Project summary: Silent Watercooled Antec 3700 BQE

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 1:32 pm

I got some new kit lately consisting of an Antec 3700 BQE, 160gb Samsung Spinpoint SATA and a dremel. This is to house my kit which consists of:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe
80GB Seagate Barracuda IV
Watercooling system
1GB PC3200 Ram
JUHIB 1700, overclocked to XP2600+ speed

Anyway heres a little writeup on my silence setup.

Heres the new case:

As you know the 3700 comes with a front drive cage

(image stolen from spcr

)
I removed the front cage in my case because that is where the radiator is going to go in my watercooling setup.

Anyway i put my new dremel to good use, and 12 rivets later i removed all the panels that consist of the front drive cage. You can tell this case is very well built because of things like that, 12 rivets just for the drive cage!

You might also notice all those ugly mobo led and switch wires, i tidyd those up nicely:

It comes with 3 HD leds none of which ive used, i didnt want to cut them off because i might use them for modding in the future, i pulled the wires back through to the outside of the case and cable tied them down to the front, nice and neatly. With the other 3 wires going to the motherboard, i put heatshrink across the length of the wires all bundled up and ran it down the back of the case where it cant be seen.

Now ive removed the drive cage i need somewhere to put my 2 hard drives! Well thankfully i carefully thought that through. I decided to elastically suspend the hard drive as that is the best solution to absorb vibrations, a LOT better than any rubber holding widget solution which from what ive read in these forums dont even work.

Heres how i did it:

Basically its 3 loops of elastic between each side of the 5 1/2" bays, to slot the hard drives in i put the bottom strand on top and the top strand on the bottom (you'll see in the pic)

The elastic i used is just the regular clothes elastic, 70p from Wollworths if i remember correctly for about 20m! I did this for both of the hard drives and they sit perfectly with good clearence inbetween.

The elastic also helps in transportation as no harsh bangs or nocks in the car will ever get to the hard drives.

Now the hds can bake in their own little oven... how about fan assisting them?

ehehehe

Anyway, chance now to show off my elastically hd cooling system

You might have spotted the fan in the last pic but heres a better pic of that.

The fan is set at an angle to blow perfectly over the 2 hard drives and as theyre both spaced very nicely apart it'll ensure good cooling. The fan is set on 5v for a good balance between silence and cooling.

Nows also a good time to boast about my cablegami skills and custom cabling.

I basically stripped down my psu and heavily modded it, i tried the antec smartpower psu that came with the case, its very nice but very noisy to my standards so i got my q tec and heavily modded it, im running its 2x 80mm fans on 5v, also removed the pentium 4 power cable and some other random cable that i didnt need, also took out one of the molex daisy chains as 2 is excessive and would just end up unused. You'll notice the special 90 degree molex connectors, i got those imported from america, theyre uber.

Anyway heres a pic of the setup so far. i still have alot of little mods i want to do to it.

Thats it now, notice the nice neat cabling, especially the psu cabling, very minimalist compaired to all the other psu's out there

.

One thing to note about this case is that the 120mm fan it comes with also comes with rubber mounting things which is a very nice touch, they work a dream, i have one more 120mm fan on the radiator, the fans both run off 5v (used to be on rheo but i dont like using it anymore because i just used to leave it on 4.5-5v anyway)

Temperature wise:
Ambient: 22 C
No Load: 38 C
Full Load: 40 C

Although if i turn the fans up i can get much better temps (not that these temps are bad for a silence setup anyway) remember im heavily overclocked too.

The mods i want to do still are, re-tube my watercooling nicer, get more blue dye for it (it keeps dissapearing!?).
Sort the radiator - basically put the 120mm fan on the other side of it, and build a plexi shroud that goes from the radiator to the front 120mm vent + and put a 120mm fan in that vent.
Mod my psu to maybe run off a single 120mm fan.
Cut the 120mm fan grills out.
Get 4x20 LCD screen.
Re-install my cold cathodes.
Do something with the unused led's
Change power led's to better colour.

amongst other things.

Tell me what you think/suggest me mods.

Seal

Sledge · Post by **Sledge** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 1:46 pm

Your work looks great but I can't believe you're getting only 38C idle. My setup is pretty quiet (w/out the GFFX) and all I have is a Zalman 7000 and undervolted Panaflo's and I get 38C at min fan speeds.

