Need suggestions for smaller radiator

[Dark Mantis]

Hey, hows that review coming DM?

Getting there but there are always things that hold it up. Photos done and build almost completed, then just doing the actual testing etc.

Yes it sounds like heaven, a nice fully kitted out workshop would be great. I was looking into a laser cutter and etcher but I just wouldn't be able to get the moneys worth out of it. Great bit of kit though.

[WarYur]

Now all I have to figure out is what to do with that XSPC res in my Corsair 800D case and then that Thermal Star LCD card reader/ and fan and temp display sure wasn't made for my case either.  Not only doesn't the  slide bars that are supposed to lock your front bat installs in not working but I will have to drill some new holes in the case as well.  That dual bay res is along the same lines and at first I was thinking of putting in a fill port on top of the case but now I am not so sure about that.  In order for that res to slide I will have to do some filing on the case and after trying to install the three fan rad on top I found out that the way I wanted to instal everything will not work.  I didn't want to have to have the res over the top of anything electrical running through it but I can see now where I will have the temp/fan display on top in the front bay, then the dual bay res, then my blue ray/DVD rewritable drive with no room for another optical drive as planned.  That's such a big deal there but i just like to be able to copy from one drive to the other sometimes. 

I was having a hard time seeing how I would install a push/pull setup with the 3 fan (6 fan?) rad on top but after reviewing some of the spare Koolance parts I have laying around it became doable with some more drilling on the case.  I'm not going to be using any of the actual Koolance rad/res/pump parts just the shrouds surrounding the fans part of an older set up that i had already torn apart but forgot why.  LOL...  Seems to be kindof foggy out around here...      I may need to run to the hardware store tomorrow though as I don't think that i have enough of the right kind of screws for all of this.

DM, do you have a drain in your system for when you are cleaning out the lines?  I have one but I am not sure as yet exactly where I will be putting it and I also am sure wishing that the quick disconnects weren't silver colored.  Does anyone besides Koolance make those?

I don't know why I am asking that since I am out of money for this rig and overspent what I should have at that.

[Dark Mantis]

Ah, so now you are becoming a real customising water cooler! You can always tell when the budget nowhere near covers the expenditure

Phobya do some quick disconnects but I have some and I can't say I am overly pleased with them. I think this is one place where Koolance does excell. I particularly like their VL3N connectors. They are really no spill!

[WarYur]

Ya and then some! (fundage).  What me worry?  I am really having a time now trying to figure out how the electrical end of this goes.  Well, no more cable management than anything else.  I will put the rad just underneath the top of the case, then a row of fans on the bottom of that.  Ok, so far so good.  Then I took the very top most part off a Koolance Exos setup which would be what I would call the molding.  Here is a better picture on the koolance site;  http://www.koolance.com/water-cooling/product_info.php?product_id=1163 You probably already understand what I am trying to convey but it's the angled part around the sides that are connected to the rad.  It fits perfectly over the fans that go on the top there but I am not sure what to do with all the cables now except for maybe drill some holes somewhere where you can't see it and run them down the back side.  Unfortunately I ordered the 120mm fans before I decided that it would be a lot cheaper to do my own sleeving and heat shrink stuff so had frozencpu do the it on them and they use some fairly thick stuff to sleeve the cables with let alone the heat shrink so that they are really stiff. 

Would it be better to then take all the nice work they did off of the cables leaving them more pliable?  Also in order to be able to raise and lower the fan speeds on the rad I am not exactly sure how I am supposed to wire it,  I guess since there is one of the small three pin connections on each fan and then one male and one female 12 volt connection then you just connect one fan to the next in the three top fans and same for the bottom and then connect that front panel temp/fan speed LCD readout to one of the three pin connection on any of the three fans on top?

Any direction you would like to throw in here would be very much appreciated!  I feel like a complete dunce but ya gotta learn the right way of doing things sometime eh?

I do plan on taking any reference to Koolance off that top part too and perhaps give it a bit of paint to spruce it up a bit but I am not totally sure about that right now.  It probably doesn't matter but those are all Yate Loon 120mm x 25mm UV Reactive LED Fan - UV Blue (D12SH-124UB) fans.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

I certainly wouldn't waste all the work you have paid for in having braiding done on the cables as it doesn't really matter how pliable they are as once fitted the won't need to move around.

