PC Water Cooling Question

Renzatic · Apr 15, 2015

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask this, but it seems the most appropriate, since none of the others quite fit this topic either.

I'm going to be ordering a bunch of computer parts this Friday. I just about have the entire thing kitted out, but there's still one component I'm missing: a radiator.

Now I have no experience with watercooling a PC. But considering the tremendous advantages it offers, the relative ease they go into a case these days, and the fact I'm going to be building into a case that's really damn tiny, I figured it'd be a good time to take the plunge.

Now I'm building a Mini-ITX machine in a Silverstone FT03-Mini case. This video shows someone installing a radiator into the case I want to buy, and it looks dead stupid simple. Problem is, he neglects to tell everyone exactly what he's using (unless I missed it at some point). I've looked up 120mm rads on the internet, but since I don't know exactly what to look for, or even what brands are good, I could use some advice to help point me in the right direction.

Anyone have any experience with this? I'm all ears if you do.

impulse462 · Apr 15, 2015

I do, if you have any questions. It's pretty fun. Got a first gen i7 to 4.7ghz w/ water cooling back in the day.

Renzatic · Apr 15, 2015

impulse462 said:
I do, if you have any questions. It's pretty fun. Got a first gen i7 to 4.7ghz w/ water cooling back in the day.

Let's start with the basics. With the size of my case in mind, what would be my best choice for a low profile radiator?

I'm thinking about this one, but I want a second opinion before I pull the trigger on it.

...I love the corny names for all these custom computer parts. BLACK ICE GEE TEE STEALTH ONE-TWENTY ECKS!

Also, for poops and giggles, I might also consider watercooling the GPU. I probably won't, but I'd like to know about my options nonetheless.

mobilehaathi · Apr 15, 2015

Dude, go for mineral oil cooling!

Renzatic · Apr 15, 2015

mobilehaathi said:
Dude, go for mineral oil cooling!

I dunno. I'd have to go out and buy a fish tank to do that. And if I get a fish talk, I'll want to put a lobster in it. That's too much temptation for me to handle.

bradl · Apr 15, 2015

It's definitely a lot easier nowadays than it was before, especially with the closed loop units instead of the clunky ones they had out from roughly 10 years ago.

My mini-ITX build is straight out of the "Chip" golden build from TonyMacX86:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/golden-bu...ip-build-ga-z77n-wifi-i5-3570k-hd-6870-a.html

only changes I made were that I slotted in a AMD RadeonHD 6950 video card (which I just swapped out for a R9 280), and a 750W Antec PSU (Which I already had).

I already owned the 2 SSDs, HDD, and optical drive that are in there.

But the Antec Kuhler H2O 620 was easy to put in. Because of that, the only fans I hear are from the PSU, and the GPU from when I fly around with FSX or P3D. Makes overclocking easy as well.

With that case, you should have PLENTY of room for it, unless you're going the long way with an entire cooling system instead of closed loop. But have a look at those to see if they may work out for you better.

Newegg has the 620 out of stock, but the 650 may suffice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G28M9448

BL.

Renzatic · Apr 15, 2015

bradl said:
With that case, you should have PLENTY of room for it, unless you're going the long way with an entire cooling system instead of closed loop. But have a look at those to see if they may work out for you better.

Newegg has the 620 out of stock, but the 650 may suffice...

Can you remove the fan from the 650? It looks like you can, but it's hard to tell from the shots they give you.

The reason being that, as is, I'd have two fans blowing into each other through the radiator, with the case fan blowing from the bottom up, while the rad fan blowing down onto it. It'd keep the radiator extra cool, but it'd probably screw with the intake and exhaust flow throughout the rest of the case.

impulse462 · Apr 15, 2015

Renzatic said:
Let's start with the basics. With the size of my case in mind, what would be my best choice for a low profile radiator?

I'm thinking about this one, but I want a second opinion before I pull the trigger on it.

...I love the corny names for all these custom computer parts. BLACK ICE GEE TEE STEALTH ONE-TWENTY ECKS!

Also, for poops and giggles, I might also consider watercooling the GPU. I probably won't, but I'd like to know about my options nonetheless.

Looks fine to me. As for watercooling your GPUs...I'm assuming you've picked a card with which you can buy a waterblock pretty standard with it. Water cooling gpus is cool, but unless you're doing some serious overclocking its kind of overkill.

mobilehaathi · Apr 15, 2015

Renzatic said:
I dunno. I'd have to go out and buy a fish tank to do that. And if I get a fish talk, I'll want to put a lobster in it. That's too much temptation for me to handle.

Deep fried lobster?

Renzatic · Apr 15, 2015

impulse462 said:
Looks fine to me. As for watercooling your GPUs...I'm assuming you've picked a card with which you can buy a waterblock pretty standard with it. Water cooling gpus is cool, but unless you're doing some serious overclocking its kind of overkill.

Actually, no. I picked a solid card that'd fit in the case with some room to spare, and though "hey, watercooling" as an afterthought.

