First time modding - 800D water cooled

[jd2195]

A couple of months ago I finished my first water cooled build along with my first mods. I am very happy with the results of the mods and the performance and noise output of the water cooling. I originally uploaded a build log on a different forum as I went along but I thought that I might as well upload a more brief build log on here. Unfortunately I do not have photos from the early part of the build log as my hard drive failed and I had to wipe everything from it. This means that I only have later photos. Hope you enjoy my build log !!
 
So about a  year ago from now I decided that I wanted to water cool my build. My main reason for wanting to water cool was because I love the way that it looks and to make my system a bit quieter. Unfortunately I did not have enough money at the time or the right case. This meant that I would have to wait and pick parts up over time. I decided that I wanted to put both my CPU and GPU under water as I think that it looks much better. My build was modest at the time containing a 2500k, MSI z77a G45, and a GTX 560 and the only thing that was going to get upgraded from that was the graphics card to a 570. This was because there were no water blocks for my card so I had to upgrade but more about that later.
 
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500k
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G45
Grpahics Card:KFA² GTX 570
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance Blue DDR3
HDD: 1TB HDD
PSU: OCZ ZT series 650W with custom sleeved cables using MDPC sleeving
Case: Corasir Obsisdian 800D
CPU Waterblock: EK-Supreme LTX 
GPU waterblock: EK full cover block and nickel back plate
360 Radiator: XSPC 360mm
240 radiator: Magicool 240mm
Pump: Swiftech MCP655 with bitsopwer D5 mod kit
Reservoir: FrozenQ Liquid Fusion V res UV blue
Fittings: 10x EK PSC compression fittings black, 3x EK PSC 90 degree adapters, 2x EK PSC 45 degree adapters, 1x alphacool 90 degree fitting, and 2x Koolance Quick Disconnects(all 3/8" ID 1/2"OD)

 

This was my final parts list and I will tell you how I came across most of these parts, some of the prices I got were quite ridiculous I believe. 

Over the months of October and November I began looking out for parts cheap while doing some research into water cooling and making sure I got the right parts. After seeing a FrozenQ reservoir in Linus's personal build series I decided I would quite like one. I began trying to search for a cheap one as they are quite expensive. Eventually I managed to find one for a bit of a discount on another forums marketplace, that place turned out to be a gold mine for me. Reservoir bought and I was happy. Next up I began looking for a graphics card. As my budget was minimal it took me a while to find one cheap enough but after a while looking I found the aforementioned graphics card with a water block on for only £100. I personally thought that it was a great deal.

After Christmas came and went I realised that I still needed a suitable case for water cooling as at the time all I had was Coolermaster HAF 912+ and that was not going to be suitable for my needs even if I heavily modded it. Originally I thought that the Bitfenix Shinobi XL would be a good choice but got put off of that as it only supported a 360mm rad and even to get that in you had to do a little bit of modding. I had always wanted a 800D as I thought that they looked amazing and were one of the best cases for water cooling but they were out of my price range, however, on eBay I managed to find a used, slightly battered, 800D for £110. I was so happy with that find and think that that was probably the bargain of my build. At last I had a case and could finally begin planning my build properly.

 

Prior to getting the case I had actually finished my first mod. I decided that for this build I wanted to sleeve my power supply cables. So for Christmas I got some basic sleeving supplies, including a crappy pin removal tool set, and began sleeving. Unfortunately I was held back by the fact that I bought at least 2, might even have been 3, crappy pin removal tools before I finally gave in and bought the original molex removal tool. I went with b-magic blue and black from MDPC and eventually went with the heatshrinkless. I am very happy with my results seeing as it was my first time sleeving and it was my first mod.

 

At a similar time to getting the case I also managed to pick up some ek fittings along with 2 Koolance quick disconnects and some 45 degree and 90 degree adapter fittings fairly cheap off of the same forum marketplace that I got the graphics card and the reservoir. 

 

While waiting to receive my case and planning the loop I realised that the 800D only fits one 360mm rad natively and although that would be enough for just a cpu and single gpu loop I wanted a bit of overkill and to future proof it a bit in case I bought another gpu and wanted to put it under water so I decided to mod it to fit a 240mm rad in the bottom of the case. This is a fairly simple mod and there are many guides on the internet on how to do it so I was reasonably confident. Upon receiving my case I began to try and sort out the side panel as it came without acrylic and there was some sort of adhesive left on the back on the side panel. I wanted to get rid of this so I tried quite a few methods of getting it off. My last attempt was using white spirit and this began to actually strip the paint off. I decided that to get rid of this adhesive and the part of the side panel that had paint removed I would cut that part of the side panel so that the annoying curve to the side panel window was gone and I would have a nice square which would also make my res more visible. Overall I was actually pretty happy that this happened and allowed me to do more mods and get more practice. 

