and running, I turned the pump down to 2 because it was cavitating at 4. Good flow though.

[sswilson]

I use an old dishsoap bottle for filling. Gives me good control over the flow of water.

[SugarJ]

Perhaps I should have left the lid off and kept pouring, but the reservoir didn't seem to drain into the pump unless I tipped it. I was nervous enough as I had my data drive mounted (but not plugged in) below the res, with a big wad of paper towel on top of it in case something bad happened.

It's all good now. I think next time I'll try filling the rad through the tube before I connect it to the pump. That should eliminate a lot of refilling the small res.

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by SugarJ

Perhaps I should have left the lid off and kept pouring, but the reservoir didn't seem to drain into the pump unless I tipped it. I was nervous enough as I had my data drive mounted (but not plugged in) below the res, with a big wad of paper towel on top of it in case something bad happened.

It's all good now. I think next time I'll try filling the rad through the tube before I connect it to the pump. That should eliminate a lot of refilling the small res.

Ahhhhh ding ding ding!!!!! (The light finally came on... ;) ).

I didn't look back to see the full setup, I'm guessing this is just a bay res and not a res / pump combo? That's one of the beauties of a bay res/pump is that water in the res = water to the pump.

[SugarJ]

No, it is a res/pump combo. That's why I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't prime the pump.

Edit: This one: XSPC Dual 5.25" Reservoir for One Laing D5 (Back Mount)

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by SugarJ

No, it is a res/pump combo. That's why I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't prime the pump.

Edit: This one: XSPC Dual 5.25" Reservoir for One Laing D5 (Back Mount)

Hrmmmm... That's wierd. I don't see how having the res filled wouldn't be the same as having fluid in the inlet hose....

I've got an older version of the XSPC I picked up here but haven't gotten around to doing another WC build.... Hope I don't run into the same issue.

[jibz]

O_o I just stumbled onto this and I rrreeeeeaaaaaaalllllyyyyyy like the colour!

I feel your pain, when I did this with my raven it took me a good 40 hours before I was happy with it. Filling a bay res the tight space was a huge pain.