Anidees AI6 - Building a custom loop

[ApolloX75]

Hello! I have noticed not a lot of people use Anidees cases so I figured I would do a bit of a write up on my experience building a custom loop inside an AI6BW.

 

It's hard.

 

Anidees AI6BW

Lang D5 Strong
EK LTX

2x Koolance 2600RPM fans
Swiftech MCR220QP-RES
Primochill 3/8 ID UV tubing
Primochill Pure coolant
FrankenPC2015 (see sig)

 

So first a quick look at what I started out with:

 

Hmm. Not a lot of places to put a rad really. Maybe up top?

Oooh... no that's not going to work, no space at all. And there's even less underneath the plastic shroud on top of that.

 

Maybe in the front?

Sure! After I remove all the cages to fit my rad.

 

Ahh that does the trick! That's right folks. In order to install my rad which is admittedly an odd shaped one since it's a QP-RES (integrated reservoir) so maybe if I had a slim or low profile rad I could have done less modifications. Now of course this case has no extra mounting for SSDs or hard drives so I had to get creative...

Some rubber isolators and a little double sided industrial foam tape from work.

 

Obligatory CPU block money shot

 

So now to get my pump in place and fit my tubing. Unfortunately I'm rather strapped for cash so I can't do the hard pipe build I really want to do, so I stuck with some Primochill UV tubing I've had kicking around since about 2009... same as my rad and coolant actually.

 

Mounting the rad was pretty easy after stripping the cages.

 

So after all that hard work filling it was rather quick and that D5 pump primed amazingly quick. I'm used to older DDC pumps and having to flip the case over my head to bleed air bubbles. No such issues with this one.

Damn those Koolance fans are quiet and move a lot of air.

 

So that's it. The sexy end result. Cable management was an absolute hell to organize as I have the BW model which has pre-applied sound deadening. This eats up a 1/4" of space in behind the motherboard tray and makes everything super cramped. Also doesn't help that removing the drive bays severely compromises the motherboard tray integrity. It is very flimsy now.

 

 

I spoiler tagged all the photos to save everyone some eye strain and I apologize, some of them look off and that's just my phone being a prick plus the fact I had to resize every single one. I hope this helps anyone thinking about an Anidees. They are great cases but I think they are more suited to an air cooling setup or maybe an AIO. The dust filters work excellent however, so kudos to them on that design choice.