Phanteks P200A Portable Water-Cooled Build

[southpark11235]

This is my second time building a small powerful PC designed to be easily moved between homes. The loop is designed to be easily drained and GPU removed for long transport. It is a CAD/gaming PC for my little brother Jimmy. He needs to be able to move it half way across the US 2-4 times a year for school.

 

I used hard line tubes for everything because I don’t think I could have gotten soft tubing to work for some of the weirder bends without kinking. The run between the 240 and 280 rad is a tight 3” s bend with a 90-degree twist in it. It does not need to work in a high vibration environment all the time so I felt I could get away with hard line tubing.

 

My original idea was build something the GPU could be left it, so that is why I went for a vertical GPU mount. However, PCIE 4.0 proved to be a problem for this. The PCIE 3.0 riser for the case prevents the GPU from displaying anything and you can’t change the slot on the motherboard in BIOS without being able to see. I got a PCIE 4.0 riser to fix this, but it is flimsy. I don’t trust it for long travel and considering Jimmy might want to fly with it GPU out is the safer way. If I had known this from the start, I would have gone with a normal GPU mount and saved myself the headache. My first portable build bonces around in a semi-truck all day and is fine because the riser mount system is so much better.

 

I drilled two holes in the case for drain and fill ports. There is a t spilt off the 240 rad to drain the system and it work well for that. The fill port is connected to the low half of the reservoir because the fill port plug extends blow the top reservoir plug and I could not make a good run to that. This ended causing an unexpected problem will filling. Air could not escape the fill tube so the coolant was stuck in the reservoir. The reservoir’s top plug is blocked by the fill port so I could not easily remove it. I tried blowing in to the fill port to get the coolant moving and that was a big mistake. I got the coolant to move, but air bubbles got past the coolant and pressurized the system. When I tried to stop blowing, I felt coolant trying to come back up into my mouth. I quick blew the coolant back down and tried to come up with a plan. I sat there for about two minutes kissing the case before my cheeks where about to give. I didn’t want to spill coolant all over the brand new PC so my best plan was to take the coolant in my mouth. As I let the pressure go, I was force fed coolant. I tried to keep it all in my mouth, but some went down my throat. I ran over to the sink and spit out the coolant, saving the PC and the cost of my mouth. The coolant was sweet so I figured it was glycol based. I don’t think I drank a lot of it, but to be safe I decided to counteract the poison with ethanol. I don’t drink, but I had a bottle of cooking rum above the oven. Now I don’t know if liquor can expire, but I swear this stuff was. It was the nastiest thing I ever drank and it was doing somersaults in my stomach. The bottle had been sitting above the oven for over a decade getting heat cycled. When I tried to put the cap back on it desegrated in my hand. I poured the rest down the sink and the bottom of the bottle was chunky. In the end I cut down an allen key to get the top plug out of the reservoir and let the air escape out of that hole.

 

The PC has a 5950x and a 3080 in it so I knew it would have to deal with a lot of heat. To keep the temps down I used liquid metal between the GPU die and water block, and between the CPU HIS and water block. The case barely fits a slim 240 and 280 rad. I had to use a hammer to get the 240 rad in. Coolant flows from CPU and GPU to the 240 rad on the side. Then it goes to the 280 on the front before returning to the pump reservoir combo. The front 280 is an intake and the side 240 is exhaust.  There are vents in the bottom of the case so the 240 should get some fresh air mixed in with the warm air of the 280. The 240 is the first and hotter rad so that should be the best cooling order. The fans are just the stock Phanteks 120mm and matching 140mm fans. At full speed they are fairly quite and don’t seem to move a lot of air through the rads. I think I should change them for some better/higher pressure fans in the future. For now, Jimmy just really wanted to start using his shiny new PC. The motherboard has a bunch of tiny fans on it for active cooling. I set the PSU fan to always be on so that should keep the motherboard happy.

 

Overall, I feel like it came out ok, but if I where to do it again I would change somethings. If I didn’t only look at vertical GPU mounts I feel like I could have found a better case and gotten it smaller. Something that could fit a fat 280 with better fans would probably have worked better. Also I should have tried harder for soft line tubes. However, Jimmy is happy with his new blazing fast PC.

 

Part list

AMD 5950x

GIGABYTE AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE 3080

ASUS ROG Strix X570-I

32GB G.SKILL Trident Z Neo DDR4 4000

Seasonic PRIME TX-750

2TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2

EK-Quantum Velocity - AMD Nickel Plexi

EK-CoolStream SE 240

EK-CoolStream SE 280

EK-Quantum Kinetic FLT 120 D5 PWM D-RGB Plexi

EK-HD PETG Tube 10/12mm