Maximus Extreme + Cosmos1000 + Custom liquid. Pics inside!

[Toritechie]

Hi OCAU.

Just posted on Xtremesystems.org, but this should go here too, as I've found this forum very helpful in my research for my first watercooling attempt. I'm also an Aussie!

At the start of the year I built up a nice rig:

Maximus Extreme Mobo
Q6600 G0
2 x EAH3870 in Crossfire
Coolermaster 850W PSU
Coolermaster Cosmos 1000

For the first month I owned this machine, I ran with a Thermalright Ultra 120 CPU cooler; the rest of the system was also air cooled. This worked fine, and I had a stable overclock on the chip, around 3.6.

After doing quite a lot of reading on this forum, and various others, I decided to take a stab at setting up a water-cooling solution. My main reasoning behind undertaking this was to achieve a near-silent system. I wanted to include the cpu, northbridge (the motherboard is prepped for this), and both 3870's. If anyone here owns these graphics cards, you'll know how loud they are under 3d load. Oh my.

I contacted a supplier in Australia, who was very knowledgeable in PC cooling. After chatting and researching, I purchased the following:

D-TEK FuZion water block
Laing D5 12 volt water pump
Radiical Triple dual pass radiator
Two Maze 5 GPU blocks
Three Xinruilian 120 fans
2m 1/2inch ID Excellon tubing & 1m 5/8inch Excellon tubing
Hose clamps
Helicoils
Acrylic bay reservoir
Arctic Silver

It was an eager wait for the package to arrive at my house, when the fun would begin. Enough text, I'll attach the series of photos that cover the installation:

Gutting the case

Obviously I had to pull apart the case, get everything out before I could start installing the liquidz:



Here are some of the parts for this custom liquid setup: Notice the sexy triple rad!



Time to butcher the 3870's Installing the Maze 5's was very easy, and reduced their profile significantly. You can see the beast stock air cooler, louder than a a 747 at takeoff when under load. It was nice to find ramsinks under the air-cooler, especially since I didn't order any!



Installation of the bits and bobs: I had taken measurements of my Cosmos1000 case before ordering the watercooling stuff. I was pretty sure that I could fit the triple rad at the top of the case, ensuring it was all neatly hidden away. The Cosmos 1000 has only two fan vent areas a the top, so I had to get a drill and modify the case (put heaps of holes in it!) so that the third radiator fan would be able to pull out warm air. Yesterday I discovered that the new Cosmos1000S is already rigged for a triple radiator! Oh well, I think my modifications achieve the same thing. I guess I should have made up a template and put the holes in some kind of order ... nevermind, it seems to work well.



You can also see the rad nicely tucked away at the top of the case:



The sexy mobo:



Putting it all back together: I thought I'd take a gamble and put the whole thing back together, install sinks and pipes, and make sure I clamp everything properly before I started filling up the loop. I was pretty sure I could do this, and get it right. I had read that it was safer to test the loop while outside the computer/components, to test for leaks ... but it was getting late, I had been working on the project all day, and i wanted it finished before I went to sleep.

The desk light is on now, the sun has gone down, but below you can see the system all plumbed and ready for filling:



I had mixed up the coolant, 10% corrosion inhibitor : h2o. It's nice and green! I used a funnel and filled up the bay reservoir while powering up the pump from an old power-supply. I did this just in short bursts, so the pump wasn't working too much air in the filling process. It all went smoothly, and the loop was filled easily. It was fun watching the fluid move around, I felt like I was giving life to my machine baby.



I sat and watched the computer for a while, to check to see if there were any leaks. God help me if there were! I did have a small drip start to show itself on the Maximus Extreme northbridge outlet. I powered down the pump, and did a few extra turns on that hose clamp, and all was well. I made another coffee, watched some TV and glanced over while the thing pumped away. No major problems, I went to bed and the next day plugged in all the peripherals to see if my computer still booted.

Success!!! Fresh the next day, I hoped that my computer would still start up. Plugging it all back together, it worked! I messed around with the bios and configured the fans. I used the three temperature probes from the motherboard, and linked them to the onboard fan controls. This way my systems only speeds up the fans as is necessary, and even gaming, this radiator keeps the whole loop cool @ 750 rpm on all three fans, which is essentially silent.



I had to cut a piece of plastic out of the top cover of the Cosmos1000 case, to enable the fans to vent properly. I stuck in a piece of black aluminium flywire, it's a strong dark mesh, so it doesn't detract from the looks of the top of the case:



It was FUN! I found the whole experience of setting up watercooling a lot of fun, and there were no problems during the installation.

I achieved my goals of a quiet computer, and it runs cooler. I'm running at a similar over-clock to my air, I'm currently 3.61 orthos looped stable. The couple of stress tests I've run (it's summer here) have seen the CPU sit around 45 - 50c. Please note that this is in a room ambient of about 29 - 30c. Coolant appears happy to sit around 10c above ambient at most (this is during stress tests or hours of 3d gaming) so I guess my radiator is happily able to deal with the heat.

I'm running my Q6600 @ 400 x 9, with Corsair 1333 memory @ 1280, 8-9-9-23, 1T. Vcore is 1.49. Northbridge 1.59.

I pencil-modded my 3870's, and they are currently at 925mhz core and 1250 mhz ram.

I have managed to complete 3dMark 2006 with my Q6600 @ 3.9ghz, but it simply isn't stable enough under prime for me to run that overclock 24/7.

