My first water cooling build

[Vitalius]

This is an overall build, not strictly about water cooling.

Suggestions are welcome.

Basic system specs:

NZXT Crafted Series Black/Green Phantom case

ASRock Z77 Pro4 Motherboard

i5 3570K @ 3.3GHz


Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB (4x8GB) of 1600 RAM (9-9-9-24)


2x Kingston HyperX 120 GB SSD

NZXT Hale82 750W PSU


Update: EVGA 4GB FTW+ Edition GTX 680 




The overall theme is Black and Green. Preferably Acid Green where possible. This is the build I will run with as I build up the watercooling components.

I'm also going to be extensively (imo) modding the NZXT Phantom case by adding side windows (using a dremmel) and removing the 3.25" drive bays to make room for the reservoir and pumps which I've already done. I'll likely put the SSD's on the underside of the 5.25" drive bay using Industrial Velcro (idea stolen from Linus at NCIX) and leave a pure storage HDD at the bottom of the 5.25" bay secured with velcro as well. 

Watercooling components:

T-Virus UV Green Reservoir (It glows green under UV light)
 

Feser One Cooling Liquid - UV Green

 

 Feser One Acid Green Tubing
 

EK's Supremacy Plexi-Nickel CPU waterblock

Style of all fittings that will be used
 

2 UV Cold Cathode lights
 


Update: EK's EVGA GTX 680 FTW edition Acetal + Nickel GPU Waterblock

After that, there's the radiator, pump, and the like, the things that aren't so aesthetically pleasing.

But that's essentially it. It's becoming epic (in the process of building/modding right now). Like I said, suggestions are welcome.

Update (12/13/2012):

I've considered how I'm going to do the side panels, and I believe I will have 4 windows set up in a fairly "popular" Phantom side panel mod. I liked the look of it, so I decided to go with it. 

Picture of window mod (not my case or picture):

 

Except, make all 4 sections windows rather than just 2.

Now, the Top Right window would just show the 5.25" Drive bay cage, which I could add something cool to look at, but I'm not. I'm going to make that into a "stainless glass" kind of window. It's not going to be glass (more than likely it'll be acrylic), but what I mean by that kind of window is that it will portray an image. Made out of different colors of material. More than likely, those colors will just be different shades of green. If I could just find a way to make the image in my head real, it would be amazing. If I can't, then it will be a pane of Acrylic with the same image etched into it. We will see.

The same might happen to the Bottom Left since it would just look at the PSU. Or I might mod the PSU case to look cool. We will see (I say that a lot, I know).

Bottom Right will be either the Reservoir and Pump, or it will be another image similar to the Top Right.

Top Left will be clear and obviously be to look at the loop/hardware. Maybe something etched into the very top left corner, but probably not.

As for the loop, There will be a 3x140 radiator in the top. It will go down to the Reservoir which will go into the Pump, then to a 2x140mm bottom/side radiator, then GPU's, then CPU/Motherboard, then back to the top radiator.

This is where the 2x140mm radiator will go, or it will go along the front rather than the bottom. Still haven't decided. :| Whichever might be easier.

Note: That's my actual case+PSU btw.

I'm also considering flipping the motherboard tray from one side to the other inside the case so that the motherboard is upside down so that the GPU's waterblocks are facing up to be seen rather than the PCB's. If I do that, flip everything horizontally. 

All that would require is a tool to remove rivets and looooots of nuts+bolts as I would probably take the entire case apart so I could easily do as I please with each section individually.

If you look back at that window mod picture, you'll notice there's a bit of space above the windows on the side panel that's unused. Either I could extend the windows, or I could cut some wording out up there. I'd prefer the latter, but what do you guys think? 

Suggestions are welcome, as I've said. Project name ones in particular.

[TallGeese]

Thats quite a list. With relation to watercooling, make sure if you plan on dissasembling and reassembling the loop at all often (adding lots of hardware) then have a good fill line into the rez (drill a hole or something on those lines and put a cap in it) and drain line at the lowest point of the loop.

Also some good radiators are aquacomputer, alphacool, ek.