It's not that important because I usually don't concern myself with overclocking all that much. But I do like a silent case, which a watercooled GPU would help provide.

For reference, this is what I'm getting.

mobilehaathi said:
Deep fried lobster?

...you know, that's not a bad idea. Throw a little butter in there, and I could have sous vide lobster every couple of weeks.

impulse462 · Apr 18, 2015

Renzatic said:
Actually, no. I picked a solid card that'd fit in the case with some room to spare, and though "hey, watercooling" as an afterthought.

It's not that important because I usually don't concern myself with overclocking all that much. But I do like a silent case, which a watercooled GPU would help provide.

Kind of busy right now, but I'll look and see if theres a stock waterblock for this card. Ideally, you would just take out the air heatsink, put the waterblock on, and just have the card in your circuit.

Huntn · Apr 18, 2015

Check out my blog, Quick and Dirty Gaming PC build. This page has a picture of the water cooled cpu cooler. I pulled out one of the fans in the case and replaced it with the coolers fan. Step 4F. I reccomend the Neg Egg tutorial listed on the first page of this blog.

I never finished the Hackintosh part, but someday I might.

http://titanicbuildgamingpc.blogspot.com/2014/01/part-4-internal-build.html

lowendlinux · Apr 19, 2015

Closed loop or are you going to build a loop?

Renzatic · Apr 19, 2015

Impulse, I did a couple of quick searches, and all I can find for the card I'm wanting is a company that sells an aftermarket mod, not the block itself. I'd get it, but unfortunately they're all the way over in the UK, and it costs around $200 more plus S&H. Considering I'm not that hardcore about watercooling the GPU, I think I'll wait.

Though if and when I decide to do it later, I don't need a second rad in there, do I? I just loop from the block on the CPU to the GPU back to the initial radiator?

Huntn, I think you've finally pushed me over towards getting the Corsair kit. It looks like it has the best bang for the buck, and it's small profile means it'll fit into my tiny case, which'll look something like this once it's all put together (sans window). I was considering this Kuhler per Bradl's recommendation, but I thought they might be just a bit too large for case I'm going for.

And yeah, as you can tell, I've switched cases. Figured I wanted just a bit more room to get everything I'd like in there, and still have some room to tidy it all up.

Here's my final computer, pending some considerations.

Rosewill Legacy U3-S mATX case. Though I might go with black instead of silver.

Gigabyte GA-Z97MX mATX Motherboard. First time I've considered a Gigabyte Motherboard. Let's see how it goes.

(alternately)
Asrock Z97E ITX Motherboard. I might get this to save on space, since an ITX mobo will fit in an ATX case. I'd have a little more room on the bottom of the case, but I'd get sacrificing a few PCI-E slots to get it. Still toying with this.

Intel Haswell Core i5 4590

Corsair CX500M Modular PSU

Asus GTX970 Mini GPU

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD

2x4GB DDR3 1600 Corsair VVEEENNNNNGGGEEANNNNCEEE RAM. Cuz it's bloodthirsty.

And last but not least...

Corsair H50 Liquid CPU Cooler

All size and space considerations have been made. Barring the slight motherboard quibbles, I'd say I'm about ready to attempt to build my tiny crowded PC.

Though if anyone's got any suggestions, toss them my way.

Huntn · Apr 19, 2015

Glad I could help.

The cooler was easy to install. Interesting enough, for the case I liked, the full size case was older, and was less expensive, than the newer mid size case.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181029

Also read the "What I learned section" of this page: http://titanicbuildgamingpc.blogspot.com/2014/01/part-2-parts-list-what-i-learned-and.html

D.T. · Apr 19, 2015

I've been getting the urge to build a PC recently.

It's not totally out of the blue, doing VR work, could use the extra horsepower.

Plus, I'm going to be migrating one app from .NET to something opensource (probably Node/Postgres), and dropping another that required Winders dev tools (currently using Parallels), so my need for windows _on_ my Mac will drop (if that makes any sense...)

I don't recall what our "portable" machine was for a recent road trip, but it wasn't portable

It has some beastly GPU.

Renzatic · Apr 19, 2015

Huntn said:
Glad I could help. The cooler was easy to install. Interesting enough, for the case I liked, the full size case was older, and was less expensive, than the newer mid size case.

I almost want to go with a full sized case just for the convenience of it all. There's so much space inside of them, you don't have any problems routing wire or installing anything. But once you're done, you have this massive, huge, cumbersome thing sitting around that's always in your way.

That's the main reason why I'm going with a smaller computer. I happened across this video, and compared next to that guy's monitor, it's almost a quarter of the size of my current PC. Even if it will be kind of a teetotal pain building it (thank god I'm not going with a full on Geforce Titan and all those hard drives, though that might be of some interest to D.T above), I'm gonna love it when it's done.

I gotta figure out what to do with all those wires, though...

