1 Year Later! Water cooling loop update in post #5! So I have been deployed (still am) for a while and took some R&R. After about 6 months of picking parts for my next rig following my X79 POW MIA I finalized my list and slowly collected parts. I was also awaiting news of the tech specs of X99 and once they were leaked/released I decided it was best to stick to X79 as good second hand parts were in good price ranges to keep this build sort of on a budget allowing me to put exactly the hardware I wanted into the system with out breaking the bank.
The Guts:
I started by picking up a second hand i7-3960 and a refurbed ASUS X79 RIVE Black Edition. Only disappointment in the Refurb was it was missing the OC Key but I made up for it by picking up the ASUS ROG Front Panel which so far with out much tweaking is a nice feature. I bought the 32gb 2133mhz DDR3 Dominator Kit new and used a coupon code saving $43 off the price on Newegg which was nice. And collected two Second hand GTX Titan SC's. I wasn't so much concerned getting the Ti's, or Blacks or running the chance of choking on 4GB of Vram and considering the two second hand Titans cost me the price of a single Titan Black Hydro Copper I would say I did well in maximizing GPU performance with the cost.
Water cooling was a must and I am looking forward to possibly watercooling my two Titans in the future but for now I stuck with a 240mm rad and the Swiftech Pump/CPU Block to simplify the loop. I had planned on running rigid tubing but after hassles and lack of experience the rigid tubing was taking to much of my R&R time to do so I simply ran some tubing with some fittings I had to spare.
As far as the case was concerned I looked long and hard at my choices. There are some good ones out there but there were some key things I was looking for. Rugged, Simple, Portable, and Black. The Corsair C70 fit the bill nicely. It did take some rough cutting and work to accommodate the massive 240mm rad in the front but it worked out. The case was furnished with a complement of Corsair fans as well.
Largely the build is in a mid state of construction. Future plans for blacking out the Titans and Dominator RAM, as well as some more modifications to the case are still in the works but put on hold as I had to return to my deployment. My future goal is a blacked out interior with some custom cut plexi or sheet metal panels to simplify the interior and help with cable management, and of course run the rigid tubing for the loop. But as it stands from the end of my deployment here is my new workstation/gaming build BLACK.
Test fitting components and getting a feel for running the loop.
The rough chop shop work to accommodate the Alphacool 80mm thick 240mm rad. The C70's front fan holes did not match up to the fan spacing on my rad so they were bored out to help.
Fans installed. Really liking the Corsar fans.
To drastically minimize space I went with a Samsung 840 SSD and a simple 1TB Laptop hdd and a slot load DVD drive. Using the nice drive bracket I was able to fit all three drives into a single 5.25" slot.
The ROG Front Base Panel and the Drive bay installed before the front cover is installed.
Not looking to bad although the Drive bay stands out a bit more than I would like with the off color tone.
The main components are reinstalled as I start really planning and building the loop.
I'll admit its a bit of an odd positioning for the reservoir but it works.
I am going to skip my poor attempts on trying to get the hardline tubing that I must have spent 30+ hours on with no avail and jump to what took 15 minutes to assemble with the flexible tubing. Not going to give up on hardline, just ran out of time.
Leak testing done for a good 16 hours. It passed.
My horrific cable management.
And as I wrap up the build.
Now to turn on the machine I had spent 6 months dreaming and planning.
LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
I was pretty excited to have it running even if it was half complete. Even threw four monitors on it to test the expanse of two 1080ps and two 1440ps. Needless to say, the in-laws were not uber enthusiastic but they tolerated it for the two days I had it on the dining room table.
And some final shots of the build until I return home to finish it.
Thanks for reading! I will update once I complete my work in a few months!
post edited by nikkocortez - 2015/09/20 01:39:00