As for speed control that is very easy. There ar evarious ways to accomplish this but a lot depends on budget and what you already have installed. Personally I would advise the wiring of them all in parallel as you will need them all to be going at the same speed always. You can get 3 into 1 fan cables which you can then connect to a fan controller. It might not be prudent to run all three fans form a single motherboard header connection though because of the loading.

It should look realy nice when it is completed. We will expect plenty of pictures. We like photos!

[WarYur]

Yes, thanks again DM, after posting this last night I figured out how to hook them up first together as three on one and then to the PSU and then the connection to the front panel fan speed control onto one of the 3 pins from one of the fans should work just fine.  I'll do the top three on one and the bottom three on another leaving me 2 more fan speed connections on the front panel display one of which will be the two fans on the single rad on the back fan spot of the 800D.  That one will be pulling air in as per the way that Corsair thinks the air flow should go and the top fans will all be blowing up and out of the case.  There is one other 140mm fan just under the deck there near the motherboard and just to the right and up from the PSU that draws air from the bottom of the case which has a large mesh pull out that will hopefully catch all the dust.

I wish that I had more room in my bedroom becasue for some strange reason that side of my apartment doesn't get much dust or at least not as much as the living room does which is lots.  Never could figure that out becasue the bedroom has a main road going past it and there is some construction going on (which really makes me MAD becasue it is displacing all the deer we had living around here!)  and always has had a lot of dump trucks and semi's going through and the living room is right next to the parking lot and garages of the complex with not so much traffic going buy but that is where all of the dust comes from.  Very weird...

Anyway, back to the subject on hand, the only real issue I am having now is where n the heck to stuff all the cables from on top.  It looks like I will have to call upon some magician skills or something.   Oh, that's right, I don't have any magicians skills.     I'll figure something out I'm sure.  I think I just needed to hear that I was on the right track.  I love this forum!

And yes, pictures...  I guess I will have to clean my living room to take pictures.  LOL, or something.  I tend to have stuff all over the place especially when i am building so that I will be able to see everything available to me otherwise it's out of sight out of mind, which seems to be something that has come about i the last 7 years or so.  Couldn't be old age or anything...   

[Dark Mantis]

Or maybe iot just gets to a point where there seem to be other more important issues than plain tidiness. 

Sounds like your wiring is getting there and don't expect to get it right first  time...I don't think any of us manage that. I would say install some loose cable ties in the rough positioning that you wiring run is going to take and then you can add cables or remove them as you need to and then just tighten them up to tidy everything in the end.

[WarYur]

Know what you mean re: tidiness.  However I have two long haired all white animals, one a dog (American Eskimo Miniature) and one a cat (who knows).  The dog came down with hypothyroidism of all things and so sheds now on a daily basis rather than the normal semi-yearly basis.  I need a ride on vacuum cleaner!  Or just one with a clutch but I guess my dyson DC 25 Animal will have to do.

Great advice!  I will do as you say with the ties. 

[Dark Mantis]

Certainly seems like you have your work cut out at home then with the two animals.

[WarYur]

Right, you don't know the half of it.  More to it than I mentioned earlier.      Anyway, I get the rest of the stuff I ordered tomorrow so I am kindof excited to get everything done finally.   I have company coming tomorrow too though so not much will get done on the PC  end.  I got that "molding" all cleaned up today with some stuff I found a while back called "Goo Off" becasue there were a bunch of product stickers on one end of that piece and then washed it all up and probably tomorrow I will put a light coat of flat black enamel on it so that it looks new again and doesn't have a logo on it anymore as well.  I don't want that Koolance name on something I am building you see.  No offense Koolance...

You mentioned the VL3N quick disconnects by Koolance in one of the last few posts and those are the exact ones I have and I believe also one set of VL4N.  Are you using anything like that in your rig?  AND, do you have like a drain out the bottom or somewhere so that you don't have to be turning your case all around to get all the liquid out when cleaning?  I probably will do that since I won't be turning that full tower Corsair all about anymore although I have but it darn near killed me too.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes it all becomes a bit unmanageable when it is all fitted together and full of fluid.

I have a very big loop that is about 20 metres long and encompasses three areas. I have to be able to disconnect the computer from the loop for obvious reasons.  For that I have a couple of Phobya quick disconnects that I mentioned before. They are ok but not as good as the Koolance. The VL3Nis 10 mm ID and the VL4N is the 13 mm ID version I think.

