ShadowMoses - Attempting to add an additional 360 RAD to ThermalTake Core P3

[Bad5ector]

Hey folks, been working on upgrading my system with an additional rad. Normally that would be pretty ez pz right? Well my case is a Thermaltake Core P3 which already has a 360 Rad mounted in the front, so that leaves me with no other spot to mount an additional rad. OR DOES IT? I think with a little planning, and some trial and error, I might be able to make this work.

To preface, I'm not much of a modder, this would be my first real attempt at modifying a case in any meaningful way (as you will see by my rather spotty dremel work). I have been building computers for close to 20 years, but usually I stick within the limits of the case I am working with. A few years back I built ShadowMoses (I'm bit of a Metal Gear Solid geek) and this was my first go at full custom water loop. It has gone through many revisions since 2017, most recently was the switch from soft tubing to PETG. The current specs are:

 

Computer Hardware:

i7 7700k

Asus Maximus IX Formula

32GB Corsair 3200 LPX 

EVGA 1080ti FE

Samsung EVO 500gb NVME boot drive

Crucial 1TB SATA M.2 games drive

2x1TB Seagate SSHD in RAID 0 (more games storage)

Thermaltake Core P3 Snow Edition

 

Cooling:

EK-CoolStream XE 360

EK-XRES 140 Revo D5 PWM pump

3 x EK-Vardar F4-120ER 2200RPM fans

3 x Corsair LL 120 RGBs (to get those extra FPS in games)

 

Most of the computer hardware (minus the NVME and M.2 SATA drive) were purchased from NCIX shortly before their end (RIP). BTW, this is my first post to this forum, but hopefully not the last. Looking for a community of like minded individuals who share my love for tech and hardware. So without further ado... here is the progress pics of me trying to plan out a way to get an additional 360 SE rad mounted to this case:

 

This was how I envisioned it. (Spoiler alert, this isn't the way it will end up lol)

 

 

 

My super profesh CAD drawing:

 

 

 

 

[Bad5ector]

Guess I'll have to post more later?? Seems every image I try to add now just sits in "queued" state.

[Bad5ector]

Testing the fan splitters out. Each group of fans are different,  so I want to make sure they each have their own header on the motherboard. 

[Bad5ector]

Now for the "fun" part. The point of no return as it were. The dremel tool has made an appearance. Like I said in the earlier post, not the best dremel work,  but should do for my needs.  I'll definitely need to pick up some rubber trim for the final build to save my tubes (and fingers).

[Bad5ector]

So far so good I thought.. but shortly afterwards I realized I didn't have an easy way to attach this side panel back and get the plumbing in order.  So I ended up going a little ghetto until I could devise a plan

[Bad5ector]

So after a few coffee I had a eureka moment. The plan now is to still attach it to the side panel but with the inlet and outlet on the rad facing away from the case. I will have to lower the rad slightly and get use the rotary 90s to point up and hopefully be able to attach the tubing that way, over the top. But in the meantime I'm going to run some tests. After testing, as expected the drop in temp wasn't huge BUT the consistency in temps in relation to how fast the fans were spinning was much better. Fans didn't need to ramp up nearly as much as before.

 

So once I get some more time this weekend I am going to see about putting this plan in action. But if I learned anything over the years "the best laid plans of mice and men... often go astray". But hopefully not too badly hahaha. Going to see if I have any proper rotary 90s left, if not I will be stuck using the hardware that's on there now but I really think the rotary 90s would be the best fit. But I am open to suggestions

[Bad5ector]

So I didn't have all the hardware I was hoping I had but I made it work. One of the great things about soft tubing is the flexibility it allows. 

 

Just running the pump now to bleed the lines for a bit but all in all I'm pretty satisfied with the result. There are a few things that I'll address later but nothing too pressing.  A rubber lining around the cut out in the case and maybe some more 90 fittings to clean up the tube runs. 

 

 

[A1200]

Looks pretty cool, what sort of temps are you achieving before / after the additional rad?

[Bad5ector]

Hey thanks. 

As expected, the temps aren't much different, give or take a few degrees. What has changed is how often the fans ramp up. I was playing Control earlier on my silent setting and the fans I think ramped up once when it first loaded the game and after that they went back down to about 700RPM and stayed there through the whole session. I did this mainly because I am (like a lot of folks) looking at getting a new next gen video card (Leaning 3080, but waiting until October to see if maybe AMD has an answer). As such I was anticipating an additional 100watts or so worth of heat to be added to the loop. Just wanted to future proof. In the meantime, I will enjoy the quieter PC.

 

Cheers.

[101m4n]

I'd be a little worried about those fittings outside the case.

My last water-cooled build with soft tubing (aside from the one I'm working on now), was five years ago, so maybe things have changed since then, but every leak I have ever experienced was the result of a rotary fitting being put under some sort of tension.

As a rule, I avoid using them on soft tubing for this reason, too easy to accidentally tension them and cause problems.

Then again, it's outside the case so I guess even if it does leak it shouldn't be too big a problem!

Just out of interest, what order does coolant go through the radiators? I've never stacked radiators, but I've always imagined that passing the coolant through the "outer" one first (or whichever is receiving exhaust air from another radiator) ought to lead to better heat dissipation. Rate of energy dissipation being proportional to temperature differential and all.

[Bad5ector]

Hey thanks for the concern, you're right, the rotaries are a potential point of failure but since they are outside of the case, I think my risk is low. And it isn't putting as much pressure as it might seem in the pictures. But it was something I was going to keep an eye on. Unfortunately my options for loop order is limited given the case, basically goes through each rad first then the rest of the loop. But really when all is said and done, it shouldn't mater much because it will reach an equilibrium. At least that is my understanding... and seems to hold true from my day or so of testing.

[101m4n]

Yeah makes sense.

My idea goes kind of like this:

1) Slow the pump down so the the coolant temperature differential is as big as possible.

2) Pass water through all heat generating components first, then to outer radiator, then to the inner one.

With the slow flow rate, the water picks up more heat in the components, and so loses heat more readily in the outer radiator. It also spends more time in the radiator allowing it to shed more heat. Additionally, the inner radiator would then be dealing with coolant at a lower temperature, but also cooler intake air. I don't think it would improve temperatures much, it'd probably make them worse actually now that I think about it. But it would in theory let you dissipate more heat which I guess would translate to lower fan speeds.

Oh well. Maybe I'll test it out once I've got my new system up and running .

[Bad5ector]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give that a try and let you know how it turns out. I wasn't expecting much of a drop in temps when I started this endeavor. I had an extra 360 slim rad kicking around from when I was going to do a custom loop for my wife. She decided she didn't want to go through all the hassle after seeing what it takes to maintain a loop and went with an NZXT x72. This was more of a... can I do it? Combined with knowing the new video cards will be adding more heat overall to the loop, I figured it couldn't hurt.

Here are my current temps while gaming. Mind you I'm just playing MTG Arena atm, so nothing too intensive but overall I'm satisfied the fans haven't ramped up at all and the temps are where they were before the rad addition (actually slightly lower, but not something I would write home about).