water cooling a p182 - top mounting a MCR220

[nikitos]

I was wondering if it was possible to top mount a MCR220, in to the top of an antec p182, without touching the stock top exhaust fan (for aesthetic reasons)? From some initial rough measurements it seems that the rad if unfortunately too long to fit. I could opt for a single rad, but something tells me performance (even though it's not the #1 goal here) will suffer seriously. As for using a radbox, does the rad hang far enough from the various plugs? It seems to me from the pictures that it could interfere with DVI and other ports.

thanks!

[Babrbarossa]

I cut the top out of my p180 to put in a triple radiator and included the rear fan vent in the design. One thing you could do that would make it easy on you would be to use the existing fan vent and just cut the hole for the second one- that way there's be lots of room for tubing and fittings, less cutting, and no need to worry about not overlapping the top fan. However, I do think that there would be enough room to mount it in front of the fan but working inside the drive bays with bolts and/or fittings and tubing (depending on how you do it) is a pain, but doable as you can see in my build log (i'm assuming that the layout of the top of the p182 is the same as the p180)

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...rcooling+antec

[nikitos]

Thanks for the info B,
Did you put the rad outside because it didnt fit inside?

[Babrbarossa]

Mainly- mounting it the way I did doesn't change the profile of the case much and it's good and solid- only downside is that the air through the rad is from the case- but where I had all my components watercooled, most of the heat generated in the case was collected by the water in the loop, not the air in the case.

[lcdguy]

if it were me i would be getting a rad box and mounting that sucker on the back of the tower.

[nikitos]

Will the radiator obstruct the rear ports if mounted with radbox?
Also the problem will radbox is that one of the fan holes into which the radbox is screwed into is covered by the sidepanel.
I'm sortof leaning towards going with 2 internally mounted 120mm rads, as from the pictures of Skyguy's rig (http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/guides-how-s/979-water-cooling-680i-antec-p180-build-log-guide-3.html
no cutting was involved, which is a big plus.

[CanadaRox]

I have a 120.3 on the back of my case, and the only port it obstructs is one of the DVI ports on my GPU. And you can still use a DVI cable in this port, you just cant use a DVI => VGA adapter in it.