Corsair 500D SE RGB for custom hard loop?

[Antigrandbean]

As the titles asks, just want to think what ya'll think about the Corsair 500D SE RGB for a custom hardline water loop? 

 

Plan is to use one 360 radiator and one 240/280 radiator for the cpu, gpu and just aesthetics. Currently only parts I dont have sitting in front of me are the GPU, Case and loop materials. I'd like to have a reservoir since I'm using chromed/nickel plated brass tubing.

 

I know I'll be running a 2080 and space isn't too much an issue (desk, house wise) so if you want to recommend a good tempured glass case below $260 I am open to listening. Prefer a bit more timeless look to the case vs the extreme stuff you see. 

[TVwazhere]

7 hours ago, Antigrandbean said:

As the titles asks, just want to think what ya'll think about the Corsair 500D SE RGB for a custom hardline water loop? 

 

Plan is to use one 360 radiator and one 240/280 radiator for the cpu, gpu and just aesthetics. Currently only parts I dont have sitting in front of me are the GPU, Case and loop materials. I'd like to have a reservoir since I'm using chromed/nickel plated brass tubing.

 

I know I'll be running a 2080 and space isn't too much an issue (desk, house wise) so if you want to recommend a good tempured glass case below $260 I am open to listening. Prefer a bit more timeless look to the case vs the extreme stuff you see. 

Cant find many 500D watercooled examples

https://pcpartpicker.com/b/GyRJ7P

If you want more ideas, you can check out the Corsair 570x. It's the exact same frame internally

[Corsair Nick]

Not a 500D SE, but exact same case minus the front glass.  This is one we did in-house with a custom loop just to give you an idea.  Let me know if you have any questions.

 

 

[Antigrandbean]

Thanks for the answers so far. 

 

While I have you @Corsair Nick I was wondering if you knew the dimensions of a push/pull combo on the front facing 360 radiator? It looks like the non-SE doesn't include the front facing LL120 fans, obviously that is a selling feature for the SE vs the non-SE. I'd like to add another set of LL120's but seeing the room with just one set of the 120/140 fans to the reservoir I don't think it will be possible.

 

On a side note, do you know the static pressure of the LL120's vs the ML120's? Buddy picked a pair up yesterday and they're beautifully silent. Might upgrade all fans to the ML's. 

[TVwazhere]

7 hours ago, Antigrandbean said:

static pressure of the LL120's vs the ML120's

These are on corsairs website

 

LL120

 

ML120

 

So the ML120 makes better radiator fans (At least at max RPM, I dont know if they're better at similar RPM's but I would assume so)

[Corsair Nick]

12 hours ago, Antigrandbean said:

Thanks for the answers so far. 

 

While I have you @Corsair Nick I was wondering if you knew the dimensions of a push/pull combo on the front facing 360 radiator? It looks like the non-SE doesn't include the front facing LL120 fans, obviously that is a selling feature for the SE vs the non-SE. I'd like to add another set of LL120's but seeing the room with just one set of the 120/140 fans to the reservoir I don't think it will be possible.

 

On a side note, do you know the static pressure of the LL120's vs the ML120's? Buddy picked a pair up yesterday and they're beautifully silent. Might upgrade all fans to the ML's. 

It's really going to depend on what hardware you use for your radiators and fittings, how you run your lines, and how you mount the reservoir.  We don't currently offer custom loop components, so I unfortunately can't confirm a guaranteed setup that will work in a push/pull config.  Yes, the non-SE version of the 500D does not include LL120 RGB fans since it has a solid front, but if you go forward with the SE version, you'll have the LL120 RGB fans included.

 

ML120's will be our top performance fan.  They are available with RGB LED's as well if you want custom lighting.

[Profezzional]

@Antigrandbean

TL;DR: push/pull in the 500D is possible, if you get creative and are really determined. On a side note, my 9 LLs are pretty much silent under 900 rpm or so in the 500D with the doors shut.

 

This is a bit of a long post, but I feel the need to justify some of the decisions I made here since a couple of them are cringe-worthy, so I want to walk you through my journey with this build. Fair warning: being an engineer, impatient, and having saved up a good bit of money is not a good combination 

 

I finished my build in the 500D SE (originally had the 570x but swapped it after a couple weeks because I wanted doors) a couple months ago (my first PC build actually, though having dabbled with some hardware stuff in CIS classes in high school and being the IT guy at a 7-person startup, I had a rough idea of what I was doing), doing push/pull with LLs and originally using the H150i:

 

 

 

 

It wasn't too cramped, but cable management with 9 LLs, 4 LED strips, and 4 2.5" drives was definitely a fun challenge (the 4th 2.5" drive is tucked on top of the rats nest behind the power supply):

 

 

I wasn't content with my 2080's noise level when the fans were ramped up, and even though the H150i kept my i7-9700k just under 70C or so under load, I wanted to go all out with a custom loop. Since I already had the LLs and the return window had passed, I wanted to use them, and so I had the same dilemma of wanting to do push/pull (almost entirely for aesthetic, because the LLs are pretty sexy). I also wanted to go pretty heavy on cooling capacity (I'm overclocking, but not going super hardcore; I mostly wanted a pretty quiet system even under load), so I wanted 360 and 280 rads.

 

I couldn't figure out how to mount EK's XRES 140 D5 pump combo normally and still have room for push/pull; the PSU shroud goes too far foward to have it on the bottom front fan, and the res was too tall to have it on the middle front fan and have the top rad as well. My other options were to go with a different res/pump combo or separate components, but I couldn't find an easy-enough way to mount those either.

