Heavily modified Fractal Define R4 with dual 180mm and 360 radiators

[d33g33]

Hi guys, 

 

My first post! I've been following the Linus YouTube channel for a while and decided to make the investment into the forum as well.

 

I have been out of the PC game building for a long time so I had to do a lot of research to catch back up, also I wanted to do my first liquid cooled machine.

 

UPDATED PHOTO AFTER REBUILD

 

First Post  -> Below

1st Update - Sleeving order and window concept

2nd Update - First attempt at sleeving

3rd Update - Custom Window cutout

4th Update - Fans!

5th Update - Radiator Shroud

6th Update - Radiator Updates

7th Update - Finishing Side Panel

8th Update - New front plate for 2x180mm rad

9th Update - False motherboard tray and goodies

10th Update - Front Panel Sleeving and starting to reassemble

11th Update - Modified Front door!

12th Update - Acrylic Tube Bending

13th Update - Complete Teaser Photo

14th Update - NOW COMPLETE

 

First things first here is my PC.

Intel 3770k

Asus z77 Sabertooth

2x 8gb 2400mhz Corsair Dominator Platinum

2x Samsung 840 120gb SSD's in RAID 0

EVGA Geforce GTX670 Superclocked 4gb

CoolerMaster Silent Hybrid Pro 850w PSU

Fractal Design R4 Case

 

Here's a quick peak at it assembled to test run to make sure no issues before I started to WaterCool.

 

Cable management is super dirty as I knew it was just going to get tore down once I was happy with it.

I noticed after building that CPU temps were a lot higher than I was happy with, one core getting to 100degrees while playing FarCry 3. I reseated a couple of times and tried some MX4 but temps never really seemed to come down much at all. I would fix all that with the liquid cooling.

 

After no ticks with the machine running dry and gathered everything for Watercooling, here's a list of what I got.

 

Koolance-380 CPU Waterblock

XSPC Razor GTX670 Waterblock

XSPC RX240mm Radiator

Black Ice GT 240mm Radiator

Switftech MCP655 Pump with BitsPower dressup kit

Frozen Q Liquid Fusion T-Virus 25ml Reservoir

All fittings are matt black Bitspower

Tubing is white PrimoChill 1/2 x 3/4

and I ordered in 6x 2150rpm 120mm Gentle Typhoons

 

Goodies!

 

I started to build a step by step, photo's of dissembling the fans and painting, also took apart the bracket for the video card and painted that white as well so everything was black and white, no grey. But... I got carried away with he build so photo's stopped. 

Liquid cooling went in fairly straight forward apart from the top rad. Even though its a thing rad the high dominator platinums and the plastic 'thermal armor' on the mobo meant it just wouldn't fit, not even offset so... out came the drill. I also took this to the 5-1/4" bays so there are no drive bays at all now, just SSD's velcro'd to the back of the Motherboard tray.

 

I err... 'extended' the 'honeycomb' so I was able to mount the rad almost hard up against the side of the case, heaps of clearance!

 

I had my first go at sleeving! it was shambles. I don't know if the product I was using wasn't that great (modkobra kit) but I watched a heap of guides and it just seemed everything looked nice and tight but the heatshrink just wouldn't hold everything together and before long the sleeve would contract from it's stretched clean state and there would be a bunch of cables hanging out somewhere.

I did the best I could but maybe I need to practice some more or step it up to some MDPC sleeve.

 

Final step was to put a side panel on to show off all the liquid cooling, I got a very dark blank tinted plexiglass cut to size. I drilled in some nutserts the the chassis and then drilled holes in the plexiglass and used M6 allenkey headed bolts to fix it all together. I had some lamptron noise deadening foam so I stuck that around the edge for a great sound and vibration killer. When the PC is off its very hard to see inside and then when I turn it on with the 60cm of LED strip inside its lights right up. Super happy!

 

After a bit I was very disappointed with my temps, I had just spent about $1000 on watercooling equipment and temps still weren't great. I started doing some research into it expressing how disappointed I was and I stumbled across Delidding. I had never heard of it before! A lot of people say they cant afford the risk but when I was looking at my PC the CPU was about the cheapest unit in it so, out with the blade! Cutting was no problem, took me about 10mins to get it off using 2 different blades, a very thin and then thicker one. If I was to do it again I would go the vice and hammer approach.

 

After delidding and cleaning up I applied CooLaboratory Liquid Ultra between the die and IHS and MX4 between the IHS and CPU waterblock. The results? Fantastic!

Running at 4.4ghz @ 1.220 vcore (1.232 on CPUZ) my max average was 78.25degrees after delid running same clock and voltage temps were 61.20 degrees a great result! All this with undervolted fans @ 5v so the system is super quiet.

 

As this test was done right before and after the delid I actually believe that the temps have improved as the TIM has had time to cure. I'm now running @ 4.6ghz 24/7 @ 1.344vcore in CPUZ (manage to get to 4.8! but backed off http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2767490) and I don't see temps over 54 normally. Yesterday I ran AIDA64 for an hour and max temp was 62 degrees.

