Planning loop in difficult case

[AT0MAC]

I have an awesome looking cube case, the Lian Li PC-V33 black.

It fits perfectly for were I need the PC to be and it has so far done everything I wanted without any trouble.

 

I am in the process of re-building my machine with Coffee Lake 8600K and a Asus Maximus Code X motherboard, plus my trusty Corsair Dominator Platinum 2400 C10 RAM and Zotac Amp Extreme GTX 1070 graphics, just to mention the basics.

 

I have to admit this case is by far build with watercooling out of mind, in case you dont know it its basically a testbench with sides and a roof.

I have the middle version, as seen in this picture:

 

I have to place my graphics card in the X8 slot, but it should not really matter in terms of performance. Issue is that the card I have is close to being the maximum size the case accommodates.

I have an old Alphacool ST30 120mm radiator and thinking about buying a second one, not sure if the back one should be push/pull or only push.

 

I have 14x Corsair ML120 120mm and 2x ML120 140mm fans already from another build I did a year ago that's now discontinued, so available high quality fans is not an issue for me.

 

I dont know what CPU block I should look out for, if the EK full nickel blocks is my best bet or there is something better I should look for. Not sure what my budget would be but I see that Kryos blocks seems way overpriced imo compared to EK.

 

My biggest issue is pump/res, as there is not really any clear place to place it??

I think the best is in front of the modded harddrive cage in the lower section of the case (normally it dont have a hdd cage, but I have 3 drives +nvme, so needed it like that)

For the time being I will run the build on air, but will progress  into buying up parts for the loop over time.
Would love to do hard tubes by the way, but always only used soft tubing so it would be my first time.

Can you recommend me what to do and not do?
I dont want to change case.

Sorry for the confusing order of questions and information, English is not my native language and i currently have flu so am kind of dizzy.

 

3D drawings of what Im trying to do so far:

 

Side

Front

Top without upper layer

Top layer with mockup block, rads and the big block at the end is the size of my graphics card

 

[AT0MAC]

I think I found a way, its not totally up to right dimensions, specially the tubing and fittings, because oh boy I got pretty tired of drawing in Sketch-up by now...

top view

 

Back view

 

Side

 

Alternative top view with push/pull

 

The rad in the back is Alphacool XT45 dimensions. The res is Aquacomputer Aqualis DDC 100 and the pump is Alphacool DDC PWM

 

Im even thinking all this could be done with the right compination of spacers and fittings, instead of trying to bend HD tubes for the first time.

What do you think?

[AT0MAC]

Retry, made it look cleaner but oh boy  it have many 90* angles, is that a healthy CPU loop?
Would be kind of easy to build though.

 

 

[AT0MAC]

well it looks a mess, I will try another day with a 240 slim rad instead. Any slim rads that are better than others?

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

The real question here is ehy you have 14 FANS!? What was your last build!?!?

[AT0MAC]

2 hours ago, orbitalbuzzsaw said:

The real question here is ehy you have 14 FANS!? What was your last build!?!?

Lol, you caught that... I have more than one desktop PC, actually I have 6 atm, and at one point I wanted to change all fans to ML120 as I was really impressed about the performance of the first 2 I had bought.

 

Eventually it turned out I never used them all and instead opted to keep using my many other corsair, noiseblocker and noctua fans in various builds, to keep the MLs for more serious tasks, like this one.

I think I have close to 50 120mm fans in total, were of more than half is not in use, and in bethween that is the tower of ML120s standing in my closet.

 

In my old gaming PC i used at one point 7 ML120 120mm and the 2 140mm, untill I bought a better cooler and a bigger graphics card, so Its just nice to not have to buy all the time and have the option to shift hardware around, im sure LMG thinks the same.

 

Actually it was pretty nice last summer, I build a very portable desk fan with a old 12volt power adapter and 4 fans.

 

I like to build and PCs is my hobby.

[AT0MAC]

New plans on the table, and now its really starting to look like something.

 

Res/pump compo I think should end out being the Watercool DDC-Tank LT

Still it seems like a mystery to me why practically all DDC PWM pumps are unsleeved, the only one I can think of there is is that Alphacool DDC 1T.

 

I really like the look of Phanteks fittings, so im thinking I will go with those.

 

I can not avoid using a EKWB Uni mount for the pump/res.

 

I would like to use the flow sensor port on my new motherboard and think of getting a Barrow flow sensor (the one drawn is bitspower, but there is a price difference).

 

Also the temp sensors would be nice to use, and think of getting 2 Alphacool inline sensors to check on inlet temp and outlet temp.

 

As the whole setup will be themed around my favorite animal, Pandas, everything is going to be white/black were possible.

