ULTIMATE "Overkill" Water Cooled Build a Gaming PC Computer "How To" Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
8,488 words · ~42 min read
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uh
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welcome to the most overkill build guide
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we have ever done this system with all the
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peripherals that we're going to suggest might be appropriate for it is gonna
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cost over six thousand dollars u.s so it
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is not for the faint of heart however if you want nothing but the best of the
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best i can stand pretty confidently behind
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any of the recommendations on this table
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so who is this system for exactly well number one is the components we've
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chosen are optimized for gaming number two is they are optimized for
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overclocking and number 3 is they are optimized for very very quiet operation
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and we've also gone with a full custom liquid cooling setup in order to help us
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achieve the goals of gaming overclocking and quiet operation all at the same time
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now with that said our choices here today were not dictated by performance
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per dollar or any kind of value metric really we're going for the best possible
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performance that we can get and
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that's it for our CPU and motherboard combo we've
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gone with a 4770k unlocked processor
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from Intel so this is on the lga 1150 platform and we've gone with the maxima
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6 extreme motherboard from ASUS now you
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might ask why didn't we go lga 2011 with this system the benefits of lga 2011 are
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more cores more RAM as well as more pci express
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lanes natively but because this is a gaming oriented system and not a
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workstation we aren't going to benefit from those things as much as we'll
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benefit from being able to use a fourth generation haswell architecture because
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most games are lightly threaded workloads compared to a second
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generation sandy bridge architecture which at the time of filming this is the
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highest available on the lga 2011 platform next up is graphics cards we've
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gone with two ASUS GeForce gtx titans
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with coolants water blocks on them the reason we're water cooling them is that
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you can get higher boost clocks if you keep these gpus very cool due to GPU
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boost 2.0 and the reason we've gone with titans as opposed to gtx 690s or Radeon
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7990s is that i personally find that the
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best scaling and the best compatibility comes with two-way graphics card
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configurations of no more than two cards now the reason to use two titans as
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opposed to a single 690 is that you get a six gig frame buffer with gtx titan
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that is not available on any other consumer grade gaming graphics card that
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means particularly when running at high resolutions titan is going to deliver a
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better gaming experience with large textures so now and in the future than
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any other solution on the market storage is very personal but we've gone
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with two Intel 520 series 240 gig ssds
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for a total of almost 500 gigabytes of os fast raid 0 so accelerated SSD
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goodness for our applications then we've gone with two western digital red series
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three terabyte drives in raid 1 for redundancy now we could add more of
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those drives in a more elaborate raid configuration but the most important
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point i want to make here guys is for our os and applications and the things
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that we can always reinstall if we lose them we're using raid 0 which is fast
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but not safe and then to back up that SSD array on a nightly basis at least as
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well as to archive important data we're using a safe raid 1 array on a raid
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optimized drive such as the wd red
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also in line with our gaming theme is the use of an ASUS zonar phoebus sound
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card it's very similar to the zonar zentz that i've been using for quite a
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while now except it's a little bit more gaming optimized so it has a front
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control pod you can plug your headphone microphone into it uses all three and a
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half millimeter connectors and it always gets the latest software updates from
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ASUS for their gaming optimized features so my understanding is that their new
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radar will be coming to it soon which is a visual indicator of where sounds are
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coming from which is kind of neat we're using premo chill primo flex lrt
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advanced tubing my personal favorite type of tubing it's awesome we're using
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coolant's 3 8 inch id 5 8 inch od
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compression fittings what i like about these is the fact that they can be
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wrenched tight or hand tightened and they look outstanding we are also using
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a phobia gold-plated reservoir which looks pretty la bling bling as well as a
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coolant 380i CPU block which is one of the best performing CPU blocks on the
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market the last couple water cooling components are a swiftech
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mcp655 pump it's really the only one i recommend and a phobia gold-plated
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reservoir for peripherals these are so
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personalized but these are some pretty good general recommendations we've gone
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with a logitech g710 plus it uses cherry
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mx brown switches logitech's excellent software and even includes along with
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the media keys and programmable g keys an o-ring mod on every single switch
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making them even a little bit softer to type on we've also got a deathadder 2013
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although a logitech g700s would be another great pairing for that
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particular keyboard the thing people like about the death adder 2013 is it's
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one of the highest sensitivity optical mice on the market as opposed to laser
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mice so there's none of those weird acceleration issues finally for our
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headphones we've gone with the custom one pro from bayer dynamic and we
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recommend checking out the mod mic if you need something to go along with it
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or perhaps something like a blue snowball which is an excellent desktop
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microphone and last but not least the elephant in the room
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right here the 900d pretty much the only case maybe not the only but one of the
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only cases in existence capable of housing this type of a machine
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especially all those radiators the first
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step in any successful build endeavor is ensuring that you're at a static safe
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workstation so i don't recommend working on carpet and in our case we're working
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on a mod matte extreme i recommend using an anti-static wrist or ankle strap i
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prefer to keep it on my ankle so it's out of my way and last but not least
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you'll need a multi-bit screwdriver just a phillips head will work for most basic
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builds but with this one things got a little bit crazy and we ended up needing
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a power drill and some other things as well but you can do most of what you're
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about to see with just the stuff i've outlined already
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this step is really really important guys pay close attention particularly
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with a liquid cooled build it is extremely important to build the system
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outside of the box outside of the case just like we've done in the past on our
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build guide so you can check that out there because the last thing you want is
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to spend hours and hours putting it together only to have it not boot up
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because something was dead on arrival particularly for graphics cards now we
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liquid cooled these graphics cards in a separate video so you can check that out
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but you don't want to install a water block on it only to find out that it is
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defective so install it with an air cooler run the whole system do your
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burn-in tests then it is time to
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actually assemble the computer for the sake of keeping this video a little bit
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shorter we're not going to do a step by step on it this time around though guys
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so just check out one of our previous build guides for how to build it outside
