Water Cooling Project - Assembling the System: page 5
(Page 5 of 6 )
Manufacturer: | N/A |
| Product: | Various |
Price: | Varies |
Availability: | NOW |
Reviewed By: | Jim "Justi" Miller |
Review Date: | August 2003 |
Step by Step Water Cooling Project
Assembling the System:
Alright, all of our water components that need mounted to the case are mounted, now we simply have to assemble the system as you would any other PC. Once your system is assembled you mount the water block using of course some reliable thermal paste and that's about it.
We used white plastic fitting clamps from Cooltechnica.com to firmly hold our connections in place. Our pump we mounted as you see below. Mounting the water system in this manner allowed us to minimize water line lengths while creating the most efficient loop.
Our water flow is as follows:
The best thing about doing your own water cooling project rather than a kit or a pre-made water case, is that YOU get to decide how to set it up. We decided to route our water like this, but you can feel free to do whatever works best for you.
That's pretty much it. Because of all the preliminary work we did, the system is pretty much ready to fill again now that you've got your PC assembled. I'm not going to go into detail on assembling the PC because let's be honest, if you're building your own water system you damn sure better have built a PC before!!
Filling and Bleeding the System:
This is where our ghetto T-Fitting becomes a real pain in the rear. Air gets trapped in lines which makes it difficult to fill. That's the reason that a two valve bleeding system works best. You simply route the water flow thru a water container (gallon jug is what I use) and it all but fills itself. With this single T-Fitting it was WAY more of a pain in the arse than that.
We basically had to place a two foot tub extension on the leg of our T-fitting, fill it to the top, roll the case from side to side being careful not to spill water, then do the same, over and over!
You'll notice in the picture that there's so much air in the line that it looks like foam! This was the problem we ran into with our ghetto filling device. What we did was fill it as best we could to get the loop flowing when we applied power to the pump. (We did that by running the pump WITHOUT THE PC TURNED ON!! DO NOT POWER YOUR PC UNTIL YOU HAVE A GOOD FLOWING WATER LOOP!
After about thirty minutes of the loop running, the water would work it's way down from our fill tube, and we'd refill it. After about three rounds of this we were left with a mostly clear water loop.
Here you'll see the transition from straight foam to a good air free water loop..
Foam:
After letting it settle a bit..
And finally after quite a while and me being fed up with standing the case up, laying it down, standing it up, laying it down...
The reason you have to lay it down and stand it up repeatedly is that is what gets the air bubbles to rise to the top and leave thru our fill opening. Once we got it to the point that you see above, we let it run overnight, again, with the PC off and just the pump on. This served two purposes. It worked out the last of the air bubbles, and it was one last leak test before we gave the PC power.
By morning the fill tube was all but empty allowing us to remove it and place our brass fitting (cap) back on it. Our water at this point was crystal clear and flowing nicely.
But Does it Work??:
After letting your water loop run for a bit longer like this, checking VERY carefully for any leaks, which if everything went according to plan up to this point, you shouldn't have any, we didn't. It was time to turn on the PC. We wired the relay back to this PC as it was design, plugged in our monitor and keyboard, then turned it on. The very first thing to check it to make certain that the pump turned on with your PC. So long as it did (and ours did thanks to the Swiftech relay system!) then go into the heath screen of your BIOS before you get any further to make sure that your temperatures are in check and staying that way. If everything looks good, then it's safe to say that you're in the clear and you have successfully created your own water cooling system!
Let's go to the last page of this "guide", "how-to", or whatever you want to call it and see what kind of results we obtained and wrap this thing up..
Next: Was it Worth it?: page 6 >>
More PC Cooling Articles
More By Jim Miller
/ 10 
