[NoBS|Thirsty]

The Antec Nine Hundred Two Midtower Case FTW!!!!!!!!

[pcgamer]

Finished putting all the parts together, an hour of cable management and day of leak testing:



The phone image quality is horse shit .. i'll post some HQ pics soon. Summer is pretty brutal this time so air cooling wasn't cutting it:

Temps on the Coolermaster V8:



Temps on Aprogee XT + 240 rad:

[Rasparthe]

Wow looks great!  I really need to do some watercooling I think.  No time right now and I think I would need a bigger case.  Those V8 temps seem ridiculous high you keeping that thing in the oven?  Your new ones are great though.  What kind of rad is that?

[pcgamer]

The V8 was doing just fine in winter but as soon as summer hit the cpu was idling at 50 C even with my 5000 BTU AC on. As for the radiator it's the Swiftech MCR220 Quiet Power.

[KU@TO]

Nice hardware, PC! (I have the same rad cooling the 5970 And the XT is one of the top 5 performing blocks right now.     
Looking forward to some hi-res pics.

[pcgamer]

Thanks man, did a fair bit of research before buying all the parts. Damn your 5970 must run really cool! My 5870 is burning at 85 degrees under full load with 27% fan. I really need to cool it somehow. I was thinking of air cooling specifically this one: http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_&mID=546 but it's still not released yet . Do you have experience with any other coolers? I don

[Evilgenius]

cant you just turn your fan up?

[KU@TO]

@PC

I bought the 5970 used already with the full block.  Even though it's not one of the best designed blocks it still keeps the temps nice and cool, mainly because it's on a separate loop.

My guess is that accelero will be one of the best solutions for air cooling the 5870.  If you decide to run the i7 and the 5870 on the same loop your radiator will be getting a little heat soaked at full load.  Your temps won't be terrible, but you'd do much better with a 120x3 or 120x4. 

If you want to do cheap wc, you can look on ebay and maybe score a used full block for about half retail.  A more flexible solution would be to install a MCW60 and add a heat sink like this http://www.swiftnets.com/products/HD5800%20HEATSINK%20SERIES.asp for the ram & vrm.  The MCW60 is a great little block and it fits almost every card out there.  That's what I was using on my old 4870 and still have it in a box somewhere.

[pcgamer]

Sell me your 5970 lol i'll give you my 5870 + cash

Yeah just 120x2 isn't enough for i7 + good GPU. If I end up getting WC for the GPU I will probably add another one of those radiators inside the case.

So today I fucked up haha!  I have my reservoir mounted in the 5.25" and while trying to pull out the dust filter I pulled on the tube a little which caused a leak. I saw one drop on the north bridge heatsink so I wrapped everything with tissue paper and pulled the plug on the computer. I had to drain the whole system, remount the reservoir and now in the process of bleeding all over again =( fml. Hopefully everything still works *fingers crossed*

[KU@TO]

lol, I'd like to say I've never been there but I would be lying   

As far as I know, that HidrX (assuming that's what you're using) doesn't gain conductivity till about a week's use.  Sill it would only be partially conductive so I doubt you damaged anything.

[Rasparthe]

ouch!  Number one reason why I still hesitate to set up a WC system although I so want to do it.  Good luck!

[pcgamer]

Phew everything is fine .. I installed the clips tightly and moved the reservoir to a more solid location.

@Rasp: Don't get discouraged by it dude. It is really easy to set it up. Just don't do stupid stuff like me lol

@Kuato: i was serious lol if you need to sell that 5970 anytime soon let me know so I dont go out and spend a fortune on a new one + block

[KU@TO]

I don't see myself upgrading any time soon, but if anything changes I'll let you know.  As far as adding a vc to your loop, check out this bench which has a very similar setup as yours: (i7 920 @4095 Mhz, 1.424v, XT Block, MCR320 (120x3) Rad.)



Looks like the impact on temps of adding a vc to the cpu loop is not as much as I originally thought.

[pcgamer]

That can't be right :/ I read on countless forums that adding a high end gpu on i7 on a dual 120 rad would heat up way too much. I just turned on turbo boost to get x21 multiplier and now running 4.2GHz .. this raised the temps a bit more 40/67 so a gpu in this loop wouldn't be ideal IMO. I gotta do more research on what that chart is trying to get to.

btw HQ pics of the rig

[NoBS|Thirsty]

Fuck im in love