Page 2 - WC n00b ?'s

I would put the res at least slightly higher than the pump.

The problem with most of the meant for wc pumps is that they are not self priming. So first off is the pump completely full? Any air in the pump can cause major damage. If there is no air then raise the height of the reservoir and that will provide a sufficient source of water to feed the pump. A self priming pump would be ok above the reservoir because they push and pull the water through, but since it is not self priming, it only pushes the water out, and provides no force to bring water to the pump.

Looks like if I had just taken the time to read the last part of the guide, it would have answered my questions. Thanks for your help, I'm going to go take a look at the component positioning and get this thing set once and for all.

Ok, I've been messing with this thing for nearly three hours off and on and as far as I can tell there is no air in the pump or any part of the loop, but the pump is still stopping after a while. Any suggestions? Would it be best for me to empty out the water and start over?

Are you loading the PSU with anything else? If not, it could be hating the weird load you're giving it and be "tripping out" as it were, haha..

Ya, that could be it too.

Either load it with some drives, or heck you could even take a lead from your case and have the pump plugged into that, so the loop is out of the case. I would suggest keeping the case closed though, run it through a hole or something, just in case a tube decides to pop off.

That or normally if you have a few optical or hard drives around that will load it up enough..

Guess it could be the PSU freaking out. It's an old 250W AT power supply. I decided to use it because of the convenient power switch, that way I didn't have to do the paperclip trick on an ATX PSU. The only load it has on it is the pump (24W = 12V x 2.0amps) and the fan (I don't have it with me right now, but I would assume it shouldn't be more than 5W). I'll give it a try running the loop off my main machine's PSU for a while.

Ya, you just really need to load a psu. Especially with a fan and pump, you are only loading the 12v line. You really should load all of the rails. Just try loading the psu, or in a psu that is loaded and see if that helps.

So far so good. It's been running fine for a few minutes now. Now I just need to wait to see if it's going to shut off, and if it doesn't, then I'll wait some more to test for leaks.

Well I let it go for about 2 hours. It stopped sometime between 25 minutes after my last post and this post. It's plugged into a loaded PSU (motherboard, hard drive, two optical drives, 3 fans). Any new suggestions? I'm starting to wonder if the pump just isn't bad.

It could be. Some pumps can be fidgity. Are you sure you never ran it dry? Because even running it dry for a minute could severly mess it up.

Which pump are you runing anyway?

I guess I fucked it up in the 3 seconds I had it running dry. That's pretty lame. I hope I can get it replaced. It's a Laing D5 Basic/D-Tek/Danger Den D5 Inline 12V DC Pump. Not the variable one, the basic.

I guess I should probably follow up on this post even though it's been over a month now. I did end up getting that same pump working, it wasn't messed up as I had thought. I redesigned the loop, so some of my good Masterkleer tubing went to waste and was replaced by cheap vinyl tubing that I bought at the hardware store (hey, at least it wasn't Tygon that I wasted). System runs like a beaut. I have some general overclocking questions to ask, but I'm going to start a new thread in the CPU OCing section.

Post up some pictures here or in the case gallery while you are at it

It's the ugliest system ever... Duct tape, bad dremeling, galvanized strap hanger brackets, extra holes where they don't need to be, wires hanging out the sides... I need to find my camera.

Here are some pics:


The front of the watercooled case on the left. That's BB-TOP (Big Black Tower of Power) on the right there, it's a CM STACKER 810 case, very big... would have been a much better case for watercooling, but since I had no idea what I was doing I decided not to harm my good components with my experiments.


The tubing is pretty much all meeting in the middle which gives it a pretty cluttered look and also makes it pretty difficult to work on anything inside the case, but given the case's small size I really didn't have many other options. I ended up putting the res in the drive bay area (figuring I'll only ever need one drive on this computer), the pump just went were I could fit it... Turns out to be a pain in the butt when I have to pull the BIOS reset jumper... Oh well, I guess this is the kind of stuff you learn to look out for once you've done a watercooled case a few times.


I noticed that the NB was getting a bit warm so I decided to throw a fan at it. It's an 80mm fan with a reducer that takes it down to 60mm and then it's just duct taped in place over the NB cooler... How else did you think I would do it? I do want to pick up an NB water block at some point if it turns out that NB temps are keeping me from increasing the FSB, but I don't think it's the case, this jury rigged cooler seems to be keeping the temps in line.