HAF X ~ Modding Zone

Got all the watercooling parts in the mail today

Going to try to fit it all in the HAF X, removing the bottom HDD cage and mounting my drives in the 5.25 bay area with the Lian Li rackmount. A 240 XSPC rad will be installed in the bottom HDD area, and the 360 rad will go at the top of the case. I will start tomorrow afternoon. I am documenting because this is my first watercooling experience and I want to do a build log, as well as giving others an idea of what will fit in the HAF X.

The goal of the build is both silence and performance. I might upgrade to Gentle Typhoons down the line but I want to see how my current fans work out first. The Apollish fans are hard to come by so some may not know, but they are very quiet, as well as bright, which I like. I plan to run just 5 of these fans in the case, I am removing the other fans as well as the stock 200mm and 230mm HAF X fans.

I will also be providing insight into my watercooling experience and particularly what it is like to watercool for the first time. Running at 5ghz on the 2600k on the NH-D14 had some unacceptable temps, so I hope to correct that by watercooling. The GTX 480 also runs hot as well, even with an aftermarket air cooler, temps were in the 80-90s, overclocked with added voltage.

As an observation, the radiators and compression fittings look quite a bit smaller in real life than they do in the photos on websites. Today was the first time ever I held these parts in my hands. They just look so gigantic in the photos, maybe because it's zoomed in at high resolution. The 360 rad was smaller and lighter than I expected, which is probably a good thing, though the weight will change soon once I add water.

Parts:
EK Copper/Plexi Supreme HF
Koolance GTX 480 Waterblock
MCP 655 Vario
EK X-Top V2
Masterkleer 1/2ID 3/4OD Clear UV Tubing
1/2ID 3/4OD Bitspower Shining Silver Compressions
XSPC RX360+ RX240
5x Enermax Apollish Vegas Red case fans
Rheosmart 6 Fan Controller
EK Res 250 Advanced
EK Rad Holder 120
PT Nuke CU
Distilled Water
Silver Coil

Putting the X-Top V2 on the MCP655...

Together, with fittings

Went to CVS and bought 5 gallons of distilled water, 3 of which are shown here. I didn't know how much I needed so I bought extra just in case, the worst case of which I will just drink the extra water. I also heated up the water to almost boiling and poured it into the 2 reservoirs, shaking them around in an effort to clean them. By the look of the water that came out, however, they were already pretty clean. Oh well, better safe than sorry.

Putting compression fittings on the res. My fingers are red and scratched now from twisting those fittings. I used a rag after a while to spare my poor fingers.

Now, time to put the Anti-Cyclon in the res. The instructions said, use the screw that came with the anti-cyclon to attach it to the inside of the res. However, Performance PCs didn't send me any screws with the cyclon, I looked all over. I just dug into my bags of screws, and luckily found one that worked.

I decided to cut mini pieces of tubing to connect all the parts together to leak test them. The cutter was a sharpened poultry knife, which worked surprisingly well, good thing I did not waste 10 bucks on a hose cutter. I cut it on top of an old textbook that is now to worthless to sale, much less read. That class sucked.

The leak-test set-up. Not turned on yet. Everything is quite cramped and at this point I had to be careful of scratching the paint on the parts.

Plugged in and filled with water. There was some initial gurgling at first but now it is subsiding. So far it has been on for half and hour and no leaks. I'm not one for patience so I'll probably disconnect it after an hour or so, drain it, and start installing it for real.

Finished build, my hands were burning from turning compression fittings, lol, and accidently cutting myself with the knife I used for cutting tubing. But definitely one of the most satisfying experiences I've had.

Put the EK rad brackets on the bottom of the radiator, to mount to the bottom of the case. I'd never seen anyone do this before but it just made sense to me so I wanted to try it.

Bottom view

Testing the fans on the shelf outside the computer, I just wanted to see what it looked like.

Ok, pulled off the cover, this is what it originally looks like.

Drilled out the rivets holding the bottom HDD cage into place, it went pretty cleanly with a carbide drill bit. The stock bits that came with the drill didn't really do a good job of drilling into it because the metal of the case dulled them. I used a 1/8" bit.

HDD cage sitting out. I should have been a doctor.

Next the fans have to go. Here are the 200mm fans on top. Good CFM but bad static pressure, and they make this annoying hum that's gotten to bug me.

Fans gone, another one bit the dust...

