Watercooling the 780t

[Hakka]

**Watercooling build log starts near the bottom of this page**

 

I've just transferred it to a new case (Corsair 600t to 780t) and added SLI 1080s and a few other bits and pieces, lots more room in this one and much better airflow. I'll be switching this over to a full custom watercooling loop.

 

Been looking at an X99 & 6900k setup but the performance increase isn't big enough to justify the cost.

 

Ivy Bridge E 4930k @4.4ghz

Rampage IV extreme black

64gb Gskill Ripjaws

2 x Strix GTX1080s & MSI Hb bridge

Creative ZXR

7 x SSDs

Corsair H100i

Corsair AX1200i

 

 

 

Cables are a bit messy at the moment, especially around the bottom of the motherboard. Not sure about the white case, it looks ok but everything else in my room is black, I'm thinking about giving it a custom paintjob and going for a damaged metal look. I'm gonna do a test run on an older case first to see how it looks.

 

 

I need to swap out the white lights on the control panel for red ones, and get rid of the hue led controller that doesn't work properly. Might put a Hue+ in it. I'm running 3x120 Riing fans in the front (in) and one in the floor (in), a 140 in the rear (ex) and 4x120s on the H100i in push/pull (ex). It flows a heap of air, just finished 2 hours of Battlefield 1, the top card peaked at 61degrees C overclocked to 2088 mhz.

 

 

 

I bought some Primochill anti kink for the coolant hoses, ordered red but its actually pink so had to paint it. I really want some LED ram but cant find anything decent in DDR3. The light on the SLi bridge is a bit too bright, might have a look inside it and see if I can tone it down a bit.

 

 

 

I have  3 more SSDs stuck on the rear of the 3 you can see, and another one around the back of the tray. I have some carbon fibre look vinyl to cover the white parts, I'll probably end up adding a panel to cover all that so I can mount a coolant reservoir to it.

 

 

Also got an Acer X34 Predator to replace my triple 24" surround setup, I don't miss the extra width.

 

Here's the rig that most of the parts came from:

 

[stealth80]

This looks nice! Grab some cable combs to help with those cables:

 

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/Cable_Combs.html Just some examples

 

Also look at Ryzen once the platform settles down $499 is a lot less than a 6900k!

[PCGuy_5960]

1 minute ago, stealth80 said:

Also look at Ryzen once the platform settles down $499 is a lot less than a 6900k!

For gaming Ryzen is not good and it is worse than his 4930K....

[3 Lions]

You like red then, have you considered getting an EK X240 kit? it basically gives you all of the parts to do a custom CPU liquid cooling loop. 

[Hakka]

2 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

This looks nice! Grab some cable combs to help with those cables:

 

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/Cable_Combs.html Just some examples

 

Also look at Ryzen once the platform settles down $499 is a lot less than a 6900k!

I have some combs in there but most of them fell off as i was moving things around so I pulled them all off for now.

 

I'm keen to see how Ryzen goes, realistically I don't need to upgrade for a while as I can max out pretty much everything I play with ease. I just like buying new toys.

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, Hakka said:

I'm keen to see how Ryzen goes, realistically I don't need to upgrade for a while as I can max out pretty much everything I play with ease. I just like buying new toys.

If I were you, I would wait for Skylake-X, it should be pretty amazing in terms of performance! (especially gaming)

[Hakka]

2 minutes ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

You like red then, have you considered getting an EK X240 kit? it basically gives you all of the parts to do a custom CPU liquid cooling loop. 

I've been doing a bit of reasearch over the last few weeks just trying to get my head around the different options, not sure if I've looked at that kit but I'll check it out.

[3 Lions]

Just now, Hakka said:

I've been doing a bit of reasearch over the last few weeks just trying to get my head around the different options, not sure if I've looked at that kit but I'll check it out.

Yeah I recommend you look at this because you could fill it with red liquid and will look the business. 

[stealth80]

4 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

For gaming Ryzen is not good and it is worse than his 4930K....

Hence why I said "once the platform settles"

 

Something ain't right at the moment it's raw power is there, but games aint using it right

[Hakka]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

If I were you, I would wait for Skylake-X, it should be pretty amazing in terms of performance! (especially gaming)

I think thats the best option, hopefully Ryzen is a winner and pushes Intel pricing down a bit.

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, stealth80 said:

Hence why I said "once the platform settles"

I don't think that we will see AMAZING gaming performance results though TBH... Remember, AMD had the same argument with Bulldozer (It will get better over time) and we all know how that went...