 

Next I moved onto OCing the graphics card. It seems that the higher the videocard memory the worse the overclock, I managed to get a +36mhz to the core and +100mhz on the memory which isn't great but hey, its free performance right? I played around with some alternate hacked BIOS' and by just turned up the TDP managed to boost up to 1254mhz. I've been running like this amount a month stable so here it can stay.

 

Here's some glam shot's the last one is how it sits now unfortunately the colour is off due to the speaker lighting but it shows the side panel, the foam is obvious in the picture but not in real life. Also shows how I moved the res to mount directly on top of the pump. Enjoy!

 

 

Any that's about my build! thanks for checking it out. I think ill order sine sleeved extensions for the videocard, 24 and 8pin's to tidy it up just a tad more, apart from that wait for a cheap GTX670 to come up for sale and add that for SLI. That will do me until Ivy Bridge-E's release in Sept I think :D

 

Any feedback is always welcome!

 

Thanks All.

 

DeeG

 

btw wrote this from my new Intel NUC, what an awesome unit! driving 2x 24's at 1920x1200 :) and its 8gb RAM with a 256gb SSD! COmputers are awesome...

[bchampion96]

SWEET! :D I could help noticing in the side on pictures that everything looks lopsided. Just me?

[joelthezombie15]

WOW, AMAZING!!!

[d33g33]

SWEET! :D I could help noticing in the side on pictures that everything looks lopsided. Just me?

Probably not just you, in the first side on the res was just ziptied, so its on a lean. On the last the clips for the front fan tray aren't very fond of the weight of the front rad so teh top is leaning back slightly. Everything else should be straight... I think... ha!

[Morfy]

Very clean looking, love the fittings and the way that it all combines.Great job!

[CyberJesus88]

quite impressive mate...well done!! :)

[Ymac]

Very nice!

can't wait working on my R4 with watercooling! ;)

[d33g33]

Very nice!

can't wait working on my R4 with watercooling! ;)

Let me know if you have any questions or photo's of anything when you start, i'd be happy to try help.

 

Cheers all, fantastic feedback!

 

DeeG

[Nit3Rid3R]

That looks beautiful, very well done!

[romellobethebest]

awesome

[911^NEmeSis]

Wow this is very nice mate. I think you may have just given me a final idea for my new build! The black and white looks sick, and I think with a window, it would look insane!

 

Good work though. Very, very nice stuff.

[raminasani]

hey man very nice build :) but do you think it is worth it to replace the thermal compound for your cpu ? intel gives you 3 years warranty so why bother if something happens you can get a new one ?

[Raptus]

I love the build, simply outstanding. The R4 is still one of the best looking cases imo. Great work!

[That Norwegian Guy]

Brilliant. This wouldn't be out of place behind the panel on a Star Trek federation cruiser :P

[everything count to life]

Absoulty beautiful :d

[Nicktrance]

That looks amazing, I really love black and white builds. Some black/white sleeving should make it look even better :).

[d33g33]

hey man very nice build :) but do you think it is worth it to replace the thermal compound for your cpu ? intel gives you 3 years warranty so why bother if something happens you can get a new one ?

Hmm im not exactly sure what you mean. It's definitely worth replacing the standard thermal paste with a quality product in my opinion. Voltage and heat is what kills components and if you can drop temps by just changing out the Thermal Paste then you have improved half of the degradation factor, kinda... if that makes sense. At stock clocks it probably would have lasted fine, even on the hot side and yes I could have had it replaced but, I wanted to watercool and I wanted High Clocks. In no way would this have been possible without delidding on my chip.Its not a great chip, 1.344vcore is quite high for a 4.6ghz OC but i'm happy it got there. And it's now a voltage restriction as I don't want to go higher than 1.35vcore. Temps are supurb!

PS thanks to everyone for the awesome comments!

[TicTac]

What a change looks amazing nice job man!

[jecho]

In the first few pics I saw a intel stock cpu and was like dafuq??? Then I realized I am dumb. Test build :) really nice man.

[d33g33]

There's a few questions around mounting a 240mm rad up the top of an R4 and while it can fit I found with a z77 Sabertooth and Dominator Platinum RAM it was impossible. The will for it to 'must go in' required drastic measures!

The magnetic filter works exceptionally well for me...

 

Here I've tried to show you the clearances 

 

[TheArium]

Did the magnetic filter come with the case or did you get it elsewhere?

 

Also, white tubing or white liquid? It looks awesome!

[d33g33]

Magnetic filter was a separate purchase.The tubing is white, you can see the clear fluid in the reservoir. I would love milky fluid with transparent tops on the GPU!

[GuppyTech]

very horny my friend

[Lamb]

WOW! This seriously is one of the best build I have seen on here for a while. If this does not get into build logs of the week, then I don't know what will.  :lol:

[nickbickerstaff]

dude that is an absolutely beautiful build! be proud