Therefor I would like to use black tubes and white fluid, only places the fluid is visible is in res and flow sensor, but would look awesome I think.

 

As for rad im thinking to get a slim 240 white model like this one.

 

Any feedback to my thoughts?

 

Still, I would really like to have a drain port in the loop somewhere, but were should it be???

 

 

 

 

 

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

On 1/5/2018 at 4:10 PM, AT0MAC said:

Lol, you caught that... I have more than one desktop PC, actually I have 6 atm, and at one point I wanted to change all fans to ML120 as I was really impressed about the performance of the first 2 I had bought.

 

Eventually it turned out I never used them all and instead opted to keep using my many other corsair, noiseblocker and noctua fans in various builds, to keep the MLs for more serious tasks, like this one.

I think I have close to 50 120mm fans in total, were of more than half is not in use, and in bethween that is the tower of ML120s standing in my closet.

 

In my old gaming PC i used at one point 7 ML120 120mm and the 2 140mm, untill I bought a better cooler and a bigger graphics card, so Its just nice to not have to buy all the time and have the option to shift hardware around, im sure LMG thinks the same.

 

Actually it was pretty nice last summer, I build a very portable desk fan with a old 12volt power adapter and 4 fans.

 

I like to build and PCs is my hobby.

A TOWER of ML120s? Where is your money-printing machine and how much will you sell it to me for?

[AT0MAC]

21 hours ago, orbitalbuzzsaw said:

A TOWER of ML120s? Where is your money-printing machine and how much will you sell it to me for?

Well, I don't have a money printing machine, I wish!

 

But there is 3 key things that distance me from most others: I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I don't have a car.

 

And I'm same age as Linus, so I have an actual working career with a pretty borring dayjob that luckily bring in enough to keep my hobby running along.

 

Sorry to disappoint.

[AT0MAC]

I have now started building a pre-rig, just to test out a few things before the actual build.

I dont have so many hours a day to really tinker, like 2-3 hours every day, so at the moment Im still installing everything and expect it to take almost all week just doing that alone - I have a very specific set of requirements for Windows and wish I could convince MS to do it my way from the beginning, its so much smoother and without "crap" build in, but it takes quite a while to make it so.

 

By the way, there will be RGB included, atm testing out a Halos Lux fan frame.

 

 

 

 

 

[AT0MAC]

I still have not given up on water cooling this thing, but for now I will stick to air.

Was yet again fooling around in sketchup and came up with an idea, If i buy a heatkiller DDC 150 tube, could I suspend it if I rivet the mount into the back of the case and use a brass extension into the rad in front?

That would mean I have to move the back fan out of the case, so I can rivet directly into the aluminum the case is made of.

 

Im wondering of the weight of glass and metal + water would be too heavy to hang like that?

would also make it real easy to both have a fill port and a drain port.

 

If its too heavy, there is space above I can make a steel plate or something, that the res is also attached to, rivet to the front fan bracket and the back, so its both attached along the whole length but also there at the fan placement behind it, plus the brass extension into the rad.

 

 

 

 

[AT0MAC]

I guess you guys are growing tired of 3D drawings.

I'm very certain this will be the last one as it actually fits all I want the loop to do.

 

• It needs to be actual possible to build, without the risk of anything breaking or falling down (see the one with the huge res)
• It needs to clear the path of harddrives
• It needs to leave enough space for all the cables in the basement
• I would prefer to not modify or mod the pump, as pumps are ugly the best would be to have it out of the way
• I want it to be fairly simple in terms of fittings and angles

This is the best compromise of all I have come up with:

 

 

DDC 3.2 PWM with DDC-Tank LT from Watercool as res and pump combo

 

 

I actually have an old Elite 110 case from cooler master in the attic, not being used.

It has a very practical bracket on the back that will extend the PSU about 30mm out the back and give more room for the ton of cables down there, without being too disturbed by the pump.

Should be real easy to rivet that into place.

 

 

I will use either small 10/16 mm Alphacool fittings and EK ZMT soft tube, or very small hard tubes and Phanteks fittings.

 

Im very sure I will soon-ish invest in these things to at least have that fixed.

 

 

Should be an awesome pump/res combo, and the only cable going to the mb is the PWM, so a nicer looking extension just because...

Of course put on anti vibration kit.

The absolute awesome heatkiller iv w backplate and some hydronaut as i have used up my kryonaut and is getting a bit tired or how difficult it is to work with.

 

I also know I want a HW Labs 240 GTS white radiator from highflow.nl

 

Just cant figure out those damn fittings, so when ever I have bought these things I will try do some real live mock ups to see how it will work out