Part 6 - Project Blue Dragon Water-cooling and Case Mod Build Log

More Fans and Fan Testing:

I've been tinkering with my remaining radiator fans spliced, braided and daisy chained them and then done a bit of testing just to make sure my soldering and wiring techniques are up to scratch.

Fans for top radiator

Testing fans

Hopefully I'll be cleaning loop components this weekend and putting some of it in the case. At least once I've washed the car and trimmed the hedge.

Updated 30 October 2011

Cleaning and fitting water-blocks and radiators:

I've spent a good part of the weekend cleaning out my radiators, reservoir, water-blocks and flushing some distilled water through my tubing. This took much longer than I expected and I used about 5 litres of distilled, but at least that's another job out of the way.

Through research and asking questions on different forums it seems that some water-cooling experts use vinegar to clean out their components. I managed to get some pure white vinegar but after reading about possible reactions between acetic acid and nickel plating and after much thought, some more research and a couple of posts on a water-cooling forum I decided to use just pure distilled water.

Although there were a few bits of flaky paint that came out of the rads and some slivers of acetal from the reservoir my components appeared to be very clean.

I also managed to install my fans onto the radiators. The problem I had with the fans clipping the neoprene spacers has been solved by using threadlocker, I applied this to the bolts, rigged the fans up to a power supply so they were running and tightened the bolts until they were just fouling the spacers and then backed them off a few threads, hopefully this will work.

The rest of the time I've spent installing the Koolance blocks onto the graphics cards, along with my sprayed single slot PCI backplates, again this took longer than I thought it would and probably took a good two hours to complete, they look amazing though and I'm really pleased with the result. This is gonna look so cool when it's rigged up in the case.

Koolance VID-NX580 fitted to EVGA graphics card

I've got a bit of a problem fitting the Koolance CPU water block to my Asus P8Z68 Deluxe motherboard.

The CPU-370 water block comes with a mounting bracket that passes through the motherboard from the back, the mount has an insulator and a metal bracket. The insulator and bracket are very close to one of the mounting screws that secure a heat-sink on to the front side of the motherboard.

I've had to cut part of the insulator but the metal bracket looks very close, I've decided to grind of part of the metal bracket just to make sure there is a bit of clearance. I know this is going to look like a bit of a bodge but I have no alternative.

Neoprene spacer trimmed but metal bracket a bit close

Close-up

This is a shot from the front of the board, the screw that is close to the mounting bracket holds this heatsink in place.

The heat-sink from the front of the board

I think I'm getting close to a point now where I can start getting everything installed into the case. I'll post some pictures of the radiators installed in the case later this week, and with a bit of luck some other components installed into the case.

Build log pages: 1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10

Thanks again for looking and as always comments are welcomed, you can leave comments below or on my Blog Home page, here.