Planned first rig...

[Atragon]

I'm trying to put together a watercooled system, the noise level of my current case is rather high, along with temperatures.

My goals are:

1: A quieter PC...preferably a max of 4 fans including the 2 power supply fans

2: A cooler PC...I'd really rather not be running my CPU at 65 degrees C under load, and almost 55 degrees idle

The case: a rather nice Addtronics 7896A

The fans: 120mm and 80mm front case fans, 80mm and 60mm exhaust fans on back of case, 80mm fan blowing onto CPU heatsink, CPU heatsink's fan, GPU heatsink's fan, 2 power supply fans (enermax whisper power supply)

The system: Athlon XP 2100+, 512MB PC2700 Samsung CAS2.5 @ CAS2, Gigabyte GA-7vrxp, MSI GF4, Ti4600, Aureal SQ2500, 3Com 10/100 ethernet, liteon 40/12/48 CD Burner, 16X DVD drive, 3.5 inch floppy, maxtor 7200rpm 80GB HDD. 350W enermax power supply


What I'm looking for in a watercooling system is probably CPU, GPU, and maybe chipset blocks, a radiator (probably a black ice extreme), a pump (silent is good), and a resevoir. I'd ideally want 1/2inch ID tubing

I'm thinking of mounting the resevoir near the top of the case, just above the power supply, the radiator at the front of the case with a fan pulling air through it, and the pump also on the bottom of the case.

What I'm looking for is some advice on what waterblocks to get, what type of pump to get, a good resevoir to get, if I should get two pumps, and how to connect it all together.

As a note, the reason why my CPU is running so hot is because of a power regulation problem with the motherboard, I've got to crank the core voltage.

[Cova]

I'd recommend something similar to my own system - I'm quite happy with how it turned out both in cooling performance and noise levels.

It's a ViaAqua 1300 pump (400 GPH), a Maze-2, a BI Prime, and 3/8" ID thin-wall Tygon tubing. I don't use a "real" res - just a T for an air-trap. Except to make the system easy to fill I don't see any advantage of a large res, and in the event of a leak I have a lot less coolant to spill in my computer, and it takes up less room in the case. Layout of the system is shown below (and all the lights look really washed-out from the camera flash).

Problems I had (things you should look-out for) were the hose from the rad to the pump inlet, and the pump vibrations. The first problem was that the pumps suction was enough to actually collapse the thin-wall tubing in on itself - the spiral-wrap on that tube fixed that problem and can't be seen through my window. The second problem I fixed by taking a piece of foam that was originally used in packaging a motherboard, and cutting and glueing it to the sides of the pump that come in contact with the case. All the fittings are 1/2" OD, so the 3/8" ID tygon forms a very tight seal over them with no clamps (and no leaks). Except for the rad fittings which are 3/8" OD - you can see in the pics I have clamps on those ones. One of the rad fittings has a small leak when the tygon has pressure pushing it towards the rad, but that only happens if I push it that way when working on the system. I'll be changing the type of clamp I use sometime and should fix that problem. I'd recommend getting the same size fittings all around and then using tygon one size smaller and leaks should be virtually impossible.

I'd recommend a the same pump that I'm using (ViaAqua 1300), any WB that you think looks good (a few degrees performance difference doesn't matter unless you plan on OC'ing to the max), and a BI Extreme, arranged something like what I have.

Good luck with whatever you end up building.