Any way to make white soft tubes look good in an all black case? (first time water cooling)

[Nathanpete]

Context: I am upgrading a PC that doesn't need water cooling (R7 2700) to a custom loop to improve the aesthetics of my IT Class' showcase PC for open houses. I really do love the class and what more people to experience it. Because all the supplies were purchased from the school's Newegg Business account, and working with the school when we just closed down till New Years is near impossible. Anyway, all the parts are ordered (the CPU block, corsair lighting node pro, and fans are stuck in shipping) and are set in stone. No returns and no purchasing more parts. 

 

Here is what I am using:

Ryzen 7 2700

MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X (vertically mounted for looks)

Thermaltake View 71 (black case w/ black tinted tempered glass on 4 sides: top, front, left, and right)

A thermaltake modular PSU (I really need to find a way to get Molex for the pump, the remaining modular cables are gone and the molex cable from a EVGA 550 G2 don't fit)

A 360mm (65mm thick) rad from thermaltake

6x titanium 10/13mm compression fittings from Thermaltake

Some all white soft tubing from Primochill (sealed, open box)

3x Corsari LL120 RGB fans (in shipping)

Corsair Hydro X block (I don't have the receipt of which exact one but it is prob their most common standalone block)

Corsair Hydro X XD5 (D5 Pump+reservoir)

 

and I think that is it. Anyway when I realized the school ordered white tubing instead of clear or translucent red like I asked, I was a little upset because I was concerned with how the tubing would look like behind very tinted tempered glass in a black case. 

Luckily, there is already a picture of the white version of the View 71 (a water cooling case) w/ white hard tubing, and that at least told me how it could look behind tempered glass (the glass IRL is much more tinted than the pictures on their website, especially the snow version:

 

 

I already have the rad temporarily mounted to the top with the incorrect screws on the top (in/out on the right hand side), and I can easily move it. But I really can't move the pump except for up and down. I really really can't be bothered to move the pump and reservoir anymore, I have cut myself twice on the case and spent two hours moving drives cages and mounting the pump, and I can't do that anymore since I am limited to building the PC during school hours (2.5 hours for 2 or 3 days a week). 

 

The hard drive cage is installed in the bottom right attached to the back (is that still called the mobo tray?) with a pre-installed thermaltake 120 fan that I have already moved to inside the case (instead of the front panel) to actually make the dust filter work. The pump is attached to a fan mount right above the cage. There is about 2-3 inches of vertical distance and about 1 inch of horizontal distance between the rad's outlet compression fitting and the inlet fitting at the top of the reservoir. I need to fit another tube in there and because the tubing is still sealed I don't know how flexible the tubing is, much less how to actually install tubing in such a tight space. 

 

Anyway here is my main question: Is there any good (and easy to a novice) way to make all white tubing look good in a very black case with some RGB elements? Reminder that the GPU is vertically mounted and the pump isn't moving, but the rad can.

 

Also: Is there a proper orientation to mount a rad to the top? Like am I supposed to attach the fittings to where the plastic caps are or the metal caps on the opposite side? Looks of the rad don't matter since you can't read the (currently upside down with the metal caps facing into the case) Thermaltake logo behind the large "overbite" on the top of the case. (this overbite is where the top screw to secure the swinging tempered glass door attaches)

[narrdarr]

Tubing is cheap. Personally I think black tubing looks the best for soft tubing. I would just buy some. 

 

But if you want to use the white its fine to. The key is smooth tubing runs. Try to work with the curve of the tubing. 

[Nathanpete]

1 minute ago, narrdarr said:

Tubing is cheap. Personally I think black tubing looks the best for soft tubing. I would just buy some. 

 

But if you want to use the white its fine to. The key is smooth tubing runs. Try to work with the curve of the tubing. 

Clearly you didn't even read the first paragraph, this is not an option as said here: 

23 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

Context: I am upgrading a PC that doesn't need water cooling (R7 2700) to a custom loop to improve the aesthetics of my IT Class' showcase PC for open houses. -snip- Because all the supplies were purchased from the school's Newegg Business account, and working with the school when we just closed down till New Years is near impossible. Anyway, all the parts are ordered (the CPU block, corsair lighting node pro, and fans are stuck in shipping) and are set in stone. No returns and no purchasing more parts. 

I get that I write very long messages, but I know that not writing enough is not going to get an answer because of a complete lack of context. I gave you context and more but you just read the title and answered. 

[GER_T4IGA]

Depending on where you shine the lights from, the white tubes will take the color of the lights! They will also very likely be the center piece of attention other thatn LEDs burning holes directly into the retinas of viewers (what I mean is deirectly visible LEDs - they shoudln't be).

I can definitely imagine it looking great. I personally like straight runs so I go for 45 and 90 fittings where possible to reduce any possible kinks but that is down to taste. Can make it look almost hardline like.