 

At this point I doubled down, determined to find a way to keep my push/pullI  It turned out that while the pump combo wouldn't fit between the PSU shroud and the fan with the mounting holes facing the fan, but it would fit with the mounting holes perpendicular, with a few millimeters to spare (I had about 82mm of clearance, and the pump is 78mm wide):

 

This renewed my hope, but I couldn't find any brackets that were thin enough to mount the pump to the bottom of the case. Another option I considered was drilling holes and mounting the pump directly to the side of the case, but I wanted to leave that as a last resort. So I decided to get creative and use the CAD skills I learned in my engineering classes to design and 3D-print my own bracket for the pump that would mount to the bottom of the case (the cutout in the support circle was for the cables coming out of the bottom of the pump):

 

 

A couple lessons were learned here. One is don't design parts at 3AM on no sleep during midterm exams (the back wall of the bracket was a lot thicker than it needed to be for some reason, so I "had" to drill out those holes a bit for a countersink for the pump screws). Another was to not try so hard to work with what you already have that you choose to drill holes in a part you designed and 3D-printed instead of just buying longer screws for a couple bucks. By the way, I'm using EK's SE 280 and SE 360 radiators. I went with the 28mm rads since the 360 was the same thickness as the H150i's and I had already measured and determined that I could make it work, and since if I went any thicker on the 360 then it'd probably be kind of pointless to get the 280 as well, especially with just the 9700k and a single 2080.

 

After that ordeal, the bracket fit really well, but I ran into another problem: I couldn't put the front 360 rad in there with the ports at the top, because of the top 240 rad. I also consequently wasn't able to run lines around the pump. This seemed to be a show-stopper, especially due to my impatience after having all the necessary parts sitting in my apartment for several days while I waited for the bracket to be printed, then waiting another week for a 2-slot bracket from EVGA to vertically mount the graphics card, so I didn't want to wait several more days to re-print a different part (though I probably should have).

 

So as I was sitting there, forlorn, looking at my parts, I got looking at the PCIE slot covers, and got an idea (this is where the cringe comes in):

 

 

After that picture I flipped the brackets the other way and moved them to the bottom screws on the middle fan so the pump is hanging rather than being held up, to get the pump down as far and as close to the top of the PSU shroud as possible, to give myself more room. What is actually kind of cool about using these is the resulting adjustability in the pump position. I do however, full intend on designing and 3D-printing a new bracket that will let the pump go in the same spot, and also use the screws from the top of the bottom fan for added support. Anyway, to wrap this too-long post up, here's what my end result loop looks like:

 

 

This was of course my first time doing a custom loop, and my friend talked me into going with hard tubing (I'm using PETG). Mistakes were made; the bends aren't perfect, and I should have brought the line from the CPU outlet to the pump inlet instead of the top of the res, because currently it's a hassle to fill. I also have a suspicion that having the inlet in the top of the res may make it harder to aerate the system (I'm using EK's clear cryo-fuel, but it looks white at the moment because of all the bubbles; hopefully it clears out once it aerates a bit more). In addition, I probably could have ran the GPU lines in from the front like Corsair did, but I didn't think I could bend that tight. I might still be able to do it with just bends, but I'd rather just do it with fittings. I'm also a noob and at first used the thermal pads that were on the stock EVGA GPU cooler, which are a lot thicker than EK's thermal pads, so the GPU block initially wasn't making contact; I had to do the GPU block twice before I figured that out. Speaking of which, I'm not super happy with the GPU block lighting, since it really only permeates through not quite half of the block (the light on the left in that picture are from the LED strips).

 

For the drain line, I had to get creative again to use the fittings I had after changing my plans with the radiator directions; I have a splitter off one of the ports in the front rad that goes to the GPU inlet and also to a line of soft tubing with a ball valve for draining (another example of in the context of the money spent on the rest of the system, a note to self is don't cheap out on fittings). While tricky to assemble initially (because the soft line runs under the hard line from the other port almost immediately), this makes it actually pretty easy to drain, and the doors hide the drain line decently well. I'm also not sure about the physics of the height of the res in relation to everything else, because when you stop the pump, the res fills back up while I'm assuming the top rad empties.

 

On a positive note though, I only had one leak that I found pretty quickly and haven't had any issues like that since.

 

I plan on redoing the lines at some point, probably using 90s at every bend like Corsair did instead of trying to bend things myself. In the meantime, I'm just gonna relax and enjoy the awesome temperatures, though the pump filling was still making more noise than I'd like (we'll see if it quiets down once it's done aerating and the doors are on). I also don't like not being able to control the speeds of the top and rear case fans with iCUE, since I had to plug those straight into the motherboard, so I might have to get a second Commander Pro eventually, which will be tough to fit in there.

 

Anyway, that's what I did in the 500D; I love the case and the flexibility it provides. While I think that I'm getting pretty close to maxing out the capabilities of what the case can handle, it's surprised me how much I've been able to pack in there, given enough time and effort.

[TVwazhere]

17 hours ago, Profezzional said:

@Antigrandbean

TL;DR: push/pull in the 500D is possible, if you get creative and are really determined. On a side note, my 9 LLs are pretty much silent under 900 rpm or so in the 500D with the doors shut.

-snip-

I would definitely make a build log of your system!

https://linustechtips.com/main/forum/3-build-logs/

[AJ96XJ]

I was wondering if someone could tell me which type of fittings Corsair are using in their 500D loop. From what i can tell, it is 8 90 degree and 5 45 degree fittings. 

TIA.

[Skarddd]

On 11/27/2018 at 5:36 PM, Corsair Nick said:

Not a 500D SE, but exact same case minus the front glass.  This is one we did in-house with a custom loop just to give you an idea.  Let me know if you have any questions.

 

 

is there anyway I can get a parts list for this? I want to do this exact setup in my 500D SE @Corsair Nick