I do have a drain tube incorporated into the loop, well two actually. It was something that I retrofitted after realising my mistake in not including it in the first place.

[WarYur]

Yes, I did learn something along the way, even if it was using the "toys"    It kindof bugs me though that Koolance is starting to put out MUCH better products what with actual copper in their rads and black fittings and such. I know that it is a good thing BTW that they are upgrading their rads and putting out nice black fittings and such but I felt like I was on the "Koolance Quality Assurance" team the entire time I was using their stuff and even had to pay for the products they were learning on.

Like the "O" rings on the L shaped swivel nozzle that leaked all over a nice sound card that isn't being made anymore.  It was a Creative card but also had the front panel with tons of connectivity.  Not like the ones they are putting out now.  I could have recorded me (ME!)    on my electric drums and transferred vinyl to DVD and much more.  I don't think the newer ones have that much connectivity.  One of their reservoirs leaked on me, one of the water blocks for an nvidia 9800GTX + SSC leaked and had to be RMA'ed.  I don't even want to talk about how much all that cost me either! 

I have read where their CPU 370 is a pretty nice CPU block too.  I have the CPU-360 on my Intel QX9650.  Now that CPU in particular was a learning experience too.  I spent good money on the QX 9650 quad core and with the thinking that spending more would get me a better CPU since there was also an Intel Q9650 quad core that was quite a bit less.  Come to find out, and this is well documented, that the cheaper version or the "Q" would OC to 4Ghz and the "QX" for the most part would not, and many, many people tried.  It may have had something to do with the Striker II Extreme motherboard (Asus) too though which was nothing but trouble from day one.

Regarding the Koolance quick disconnects it looks like I lied about the VL4N ones.     I have two sets of the VL3N and then one set was the second out (Gen 2) which is the VLN2 (10mm or 3/8" ID).   So, I stand corrected sir.

I sent off a quick email to Koolance a while ago asking if they were planning on getting the quick disconnects in black and will report what they tell me.

On an different note, which sound cards do you prefer and/or go best with Gigabyte motherboards.  I have Logitech Z-5500 5.1 PC speakers and decent earphones/headphones but like to use the speakers the most.  Sorry I "talk" so much!

[Dark Mantis]

I think most of us have fealt like beta testers for some company or other at some time. You wouldn't mind if they were supplying the kit free in the first place.

I haven't bought a sound card of any description for years although I have had some nice Creative Soundblasters in the past. I know the onboard isn't quite as good but it does for most of my needs.

[WarYur]

Onboard sound isn't all that bad but I still like the extra oomph that you get with an actual card installed and then I guess I just got into the habit of having one.  It's nice for games and then having the speaker system and head and ear phones that I do I really need a sound card although I am not all that sure why I buy Creative's offerings because their customer support has gotten me mad enough to want to be able to reach through my email program a few times and...  Well it wouldn't have been good.  I also don't like the way their software permeates your hard drive either.  

I got my last package today so I am all set.  That Black Ice GTXtreme single 140mm rad is a bit bigger than the Corsair H70's rad.  I hadn't thought of looking at the spec's of the Black Ice rad when I bought it should still fit in that back fan space of the 800D but if not there I saw a vid in the computer case section of Corsair's forums on how to mod my 800D to install the single rad down on the bottom front part of the case.

I just got an email from Aquatuning that they are getting in the HK nickel and black chrome CPU block in but when I looked it said "expected" and that was it.  After looking at the regular version of the HK 3 today I like the looks of it with this Gigabyte (P67A-UD7-B3) board better now that I have seen it up close and personal so I am glad I ordered that one now.

At any rate now I can finally go forward and maybe have some pictures by the end of the week or weekend all depending on the weather.  

Boy it's a good thing I am a confident type of person or I would feel rejected about no one save you and probably Allen (and myself) using that poll I put up.  LOL, HK is ahead by one!

[Dark Mantis]

Generally the polls are a poorly used option as most people just seem to ignore them, or maybe they are frightened to put the mark on one thing or the other. I really can understand the thinking behind a lot of members...I mean it's only a poll. A bit of fun!

I use my 7.1 headphones when I am playing games late at night, otherwise I use my normal surround sound Logitech speaker system. The quality of the onboard sound, whilst I am sure not up to the dedicated sound card, is pretty good now and it does me well enough and like you I was gald to see the back of Creative's sneaky file system.