 

When I received my dremel I began to remove the hard drive cages from the basement compartment. Although the guides made this seem easy to get the cages out, it was not. After getting all of the required rivets out I could not pull the cages out. After much effort trying to get them out I gave up and got the hammer out. After a couple of hits with the hammer they came out. The only damage to the case was a few scratches on the bottom but that did not matter as I had to cut that part of the case out anyway. I then waited a while but eventually cut the bottom section of the case out where the fan filter and radiator grill would be placed to allow air to be drawn in from the fan. 

 

In between taking the hard drive cages out and cutting the bottom section out I also cut the side panel to size. This required me to order a few extra attachments for my dremel as the regular cutting wheels would not do the job. The cutting of the side panel went fine but then I had to file the edges down as I did a pretty rough cut. The filing went fine until the last ten minutes when I pulled the file up to far. This caused a huge scratch in the paint, I was so annoyed. However every cloud has a silver lining and this clouds silver lining was that allowed me to enter into another area of modding which I initially was not intending to and it was painting. 

 

I went a bought some spray paint from my local hardware store, just plain matte black and some grey primer. After applying a couple initial layers of primer I began to apply the black paint. I applied probably three of four layers of spray paint until I was satisfied the colour matched very well and once again I was very happy with my first venture into another aspect of modding. This was the final look of the side cut and painted:

 

After finishing all of the mods pretty much I was then stuck. I had little money and so had to wait to acquire parts. Luckily a very nice member of another forum saw that I was missing a cpu block and he offered me a EK Supreme LTX for free. This saved about £50 on paying for a new block. This allowed me to spend the saved money on other parts that I needed. The build slowed down at this point as I still needed a pump, 360 rad and 240 rad, tubing and coolant. I was waiting for good deals that I could find either on forum marketplaces or on eBay. This was the CPU block when it arrived:

 

Eventually I found a XSPC 360 rad on eBay for £33 and then the next day a magicool 240mm rad for £20. Soon after winning those 2 items I went ahead and bought the coolant and tubing, new of course as you cannot really recycle those parts. I settled on getting Mayhems X1 UV Blue dye and primochill advanced lrt uv blue tubing. It may seem strange that I wanted both the coolant and the tubing coloured but I thought that there would be parts of my build where the coolant would be visible when not in the tubing and I wanted  it UV reactive but I also loved the look of the blue tubing so I went for both. 

 

At this time while the build was moving slowly I was moving house. This meant moving the case over to the new house. I had already bought the acrylic for the side panel and in transit to the new house the acrylic got scratched meaning that I had to spend more money on another piece of acrylic and so more money spent that I did not need to spend. This was the scratch:

 

Eventually I managed to find a pump on another forum marketplace for pretty cheap. It was new and unused but unfortunately it was not the vario edition so I could not control the speed. I just had to make one final order which included fans, bitspower mod kit, and a few other things that I needed to complete my build. After receiving all of these parts I realised that I could not complete the build as the options on the pump were too limited. This meant that I had to order a bitspower pump top and a few other fittings as for some reason the bitspower pump top comes with G 3/8" threads for some stupid reason. 

 

After these arrived I began to assemble the loop. First of all I began to put the fans on the rads:

and then the mod kit on the pump:

I then proceeded to get the cpu block onto the cpu:

I then installed the gpu and the rads into the case:

 

I was almost ready now all I had to do was find a place for the pump and the res. This was quite hard and it ended up in me having to get my dremel out again. To mount the res I had to drill a few extra holes so that I could mount the Ek uni holders and then mount the res on them. I eventually decided to mount the pump onto the midplate just under the graphics card, this meant that the pump was pushing the water up most of the way and this caused problems when initially filling the loop up but when it got going it was fine. This is the final placement of the pump and the res:

I then began tubing up, because I could not place the pump where I initially wanted to, I had to change the loop order from the original loop order. This was the original order that I made:

and this is the final order that I went with:

After tubing up the loop I made the coolant as I had only purchased the concentrate I had to mix in the biocide and the distilled water and this was the final colour that I went with:

 

One of the main problems that I had was making sure the tubing was not kinking when going from both the 360 rad and the 240 rad behind the motherboard tray. To solve this problem I made a makeshift 180 degree adapter sort of thing using a 90 degree adapter to a 45 degree adapter to a normal fitting and this allowed the tubing to not kink. This is what both of them looked like:

 

I then began to leak test. All started off smoothly but one of 180 degree adapter things began to leak because it was not tight enough. This meant draining what liquid I had in the loop and re-doing that part making sure all of the fittings were tight. As I began to refill the loop I spotted another leak coming from the pump top where I had not tightened one of the stopper things that are used for the unused ports, this was an easy fix. Luckily all of the water that leaked went straight onto paper towels but even if it had not it would not have mattered as none of the components were plugged in receiving any power. Here was my leak testing setup:

And this was the loop fully filled while leak testing:

After a further 16 hours of leak testing and no more leaks I cleaned up the paper towels, wired up my system and turned it on. Thankfully everything worked but my cpu temperatures were quite high so I decided to re-seat my cpu. Unfortunately I did not have any TIM left so I had to go get some. After re-seating my cpu my temperatures were much better, idling at just below 30 degrees and when I ran prime95 I think it did not get above 45 degrees.

