First water loop, Gigabyte Aurora

[Brodel]

Hey

Thanks to a lot of help from people on these forums I have finally started to put together my watercooling loop today.

Relevant sytems specs:
AMD 64 3000+
A8N-E
7800GT
Gigabyte Aurora Case

Watercooling Setup
DDC with plexi top
120.2 Alphacool NexXxoS Pro rad
Maze 4 GPU block
TDX CPU Block
XSPC 1/2" hose
DD 5.25 Bay res

My intended loops goes pump>rad>gpu>cpu>res>pump


I have spent the best part of 5 hours on this today but am waiting for the res to arrive before I can finish the last part.

I'll keep it fairly brief as although I might have found mounting the plexi top to the ddc a milestone in watercooling...it's probably meaningless to most others lol.

Anyhow here is a picture of my case before starting, I'm sorry they are not very well light, the flash on my camera seems to have broken.


http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/1343/p7210074sq3.jpg

I'd already suspended my HD's with stretch magic to reduce thier noise so I began today by removed the gigabyte fans and the fan grills and replacing them with 120mm yate loons on 7v adapters. Then I mounted the GPU and CPU blocks and installed everything back into the case. From there I mounted the rad and then started to attach the hose. With my loop going pump>rad>gpu>cpu>res>pump and not having the res yet I started with attaching hose from rad>gpu>cpu which is where I am at now.

The photo below is where I've finished for today, the hose from the pump to rad doesn't have barbs on it just yet incase I need to shorten it a bit when adding the res. To be honest I was hoping the hose might have been able to bend a little tighter but it wouldn't without starting to kink and I'm a bit of a perfectionist so couldn't stand even the slightest bend. I gotta admit, screwing in the jubilee clips has been a nightmare and I'm not quite sure how I'll get the bottom jubilee clip onto the tdx as there is so little room for a screwdriver but I'm sure I'll figure something out.


http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/2227/p7210080yz4.jpg

Fingers crossed there aren't any catastrophic errors in my installation:eek:

[Conan257]

Personally I think CPU->GPU is a better way to do the loop.. shouldn't matter that much though I suppose.

[coolmiester]

You might want to turn your fans round so they are drawing cooler air through the rad from outside the case - other than that everything looks great :cool:

[Brodel]

Personally I think CPU->GPU is a better way to do the loop.. shouldn't matter that much though I suppose.

I could have done that, I just figured it was less of an angle for the hose to go to the gpu and cpu. It's a bit difficult to get perspective from the pictures as the hose at the rear of the case looks like it stands out a lot more than it actually does in reality. I think it's long enough to reach to both though so I could change it.

You might want to turn your fans round so they are drawing cooler air through the rad from outside the case - other than that everything looks great :cool:

Thanks for the tip, I might see how my temps go with them how they are and then swap them around afterwards. I have an intake fan at the front and need the air from it to cool the passive chipset heatsink so it might get too hot if I reversed it. I have the aurora with the mesh side panel too so it should pull in some fresh air from that.

hopefully tomorrow I'll have the res and can start the leak testing. I'll post back with pics then, fingers crossed. :)

[UnreaL]

Personally I think CPU->GPU is a better way to do the loop.. shouldn't matter that much though I suppose.

It doesnt make a difference - choose the shortest tubing route/least kinked route over cpu/gpu order!

If you can perhaps turn the hard drives around so that the cabling is out of site around the back...

Edit: The other option that exists is to flip the rad so the barbs point into the case to keep it all self contained and reduce tubing length (should allow you to route pump->rad->cpu->gpu...) but I have not used an Aurora so I dont know how well it would fit.

[Bubbles]

how do you like that case? im trying to find a good one for my first wc comp

[Brodel]

Edit: The other option that exists is to flip the rad so the barbs point into the case to keep it all self contained and reduce tubing length (should allow you to route pump->rad->cpu->gpu...) but I have not used an Aurora so I dont know how well it would fit.

Thanks for that idea, I tried it but unfortunately it wouldn't have fitted that way. The tubing isn't all that bad really, in some ways I quite like being able to see part of it tbh.

how do you like that case? im trying to find a good one for my first wc comp

I hadn't watercooled anything before so I don't really have anything to compare it too but overall it was pretty easy. I don't think I'd have wanted a smaller case for my first loop that's for sure.


I've managed to finish it all now, had a small scare when one connection started to leak but it was just a loose jubilee clip. I've had it running for the last few days now without any problems. I only have 3 x 120mm yate loons running at 7v so along with my Seasonic PSU it's practically silent. I tried the fans at 12v and they were A LOT noisier and did very little for temps, maybe a degree or so. I'm very happy with the temps as they are at 7v though. CPU and GPU haven't gone above 45 even in the hot weather, at the moment they are idling at 36 and 37. I've been able to volt mod my 7800GT too and get it to 491mhz/1.2ghz which I'm pretty happy about.

Here is a photo of the complete setup, thanks to everyone on here for helping me pick out the right parts and/or selling them to me via the trading forums. :)

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/8100/2ch3.jpg

[Axiom]

Looks good for a first water cooled pc keep it up