Draining / Prepping a water cooled system for non watercooled Gfx Card

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Intro

I thought I would do a blog post on how to prep your water cooled system for an upgrade (if you have never done so). In my case I ordered a GTX 780 Lightning because I didn't feel like purchasing a water block for a 780 or 780ti.

I am not going to go into any detail about how to add or remove a graphics card waterblock or in any kind of detail about "how to" when it comes to water cooling. This blog is for people that already have a water cooled system and have not or do not know how to drain their system. I hope this gives you some insight on the task.

 

Here we go:

So at first this seemed like a somewhat daunting task. I didn't want to ruin any of my components and I wasn't sure the best way to drain my system. I could have Google'd it but I was feeling "adventurous". I thought the best way to tackle this was to start draining at the bottom. After I unscrewed my 200mm RAD from the bottom I started draining there (of course the system was turned off).

From bottom up I slowly started plugging tubing and in some instances cut tubing open (near cpu socket) and drained water into a bowl. One thing I kept in mind was that I wanted to save some tubing so I was careful not start cutting in the middle of the line.

Something I noticed was debris in the water and algae in the tubing. Although I have a silver coil and used anti-microbial tubing it was still there. I hadn't touched the system in over a year so I wasn't too surprised. At this point I decided to also flush out all the components and use as much new tube as possible.

Lastly since I am only utilizing one 240mm RAD now I turned down my D5 pump to 1.5 / 5 power settings. This actually turned out to be great becuase it reduced the noise of the pump and the cpu temps aren't affected at all.

Put the system back together and now I am ready for the 780 coming in the mail tomorrow BAM!

Final Thoughts

It's actually not that hard if you have a base understanding of water cooling and how to cycle the pump. I would suggest a second set of hands (it helps a lot). This took me a few hours, most of my day Sunday so be prepared.

If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to leave them below. I'll get back to you if I can. I know this was somewhat vague and skipped many details but if it helps anyone then great!

Starting at the bottom and taking my time worked well for me.

 

Check out my other blogs

https://teksyndicate.com/users/fishcommander/blog

 

***Update***

Added screenshot of Firestrike Extreme bench results from the 670 VS the 780. I am using GeForce 331.93 Driver (BETA) if anyone is wondering.

 

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Nice rig man! I've always wanted to do a water-cooled rig but I just don't have the time or the money.

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Is that a standard 680, or a 680 FTW block?

Regardless, be sure to give us your impressions on the 780 Lightning - see if you can't break 1400mHz on it!

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Thanks, it took a lot of preparation and research online to get the rig to look like it does (or did). Full custom water loops are great once you get them all set up. They are quiet and keep all the components really cool.

What happened for me was that I really only ended up running my 3770K @ 4.5Ghz for day to day use. I had gotten it higher for benching but it really wasn't necessary (even at stock it does a great job [4.2Ghz]).

The 670 ran @ 1303Mhz all day long and never got hot at all, probably 40-45c. That was really the major perk for me. I had out benched some reference 680's for about the same price (670 + water block).

 

TLDR;

It's fun to build and awesome to have although my next rig I don't think I will be doing a custom loop, it can be expensive and there are other options out there like the h100i.

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It's an EVGA 670FTW. So basically a 670 on a 680 PCB. The waterblock is a standard 680 waterblock. It fits on the 670FTW because the PCB is exactly the same (far as I can tell).

The main (maybe only) difference between the 670FTW and the 680 is that the 670FTW has only 1152 cuda cores. That and the $100 price tag difference at launch (Vs the 680).

 

lolz, I have yet to break 1300Mhz on the Lightning yet... I have been enjoying it in games / "breaking it in". I'll see how far I can push it on Air though soon! Other than that the card is amazing, does everything I need it too at Ultra @ 1440p

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I can get it to run @ 1306Mhz but it is starting to artifact on air so I won't be running it at that speed. I added a picture of bench scores. All things considered there is a 66.85% increase in GPU score, not bad :)