 

Here is my final setup:

I used 30cm LED strips from Icemodz based on Linus's recommendation and the white led strip is very good but the UV is not as good.

I am very happy with  the build and although the spec is not the best it can still run games pretty well.

 

P.S Sorry for the crappy pics, I am rubbish photographer and the only camera I have is my HTC One and if you want a closer look at the photos I have the album on my profile called build log and you can have a better look at the photos there.

[WorldDominator]

Looks pretty good if you ask me. You made the same mistake as me though and went with a brown pcb motherboard

[jd2195]

Looks pretty good if you ask me. You made the same mistake as me though and went with a brown pcb motherboard

Ye I know i could not tell that it was brown in the pictures when I originally got it and was pretty disappointed when it arrived. 

[WorldDominator]

Ye I know i could not tell that it was brown in the pictures when I originally got it and was pretty disappointed when it arrived. 

I plan on covering mine up and getting a blue themed water cooled build like yours.Only problem is they don't make a full block for my GPU

 

I do like that res though...

[jd2195]

I plan on covering mine up and getting a blue themed water cooled build like yours.Only problem is they don't make a full block for my GPU

 

I do like that res though...

Ye I love the res but it does become a problem in photos as it emits so much light. I kinda want to try and make a custom motherboard cover but would not know where to start. And I had that problem with my GPU, you could always get a universal block then get some heatsinks for the Vram but I do not think that looks nearly as good.

[WorldDominator]

Ye I love the res but it does become a problem in photos as it emits so much light. I kinda want to try and make a custom motherboard cover but would not know where to start. And I had that problem with my GPU, you could always get a universal block then get some heatsinks for the Vram but I do not think that looks nearly as good.

Yeah I'm probably going to hold out on the GPU block until I upgrade down the road. In a couple months time, if I'm successful and have no errors, I will post a build log of me building a custom motherboard cover

 

Now I'll stop polluting your build log. Again, nice job!

[jd2195]

Also forget to mention that I am planning on upgrading certain parts such as the fan controller. I am planning on getting a aquaero 5 pro USB fan controller. This will allow me to control the pump and the fans and have them change on their own when the temperatures get to certain levels. This will be able to keep my system even more quiet when I am just browsing the web but when I am gaming it will be able to keep it cool.

[PBaines]

Looks pretty good, apart from that horrid PSU, OCZ?!!!! I didn't know people still bought those anymore... lol

 

 

Sleeved cables look great!

[Ccaution]

^ from time to time OCZ get very aggressive price-wise, and the reviews (TPU/JonnyGuru) make me feel confortable with the idea of having one, in the distant future. When my Enermax dies, that is. /ot

 

Great looking build jd If the old vengeance modules worth a penny, consider selling them for a kit of Dominator Platinum GT. You don't need to go crazy, 1866 would do and I think they would make the whole thing looking even better

[jd2195]

Looks pretty good, apart from that horrid PSU, OCZ?!!!! I didn't know people still bought those anymore... lol

 

 

Sleeved cables look great!

I have had no problem with my psu and the pinout of it is not that bad plus it is also quite cheap.

 

^ from time to time OCZ get very aggressive price-wise, and the reviews (TPU/JonnyGuru) make me feel confortable with the idea of having one, in the distant future. When my Enermax dies, that is. /ot

 

Great looking build jd If the old vengeance modules worth a penny, consider selling them for a kit of Dominator Platinum GT. You don't need to go crazy, 1866 would do and I think they would make the whole thing looking even better

Just looked at eBay and they are actually worth quite a bit . Might consider selling them on and getting some better ram but for the moment they will do.

 

Currently over clocking my cpu, finally got around to doing it, just about to start stress testing 4.4ghz with a voltage of 1.2 

[Emkryan]

Ye I know i could not tell that it was brown in the pictures when I originally got it and was pretty disappointed when it arrived. 

Gigabyte FTW

[Emkryan]

Looks pretty good, apart from that horrid PSU, OCZ?!!!! I didn't know people still bought those anymore... lol

 

 

Sleeved cables look great!

I have one. It's doing me good, I plan on sleeving it soon too plus I painted the thing because it was ruining my build

[AxelPeeters]

Nice build

[jd2195]

I have one. It's doing me good, I plan on sleeving it soon too plus I painted the thing because it was ruining my build

Ye I might remove the sticker or paint it, the yellowis killing my build.

Nice build

Thanks man.

[jd2195]

Just finished overclocking for today. Managed to get it stable at 4.5 gHz using a 1.28 Vcore. My max temps when running occt were around 55 degrees so I could definitely take it higher but I am happy at 4.5 so I am just going to try and see how low a Vcore I can get I think.

[CJPowell27]

looks pretty good even with a brown PCB.