First post, by deleted_Rc
Hey guys, was tinkering with the idea of creating a custom loop for my main rig but then I got the idea to also do it to the next best thing namely my secondary heater 🤣 . My Athlon was making to much noise even with some modern bigger fans in it, I was still limited to using the stock fans for my CPU and GPU so my Athlon will be my first try at a custom loop before I start on my main rig.
recently I had the chance to buy a full loop for peanuts however this seemed to good to be true (it was cheap knock off loop from china with Nikkel, Copper blocks and a Alluminum rad), so I didn't get that one in the end since he wanted more for it then it costs new in china including shipping 🤣 . Anyway so I will be sticking to pretty much modern parts I can get off the local market. Pump and res is already in and performed some mods on the case already to fit everything.
this is how my computer looked like before I started modding:
Plan:
- Silent and just above ambient temperatures.
- Retaining the retro fill as much as possible (so I will stay with my current case and mod it to fit a modern pump and resevoir)
- Stable 300-400 Mhz OC on the CPU
- Stable max OC on the GPU
The loop will contain the CPU, GPU and NB. Since I do not want to start right away with hard tubing (nor do I want to spend that extra cash on that right now maybe later), so I will stick to barbs and soft tubing and maybe invest later in hard tubing (PETG if at all)
Hardware list:
Case: Chieftec Dragon "anthracite"
CPU: AMD "Barton"Athlon XP 3200+
Motherboard: Asus A7N8-Deluxe
Ram: 2x 1 Gb DDR kingston
GPU: Asus A9800XT
HDD: 160 Gb Seagate IDE (recently replaced my 80Gb one which died on me with the Tick of death)
ODD: 2x DVD-RW (to fill empty spaces)
FDD: Black floppy drive
PSU: Hiper Type R 580W (fully modular and previously recapped)
Watercooling equipment:
Pump + Reservoir: Alphacool Eisbecher D5 150mm acetal reservoir incl. Alphacool VPP755 pump
Radiator: Alphacool 240x120x30 mm (45 mm would've been prefable since I am limited to 1 radiator but my case has onl 40 mm headspace on top)
tubing: TBA
Fittings: TBA
Fan controller: TBA
So I got the pump and res in today and started modding my case right away:
This is the end result, I removed the 2 brackets for holding additional FDD & HDD (there was room for 5 and now only 1 FDD). Also I mounted my HDD on the back of my case to hide the huge amount of cables cluttered in that area, also modded a IDE cable.
Next up is modding the top of the case above the PSU to hold my 240 mm radiator and put 2 fans on top of it with a fanshroud (240 mm is rare it seems). The fans will most likely be pull with 1 fan as intake and the other as exhaust.
Future mod will be done to side panel to include a windows and light the case with AMD red lighting.