So I’d really like to watercool my whole system, CPU and single GPU, R7 1700X and Vega 56 (currently flashed to 64 air BIOS, but may consider liquid just for shiggles if it runs cool enough).
The downside is that I really don’t want to spend EK money, and I want more modularity than buying the Fluid Gaming kit with the upcoming Vega block, as well as being locked into aluminum components.
Currently I’m looking at the XSPC RayStorm Ion EX240 kit:
and expand it with an Aquacomputer Vega block:
as well as expand the loop with an addition 120mm radiator above the GPU.
As well as someone who built an EK loop with about the same layout I’m aiming for: https://imgur.com/a/1jpk7
So I’m pretty sure this can be done.
Mostly I’m curious about XSPC components because I don’t hear much about them. I did find a few reviews of the kit that are pretty good, it’s not molex-powered so that’s a plus as well.
XSPC stuff is actually fairly good especially for the price.
I had one of their kits years ago and was really pleased with it.
The only thing you should be aware of is that their barb fittings and tubing are shit. Do not use them. Just don’t. You will save yourself a lot of pain by spending the extra money on some decent tubing and compression fittings. They are not xspc products. They are cheap chinese things that will leak.
The 240 kit for sale on frozencpu.com seems to come with compression fittings where as the picture you have above has barb fittings. So you might wanna check into that.
The fans the kit comes with are also kind of meh. They aren’t bad, but any good quality fan that is optimized for static pressure will be a little better. Again, this might be a different case these days, so take my words with a grain of salt.
I’ve been running an XSPC Raystorm block on my 4670K since the system was new. I’ve had zero issues with it. When I was still running my GTX780, I also had an XSPC full cover block and back plate for it. Great performance here as well.
For clarity, I am running:
EK VRM block
EK chipset block
EK full cover block on reference GTX980
XSPC raystorm CPU block
Monsoon dual bay res
D5 PWM pump
2X 360mm Alphacool rads.
Also recommend thick rad if your just going to have 240mm for those two parts Would really want min 360 if not 480 since the vega pumps out the heat and an OC am4 cpu is not the coolest part either
Dont use frozencpu use preformance-pc
What are you goals watercooling? Temps? Sound? Fun?
XSPC is fine, There are better Rads out there really depends on what size ect.
Why’s this? I get that it may last a little longer with regard to “wear” and may be a little less prone to oxidization but I plan to add a corrosion inhibitor of some sort with distilled water for a fluid, at least to start with.
The plan is a 240 in the front and a 120 in the back, and that’s about all the S340 supports. I believe I can get a 280 in the front if the fans are mounted to the case, otherwise the rad will interfere with the I/O at the top. I might lean that direction just to get up to 400mm of surface. Can’t really go any thicker than standard though just due to the cable management bar, which I don’t intend to remove.
Better service? The EX240 kit is $35 less at FrozenCPU which is why I was leaning their way.
Kind of all three. I’m definitely more sound tolerant than many though. Right now the Vega fan is set to 3000 RPM and that’s fine, I listen to things loud. I guess the first goal is load stability, as the Vega likely temp throttles on the HBM, and while I’m not nearly as disappointed with the stock blower as many (like no one knew what to expect?) one of the goals was always to put a block on it and have fun playing around.
I’ve never used XSPC blocks before so I don’t know about their performance. I use EK blocks but the rest of my loop is made up of components from various manufactures. I’ve used EK and Alphacool rad. The Alphacool rads had much better build quality than the rads I got from EK but that was several years ago.
You would probably be alright with a 45mm thick 240 in the front if it has high FPI count but you’ll need fans with good static pressure to push the air through and you might need to increase the rpm on both the pump and fans. It sounds like you would be alright with that because it would probably still be quieter than running the stock gpu fan at 3000 rpm.
I also prefer Performance-PC over FrozenCPU. They seem to fill the orders quicker and their customer service is excellent.
Well it looks like FrozenCPU is the only website with an XSPC Razor Vega in stock, so I’ll be ordering that from them, but since PerformancePC’s lets one configure the EX280 kit, that’s coming from there. Amazon has tons of fittings and good pictures (and Prime) so I’ll be getting small bits via that… ugh, so many places to ship from.
Don’t know if anyone’s following this, but placed orders today. I think I have a great solution for loop order, will be a total of 400mm of radiator, and will possibly have to fabricated my own bracket for the pump and res combo but that’s not an issue for me luckily. Might even make a few spares.
Hoping I ordered everything necessary, got 4 feet of extra tubing (total of 10.5 feet), ball valve for drain segment, fluid temp sensor, four 90° fittings (I just realized this might not be enough…) and two 45° fittings, a three-way for the drain, four male-male attachments, four extra straight fittings…
At least I can order stuff with Amazon Prime if I got it wrong.
Yep, loop order only starts to matter if you have massive loops with multiple series pump locations, thus many fairly equal restriction between (and should be initially bled with only the first pump, which should be directly after and underneath the reservoir), otherwise you’ll end up with areas of very high pressure, thus more chances of leaks, popping fittings ect. Temperature wise the fluid in any loop with reasonable flow will be at most a degree or two different, since water has insane specific heat capacity and reasonable density, while even extremely high end computers are tiny heat sources compared to something like a motor.
Pump is integrated with the res here so no issue in that front. I’ll post more photos as I get building. This was just the first hurdle and now I have a lot of motivation since I only have one PC
Watercooling takes a lot of time to get set up. With my latest build, I spent far longer constructing the loop than I did building the rest of the PC, including cable management. I do enjoy the process though. That is the reason I water cool.
I would love to do a steam punk build with copper tubing and custom machined blocks/tops for my next build. A lot of work to be sure, but I think it would be a fun project.
Well my plan didn’t work out as expected since the 280mm rad only fits in one orientation, so I’m having to make a few compromises, but I think it will work out in the end. I’m glad I bought a few extra fittings because I might need them all.
I know your pain, i ended up with a spare 240mm rad because of small things not working as planned. Working with max size stuff always makes stuff way more complicated.
Made good progress tonight! That little one on the left from the rad to the GPU was a bitch. It’s deformed slightly but I’m hoping it doesn’t affect the flow rate.
