Unfortunately I don't have a complete worklog for this beast but it has plenty of backstory dating way back to before September 2002 which is when I bought my "Darkrider" case (a classic Antec design used by thermaltake and some other manufacturers)
This pic was from my system in 2003, in that very same 1 year old "Darkrider":
A little over 2 years ago I had my first watercooling setup, and I was pretty unhappy with it, I went through a number of crap upgrades and ended up with a damaged paint job and a desire to go for something a little more extreme.
This is a pic of my system in July of 2005 before the modding began:
So I started buying my parts, system specs were:
Opteron 175
4GB Corsair XMS
DFI Lanparty UT
Radeon X1900XT
I was working at the Ports of Auckland (New Zealand) at the time, so I took my ageing Darkrider and asked them to cut out the hard drive mounts and put a hole in the front of my case, then I took it to my panel beater friend and asked him to paint it inside and out, I have pics, but it is pointless showing them now because the system was fully built already, so now we move on to my current build.
The plan was to take my existing system and haul it in to 2008, I decided to get an Asus Maximus Formula because the P5B-E I have in my server is bullet proof, so why not go for something extreme from Asus and see how it does, the only problem, no one has stock any more, so, I went for the Maximus II Formula at only $15 more.
I already had a Core 2 Duo E6600 in my HTPC rig plus 4GB of Corsair XMS2 that I originally had in my server, here it all is with waterblock installed:
This is my case with radiator installed, I did a bit of research and ended up buying the Swiftech Apex Ultra plus water cooling kit, the idea was to keep the majority of the water cooling contained within the case, after some measuring I decided that I could get everything in along with a couple of hard drives if I remove the hard drive mounting and mount the hard drives to the back of the case, in order to get the power and SATA cables to the hard drives, holes were cut to allow the cables through, then eight holes were drilled to accommodate the mounting holes on the bottom of the hard drives.
The water pump is basically mounted with the provided double sided tape, I had to find a balance between having the tubing bent as little as possible while not interfering with what ever video card I happen to have installed.
These next pics show how the rad is mounted from the front, also you can see my baybus for controlling fan speed
And with the front plastic installed, as you can see it covers up the nasty looking hole quite well.
Next step was to install the motherboard and connect it up to the loop:
Then all that is left is mounting the waterblock to my Radeon 4870, and installing it:
This pic was from my system in 2003, in that very same 1 year old "Darkrider":
A little over 2 years ago I had my first watercooling setup, and I was pretty unhappy with it, I went through a number of crap upgrades and ended up with a damaged paint job and a desire to go for something a little more extreme.
This is a pic of my system in July of 2005 before the modding began:
So I started buying my parts, system specs were:
Opteron 175
4GB Corsair XMS
DFI Lanparty UT
Radeon X1900XT
I was working at the Ports of Auckland (New Zealand) at the time, so I took my ageing Darkrider and asked them to cut out the hard drive mounts and put a hole in the front of my case, then I took it to my panel beater friend and asked him to paint it inside and out, I have pics, but it is pointless showing them now because the system was fully built already, so now we move on to my current build.
The plan was to take my existing system and haul it in to 2008, I decided to get an Asus Maximus Formula because the P5B-E I have in my server is bullet proof, so why not go for something extreme from Asus and see how it does, the only problem, no one has stock any more, so, I went for the Maximus II Formula at only $15 more.
I already had a Core 2 Duo E6600 in my HTPC rig plus 4GB of Corsair XMS2 that I originally had in my server, here it all is with waterblock installed:
This is my case with radiator installed, I did a bit of research and ended up buying the Swiftech Apex Ultra plus water cooling kit, the idea was to keep the majority of the water cooling contained within the case, after some measuring I decided that I could get everything in along with a couple of hard drives if I remove the hard drive mounting and mount the hard drives to the back of the case, in order to get the power and SATA cables to the hard drives, holes were cut to allow the cables through, then eight holes were drilled to accommodate the mounting holes on the bottom of the hard drives.
The water pump is basically mounted with the provided double sided tape, I had to find a balance between having the tubing bent as little as possible while not interfering with what ever video card I happen to have installed.
These next pics show how the rad is mounted from the front, also you can see my baybus for controlling fan speed
And with the front plastic installed, as you can see it covers up the nasty looking hole quite well.
Next step was to install the motherboard and connect it up to the loop:
Then all that is left is mounting the waterblock to my Radeon 4870, and installing it:
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