Project Minovsky

KillerTreeFrog · April 7, 2015

So, project Minovsky, where to start? I have been dreaming about building a fully custom water cooling loop since I first saw them in the back of a Maximum PC magazine years ago. But somehow I have never managed to. Before now I was intimated by it, and was worried I would mess something up. When I started this build it was winter here in the mountains of East TN, which means it's too damn cold and nasty to ride my motorcycle so I needed something to do. I could throw more money at my bike, but my friends already give me hell for spending too much on it. So I decided it was time to do a little refresh to my PC. It's been a while, I am still rocking a Core I7-860 that I have over clocked to 3.66GHZ. Not an amazing OC or anything, but it's been a work horse since I bought it in November 2009. I had only one real goal in mind in doing this build, I wanted to do what I have been dreaming about for the past 10 years, and that is to put my computer under a real water cooling loop. I had spent a rather ridiculous amount of time researching all of the parts that I wanted to use, and how to set everything up.

The idea started back in November when I bought a Gigabyte board and 4690K from a friend of mine. My original plan was to use those, slap 16GB of ram into, put it all under water and call it a day. My plans were changed for me once I started looking into blocks, and started in on the build itself. So let's start at the beginning I suppose. I knew I wanted a different case. I have been using a Corsair 660T for quite some time and I needed a change from it. I get tired of looking at the same case after so long. I ended up with a Corsair 750D. I know there are better cases out there for water cooling, but I happened to see the 750D in a Microcenter and really liked it. Reminds me of an R4, but larger. After seeing it, I knew I had to get one, and so I did. Then I started researching radiators, and what would fit in the case. I knew I wanted low FPI rads in hopes of running lower RPM fans. I decided on a 60MM thick 280MM rad for the front, and a 60MM thick 360MM rad for the top. I ended up going with EK blocks for both the CPU and my 770GTX. However this is where I hit my first snafu. After getting onto EKs website I noticed that my motherboard, a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI, was not on their compatibility list for the EK Supremacy EVO. Damn. It may have worked out, but I didn't feel like taking a chance and picked up an Asus Z97-A. I figured I could sell the Gigabyte board later since it was new. I picked up the XSPC Photon 170MM Tube Res with the D5 pump because I knew I wanted a combo. I needed to have at least one HDD cage as apart from gaming I also use this computer for photo editing. And my pictures tend to eat space . I grabbed a bunch of Noiseblocker fans, some Bitspower fittings and hoped I was good to go. How very wrong I was.

So starting things off, some pictures of the parts I had when I first started the build, and my helpers for the build. Triple kitty build.

First thing I did once I had the rads in was flush them. I had read about how people would run pumps for outdoor ponds, and distalled water through a filter. I wish I had. I went through a couple of gallons of distalled water trying to get those stupid AlphaCool rads clean.

But clean I got them, and one of my best friends, Chad, and I managed to find a weekend in late February to get together and start building this PC! In the time between getting the parts in, flushing the rads, and starting the build I had managed to talk myself into getting a 4790K. My sister's boyfriend wanted my old parts anyway, so I figured it would be fine. We deiced to start building it in a shop, and started on a Friday night around 7PM. We didn't get out of there till almost 2AM. This is where the problems started. But before I get into that, lets mount some rads first. And check to make sure the computer posts. I went ahead and ripped out my 650HX I had planned on re-using from my old PC, and plugged her up.

Ahhh feels good. Post check is good, rads are in the case, time to get some water blocks on. Started with the CPU block first. It was pretty straight forward. No more difficult than some of the old air coolers I have messed with. The GPU block on the other hand was a bit of a fiasco. I checked on EKs website before ordering it to make sure it would fit my 770GTX. Well I was wrong. Turns out EVGA made two 770GTX SC editions. One with the PCI-E power side by side reference style, and another way. The other way having the connectors stacked on top of each other. Guess which one I had, ya the stacked one. We had already taken the stock cooler off, cleaned the GPU up, put the new pads on and went to put the water block when we figured this out. Awesome, so now I have a useless water block. Since this was about the time Frozen CPU went down, and that is where I had ordered it from. So we put the stock cooler back on, rather defeated.

So at this point it was getting pretty late, but we figured we would also throw in the mother board just to have it done. But alas, although I had looked up the clearance figures for the 750D, the top heat sink on the mother board was still hitting the fans on the rad. Disappointed is not really the word for it at that point. But oh well, such is life. We put my old PC back together, put the GPU back together and got the hell out of there.

