P180 Watercooled

Show off your quiet rig.

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DeMoB
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P180 Watercooled

Post by DeMoB » Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:06 pm

Hello SPCR types ^_^

I'm new here, but am very much into the silent PC ethos.

In my ongoing quest for silent a PC I've recently finished modding my (original version) P180 for clean cable runs, and think that it looks decent enough to compare to some of the excellent P180 builds on here. So, here is my setup:

Image Image Image Image

I just got a Canon D40, so if the pics are off in some way its because I had it on manual and still don't quite know my way round a SLR yet :P

If you are wondering why there is a hole in the back of the motherboard tray, it is so I can dismount my watercooling without having to take off the motherboard and ruin my cable management.

The hardware is nothing fancy as I built my PC over a year and a half ago. If people want to see it from creation, I have a log I kept that I can link people up with.

Thanks for looking,

Dan

xan_user
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Post by xan_user » Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:13 pm

H2O and eight fans!

Hmmm cool maybe but not too quiet i'll hazard.

I would think 3 fans should be easy to pull off in that case.

FartingBob
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Post by FartingBob » Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:31 pm

I hope all those fans are heavily undervolted for the sake of noise.
I would have gone with 500rpm slipstreams for all the 120mm's, since there would be very little heat not being taken away by the water. Maybe a faster one for the bottom chamber, depending on how hot the HDD's get.
Noctua's all run fine at 5v i believe, i would use inline resistors (less cabling and no need for variables) on them all. Much them considerably quieter.

And i know bright LED's look much worse in photos than real life, but still, not my cup of tea. And why have LED's anyway if your using a windowless case? :P
Nice cable work, youve managed to hide pretty much everything there!
What componants are you using, and what temps do you get with all those fans and water?

DeMoB
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Post by DeMoB » Thu Apr 17, 2008 4:49 pm

The LED was a left over I had from when I first built the rig, I originally had 4 LED fans in there as I didn't look into fans that much and just went with more Antec fans (to compliment the tricools). Needless to say I got fed up of the noise and swapped out to Noctua NF-P12's.

I have them all plugged into the mainboard and dialled back to 6v, so the noise is pretty good to say there are 7 case fans in there :P
(With moderate ambient noise, eg. light traffic from a road 25m away, when my window is open I can't hear the pc). I need to get rid of that Antec as it is too loud on 6v (but I want the NB/Mem cooling and haven't a quieter fan) :P

Temps are pretty bad for water, but I'm willing to accept that for the reduction in noise levels:

Cooling an E6600 @ 3Ghz @ 1.375v in bios [It's a pathetic overclocker]
Noctua NF-P12 @ 6v (~800rpm)
  • Ambient: 24oC
    ORTHOS Load: 54 54
    Idle: 34 36
With the fans on at 12v I get:
  • Idle: 29 32
    Load: 46 46
The full specs are:
  • ABIT AW9D Max
    Intel E6600 @ 3GHZ (333FSB)
    XFX 7950GT XT 256MB
    2GB PC26400 OCZ Reaper @ 840Mhz @ 2.2v @ 3-4-4-11
    2x160GB WD caviar (RAID 0)
    LG DVDRW
    PC Power and Cooling 610W Silencer
With the cooling system:
  • Swiftech Watercooling loop:
    - Storm v2 CPU Block
    - MCW60 GPU Block
    - MCR220-QP Dual Rad
    - MCP655 Pump
    - Tygon 1/2" ID tubing
    - T-line
6x Noctua NF-P12's
1x Antec LED


That's a lot of info in this post >_<

Dan

PS. You could also ask what the point of having such a clean cabled case is if there is also no window :wink:

xan_user
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Post by xan_user » Thu Apr 17, 2008 9:13 pm

:oops:
sorry...

Is there only one fan on the radiator? I thought it looked like two.

my bad.



PS With all those fans you could probably stuff a tumbleweed of 5 computers worth of cabling inside and hardly effect the temps...

:D

Cistron
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Post by Cistron » Fri Apr 18, 2008 12:09 am

DeMoB wrote:You could also ask what the point of having such a clean cabled case is if there is also no window :wink:
Better airflow, less noise?

Your CPU is a real lemon, that was tough luck man.

Imho, water cooling completely defeats its purpose. Expensive, extremely tedious to install, somewhat risky and still doesn't lead to a nicely quiet case, as one can't abrogate all case-fans.