Removing all the fans and GPU from the case

I had an Icy Vision air aftermarket cooler on the 480 before, so I had to remove that before install the waterblock. I had to remove the ramsinks carefully because I'd read about people ripping off the chips attached to their ramsinks.

The heat from a blowdryer helped me to twist the ramsinks off without damaging the chips.

Installed some seksui thermal tape that I got off ebay a while ago, it's thinner than the stock stuff that came with the waterblock so will do a better job at conducting heat.

Block on

With the HDD cage gone I needed somewhere to put my drives. Here's where the $50 Lian Li racket mount comes in. This is the new version with room for 4 3.5 and 2 2.5 drives. It's expensive but it's the only thing on the market that has these features.

2.5 SDD mounted on the side

Mounting the EK Supreme HF was a pain mostly because the back cutout for the HAF X is not big enough to mount the backplate without removing the motherboard. People say Cooler Master cases are well thought out and substance over form but they really screwed up here. The cutout isn't big enough for 1155.

Here's the NH-D14 removed, CPU cleaned and ready for thermal paste and the Supreme HF.

Peeled the sticker back, beautiful mirror like finish on the copper. I chose copper instead of nickel plated because of issues I'd read about the nickel coming off and going into the loop. Probably a low chance of that but better safe than sorry.

EK Supreme HF Rev. 3 mounting system. I'll have to admit it was pretty easy to mount except for the fact that the motherboard tray hole wasn't in the right place, but that's Cooler Master's fault.

Underside pic of how I mounted the 240 radiator. The holes on the right are actually prexisting holes from where the HDD cage was formerly riveted in. I had to enlarge them with a drill, however, to accommodate the large screws that would hold the EK Bracket and 240 radiator in place.

Pic of the 240 rad installed.

Both rads installed.

There is very little room between the ram and the fan. However I already knew this from previous versions I'd seen online. I wanted the fans in the interior of the case as exposed to on the top of the radiator for noise reasons, to keep the noise more internally oriented.

Silver kill coil wound into the anti-cyclon inside the EK Res, holds it in place.

I originally wanted to put the res in this position, but it would not be possible with all the wires from the drive cables and the 24 pin in the way. So I had to find a new place to mount the res.

I decided on the back. Just enough room without hitting the GPU.

Notice I switched the orientation of the 360 rad so the compressions are in the back. I did this so I could fit my optical drive in the front bays, otherwise there would be no room for it along with my fan controller and rack mount. The only bad thing with having the compression fittings in the back, however, is it presses against the +12v EPS connector on this particular board, the UD7. The computer would actually not start up the first time because the fitting was pressing against it at an odd angle, and pushing it slightly out of its socket.. I had to remount the rad and adjust the cables and connector for the +12v EPS cable to correct the problem. The room in the back in this position is very tight.

Here are some more pics of the overall system below, I did not like the angle of the tubing coming out of the res, it was a bit too tight and restrictive, and I don't think I could have closed the cover with it at that angle, so I had to redo the tubing.

I originally had the compressions on the GPU hooked up like this. But when I booted up and check the GPU temp, i was surprised that it was idling at 70c, which scared the crap out of me. I realized that with the compressions in this position, the water was just going straight through to the other side and not reaching the card. So I had to move the position of the fittings to get the water to flow throughout the whole card, which solved the problem.

Here is the reservoir out of the case, and the position which I use to fill it. I originally tried to fill it inside the case with it mounted to the brackets, but some water started dripping over my PSU from my bad aim, which was all bad, but luckily didn't cause any damage. Since then I've always taken the res out of the case before filling it.

Here are pics of it on, looks decent but the tubing was still unsatisfactory, and as you can see below I corrected it to make it cleaner and eliminate restrictions.

As I was fiddling with one of the fans the connector broke off as I was pulling it out of the socket. I was worried at first because I'd never attached connectors to bare wires before, but luckily due to that whole Gentle Typhoon 2150 thing I had read up on how to attach connectors to barebone wires.

Connectors cut off, plastic stripped down to the wires with a knife, wire strippers are $20, I have better things to spend my money on.

I went to Frys and purchased some connectors, and using some pliers, because I didn't want to spend $20 on a crimper, I crimped the pins onto the wires.

I then slid it into the connector, plugged it in an it works great!

Here are pics of the final setup, I redid the tubing to make it cleaner and to eliminate some of the sharp angles. You can sort of see the light violet UV glow from the tubing.