A brief plug for the very helpful Les & Tricia, who run Radiical Computing, and supplied the parts for my watercooling project:

http://www.radiical.com.au/

My watercooling project was finished a few weeks ago, and it's nice to actually finish this post, which I intended to do sooner! Thanks again to all the members of this forum, I have found Xtremesystems (and OCAU!!!) a great resource.

I hope this post has been fun to read, I hope to make some more in the future

[DavLe.BeRRy]

Looks great dude, the cosmos seems to be a winner for watercooling

nice temps toooo
What are the GPU temps, your only using one 320 rad for all that yeah?

[RnegadeVyp3r]

some nice hardware but i think that you could make that case look alot neater and lay the loop out better.

Hide the rest of the PSU cables, neaten the ones up you can see and the loop order is a bit strange.

Dont know why you bothered doing the north bridge also, is it really helping much?

EDIT: is the fans blowing or sucking air through the read? why not have em setup to Blow Air THROUGH the rad to out of the case as that would give ya better results.

Also, you should put a 120mm fan blowing air Into the case from the rear so that you dont have a inbalance air flow if the rad fans do expell the air to the outside world.

Nice work on mounting the 320mm rad in the cosmos tho. I really, REALLY want to buy one of them for my rig.

[DavLe.BeRRy]

Originally Posted by RnegadeVyp3r

why not have em setup to Blow Air THROUGH the rad to out of the case as that would give ya better results.

Looks to me that the fans are pulling hot air away from the radiator and out the case. To do what your suggesting he'd have to switch the radiator and fans around, it probably wouldn't make it any harder to mount but would it really make a difference? based on the top ventilation i think it might actually be better in its current pull configuration.

Originally Posted by RnegadeVyp3r

Also, you should put a 120mm fan blowing air Into the case from the rear so that you dont have a inbalance air flow if the rad fans do expell the air to the outside world.

He does? second last pics, blue LED fan.

[Toritechie]

Originally Posted by DavLe.BeRRy

Looks to me that the fans are pulling hot air away from the radiator and out the case. To do what your suggesting he'd have to switch the radiator and fans around, it probably wouldn't make it any harder to mount but would it really make a difference? based on the top ventilation i think it might actually be better in its current pull configuration.



He does? second last pics, blue LED fan.

Yes, the rad fans pull pull the air out of the case. Works great.

Yes again, there is a fan at the top rear, blowing air into the case, also added cooling to the northbridge.

[The Wraith]

Originally Posted by RnegadeVyp3r

some nice hardware but i think that you could make that case look alot neater and lay the loop out better.

Hide the rest of the PSU cables, neaten the ones up you can see and the loop order is a bit strange.

Dont know why you bothered doing the north bridge also, is it really helping much?

EDIT: is the fans blowing or sucking air through the read? why not have em setup to Blow Air THROUGH the rad to out of the case as that would give ya better results.

Also, you should put a 120mm fan blowing air Into the case from the rear so that you dont have a inbalance air flow if the rad fans do expell the air to the outside world.

Nice work on mounting the 320mm rad in the cosmos tho. I really, REALLY want to buy one of them for my rig.

By how much would the fans blowing through the rad improve the performance....... my bet bugger all. You want to post some info that says different.
Case looks good as it is leave the anal retentives to tidy up the wiring a bit if it makes em happy.

[RnegadeVyp3r]

Originally Posted by The Wraith

By how much would the fans blowing through the rad improve the performance....... my bet bugger all. You want to post some info that says different.

I would think it would make a resonable difference, atleast IMO it would be worth it for perhaps the few extra degrees it could shave off.

Originally Posted by The Wraith

Case looks good as it is leave the anal retentives to tidy up the wiring a bit if it makes em happy.

Forgive me for liking a nice n neat case. The GPU cables and spare PSU cables above the bottom intake fan wouldnt be helping the air flow in that section tho.

Originally Posted by DavLe.BeRRy

He does? second last pics, blue LED fan.

Indeed - i missed that one as i was looking at some of the other pics when i went to write that - oops

//EDIT: Just re read most of the post and noticed that your using 1.49v for a 3.6GHz on a GO edition Quad, thats a fair bit. Have you tried lower? 1.425 should be plenty for that OC but i guess each mobo is different.

I also see why you did the North bridge in the loop, coz it was preped ready for it, thats kinda cool. was that a main reason for choosing that board???

[Syvirus]

Hmm nice almost like mine :P

Could you please post some pics of the top of your case? The part that u pull off to screw the 3fans onto the case.

I have my rad in the same spot and pushing air out of the case but i dont have the top plastic cover on as if i do my temps go thro the roof. I can see you have drilled wholes or put mesh of some sort on the cover.

[OhFoRkMe]

There would not be any real noticeable difference using either push or pull method on that rad.

I would try and tidy up some of the cables since the Cosmos has the necessary holes already there.

As renegade has pointed out, i think the NB cooler is unecessary and only adds unwanted heat and restriction to the loop.

Last point would be that the 120.3 rad would be close to maximum performance with CPU + 2x GPU's. Especially since everything is overclocked. Maybe look at getting a PA120.3 from GAM in the future for additional performance.

Otherwise, everything looks good and its nice to see someone who is starting watercooling actually start with good components instead of Thermaltake stuff or similar build items.