Black Ice 800D Water Cooling Mod

Starting this worklog to document my upgrade and hopefully help out some people with any questions they may have regarding water cooling or the Corsair 800D as far as modding goes.

Index (To Be Updated)

01. Current & Proposed Setup
02. New Parts
03. Lower Drive Bay
04. Case Cutting
05. Wire Mesh Fan Screen
06. GPU Waterblock Assembly
07. Rebuilding
08. SLI Install
09. Top Rad & Cooling Loop

01 Current Setup & Gamelplan

This all stemmed from my desire to pick up a second graphics card to run SLI & watercool my GPU's. In my current setup, I am watercooling just my CPU with a 240mm radiator. The plan is to install a second GPU, drop my existing 240mm rad to the bottom of my case, and add a 360mm rad up top so I can efficiently cool all three blocks in one loop.

-Current Setup- (To Be Eliminated)
Case: Corsair 800D
MOBO: Gigabyte Z68x-UD3H-B3 (Rev1.3)
CPU: Intel i7-2600K (No Overclock)
GPU: EVGA GTX 670
RAM: 16GB (2x8) Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz
PSU: Corsair AX850 Gold (Fully Modular)
SDD: 256GB M4 Crucial
HDD: 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM
Monitor (1): Dell U2410
Monitor (2): Dell 1905FP
-Peripherals-
Sony Optiarc Disc Drive
Lamptron FC2 Fan controller
NZXT Hue RGB LED Controller
-Water Cooling-
Block: EK-Supremacy CPU Block
Rad: Coolstream XTX240
Pump: EK-DCP 4.0
Res: Ek-Res X1 150
Tubing: Primochill 3/8"x1/2" (Clear)
Fittings: EK Nickel Compression
Liquid: EK-UV Coolant

-Proposed Setup- (New)
Case: Corsair 800D
MOBO: Gigabyte Z68x-UD3H-B3 (Rev1.3)
CPU: Intel i7-2600K (Overclocked)
GPU: EVGA GTX 670
GPU: EVGA GTX 670
RAM: 16GB (2x8) Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz
PSU: Corsair AX850 Gold (Fully Modular)
SDD: 256GB M4 Crucial
HDD: 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM
Monitor (1): Dell U2410
Monitor (2): Dell 1905FP
-Peripherals-
Sony Optiarc Disc Drive
Lamptron FC2 Fan controller
NZXT Hue RGB LED Controller
-Water Cooling-
Block: EK-Supremacy CPU Block
Block: EK-FC970 GTX Acrylic/Copper & EF-FC970GTX Backplate (Black)
Block: EK-FC970 GTX Acrylic/Copper & EF-FC970GTX Backplate (Black)
Rad: Coolstream XTX240
Rad: XSPC RX360 V3
Pump: Swiftech MCP655 w/ Speed Controller
Res: Bitspower Water Tank Z-Multi 250 Inline
Tubing: PrimochillFlex LRT 1/2"x3/4" (Clear)
Fittings: (14) Bitspower 1/2"x3/4" Compression (Silver)
Fittings: (4) Bitspower G 1/4" Deluxe White Rotary 90° IG 1/4" Adapter
Fittings: Bitspower Matte Black Sealing Plug 3/8" ID
Liquid: Distilled Water
Misc: Silver Kill Coil

02 New Parts

Moved everything down to my basement so I could spread out and walk around my case without moving it too much.





Left Image: Primochill tubing & Corsairs Individually sleeved cables for my power supply
Right Image: (4) Corsair Sp120 quiet edition fans & new Swiftech pump



Left Image: Bitspower reservoir, EK GTX970 Copper Blocks & Backplates
Right Image: XSPC 360mm radiator. Also shown are an EK 120mm radiator and an EK-FC dual parallel GPU bridge that I didn't end up using



And here is a close up of all my Bitspower fittings

03 Lower Drive Bay

So I pulled everything out of the case with the exception of my fan controller, rgb controller, and cd drive. Now in order to fit my 240mm radiator flat on the bottom, the lower drive cages need to come out. I've seen people seat radiators on their side and avoid pulling these out, but I can't imagine airflow is too great that way.



To get this process started, I first had to remove the two plastic rails on the floor of the case and the bottom of the shelf. These pop right off with little effort. After that, I removed the front panel and drilled out the four rivets circled here using a power drill and a 1/8" bit. There are little tabs on the outside of the drive cage pieces (two on each) that secure them to the floor of the case. I bent these back using a flathead screwdriver and hammer.