Now I was down a GPU block, and a rad. Awesome. Back to the drawing board. I did some googling around and found that there didn't seem to be a GPU water block for my model of 770. At this point I pretty much said the hell with it. I picked up a 980GTX, a 45MM 360 Rad, and a 550W XFX XTR PSU. Originally I was going to give my sister my old case, mobo, CPU, and ram. But at this point I figured I might as well just give her the whole damn thing. Between my work, and various other things I didn't get to mess around with it again for quite a while. It was mid March before I got to put the GPU block on, and sleeve the pump cables. This time it went much better. The GPU block just went on, although I thought that EK's instructions were not exactly the best in the world.

I wasn't really sure how I was going to mount the res throughout the build, and I settled for a less than perfect solution, zip ties. I had grabbed a piece of panduit from work cut to size that I then plasti dipped black. I had some large standoffs and I was going to tapp the case, but by the time I got to that point I really didn't feel like it. I had been messing with the thing for the better part of a month and a half and I just wanted my new PC. So about two weeks ago after another couple of gallons of water went through the new rad another one of my friend came over and we mounted the res. Got that going ran the tubing, and by god it was a PC. Started to try and fill it, which was a pain in the rear end. We had water spilling down the res and were trying a few different ways to get the damn thing filled. As I was tilting the case back to get some water into the rads I noticed water coming from the seam of the res. Dear god not again. Not another problem. Tilted it the other way, more water from the seam. So we drained the water from the loop, undid the res and took it over to the sink. I filled it with some more water put my fingers over the fittings and tilted it, no water coming from the seam. Tried it a few more times, and my buddy and I just stare at each other. We really were that foolish. When we were filling it, and the water had spilled, it ran over into that seam. *sigh*. We had ran out of time that day to do anymore.

Last week he came back over, we mounted the thing, filled the loop and I let it leak test for 24hours. FINALLY! After all my mess ups I had a system that was fully under water. After the leak test I wired up the mobo, GPU, and SSD to see what it was like. One thing to note on my loop is that I went with all straight fittings. I am sure that some of the runs would look nicer with angles fittings and what not, but oh well such is life. Also because of needing the HD cage I had to have my front rad up, which made for an interesting bend on the "in" side of the pump. Loop order is pretty basic, "water out"-CPU-Top Rad-GPU-Front Rad-"water in"

So did I achieve my goal of making a quiet pc ? I sure did. All of my fans spin at 1000RPM or below. I have a mild over clock going of 4.6GHZ at 1.20V. My load CPU temps are around 45C, load GPU temps are 35C. Idle is in the low 20s on the CPU and 30C for the GPU. Ambient temperature is 15.5C. I ended up swapping out my back 140MM NB for a Be Quiet 140MM. Goes at a lower RPM. It should also be noted that all of the rest of fans are connected via 12V-7V adapters. Even with all of my mistakes, I had a ton of fun making the thing. Now I can't wait to do another. It was very much a learning by doing experience. I couldn't have done it without my friends though. So thank you to them . chadpotter3.

Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 280MM

Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 360MM

EK CPU Block

EK GPU Block

Bitspower G1/4 Thread 3/8" ID x 5/8" OD Compression Fitting - Black Sparkle

XSPC D5 Photon 170

PrimoChill

120MM Fans

140MM Fans

140MM Fan

Corsair 750D

CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 16GB

Intel CoreI5 4690K

Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI

http://www.amazon.com/PrimoChill-PrimoFlex-Advanced-Tubing-Crystal/dp/B00A0Q55MC] Tubing

EVGA 770GTX SC

Corsair HX650

Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 280MM

Alphacool NexXxoS XT45 Full Copper 360mm

Bitspower G1/4 Thread 3/8" ID x 5/8" OD Compression Fitting - Black Sparkle

XSPC D5 Photon 170

EK CPU Block

EK GPU Block

EK Backplate

PrimoChill

120MM Fans

140MM Fans

140MM Fan

Corsair 750D

Intel Core I7 4790K

Asus Z97-A

CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 16GB

EVGA GTX980 SC

XFX XTR 550W

[spoiler=Complete !]

Suffokation · April 7, 2015

Very nice and clean.

Welcome to Linus Tech.

tyson.b · April 7, 2015

Aww cute kittehs, I was thinking about a fully custom loop, but the 600 dollar price tags for a basic loop drew me away from it. Have fun with those max settings @ 1440p!