Codename: Radar

[hurlaroid]

Hey Everyone!

 

Been lurking around the boards for a little while now, checking out all the great work everyone has done. I did a major overhaul of my system at the start of the year, and have been battling with heat and noise ever since. Turns out the 290x, even with a nice after market cooler, might as well be a rebranded flame thrower. When you have 2 in Crossfire things get even more interesting. Now that the weather is warming up and I can't just open the window and let 40 degree air into the room, I decided it was time to water cool this beast. 

 

So, lets get into it!

 

 

Components:

 

System:

CPU: i7 4770

GPU: MSI 290x Gamer Edition in Crossfire

Ram: 8gb Kingston 1600

Storage: 2x Samsung 840 in Raid 0

PSU: Corsair RM1000

Case: Define R4

Fans: Stock case fans, Corsair AF140s

2x UV Cold Cathode

 

 

Liquid Cooling:

Monsoon bay res w/ mcp655 Variable

Alphacool Nexxxos ST30 and UT60 240mm Rads

EK Supremacy CPU Block

EK FC 290x water blocks x 2

Monsoon fitting

Primochill Advanced tubing

Monsoon UV green dye

 

 

All the new parts unboxed and laid out. 

 

 

Here is a before shot of my system. I had previously sleeved the cables with uv green and black paracord. You'll notice the AF140 jammed in there right in front of the 290xs to help keep them cool, not the prettiest solution. 

 

 

Here we have pulled the Ram, Graphics and Mobo. I really want this build to be all black and UV green, so this red and blue need to go......

 

Much better! I used flat black engine block paint on all the heat spreaders. It contains a ceramic element that promotes heat conductivity. 

 

 

Making a mess

 

 

Getting the fans mounted to the UT60 and mounting the rad to the front. The fan holder on the front of the r4 did not have any holes in it for the fans to mount into, and I didnt feel like taking the time to mark and drill them out at the moment. I plan going back later and ditching the zip ties in favor of a nicer solution. 

 

 

Res is place

 

 

Waterblocks installed on the vid cards. I had intended to use the EK backplates, but turns out they are not compatible with my MSI cards. Spent hours verifying the waterblocks would fit and never gave a thought to the back plates. The cards still look great without them due to the black PCB.

 

 

Snazzy new black mem and chipset heatsinks, and the EK cpu block installed.

 

 

After getting the ST30 and Af140s installed in the case, I found the motherboard was hitting up against them. I tried fixing it by taking off the VRM heatsink from the mobo and filing about 5mm off the top of it, but then the I/O ports on the back were hitting. I wound up just tapping 2 holes in the top of the case and top mounting the rad. Not what I was planning originally, so I will have to go back in the future and install some nice 90 degree fittings and figure out something a bit more sturdy than exposed plastic tubing. 

 

 

 

Tubing installed! I hard ordered an EK dual parallel terminal block, but I mistakenly got the wrong spacing on it, live and learn. Thankfully I ordered extra fittings so I was able to keep working. 

 

 

All set up for leak testing, water in and pump on! Quickly found that one of the oval gaskets on the EK video block was not seated right, but thankfully the papertowels caught it all. After a quick drain and reseating of the gasket, everything was water tight. 

 

 

I couldn't wait to get some dye into it

 

 

 

And there she is, all up and running!

It came out a lot better than I expected, despite the few small setbacks I had. 

 

There is still some more work to be done, I have some 90 degree fittings on the way, I want to add in a fillport/drainport, and I am going to wrap the tubing in anti kink coils for the obvious anti kink reasons as well as the look. 

 

What I was most impressed with was the differences in temp. Before watercooling, the 290s would consistently hit 90c while gaming in crossfire, thus throttling the cards, getting loud as hell, and making the room unbearably hot. The corsair AIO watercooler would then have a hard time keep its temp low because of all the hot exhaust. Processor temps of 65/70c were not uncommon. 

 

Now after an hour of running Furmark, the cards were at 70 and 72 respectively, with the processor holding at 50c. Playing BF4 at full settings on a 1440 monitor temps were 55 on both cards and 50 on the processor. I was very worried that only using 2 240mm rads, one of them being 30mm thick, and using low static pressure 140mm fans would not be enough to cool the system, but turns out it's more that sufficient. The room stays significantly cooler now as well, as the system is not getting super hot and I think the radiators dissipate heat at a more even pace so the HVAC system can keep up with it. 

 

All in all it was a really fun build, and I have a few more things I would like to do with it before i'm going to call it done. I will post back here as I put on the finishing touches. Hope you guys like it!

 

 

 

 

 

[NInety]

That UV.  :wub:

[hurlaroid]

That UV.  :wub:

Lol yea. When thinking about what scheme I wanted to do something just felt right about good ol green UV. I know the "thing to do" these days is more clean color pallets and white spot lighting, but for this I wanted to go a little "vintage" and create some homage to first PC I built. With me being 16 and into the grateful dead, and windowed cases still being a new thing on the market, it was a UV monstrosity. 

[skysmad]

wow thats awesome like man i want to do that 

[shouldervalley]

Sir, that looks awesome!

[SageC]

Pretty clean. I'm not a fan of the kink in the tubing though.

[hurlaroid]

Pretty clean. I'm not a fan of the kink in the tubing though.

I don't care for the kinks either, so I have some 90 degree fittings on the way. I was going to use the FC terminal which has a horizontal out, but it was the wrong size. I also need to get some cold cathode cable extenders and move the inverter out of sight when the case side is off, or at least spray it black.

[Luc401]

Great build so far

[frustratedrocka]

How the hell did you get the heatsinks off, and what paint did you use on them?

[hurlaroid]

How the hell did you get the heatsinks off, and what paint did you use on them?

The mobo ones simply unscrew from the back, they use non adhesive thermal pads underneath. For the ram I just pried them off gently, they attach with double sided adhesive thermal tape. I covered the tap when painting them and it retained enough adhesive to hold back together, but to be sure I added a few drops of super glue.

The paint I got from autozone, it's engine paint. Look for any of the spray paints that say they are heat dissipating and contain ceramic, they have a negligible effect on the heatsink.

[frustratedrocka]

 

How the hell did you get the heatsinks off, and what paint did you use on them?

 

I think your answer got deleted somehow.

[hurlaroid]

I think your answer got deleted somehow.

Lol, you're fast. Hit the wrong button

[Quantum]

I always love a watercooled R4 build  :wub:

I think there is a kink on the tubing under the GPU you may want to take a look at.  May want to get a right angle adapter to fix it in the future   

[Paralectic]

The bottom GPU's tube looks awful.

[Faz592]

The bottom GPU's tube looks awful.

a 90 degree fitting is definitely needed, 

 

but freaking awesome build, soothing to be proud of!

[Paralectic]

a 90 degree fitting is definitely needed, 

 

but freaking awesome build, soothing to be proud of!

Exactly, without that fitting the tube is just not right.

[Analog]

The build is awesome!

[hurlaroid]

a 90 degree fitting is definitely needed,

but freaking awesome build, soothing to be proud of!

Yep, it's arriving today. Thanks for the kudos!

[Faz592]

@hurlaroid update?

[CookieTheMonsta]

Everything looks great. Whole green/black theme is dope