Flipping the case upside down, you can find the bottom of two rivets (circled in red). These are used to fasten the hot swap bay walls to the lower drive cages for more rigid construction. I used a Dremel with a grinding bit and just shaved them down to nothing so I could slide the cages out. It was kind of tough to get the angle on the but I was able to do it. Once these were free, I eventually got the cages out. I had to wrestle with them for a few minutes but they're out.

04 Case Cutting

"Life" hasn't been affording me the time to continue this worklog lately. Anyway, next was to cut into the bottom of the case for airflow through the lower radiator.



I printed out a full scale template of the XTX240 and traced it out to locate screw holes. I wanted to utilize the honeycomb holes in the case already for the screws that would overlap the existing vents.



To make the cut, I used a Dremel with a cutting wheel bit. Pretty dusty and a lot of metal shards flying around but I'm happy with how it came out. Definitely recommend pulling every component out as the case dust got everywhere.

05 Wire Mesh Fan Screen

I spent a lot of time looking for a honeycomb pattern aluminum mesh to use where I cut the hole for the rad. But I couldn't find anything that would match the rest of the vents in a thin enough profile.



So I did something pretty jenky and went over to Staples after work and picked up a wire mesh office trash can for about six bucks. (It had the biggest flat surface area out of everything I looked at there). Cut out a rectangular piece with some shears and viola! I don't really intend for this to be permanent but for now I'll rest it on the inside of the case and screw the radiator from the bottom and just sandwich the screen to the case.

06 GPU Waterblock Assembly

Next for me was to install the EK Waterblocks and Faceplates to my GTX 670's. I wanted a full cover block and faceplate but had trouble locating them at a reasonable price. Luckily, Nvidia used the same PCB layout for the 970s as they did for the 670s so I got the new 970 accessories. The assembly was pretty straight forward.



First step was to remove the stock cooler and clean off the old dried up thermal paste and pads.



Second was to apply new thermal paste and pads, secure the waterblock, and then the faceplate. EKWB supplied a bunch of extra screws, pads and thermal paste in case any get lost during the build which was nice.

07 Rebuilding

Once all the prep work had been completed, I could finally start hooking everything back up.



I started off seating the motherboard and attaching the old EKWB CPU block and my RAM sticks. Then I screwed one of my new Corsair Sp120 quiet edition fans and one of my original case fans to the bottom of my XTX240 rad, pulling the air through the top and exhausting out the bottom of the case. Once that was in place, I began running my new sleeved cables trying to keep them as neat as possible.

08 SLI Install

Apologies for the quality of these pictures, they were taken on my old Galaxy S4 if my memory serves me and looking at them now, I wish I had something better. Anyway this was the most aggravating part of the entire build. The original plan was to use the EK-FC dual parallel GPU bridge between the blocks but I bought the 2-slot version which ended up being too short (angry). I then searched everywhere for the the 3-slot version but nowhere had the acrylic clear copper version in stock at the time (more angry). So I ended up buying 4 more Bitspower fittings because I didn't want to wait 3 weeks for the bridge to come and decided I'd just use tubes to connect the blocks.



This was a rather poor idea. AS evident in the photos, there is a very short run for the 3/4" tubing between the fittings. It took me a handful of different trial and error cuts and about two hours of frustration for the tubing between the cards to be the right height so that both cards sat directly into their PCI slots. A couple of times I got both cards seated but they were either pushing the slots away or pulling them in and I felt if I left them, eventually they would snap under the pressure. But I finally got them installed and they look good enough to me to leave for now.

09 Top Rad & Cooling Loop

Next came the fun part, mounting the top radiator and getting all the loops components situated.



I attached three more of the new Corsair fans to the bottom of the new XSPC RX360 V3 radiator and secured it to the top of the case. No problems. I was slightly skeptical that the Bitspower Water Tank Z-Multi 250 Inline reservoir might be a little to tall for my case but once I got it in there I thought it looked great. I tossed the silver kill coil in there and screwed in two 90° adapters at the bottom. Needed these to get the beefy 3/4" tubes to their destinations with minimum bending.



Things started to get a little cramped at the bottom with the Swiftech MCP655 pump which I knew they would. The orientation of the in vs. out ports on the pump are the opposite of how I wish they were. If they were switched, I could more easily arranged things. Below the shelf, there are two 90° adapters on the top of the radiator. The one in back is receiving the flow of water directly from the pump. The one in front (more visible in the photos) is connected to the bottom of the lower graphics card through a hole I drilled in the shelf with a hole saw bit. I used a grommet from elsewhere in the case here for a cleaner look and to avoid having sharp metal against the tube. On the right side of the lower radiator in the left picture, you can make out one of my old fittings that I reconnected which has a very short length of tube capped with a new Bitspower Matte Black Sealing Plug to use as a drain-port for future flushing of my loop.