My Finished WC Rig or My Exercise in Swiftechness
 

It took awhile, a long while, first to gather all the components, then to sit and procrastinate, and then finally to build. It was the most complicated i've tried, since i threw in the liquid cooling into the equation and had never WC'ed before, and had to figure out a cooling system layout, namely because the pump would not reach the floor of the case as shown in Swiftech literature so I had to jury rig the pump by mounting it in my floppy bay and because swiftech convienently shows all their layouts diagrams/pics without any HD's or opticals in their case. And by coincidence I even used the same case, you bastiches, lol. Assembly was kinda tricky because I also added in the aspect of the upside down mobo(always wanted one to show off the good side of pci/vidcards, and so had to rebuild the case to accept it. The liquid cooling of course required me to assemble the mobo and water blocks and components separately then bring them together in the final assemble and hope it all fit. It didnt, and I rebuilt this thing maybe 5 complete times. Filling the system was fun because I sprang a leak all over my power supply, a bad quick connect on my 80mm rad(yes its pushed all the way in, heh), too much entry angle makes it leak, so I straightened it. But to add stupidity to injury, I then didnt pay attention and overfilled the Res, spilling liquid all over my drives, lol, but it luckily posted first boot. After a bitch of a time bleeding all the air bubbles from the rear Rad, dismounted and flipped it to finally lose them, cpu/gpu/chipset now run at a cool 30-32C under full load. I made a respectable 66,000 aquamark at stock settings and I am optimistic of quite an overclock since this mobo has such a good track record and everything is Swiftech cooled.

this is not an advert but thanks Bill and the rest of the Swiftech crew for the great products. I am very satisfied thus far, and thanks to the members of this board who allowed me to steal(borrow) all their WC knowledge for free :)

Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1gb Crucial Ballistix PC3200 CAS2
DFI Lanparty UT250GB NForce3
2x74GB Western Digital Raptors in Striped RAID cooled with Vantec HD fans
ATI X800XT Platinum
Creative Audigy2 XS platinum
NEC 3500a 16x DVD/RW Burner
Power PC & Cooling 510 Deluxe Power Supply
Swiftech H20-80 series Liquid Cooling Kit
MCW20 chipset Water Block
MCW50 VGA Water Block
MCR120-FRB Radbox Radiator Kit
PC Toys Fan Controller
Logisys Case


so without further adieu, the finished machine, followed by the pics of the patience grinding assembly process. I hope the number of pics don't offend.




"The Liquid64Judge"


http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge3.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge4.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge25.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge5.jpg
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http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge9.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge10.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge11.jpg
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I sure do hate those plastic backing plates
if you want to be 'into' Swiftechness, suggest putting on a steel backing plate next time you have it apart

But what are the temps and OC like? :P

That wire routing job is ugly as sh*t. Nice work on the motherboard reversal though, that's something I'm planning to do in the somewhat near future. I'm sure the thing's prettier in person.

Now all you need to do is paint your drives black or something UV reactive, tidy up the wiring, and you'll be totally blingin'.

It looks very nice and you have some of the Works in there as well ;) It looks like you did a great job with the CoolSleeves did you follow the instructions or just go for it?

I recommended that you CoolSleeve the complete run of this tubing at next opportunity. It looks like the one of the bends will collapse once the tubing starts to soften over time. Again, very nice job especially for a first time :)

http://home.comcast.net/~bubbajudge/liquidJudge11.jpg

When using the Radbox, did it make it difficult to piece the system together after the leak test? I say that because most typically just their leak-test-proof setup directly into the rig, but obviously this is not possible when using a Radbox (correct me if I am wrong here). So, did you have to re-test once you assembled the parts back together?

deception``

Hey I am planning on using a Swiftech kit for watercooling with a radbox, and was wondering what the performance is like???

How about the noise level of the fan, and the pump??


thx

sorry for the delay in responding, i actually quit looking at the thread after the guy told me my routing job looked like sh!t, lol, he obviously has never seen or had to wire in a clear case


I don't know quite what you mean about a separate setup for the radbox requiring a second leak test. since this doesnt use the fill and bleed kit there is no 'air leak' test. What I did was assemble all the waterblocks and cut my tubing outside the case, mounted the pump and rads on the case, brought it all together in a final assembly, connected everything, filled the Res, and turned the pump on and off until the system was filled. I had one small leak at the 80mm rad which i fixed by adjusting the entry angle of the tubing and I had a large air bubble on the entry feed to the 120 rad which I got rid of by unmounting the rad and rotating it upside down while the system was running.

so far the system runs like a dream, it is as quiet as any dell type OEM machine out there, and inaudible compared to my Intel air cooled rig.

for those that asked, so far it runs at 30-32C.

I am actually getting ready to OC the A64 3200+ and my goal is a 275x10 overclock, working out to a 4000+ in amdspeak. I will post my results.

thanks again for the feedback :)

I know exactly what you mean ;) it's really a b%tch managing wires in a full acrylic case. Till now, I haven't gotten to properly do that yet, and it's been a month and a half since I completed my rig. After completing my rig, just went directly to try overclocking it, and it was good... 250FSBx14 (Intel 2.80GHz @ 3.50GHz), Prime95 stable for 9.5 hours.

IMHO, I think you did good job overall, but of course there's always room for improvement. Nice placement of the pump too, does the placement help in reducing pump noise?