Project Leaky Filing Cabinet

T

Teenyman45

2[H]4U
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
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This build log is going to chronicle my first foray into water cooling. The name Leaky Filing cabinet was chosen because once the casters are added to a CaseLabs TH-10 case with matte black powder coating it looks quite a bit like a filing cabinet... one filled with water.

Sponsorships:
This higher end build is being brought to you by, and with special thanks to, My Wallet.

Some parts are being reused but there are quite a few new goodies.

The parts list: With pictures to be posted once all the toys arrive and I borrow a digital camera.
Case: A cavernous CaseLabs TH-10 configured with a reverse ATX layout
Display: 1x HP ZR30W for 2560x1600 gaming and e-book viewing goodness
Video Cards: 3x 7970s in trifire (1x XFX 7970 Black Edition, 1x Sapphire 7970, and 1x Sapphire 7970 OC arriving soon)
CPU: I7-950 with an I7-930 as a back up
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Formula
RAM: 3x 2GB G Skill Pi 7-8-7-24-2T DDR3 1600 & 3x 4GB Semi-Defective Corsair Dominator 9-9-9-1T DDR3 1600 that is almost certainly eating my IMC because it will not stabilize below 1.67v but after getting 6 bad Corsair kits I grew tired of cross shipping
SSD: 2x Crucial C300 256GB in RAID 0
HDD: 2x WD Caviar Black 1TB in RAID 1
Power Supply: RMA Corsair AX1200 and unlike my previous Corsair PSU experience, this one has not yet turned itself into a fragmentation device... so that's nice

Water Cooling Gear:

Swiftech Apogee HD CPU Block
2x Swiftech MCP35x PWM pumps
3x Swiftech 7970 Komodo full cover water blocks
Swiftech 7970 Komodo Trifire special double X bridge
2x Alphacool NexXxos Monsta 480 Radiators (These just went on sale, are 80mm of solid copper, and are very different from the older Feser Monstas)
1x Alphacool NexXxos XT45 120 Radiator (45mm thick and also all copper)
1x EK Multioption RES x2 - 400 Advanced Reservoir (I am stunned that I just spent $60 plus shipping on a water bottle)
30 feet of clear Tygon tubing
18x Swiftech Lok-Seal 3/8ID 5/8OD compression fittings
2x Swiftech Lok-Seal 45 degree bends
2x Swiftech Lok-Seal 15mm extenders
1x Silver Kill Coil that I forgot to order and will now need to have shipped separately.

2x Rolls of Paper Towels (Brand TBD)
1x Roll of disposable blue shop towels


Final fan load out and fan controller load out TBD.

The big component group shot!
WCgroupshot521KB.jpg


I have gone way over budget and my credit card is beginning to melt from use.

All my images in this log have been, and will be, taken with a borrowed smart phone. The source images are about 2MBwhich gets shrunk to 500-600KB when emailed and the direct linking to Photobucket seems to shrink it further down to 150-200KB. So enjoy my "quality" digital photography.
 
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I really want Corsair to sponsor you. Just for the sour grapes.

It would also be mighty funny if they purposely sent you broken stuff. I'd lol.
 
Minor update: Just ordered 8 Noctua NF-F12 fans and 4 Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP15s along with a Scythe Server fan controller from NCIX. Hopefully, I can turn the LCD on the Server controller off as some reviewers indicated.

One AP15 will be used as a push fan with the XT 45 rad mounted on the CPU exhaust port. The rest will be case fans and of them will be plugged into the fan controller.

The NF-12s will be used as rad push fans for the top mounted 80mm Monstas. I think they will be wrapped in black to hide their ugliness. As for the fan blades, who is going to bend down, stick their head into the case, and look up?
 
All my parts with the exception of the order from NCIX have arrived so I will be posting pictures this weekend. As small as most water cooling parts are, the Alphacool NexXxos Monsta 480s are truly enormous.

Here is the Monsta 480 by itself.
TheMonsta480-1.jpg


Here it is with a 45mm thick 120 radiator to help give an idea of scale.
Monsta480andXT45.jpg


Add a 120mm fan to the shot for even more perspective.
MonstaandFan.jpg


Two of these Monsta-rous things are going to be cooling my trifire 7970 and cpu gaming set up. Of course, there was another reason why I bought Alphacool NexXxos rads besides the pure copper construction and 80mm thickness.
Behold the screw guard!
RadiatorScrewGuard.jpg


Even with my near total lack of mechanical and construction aptitudes, I will be unlikely to puncture the radiators while trying to screw them into place or when adding fans.

P.S. I just noticed the awful color of Noctua fans matches the color of the rental condo's carpet.
 
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Here is a group shot of the Swiftech gear to be used, excluding the compression fittings.
SwiftechGroupShot.jpg


That little blob of gray is a non-reusable packet of PK-1 that came with the Apogee HD block. The Komodo blocks each get those little reusable tubes of Swiftech's new TM-1 paste that the company claims is actually better than PK-1 when there is good to excellent block/chip contact.
 
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such a nice big case... wish they were a bit more affordable or my wallet had more cash... look forward to reading the build out...
 
I had to move to a test bench because the 7970 Dual OC is actually a 2.5width card rather than a 2 slot as advertised and so would not fit in the Storm Sniper.

Behold my high end, neat and tidy test bench.
Testbench.jpg


Those two GTs in the corner are actually being used as weights to pull on the power cables and keep that extra heavy cooler on the video card from tipping it over and breaking connection with the PCIe pins. You can see the speaker is unplugged so I can get a better bead on just how much coil whine is coming from the card. If the whine gets much louder then back the card will go to the Egg.

I first tried using the Case Labs motherboard tray with test bench add on, but I think all those extra standoffs were causing a problem because i was not getting video out. When my toolkit comes in, out those standoffs will go.

This makeshift job will serve in the interim and soon I will be trying out tri-fire.

UPDATE:

Coil whine on the Sapphire Dual OC was too much of an issue... there was a noise pulse each time there was even the slightest bit of scrolling on a web page, let alone gaming or benching. RMA-ed the card and it looks like a two week turn around time before I get a new one and can actually start building the loop for real. I will probably be doing assembly prep work this weekend or next.
 
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I just built my first water cooled system and I thought it was sweet, but this is like a dream build on steroids. Subbed!
 
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