Even when testing with the Gigabyte board (the one with no issues that affect performance), reviewers found results that were considerably lower than Intel's which does indicate that this is more of a hardware issue than a software one... Even if Ryzen gets a 20% performance boost, it will still be 5% slower than Intel.

[Hakka]

2 minutes ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

Yeah I recommend you look at this because you could fill it with red liquid and will look the business. 

Just had a look at it, looks good but I have room for 2 big 360mm rads and a huge res, I see there's a 360 kit there but I'm not a big fan of the EK cpu blocks, i prefer the look of the XSPC raystorm block, and i already have the fans so the kit  probably isn't the best option for me.

[PCGuy_5960]

4 minutes ago, Hakka said:

hopefully Ryzen is a winner and pushes Intel pricing down a bit.

Dunno TBH... So far it looks like Ryzen has very bad performance in games and Intel already has the 7700K/5820K/6800K for around $380.(And all of them outperform Ryzen in games) So I don't think that we will see a price drop

[Hakka]

Made up an SSD cover from a sheet of acrylic, I'm thinking I might do another one from translucent red acrylic, mask out the ROG logo and then paint around it, and add led lighting behind it to illuminate the logo.

 

 

Swapped out the white LEDs in the power light for red ones.

 

[Lethal_Garu]

This was pleasing to look at.

[Hakka]

this lot just turned up, waiting on stock for a few of the items I need for the GPUs.

 

[samiscool51]

Now thats red, but it needs one thing

 

 

RGB....

(I Really should start designing my system, thinking about having a rainbow setup, where everything is Rainbow, just rainbow)

 

[Hakka]

56 minutes ago, samiscool51 said:

Now thats red, but it needs one thing

 

 

RGB....

(I Really should start designing my system, thinking about having a rainbow setup, where everything is Rainbow, just rainbow)

 

Most of the parts can do RGB, I just keep going back to red. The flashing rainbow thing does my head in after about 30 seconds.

[samiscool51]

2 hours ago, Hakka said:

The flashing rainbow thing does my head in after about 30 seconds.

The Rainbow isn't for everyone..

it's for people who can handle it...

[Hakka]

Time to put this thing underwater.

 

Gear I'll be using: EK XE360 & PE360 rads, EK strix gpu acetal waterblocks, EK-fc serial sli block, XSPC Raystorm CPU block, XSPC Photon 270 res/pump combo, Mayhems clear tubing, XSPC & EK fittings, Thermaltake Riing fans.

 

Stripped everything out and put it in an old case.

 

 

I have EK XE360 and PE360 rads, the front one doesn't fir due to the bits on the underside of the drive cage, the top one fits but the drive cage restricts airflow to the front fan.

 

 

I want to mount an ROG frontbase (overclocking controller) in the 5.25 bays, it takes 2 bays but isn't very deep. I used a dremel to cutout the bottom of the 5.25 cage.

 

 

Front rad now fits and the screws line up with the holes.

 

 

Rads and fans mounted:

 

 

 

 

[Hakka]

I have Strix 1080s which are very long, and the XSPC photon270 res/pump combo which is huge, I didn't realize how tight the fit would be with everything in there.

 

Res is mounted to a sheet of 4.5mm acrylic. Acrylic is mounted to the case with 2 screws. The res blocks access to the case mounting screws so I drilled some holes in the case to access the res mount screws from behind, this means I can remove the res without pulling the whole thing to bits to remove the mounting plate.

 

 

Looks good, drilled a fresh sheet and painted it matt black, drilled some new holes so I can still have a bottom mounted 120mm fan:

 

Res mounted, and the inside of the side panel has been covered in carbon fibre vinyl so theres no white visible through the gaps.

 

 

I'm waiting on an SLI block from EK before I can start moving my hardware over to this case.

 

 

[Hakka]

 

 

I modified the original backplate to make it compatible with the ek block. Just reaized i forgot to plug in the rgb header. 

[GettinBissi]

That build initially looked absolutely bada$$. Can't wait to see how the upgrade turns out.

[Jurunce]

Looking fantastic there.

 

Have you considered using a Singularity Computers reservoir mount? They look sleek, especially their Ethereal mount, and their build quality is unmatched, as it is made of high-quality milled aluminum and anodize in silver, black, red, green, and gold.

[Hakka]

8 hours ago, JurunceNK said:

Looking fantastic there.

 

Have you considered using a Singularity Computers reservoir mount? They look sleek, especially their Ethereal mount, and their build quality is unmatched, as it is made of high-quality milled aluminum and anodize in silver, black, red, green, and gold.

I hadn't seen those before, they look nice, but i couldn't find any specs on the res diameter which makes me think they only suit singularity reservoirs.