Custom Watercooling a Node 202

[red773]

Well one day I thought it would be cool to build a mini itx pc with an r9 nano. Shortly after that Kyle made a video of his itx pc in a node 202 with a 6700k and an R9 nano. After this I gave in and ordered all the parts. i5 4570T, shitty gigabyte h81 motherboard, 16gb ram, Sapphire R9 nano, 480gb ssd. After I build the PC I benchmarked it to find out it's slower then my 380 because of the CPU bottleneck, so I got an i7 4790 used with scratches on Ebay for $250. I got the CPU did not test my PC again since I was busy working on my main PC. Then one day I thought why the fuck not custom watercool this tiny ITX computer? I found all the parts I needed to watercool it from PerformancePCs I picked out a waterblock for my R9 nano, a custom ROG EK supremacist EVO and I was going to get a EK SE 240 rad but it was out of stock so I got a magic cool rad instead which was  only 1mm thicker. Then I found some slim 120mm fans on Amazon and I got 2 of those. Long story short I got all the stuff I needed and started building.

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I started with installing the waterblock, I ended up breaking the fan header on the PCB because the stock cooler fan wire would not come out.

I started putting the tubes in place, I ended up not having enough tubing for the PC so I had to reuse some much larger tubing from my main PC making the tubing in my computer all different sizes.

And my large tubing would not sit tightly over the pump so I tried to use zip ties to hold it, rookie mistake, the PC had a huge leak the second I tried to fill the loop. It took a lot of paper towels to clean up. 

Fast forward my PC is still leaking at the pump but I got the loop filled and am now using iron clamps to hold the tubing. The PC works but has not been benchmarked yet. 

Close up of the ROG CPU block the sex appeal is real.

From this side you can see how everything fits, this setup is only possible with a single slot graphics card for everything to fit. You could use a Nvidia card however I highly don't recommend doing that, first you would have to cut off the DVI port on the card to make it single slot. Also due to the cards length, the fans would be struggling for air in my setup only one fan is choking for air, but if the card stretched over both fans the airflow would be highly reduced. I also don't recommend a Fury X or regular Fury because as I will show later the performance is the same but the Fury would take far more power for the same performance. Not to mention the Nano is cheaper I got mine for $480 on Newegg from Sapphire.

 

And final picture of the PC I will be uploading more photos when I cut the cover panel of the case to actually fit over this as the fittings of the GPU block it from closing all the way down. 

I forgot to mention as suggested to me by a couple super helpful members I am using a sata to molex adapter to power my pump as this power supply does not have any molex power cables.

The leak has been fixxed for now I am still waiting to see if it will leak or not after I added 2 iron clamps to each pump output/input. This build is a work in progress feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions! 

The  firestrike score is 12648 with everything stock. This score using my 4790 actually beats my old score of 12382 when I had a 5820k and a Fury X in my main computer. Temps are as following: 60C at load on the CPU and 48C at load on the GPU. 

 

[Najuno]

Got my respect for this! I´m working on a Node 304 with full size GPU and custom watercooling myself. That´s why I know how remarkable your project is!

[Trey222]

That is pretty cool. I have always liked small water cooling builds. 

[SonoDanshi]

Love projects like this. Could you list the pump and the fans you used please just to help "others"  who are considering something like this?

 

Would you also be able to take a picture side on to the graphics card but focusing on the area where the card meets the back of the case (with the DP/HDMI ports) as I'm interested to see if there is any kind of gap between the rad and the GPU.

 

With respect to the tubes going in/out of the rad, would it be less restrictive/safe to use some 90 degree fittings with spacers so you take the pressure off them a bit?

 

Good work so far and look forward to more.

[red773]

19 hours ago, SonoDanshi said:

Love projects like this. Could you list the pump and the fans you used please just to help "others"  who are considering something like this?

 

Would you also be able to take a picture side on to the graphics card but focusing on the area where the card meets the back of the case (with the DP/HDMI ports) as I'm interested to see if there is any kind of gap between the rad and the GPU.

 

With respect to the tubes going in/out of the rad, would it be less restrictive/safe to use some 90 degree fittings with spacers so you take the pressure off them a bit?

 

Good work so far and look forward to more.

I could not use 90 degree fittings on the radiator because the fans would block the compression fittings from being there. I could have used an extension fitting but I did not have any on hand

[geokoder]

Any updates on this? I'm currently attempting to plan a custom loop for the node 202 using a GTX 1070, which is a slightly bulkier GPU. It looks like because of the location of the GPU waterblock terminal this would never be able to be self-contained in the closed case. Does anyone make waterblocks with terminals out the "back" of the card (or front?) - the side exactly opposite of all the input ports.

[SonoDanshi]

On 11/6/2016 at 11:46 PM, geokoder said:

Any updates on this? I'm currently attempting to plan a custom loop for the node 202 using a GTX 1070, which is a slightly bulkier GPU. It looks like because of the location of the GPU waterblock terminal this would never be able to be self-contained in the closed case. Does anyone make waterblocks with terminals out the "back" of the card (or front?) - the side exactly opposite of all the input ports.

If you want to see what is possible for an enclosed 202 case with full watercooling, I created a build log for my own project >> here <<

 

My solution for the GPU terminals was to get the diagonally offset block from EK as that lets you come out towards the side of the case or parallel to the card itself (you can see more clearly what I mean in the pictures from my thread).

 

If you have any questions feel free to PM me or reply to my thread rather than hijacking red's.

[geokoder]

On 11/7/2016 at 0:19 PM, SonoDanshi said:

If you want to see what is possible for an enclosed 202 case with full watercooling, I created a build log for my own project >> here <<

 

My solution for the GPU terminals was to get the diagonally offset block from EK as that lets you come out towards the side of the case or parallel to the card itself (you can see more clearly what I mean in the pictures from my thread).

 

If you have any questions feel free to PM me or resply to my thread rather than hijacking red's.

 That looks amazing. Unfortunately, my card is too wide and I've already checked out those angled terminals. My card is wide enough to nearly hit the edge of the case so terminals at that side are totally impossible.

[SonoDanshi]

42 minutes ago, geokoder said:

 That looks amazing. Unfortunately, my card is too wide and I've already checked out those angled terminals. My card is wide enough to nearly hit the edge of the case so terminals at that side are totally impossible.

Thanks. Sorry to hear the card is too big, I haven't seen any other style blocks without getting a bit "ghetto" with your solution. I have been keeping an eye out for any 1070 "ITX" versions to see if they could replace the nano, but it would also involve cutting off the DVI port from the card as Nvidia haven't realised yet that people who spend several hundred on a GPU are very unlikely to be using DVI anymore.

[geokoder]

On 11/8/2016 at 7:05 PM, SonoDanshi said:

Thanks. Sorry to hear the card is too big, I haven't seen any other style blocks without getting a bit "ghetto" with your solution. I have been keeping an eye out for any 1070 "ITX" versions to see if they could replace the nano, but it would also involve cutting off the DVI port from the card as Nvidia haven't realised yet that people who spend several hundred on a GPU are very unlikely to be using DVI anymore.

What are your GPU temps like? I'm getting the same CPU temps as you (almost identical, 67 max and idle around 24) using an AIO cooler. My GPU goes up to about 68C max on stock clocks and idles at about 28C. GPU is blower style with a Noctua fan below it.