DeMoB
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Post by DeMoB » Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:15 am

xan_user: There are two on the radiator, but I didn't count the PSU fan as a case fan, I presume you did? :wink:

Cistron: I'm aware of the airflow advantages, I was trying to be a smart alec, but I got seen through with that one :P

I'm beginning to agree on the watercooling front, but I've got it now so may as well use it. (Or completely externally mount everything in a room far away from me :P )

After I did the case mods, I left out my watercooling for 'cleaning' (more like couldn't be bothered to plumb it back in that day), and I was trying out a Noctua NH-U12P. I got some results for the fans all on 12v, but am kicking myself for not testing it at 6v.

At 12v and the same settings as before the NH-U12P did:
Ambient 24
Load 50 50
Idle 30 33

So worse than the WC @ 12v, but I don't know how it scaled for 6v :(

It looked a lot cleaner at least:

Image

Dan

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Post by xan_user » Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:47 am

A fan by any other name still blows!
:D
After the CPU fan the PSU fan is generally regarded as the next biggest noise producer.

Do the radiator fans have blow holes on the top of the case? if not that might be the reason you need so many fans - to keep the case temps low enough for the radiator to work properly. I would think putting the radiator outside of the case would enable you to run just the PSU fan and one exhaust fan without issue. - Course if your ready to remote locate the radiator to another room, why not turn all the fans on high and put the whole PC in the other room? everything will run cool as possible and be totally silent.

DeMoB
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Post by DeMoB » Sat Apr 19, 2008 8:07 am

Mounting anything in another room is just wishful thinking by me, in practical terms, there isn't anywhere to put it (unless I come up of some way of hanging it outside the window :P, but that isn't likely)

To fill you in on the 'blanks' of the case, here are some old (bad) shots of the top and front

Top
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/1491/dscf0714yw4.jpg
Front
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2718/dscf2164ob5.jpg


I read another thread on here with a P180 with a 360mm rad and the same number of case fans, and someone commented that the case had exteme negative pressure and was the reason the temps were bad, I knew i had a lot but didnt think it would impact temps for the worse), so I swapped round the back fan (to intake) and its actually improved temps (on 6v) by about 2oC on load (I'm going to do some more testing later to check again, and try some 12v testing).

Dan

xan_user
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Post by xan_user » Sat Apr 19, 2008 9:51 am

Do you run it with the top drive bay cover open or closed? have you compared temps with open drive bay as opposed to closed?
-it would be tricky, but a baffle separating the radiator into its own thermal zone would probably make a world of difference. Some blue painters tape and a little manila folder origami separating the top drive bays from the rest of the case and using the open drive bay as a cool air intake should improve water block temps. The plumbing and ram/fan would be hard to accommodate, but probably worth the experiment.

You probably would do a bit better if you removed the empty pci covers too. I know they are vented but more air will flow if you remove them completely.

Nice looking build, and with some additional tweaking probably pretty quiet.

Next on the 'silence' list would be soft mounting all fans and the pump.

DeMoB
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Post by DeMoB » Sat Apr 19, 2008 3:01 pm

The top two drive bay covers don’t fit on anymore, as I originally cut the radiator placement to be as far forward in the 5.25" bays as it would fit.

Actually I think you should read (or scan pics) from start to where I'm at now, over here, to get a better understanding of what's in this rig.

But the short version is that the drive covers don't fit on anymore. The only difference I could have done was with the front case door open vs closed. I did however take off the plastic fan filter door covers, but the filters are still there so it's not like I’ve removed all restrictions there (could be a factor, again, will have to do some proper testing when I get chance to see what makes the most difference).

I did actually half heartedly try and make a 'duct' for the rad/drive section, but discovered that it was going to be a lot of work to get it in place with the RAM and pipes, and promptly gave up :roll:


I shall have to try with open PCI brackets, I have actually blocked them all up at the minute (bar the one at the back of the graphics card) as I was trying to coax as much air in the front bay opening as possible (and hence cooler air to the rad). As with most of the half hearted things I try out, I didn't actually test whether this made a difference for the good or the worse of the temps. But I suspect it was a bad thing doing that?


The fans are already rubber pin mounted (bar the one at the top where you have to hook and screw it on) so I presume that is what you mean by soft mount? But what do you mean for the pump?

Thanks for the help and suggestions so far, I know a lot about computers, but must admit that extreme silencing techniques is something I am pretty new to.

Dan

DeMoB
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Post by DeMoB » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:20 am

Image

Testing results ^_^

Dan

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