Also read the "What I learned section" of this page: http://titanicbuildgamingpc.blogspot.com/2014/01/part-2-parts-list-what-i-learned-and.html

Read your whole blog. Save for the tiny case, and the watercooling, I pretty much know what I'm doing. Though it's always a good idea to go over the basics from someone else's perspective to pick up tricks and tips, or learn you've been doing something the hard way. In my case, the biggest thing I picked up is what to expect delving into a UEFI motherboard. That was something I didn't even think of until I saw your shots of it. Looks a lot more user friendly and fancy these days.

It's really well written, and would be great for someone just jumping into this stuff for the first time.

scottyy · Apr 19, 2015

Honestly if water cooling the gpu is not a big deal then go with a closed loop setup. I used a H100i in my last build and it worked great. Never got temps above 80c on a 4770K. The fans on my 780Ti rarely spooled up but then again I never used it for gaming.

Please ignore the wiring mess. I never got around to giving it a proper wire tuck.

Renzatic · Apr 19, 2015

scottyy said:
Honestly if water cooling the gpu is not a big deal then go with a closed loop setup. I used a H100i in my last build and it worked great. Never got temps above 80c on a 4770K. The fans on my 780Ti rarely spooled up but then again I never used it for gaming.

I don't play games as much as I used to, but I still fire one off now and again. From what I've read, the card I'm getting is well cooled with the stock fan and heatsink, and doesn't get too hot or loud under a heavy load.

For now, my interest in watercooling the GPU is just academic.

Please ignore the wiring mess. I never got around to giving it a proper wire tuck.

That ain't bad at all.

You should see mine. I had to replace the PSU about 3 years ago. I spent a good hour and a half routing all those wires back when I first built it, making sure everything was as neat and hidden as possible. It took me about that long to get it all back out so I could replace it.

By the time I was done, I was so sick of dealing with it, I bundled up all the wires, and ziptied them into one of the drive bays to get them out of the way. It's now about the farther you can get from neat and tidy.

scottyy · Apr 19, 2015

I know the feeling. When I first built it the fans would stay on all the time. It ended up being a problem with the board. Something I did not notice when I ran it on a test bench as no fans were plugged in.

First time I turned it off the fans went to full speed.

Good thing micro center has a amazing no questions asked warranty.

Huntn · Apr 19, 2015

Renzatic said:
I almost want to go with a full sized case just for the convenience of it all. There's so much space inside of them, you don't have any problems routing wire or installing anything. But once you're done, you have this massive, huge, cumbersome thing sitting around that's always in your way.

That's the main reason why I'm going with a smaller computer. I happened across this video, and compared next to that guy's monitor, it's almost a quarter of the size of my current PC. Even if it will be kind of a teetotal pain building it (thank god I'm not going with a full on Geforce Titan and all those hard drives, though that might be of some interest to D.T above), I'm gonna love it when it's done.

I gotta figure out what to do with all those wires, though...

Read your whole blog. Save for the tiny case, and the watercooling, I pretty much know what I'm doing. Though it's always a good idea to go over the basics from someone else's perspective to pick up tricks and tips, or learn you've been doing something the hard way. In my case, the biggest thing I picked up is what to expect delving into a UEFI motherboard. That was something I didn't even think of until I saw your shots of it. Looks a lot more user friendly and fancy these days.

It's really well written, and would be great for someone just jumping into this stuff for the first time.

I appreciate the kind words.

Renzatic · Apr 22, 2015

Huntn said:
I appreciate the kind words.

No problem. Thanks for the blog.

Unless a couple of things fall through, I should be ordering my new computer by this weekend. I've decided to change one thing, though. Instead of getting a normal SSD, I'm going with one of these new M.2 blade drives. The motherboard I'm getting supports it, plus it's price and performance is equal to my previous choice (it's about the same drive in a different form factor, really). It's hard to resist a tiny drive that, I believe, is powered directly through the port. That'll save me from dealing with a few extra wires in my little case.

Here It Is!

Huntn · Apr 22, 2015

Renzatic said:
No problem. Thanks for the blog.

Unless a couple of things fall through, I should be ordering my new computer by this weekend. I've decided to change one thing, though. Instead of getting a normal SSD, I'm going with one of these new M.2 blade drives. The motherboard I'm getting supports it, plus it's price and performance is equal to my previous choice (it's about the same drive in a different form factor, really). It's hard to resist a tiny drive that, I believe, is powered directly through the port. That'll save me from dealing with a few extra wires in my little case.

Here It Is!

That looks different. I assume it has larger capacity.

Renzatic · Apr 22, 2015

Huntn said:
That looks different. I assume it has larger capacity.

It's what Apple uses for their laptops, and I believe the Mac Pros as well. If it's not this, then something very similar.

As far as capacity goes, the M.2 is limited to 500GB. Don't know if that's a universal thing, or a specific limit to this brand, though.

Renzatic · Apr 28, 2015

It is bought'd. Provided Fed-Ex doesn't screw around, I should have it in by Friday.

Time to send 'ole Bertha down that dusty trail.

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