[Build] Black Ice - Acrylic Tubing upgrade (Watercooled R4)

[doodle]

Hello All

 

This is actually my first post, long time lurker (mainly of build logs) so thought its probably about time I contributed something to the forum. shout out to Snef and Hanoverfist, took a lot of inspiration from your builds.

 

So here is my rig, completed a watercooling upgrade some 6 months ago with flexi tubing but as soon as I saw the Primochill Acrylic tubing I knew I had to use this in my build at some point. So finally got around to getting all the bits to complete an Acyclic tubing upgrade while also doing a bit of paint work as well.

 

Don't normally give my rigs names but thought "Black Ice" worked given the colour scheme.  

 

Please note to others thinking of doing the same - fitting a 240 rad in the top of an R4 is extremely tight, only way i was able to do it was because the P67 Sabetooth has short heatsinks and low enough ram slots. So will completely depend on your motherboard. there's probably about 1mm between the fan and heatsink. 

 

The build is pretty much complete now which you'll see in the pictures, the only two remaining things to do now is put in a floor and panel to cover up the 5.25" bays/ mount SSD to.

The question is do I go with Black Acrylic or Black brushed aluminium vinyl? opinions needed! 

second thing is to get an NZXT Grid fan PCB to clean up my fan cabling round the back. 

 

Component list:

 

Intel 2500K

Asus P67 Sabertooth (heatsinks painted white)

16GB Corsair Vengeance Low Profile White

Zotac GTX 670

Corsair Force GT 120GB (painted white)

Corsair AX850 (with White cable kit)

Fractal Design Define R4 Black

NZXT LED Lighting strip

 

Watercooling gear:

 

Alphacool Monsta 80mm 240 Rad

Alphacool ST30 30mm 240 Rad

XSPC Raystorm CPU Block (painted white)

XSPC Raystorm GTX 670 GPU Block and backplate

EK D5 X-Res Combo 

Alphacool D5 Pump

Corsair Quiet SP120 Fans x 6 (1 x AF140)

Bitspower Deluxe White Fittings

Primochill Ghost white Rigid tubing fittings

Primochill Rigid Acrylic Tubing Clear

Mayhems Pastel Ice White Coolant

 

 

What it looked like before

 

Some of tubing runs complete

 

All complete

 

Filled and leaked tested. but decided to make a last minute change so drained and pulled apart again.

 

naked board

 

Heatsinks painted - wasn't sure whether i should do this but the green annoyed me a lot.

by the way temperatures have hardly been affected.

 

Back together

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My dual monitor mount

 

So thats it. let me know what you like/don't like. also opinions on what i should use for the floor and 5.25" side panel.  

[Youbetternot]

Nice monitor set-up and that is some amazing cable management, very neat. I like it also nice choice of case

[coen113]

I personally think the cpu to gpu would be better when it would come out straight, and not have that weird excess bend in it, for the rest its really cool

[Homicidium]

What a sexy Define R4 build!  

[MoYo]

Looks amazing!

Would love to watercool my R4 but it would just cost too much (€800). curious how you mounted the pump/res to the fan of the radiator,  what bracket did you use?

[delet my acc pls]

Looks super good, but also REALLY familiar.

[alpenwasser]

Yup, I like it. Good to see white LEDs.

Small note: You can put an @ before a member name, or alternatively (if they nick has

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Example:

@doodle

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Also: Welcome to the forums.

[JohnnyGrey]

This looks sexy as hell! Love that little CPU to GPU loop, I'm sure it's just for looks. How hard is it to bend the acrylic properly?

[doodle]

thanks guys

 

@alpenwasser thanks for the tip

 

@coen113, @JohnnyGrey I was originally going to do just a straight 90 angle run but thought i would try something a little harder, it is just for looks. again as i mentioned was inspired by @Hanoverfist Electric Orange build. That piece took longer to do than all the others put to together. so yea it isn't easy. 

 

@MoYo its a Res mount for radiators. not designed to be used over a fan but i made it work. 

[Hanoverfist]

Great tube bends!!.. Evrything looks real clean.  Looks like you had some fun

Putting this together.  Great work.

[BenD]

that looks like a lot of work,  wouldn't change a thing

[900d]

cool build looks good.

[nerdglider]

bent tubing like that is the bees knees, truly sick!

[superducky94]

@doodle, do you mind saying what monitors and mount you have there? It looks quite nice.

[Farncir]

If you put white LED's in the raystorm block and tidy up the pcie power cables (it looks abit odd with that curve) and the 24 pin (just a little)

then it would be a hands down 20/20 build

 

being picky I know, but seems like you went all out (seen by the extra "unnecessary" bend with the rigid tubing from the cpu block to gpu) might as well go all the way and create

PERFECTION !

 

I dunno, highlighting the cpu block would look nice imo, it seems abit dark shadowed by the 240mm rad up top

[Jokrik]

What tools did you use to make that kind of bend if I may know?

other than the silicone tube and heat gun

[Raboo]

Very nice

[Rekhyt]

That looks amazing! It's very close to what I'd like to do with my build, I love wah tyou did with the CPU block to GPU block part.

 

Did you use any tutorials you can link? Or are you just more resourceful than me?

[FranktheDinosaur]

Looks amazing! :wub:  What monitor mount are you using (with which LG monitors)?

[hiyayhi]

oooh! Very nice.

 

Hard pipes are always the best...

[danBrown]

love it. really nice build you've done there

[doodle]

Thanks for the comments guys

 

@superducky94 @FranktheDinosaur the Monitors are LG 27" IPS 27EA63, The monitor mount is a Arctic Cooling Z-2 dual mount. easily the cheapest dual mount i could find. (£55 in the UK)

 

@Farncir that's the thing, i did have some XSPC white LED's for the blocks but they died in the space of a month. so if you know of some 3mm LED's that will last then i will get some. wouldn't disagree about the 24pin, but its due to the grommet positions. maybe i could just route it round the motherboard tray?

 

@Jokrik @Rekhyt Just used the Primochill video they made on how to bend tubing. other thing i did was mark out some angles on some cardboard, so i had some sort of guide. then used something circular to bend the tube round. best advice i can give is buy more tubing than you need so you can experiment/pratice. 

[Snef]

@doodle

thanks for inspiration comments

but your build are exceptional, and it become an inspiration itself

 

im not a fan of black/white build but yours is really great, just enough white at right place

[johnnybra]

Heatsinks painted - wasn't sure whether i should do this but the green annoyed me a lot.

by the way temperatures have hardly been affected.

I really love your build. It looks amazing.

Only a question. What do you mean when you say temps have been "hardly affected"?. I have a white&red rig and the blue heatsink of my gigabyte motherboard is hurting my eyes, so i was thinkin' in painting it or, maybe, putting some kind of vinyl

[doodle]

@doodle

thanks for inspiration comments

but your build are exceptional, and it become an inspiration itself

 

im not a fan of black/white build but yours is really great, just enough white at right place

 

Really appreciate the comments snef

 

 

I really love your build. It looks amazing.

Only a question. What do you mean when you say temps have been "hardly affected"?. I have a white&red rig and the blue heatsink of my gigabyte motherboard is hurting my eyes, so i was thinkin' in painting it or, maybe, putting some kind of vinyl

 

 My motherboard temperatures have not been affected what so ever. still hovering around what they were before painting the heatsinks.