One thing I did notice on your hardware selection, unless its already purchased I wouldnt get an Asus video card for watercooling. Once you remove that stock heat sink your warranty is gone. EVGA does warranty after removal of heat sink, and even if the card goes dead after mounting the waterblock. Just some info worth noting from someone that learned the hard way.

Lastly, getting 32GB of ram is completely unneeded. If your rendering the i7 processor is going to give you better results then just jamming a bunch of ram in.

[Vitalius]

Thank you for the advice. :) I'll keep in mind the thing about having a good fill/drain line.

From what I've seen, I prefer EK's line of everything. 

I chose the ASUS simply because it had a good Air heatsink for the time I won't have the water cooling components ready. That will take ~1 year to get everything. Maybe less, we will see. So, I will be using the GTX 680 for approximately a year before removing the heatsink and installing a waterblock. 

Do you think that's enough time to test for a defective card? I would suspect that if I needed to actually use the warranty, it would be within a year of buying the card. Though I am considering EVGA now...

As for the RAM, that is for four reasons. 

1. RAMDisk (~4-8 GB)

2. Fancy Cache (~4-8 GB)

3. RAM is relatively cheap anyway.

4. Future-proofing

[Craycraft]

I would wait to order the fittings, order the system, lay out the reservoir, rad, pump, ect, and then see what fittings you need. It's hard to buy fittings before you actually see it inside the case because it never lays out the you plan, well sometimes it does but it's rare. Trust me, I have oodles of extra fittings because of this. Other than that TallGeese is great advice, and good luck sir!

[Vitalius]

Thank you. :)

And yeah, I was going to do that basically. Buy the primary components first, then get everything else I needed (length of tubing, number of fittings, etc). 

Edit: I updated the OP to reflect a change in Graphics Card. 

[Vitalius]

I'm thinking of calling the project "Venom" though I'm open to suggestions on the name. It needs to go along with the Black and Green theme and possibly Anime and Video Games (my two hobbies besides building computers).

I've decided (thanks to a "how to" thread about etching) to etch stuff into the windows. What exactly is going to go into it is still up in the air, but I have a friend who is somewhat of an artist who will be sketching some ideas up for it. I feel Kingdom Hearts will be involved somehow. Maybe not. We will see.

The windows will be the two default openings on the right side panel on the NZXT Phantom case minus the mesh obviously plus two more on that same side to take up the empty space.

The two windows that will show the 5.25" Drive bay and the area under it where the water pump and the like are going to go are going to be stained glass. Like the things you see in a church, only all the glass will be different shades of green to emphasis depth and the like.

Sadly, I have no pictures as the windows are still in the concept stage. I'll update this post with them when I get some. I might just take a picture of the side panel and Photoshop some windows on to give an idea for it's final look. Once again, we will see.

[ThePlanBPill]

Everybody has that damn T virus resvoir now because of Linus. It's meh. Personally I think it's kind of tacky

[Vitalius]

Hahaha, yeah, I found out about it from Linus, but I'm only buying it because it's the best one I could find for me imo. It goes with the whole biological aspect if I continue to call this build Venom. 

It's entirely possible that I will have my own custom one made. :| I didn't even consider that until just now. ... It shall be done. Now, what to make it into... hmm. 

[Vitalius]

Updated the OP. Check that for updates on the design ideas. I'll be posting pictures of the build on Jan. 1st-5th as that's when most of the work will be done. Although those will be more like normal computer building pictures. The modding parts will be later.

[TallGeese]

If you want the best when it comes to tools, rivets, clamps etc. Nils at mdpc is the best. The million dollar pc club is by far the best modding community available. They have done the most collectively beautiful builds.

[paparoupas]

Vitalius, seeking solution to multiple unsuccessful boots that I deal with, I came accross your post. I've built a pc with the same configuration as yours, concerning  motherboard and ram, with xeon 1230v2 and hd5750. My problem is that with four dimms installed the pc restarts over and over every 5 seconds, but with two of them everything seems to be fine. So, I would like to ask you if you have given some more juice than the default 1.5V in order to make them work properly (cl9,1600MHz). I've excluded the "lack of psu power" factor, because my previous configuration with 95W TDP cpu was based on the same psu.