My Watercooled Media PC

saunders1991 · October 12, 2014

My Builds

Jill:

Jack:

Update July 11, 2015

This is practically a whole other computer than last post at this point . If TLDR skip to third paragraph

So I switched the motherboard from the Asus M5A97, to the Sabertooth 990FX I used to have in

Jack, turns out it was failing and literally every game was stuttering and unplayable (that was fun

trying to diagnose). Ended up grabbing an Asus Z97-Pro Gamer motherboard and using an Intel

4690K I grabbed several months ago to replace the 990FX, before I even got that I found a

GTX970 on ebay for $80 (selling for parts due to heat issues and blue-screening), I threw a bid at

it and won (really hoping at this point that I didn't just throw money down the drain).

I received the motherboard and graphics card on the same day and went straight to work testing

the card. I threw it in a rig just to see, and before Windows even loaded the computer shut off.

Now, I've had this issue previously with Jack when I had a pump die on me (components heated up

until auto-shutoff), so the first thing I thought to do was remove the stock cooler and... BAM, thermal

paste was barely even on the damn GPU die. Replaced the thermal compound and tried booting

again, and NO ISSUES. In other words I got a practically brand new GTX970 for about $100 CAD

(80+20 shipping), which is freaking ridiculous.

Okay, so with all that figured out, I ordered an EK 970 waterblock, got everything installed and running

great. Had the 4690K up at 4.8Ghz 1.4V, but that was getting a bit too hot, keeping it at 4.5Ghz for the

time being to counter BC's current heatwave of doom. Temps were around 60-65C on the CPU under

Intelburntest Maximum Test load (peaked at 67C), and GPU only hitting 42C during an hour long furmark

test (Ambient room temp was around 31C Bleh). There area couple of other little changes as well that'll

be noticeable in the spec sheet. Ok time for some pictures

CPU
Intel I5 4690K @ 3.5Ghz.
Motherboard
Asus Z97-Pro Gamer
RAM
Corsair Vengeance 4X4GB @ 1600Mhz.
GPU
EVGA GTX970 ACX (EK ACX Block)
Case
Corsair Air 540. (White)
Storage
120GB OCZ V3, 1TB Hitachi.
PSU
Corsair HX750i 750W
Display(s)
Samsung 55" LED TV
Cooling
Alphacool 240 & 360 Rads, Dazmode SP Edition EK CPU Block, Bitspower 140 Res, D5 Pump (With XSPC Top).
Operating System
Windows 7 HP

Set up showing the TV

Nice view of inside.

And everything is glowing!

-----Older-----

This is my HTPC computer, sits in the livingroom and is used for gaming on the bigscreen TV.

Before actually watercooling. Test fitting the rads before I got all the other parts.

I really like how this build turned out, only thing I don't like are the heatsinks on the motherboard being blue,

I'm almost temped to take them off and paint them red to fit the rest of the build, but I'm not sure how much that

might effect their performance, throw me a message if you know of a good way to do this . I love the fact

that the portal turret I got was perfectly powered by the mobo headers, so when the PC is asleep its *laser*

actually blinks, I've had a couple comments that the case reminded people of portals turrets, so I just had to.

Full Specs:

CPU
Phenom 1090T @ 3.8Ghz.
Motherboard
Asus M5A97 R2.0.
RAM
Corsair Vengeance 2X4GB @ 1.6Ghz.
GPU
EVGA GTX660Ti (Razer 670 Block)
Case
Corsair Air 540. (White)
Storage
120GB OCZ V3, 1TB Hitachi.
PSU
XFX XXX 650W.
Display(s)
Samsung 55" LED TV
Cooling
Alphacool 240 & 360 Rads, Dazmode SP Edition EK CPU Block, Bitspower 140 Res, DDC Pump (With Bitspower Top).
Operating System
Windows 7 HP