Cool and quiet Lian Li V1K+2

PhilW · Post by **PhilW** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:13 pm

Howdy! I'm Phil from sunny Singapore and would like to share with you folks my cool and quiet Lian Li V1000 plus 2. Casing has been mod to accommodate an internal water cooling system and compartmentalized from 3 to 2 sections. Custom cuttings also included for cable management and 120mm top fan to enhance internal airflow and reduce clutter.

Components
- Opteron 170 (overclock to 2.5GHz, cool & quiet enabled)
- Abit AN8 Ultra
- Asus 8800GTS (2D @ 260/400, 3D @ 600/900Mhz)
- Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic
- Pioneer 109 DVD writer
- Hitachi T7K250 RAID 0
- Antec TruePower II 550W

Cooling accessories
- Swiftech Apogee CPU waterblock (3/8" tubing)
- Swiftech MCW30 chipset waterblock
- Swiftech MCP350 pump (soft mount via acoustic foam)
- Swiftech MicroRez
- Black Ice GT Stealth 120 (with 120mm Yate Loon D12SL-12)
- 1 x Yate Loon D12SL-12 + 2 x Artic Cooling 12L (all thermal controlled by Abit uGuru)

Misc
- Akasa Paxmate ver. 1
- Macpower DigiDoc 5

Casing airflow as follow;
- Top exhaust
- Side input
- Rear exhaust
- GFX fan throttling between 70% and 90% duty cycle, latter for gaming only

- Radiator fan seal with blu-tack
- Swiftech MCP350 pump soft mount on acoustic foam and secured via cable tie

CPU fan: Pump
NB: PSU fan
SYS: Radiator fan
AUX1: Top 120mm
OTES1: Rear 120mm
OTES2: Side 120mm
Ambient temp: 28 degree celcius

With the GFX's fan at 70% duty cycle, the entire rig is near silent from a distance of 1m under my desk. You will need to go up close to hear the faint humming noise of the fans. However, at load condition during 3D gaming sessions, overall noise level definitely gained a notch. This is not a big issue with loudspeakers on though.

Phil

PhilW · Post by **PhilW** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:20 pm

More temps

Idle:
GPU: 57

Load:
CPU: 36
SYS: 48
PWM: 52
GPU: 71

Phil

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:14 am

That`s a very nice system

The cable managment is neat, especially for a water cooled machine.
At first glance it looks like you could loose a couple of fans, moving the rad at the back so it can double as an exhaust and letting the psu deal with the lower compartment.

lemonparty · Post by **lemonparty** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 5:06 am

That's a really slick looking system. Good job!

PhilW · Post by **PhilW** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 6:06 am

ntavlas wrote:That`s a very nice system
The cable managment is neat, especially for a water cooled machine.
At first glance it looks like you could loose a couple of fans, moving the rad at the back so it can double as an exhaust and letting the psu deal with the lower compartment.

Thanks for the compliment. I have spent quite some time on cable management and had to cut the spanking new casing.

I do agree with your observation. It's a tradeoff really with two-fold advantages: Easy mainboard maintenance and auxiliary cooling for the hard drives. There's a high chance I may be installing another radiator either on top or the rear if I watercool my GFX. For that matter, I will need an expensive full-face waterblock (out of budget at the moment) or come up with an innovate solution to utilize my existing Swiftech MCW60. There's very little space in between the card and side fan bracket to accommodate the tubes.

The top open frame 120mm was recently added to eliminate hot air pocket trapped on top of the casing. This was causing my X-Fi to overheat which was a real pain during gaming sessions. Minimizing number of fans was initially my priority but after countless tweakings, I've discovered that this was hard to accomplish for our hot and humid weather here. Fortunately, throttling the 120mms does seem to work beautifully without introducing excessive noise.

P.S ~ To lemonparty: Thanks dude.

Phil

PhilW · Post by **PhilW** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 6:46 am

The rest of my gaming rig.

Enough horsepower to handle Battlefield 2 and quite acceptable for Crysis @ 1,920 x 1,200 on my beloved BenQ FP241W.

Phil

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 7:47 am

The top open frame 120mm was recently added to eliminate hot air pocket trapped on top of the casing.

I see that it`s worth having the top fan then, actually I think it should be implemented on more cases like on many recent lian li's.

You could still try to remove the intake fan, air will easily flow in through the port since you`ve got enough negative pressure.

PhilW · Post by **PhilW** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 8:05 am

ntavlas wrote:
The top open frame 120mm was recently added to eliminate hot air pocket trapped on top of the casing.
I see that it`s worth having the top fan then, actually I think it should be implemented on more cases like on many recent lian li's.

You could still try to remove the intake fan, air will easily flow in through the port since you`ve got enough negative pressure.

I'm a bit paranoid about the GFX temperature. Too used to 30ish degrees on my old rig and watercooled card. That side fan helps to lower the core temp by as much as 7 degrees and even more under load. I doubt it's necessary under idle condition but a bit more cooling sure helps to maintain stability when the GFX is overclocked for gaming.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway. On second thought, I may reprogram uGuru to startup the fan during gaming only. Hmmm..

Phil

PhilW · Post by **PhilW** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:31 am

Gone modular with a Corsair HX620W.

Phil

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 10:38 am

Once you go modular, you dont go back.

Very nice looking setup.