 

Not to dissapoint you but I have built a watercooled PC with second hard mid range parts in the past and it felt underwhelming tbh. it is a very bad investment of your money and I think watercooling anythign but the highest end parts is not an option for me any more. I still feel regret towards it and I would never do it again, The only exception I can imagine is doing it for a living going to trade shows where specs are 100% irrelevant because no/one will ever use the machine.

[narrdarr]

1 minute ago, Nathanpete said:

Clearly you didn't even read the first paragraph, this is not an option as said here: 

I get that I write very long messages, but I know that not writing enough is not going to get an answer because of a complete lack of context. I gave you context and more but you just read the title and answered. 

I did read 90%. Its a bit long winded. 

Just saying tubing is cheap so you could just get some more of what you like.

 

 

[GER_T4IGA]

For reference these builds look great with white fluid but the look with white tubing wouldn't be much different. They have some visual issue unrelated to tubing color but I am sure you could solve those.

[Nathanpete]

2 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

I did read 90%. Its a bit long winded. 

Just saying tubing is cheap so you could just get some more of what you like.

You don't understand. I am a student, I am not authorized to make any purchases on the school's behalf. The best I can do is try to arrange a return/replacement but that will be a nightmare A) The school just shut down for COVID (my county has the highest levels per capita in my side of the state) till the second semester aka January. B) The grant system isn't designed for making returns. It is meant to make purchases on your behalf as a piece of the school's budget. Being a public school, the budget is very strictly controlled and we can't start adding shipping charges and restocking fees. Maybe a teacher could, but I am running this entire project. I literally created a spreadsheet of what I wanted to make a softline custom loop and my teacher transferred this info to a special spreadsheet for grant purchases and sent it to the appropriate people. 

 

I am asking for solutions on how I could possibly fix the issues with my cosmetics with what I could possibly already have on hand. We have distilled water and the only dye is a bright green. We have some other stuff (not necessarily meant for water cooling), but most of it is quite old and I would need to wait nearly two months before I can look again. 

[Nathanpete]

20 minutes ago, GER_T4IGA said:

Depending on where you shine the lights from, the white tubes will take the color of the lights! They will also very likely be the center piece of attention other thatn LEDs burning holes directly into the retinas of viewers (what I mean is deirectly visible LEDs - they shoudln't be).

I can definitely imagine it looking great. I personally like straight runs so I go for 45 and 90 fittings where possible to reduce any possible kinks but that is down to taste. Can make it look almost hardline like.

 

Not to dissapoint you but I have built a watercooled PC with second hard mid range parts in the past and it felt underwhelming tbh. it is a very bad investment of your money and I think watercooling anythign but the highest end parts is not an option for me any more. I still feel regret towards it and I would never do it again, The only exception I can imagine is doing it for a living going to trade shows where specs are 100% irrelevant because no/one will ever use the machine.

Thank you. The case had two thermaltake 120mm fan with diffused blue LEDs (one at the back for out and one at the bottom of the front panel for in) and we will have 3 RGB fans from corsair coming eventually. Looks like it will be a red video card and blue water cooling in a black case with very tinted glass. 

 

And in reality, the PC will almost never be used. It's only purpose is to run pirated copies of VR games (and old versions at that. The only game we can actually play rn is Beat Saber because it is easy to share between multiple people and every other game was banned when the principle came in when someone was playing super hot. Obv games with guns are banned in a school. And we can't get updates online because of how we have configured the static IP network for our class.) on a HTC Vive. 

 

And for contamination reasons (having to clean the controllers and headset after every song) the PC has only been turned once since March, and that was me making sure it POSTed after I added the GPU's riser card and swapped out the RAM for another kit. (2666 MHz -> 3200 MHz)

 

And the specs are mostly irrelevant because all this is doing is combining a new showcase PC and an very old showcase PC into one very cool looking showcase PC for open houses, and when COVID wasn't around, VR. 

[Nathanpete]

On 11/21/2020 at 12:09 PM, GER_T4IGA said:

For reference these builds look great with white fluid but the look with white tubing wouldn't be much different. They have some visual issue unrelated to tubing color but I am sure you could solve those.

Good news, turns out thermaltake has a video on their youtube page with the exact same case and is using white coolant. I'm using white tubing and clear coolant, but close enough to give me peace of mind. Turns out I  need to keep my screws loose, and remount my pump to the bottom of the case, partially behind the vertical GPU. I can keep my hard drive cage next to the middle fan for the front. Now my concerns are whether or not I have enough fan headers. The website for my mobo (MSI B350 PC Mate) claims to have 6 headers, but that is 2 pre-installed fans, 3 ARGB fans from corsair, and a pump, so cable length could be a problem. 

 

Also I need to find a molex adapter because we lost the spare modular cables for the PSU I'm using. 

And I am a noob at actually making good looking loops, but it is soft so I have some liberty.