Thread: Help with water cooling.

Around 5 months ago I put my new computer together. I got a little help setting it up with some people I work with and got them to install the OS/software. On the first boot-up everything was going well for about 5 mins and then the comp crashed. Started it up again and the message that my northbridge over heated came up. This happened a couple more times and I got a little paranoid but thankfully the system somehow stabalized and didn't have the problem when just running basic programs. After I installed a couple games it would always over heat and crash. I looked around on the net and found out that Asus had screwed up with their thermal paste and just used cheap shit on all of their Rampage III Extreme boards. I didn't feel like sending the board back to Asus, took the heatsink off and threw on some Arctic Silver. That helped a bit by dropping the temps to around 80 C... I now live in a hot as hell apt. and its starting to overheat again. This is the 2nd computer I've put together so I have no problem with disasembly/putting it back together. My only problem is that I've never water cooled or know anyone that has. EK Water Blocks makes the right heatsink for my computer so I'll probably go with them. I have an Antec P180B case and would like everything to fit inside if possible.

EK-FB RE3 - Nickel - Rampage III - ASUS - Intel X58 chipset - Full Board Blocks - Motherboard Blocks - Blocks - NB/SB/MOSFETS
EK-Supreme HF - CPU Blocks - Blocks - For the CPU
EK-CoolStream RAD XT (120) - Radiator, I would like to get 2 or 3 of these.

Im thinking that I'll cool the NB/SB/MOSFETS first and CPU 2nd, the reason being that the NB gets up to 100 degrees celcius where as the cpu barely hits 40 right now (its being cooled by a Coolit ECO). I'll probably need 2 meters of tubing (?), not sure which pump to get, I think I know which fittings to get.

If anyone with experience doing this could help that would be very much appreciated, thanks.

Side note: Asus screwed me, and I screwed myself, but I didn't want to go with the 1366 board, I just didn't end up having a choice .

You would likely be better off with a singe 240 or 360 radiator than two or three 120s. The problem with your antec case is that you don't have 3 fan mounts on the top of your case. You would need to cut some holes and mod the top of your case for best performance, and so that you can mount the 240 or 360 radiator with fans. You might be able to squeeze both a 120 and 240 radiator in your case, but you will still need to mod for the 240 to fit. Instead of the EK radiator, you could go with the Black Ice GT Stealth series. I have one of them (120) in my loop along with two Black Ice GTX Xtreme (360 and 120) radiators. The Stealth was much easier to fit on the rear fan of my case along with 2 fans in push/pull.

Black Ice GT Stealth 240 Radiator - Black - FrozenCPU.com

EK makes some great stuff. I have all EK blocks on my CPU and GPUs. Be warned about EK's nickel blocks, as they had some flaking issues due to improper plating and finishing procedures. You may want to go with full copper rather than nickel.

With this loop, you likely won't need to powerful of a pump, so you could go with a bay pump/res combo. You could also go with 3/8" ID tubing since you are only cooling CPU and NB. Compression fittings are nice, but they are expensive. I went with the classic bitspower black barbs and plastic clamps with my loop as I did not feel like spending $200 on compression fittings (I have a lot of components that required fittings).

As for fans for your radiators, the Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1500 RPM fans are the most popular, and also likely the hardest to find in stock anywhere. They are quiet and really provide the best static pressure for radiators. You can get higher RPM Gentle Typhoons (I have some 3000 and 4250 RPM) but they get much louder, so a fan controller is recommended.

Remember that water cooling is impacted by ambient temps, so your hot apartment will impact your overall results. If your apartment stays around 80*F, then you will need to make sure that you have plenty of fans cooling those radiators so the water can stay as cool as possible. Less fans means your radiators will likely add to your heat problem.

On a side note, the P180B case isn't the best for water cooling. Most of the mods I have seen for the P180, they have mounted the radiators extrenally on the back of the case since there wasn't much room for a larger radiator. With the money you are going to spend on this water cooling loop, have you considered just spending another $150 and getting another case? Just some food for thought. There are a lot of inexpensive cases out there that can allow for some larger, more effective water cooling components.

Thanks for the reply. I ended up keeping this case from my last build to save a little money, I didn't expect to run into any heating issues either so I just left the thought of getting another case out of my head. You do bring up a good point about the case though, since its also an older model there are no options for routing cables behind the motherboard which creats a bit of clutter and negates airflow through the case. It would probably be a little more tricky for routing tubing through all the cables as well. What I was thinking was that maybe I could hook up 2 radiators; 1 on the top and the other at the back, I was hoping I could squeeze a third on the front where there is a removable hard drive cage, that way it would pull in the cooler air. I gotta figure out my budget, but I guess I'll look at other cases to see what options are around. I was looking at some just for fun a few months ago but it was just hard to find one I liked as much as my antec. Any opinions on good cases?

Antec P180B has no exhaust side panel fan ? cut a hole & fit an NZXT 200mm fan/FN 200RB/166cfm = job done. The grill is from coolermaster ordered from their site. (i just got to tidy the cut up with an angle grinder/metal file. Trust me the amount of heat that comes out that side fan is enough to heat the house)