As for upgrades, consider this radiator

Innovatek HTCS

HaloJones · Post by **HaloJones** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 9:34 am

You have the output of the pump going to a T where it has to take a 90 degree turn? How is the rad attached? It looks like it's just kinda resting there. Can you not attach the rad's 120mm to the front intake?

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 11:42 am

good to see you're almost finished with your setup seal

i was under the impression however that it was better to have the rad fan on the back of the radiator, pulling air through the rad instead of pushing..?

nice job decoupling the hdd's and fan btw

looks interesting if not too secure hehe

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 3:11 pm

HaloJones wrote:You have the output of the pump going to a T where it has to take a 90 degree turn? How is the rad attached? It looks like it's just kinda resting there. Can you not attach the rad's 120mm to the front intake?

Yeah the T is where it takes a 90 degree turn. The rad isnt attached to anything, it sits there as it is.

chylld wrote:i was under the impression however that it was better to have the rad fan on the back of the radiator, pulling air through the rad instead of pushing..?

Yeah, ive tried both and for me i get exactly the same temps. Eventually the plan is to have it swapped around, and have a plexiglass tunnel type ducting thing which ducts air from the front 120mm fan (which isnt there yet).

And the hds are surprisingly quite secure, they would fall out but only with some serious shaking. It'd easily survive car journeys to and from uni which is where i am right now

.

Seal

moving shadow · Post by **moving shadow** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 5:56 pm

your a ghetto mod genius mate

I have always wanted to try watercooling but as i dont overclock its just not worth it, very nice setup, especially the elastic from woolies

Zyzzyx · Post by **Zyzzyx** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 6:18 pm

You'll notice the special 90 degree molex connectors, i got those imported from america, theyre uber.

I DO like those. Would work quite nicely in one of my projects. I'll have to check my electronics shop for them, but if they don't... where'd ya get 'em?

HaloJones · Post by **HaloJones** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 2:18 am

That T is really harming your flowrate. You would be better having the fill/bleed run off the 90 degree turn and the flow going straight along the top of the T

here

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 5:27 am

HaloJones wrote:That T is really harming your flowrate. You would be better having the fill/bleed run off the 90 degree turn and the flow going straight along the top of the T

here

Yeah i know, people always point that out. However i prefer more a setup for neatness over cooling, and i'd hardly say 40 Deg C full load (with rad fan at 5v) are bad temps, i used to have it without a 90 degree bend and the temps went up by 1 deg C which imo dosent make much of a difference considering the tidyness of the new setup.

Nice setup btw HaloJones, that rad looks uber dusty though! I used to have a black ice pro.

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 5:32 am

ehehe elastic from wollies rox! its the most perfect thing to use, thought of thin bungee cord but its not suitable, too thick!

Zyzzyx wrote:
You'll notice the special 90 degree molex connectors, i got those imported from america, theyre uber.
I DO like those. Would work quite nicely in one of my projects. I'll have to check my electronics shop for them, but if they don't... where'd ya get 'em?

I got my right angled molex connectors from here:
Scorpion Mods

To get them imported you have to email them first and ask them the'll work out the extra costs to add on for shipping etc... only costed me an extra $5 ontop of the price which is well cheap considering.

Also for 90 degree molex info check out here:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.p ... +AND+molex
and
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.p ... +AND+molex

Theyre what inspired me to buy them! Uber neatness

HaloJones · Post by **HaloJones** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 9:03 am

Seal wrote:Nice setup btw HaloJones, that rad looks uber dusty though! I used to have a black ice pro.

It's a "Gold" Black Ice Extreme I got as a free upgrade when the courier lost the regular kind and yes, it needs a good clean!

This is my other system.

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 4:35 am

heatercore... nice, heres my old setup, looks very similar to your old one.

snutten · Post by **snutten** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 8:43 am

I´d recommend hanging the pump in the same type of elastic bands. You´ll notice there´s much less vibrations emanating from the Eheim that way! (Make sure it doesn´t touch anything but the hoses.)

Bat · Post by **Bat** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 10:46 am

What pumps are you all using? What are they like?
I've made a thread for pump reviews:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=8141

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 1:30 pm

Yeah, the size/shape/weight and location of the pump make it very akward to elasticaly suspend, otherwise i would have already. I think ill look for those rubber mounting feet things.

Bat: ive already posted there!... twice now