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of the case i recommend using your motherboard box as an anti-static
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workstation for this step once you've done your safety build outside of the
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case grab all the components that you need out of the motherboard box so that
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you're not in and out of there all the time so all the SATA cables you need to
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install all of your drives the i o shield which you'll need for the back of
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your case as well as the wireless module that also acts as an ngff upgrade slot
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and the antenna that goes with it this is a cool antenna it actually attaches
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magnetically to your case or anything else that's nearby this piece is
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optional this is ASUS oc panel it comes with the maximus 6 extreme it allows you
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to access some tweaking options whether you mount it outside of the case or
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orient it this way and mount it in a five and a quarter inch bay so that it
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can sit and operate in a more basic mode from inside the case there's also a
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custom cable that goes with that speaking of custom cables the last thing
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we'll need is an sli bridge because we are going to be running two graphics
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cards now it's time to install the CPU note
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carefully the orientation of the golden triangle on the corner of the CPU as
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well as the little plastic triangle on the socket cover you're going to want to
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line those up when you're installing it next pull up the retention ARM you don't
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need to remove the plastic cover yet position the CPU inside the socket
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carefully give it a little wiggle to make sure it's in the correct spot then
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all you have to do is let the ARM come
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down slowly sliding the retention clip under the nut
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then push down pull out and lock it
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under the retention ARM the little plastic cover will pop off and then your
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CPU is installed water cooling is all a little different
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so follow the instructions that's really really important this particular block
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comes with a large silicone isolating pad as well as a hefty metal back plate
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if it's not oriented correctly on the back of the board you could have
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problems later on so make sure that the cutout notch has the shape of the CPU
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back plate sort of corresponding to it so just be careful is all i'm really
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saying thermal compound application now i prefer ic diamond over other thermal
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compounds but just for lulls i pulled out an ancient tube of ocz ultra five
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plus just to show you the method just apply about the size of an uncooked
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grain of rice in a line down the middle of the CPU and you're golden
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now that back plate's on there but it's not secure at all in order to get it
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firmed up take four plastic washers and put them over each of the four posts
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followed by the four thumb nuts now these ones should go down
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enough that they're quite tight because these are what's going to keep the posts
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in place now that it's secure you can put the CPU block down on top of the CPU
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followed by four more plastic washers four springs and finally the four large
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thumb nuts now these ones you're going to want to tighten in a cross pattern
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and don't wrench them tight don't go so tight that the board is flexing and the
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CPU block is flexing it just has to be tight enough that it makes good contact
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with the processor underneath finally put two of the compression fittings onto
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the CPU block no need to put the top pieces on yet because we haven't
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installed tubing yet and that's pretty much it for your CPU block RAM
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installation not too complicated guys now do note that this particular board
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the maximus 6 formula has tabs on only one side so i recommend putting the
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non-tab side in first followed by pressing firmly on the tab side until it
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locks into place we have four dimms so we're going to do this
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four times
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with the tool-less release in the back we can take off the windowed side panel
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of the 900d as always i recommend stashing your side panels somewhere safe
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preferably inside the box that your case came in with the foam in between so that
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they don't get damaged in any way next up you can open up the basement by
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pressing the little tab here and pulling it open that's where you'll find the box
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with all the hardware that you need to install pretty much anything you could
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possibly want to in the Corsair 900d
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now the first thing we're actually going to install is our i o plate which as
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with any case is installed simply by aligning it
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with the hole at the back of the chassis and then popping
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each of the four corners in individually
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the mpcie combo 2 card acts as both a
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wireless module this is wireless ac as well as an ngff expansion slot so you
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can simply plug it in in the top of the board here
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screw it in from the back then you're ready to mount the board
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once that's done you'll see that the motherboard standoffs for our standard
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atx size board are already applied so
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all we need to do is take the appropriate screws out of the box of
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screws and put nine screws through the board into the back of the motherboard
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tray you know how your room kind of gets messier before it gets cleaner this is
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the part where we actually have to disassemble things before we can
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continue assembling them so we're going to take out the rear fan we're going to
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take off the front aluminum plate and take off the front fans by undoing the
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screws we are going to remove all three
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of the existing triple drive cages that are in the 900d by removing the screws
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at the back and finally we're even going to remove the screws that are holding in
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the additional mount point for another one of those drive cages remember you
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can get them optionally now we have a
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clearer idea of what we're dealing with now this my friends is when things start
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getting really serious business so just for the sake of knowing where it is so
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we don't accidentally install any radiators that interfere with it we're
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going to put the power supply in now so i recommend putting the power supply in
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on the side of the case that is nearest to the motherboard tray the reason for
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that is it's shorter runs to the components particularly up the back of
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the tray however this case does support dual power supplies and you can put it
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in whichever bay you prefer now mounting radiators most of the
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radiator mounts in this case are native however there are two pieces of metal
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that were hidden that we actually took the screws that hold them in place out
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when we were removing the cage mounts on the bottom of the case one of them is
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cleverly labeled down and the other is cleverly labeled up
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these simply mount to the case using little
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hooks as then and then screws to hold them in place permanently once they're
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in these are what are going to allow us to mount that quad radiator that goes on
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this side now we're ready to start physically planning the layout of our
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loop in terms of where we want to install fittings radiators and tubing
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this is the point in the build where you want to actually make sure all of your
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carefully laid plans are even going to work take those radiators do quick test
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fits make sure that you not only have room for the radiators and graphics
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cards and other bulky components but also that you have room for the
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associated cables and fittings and tubing that's going to go with them
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because even the best laid plans well it is possible to make mistakes
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once you've done your test fit it's a great idea to take some of the little
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difficult hard to reach connectors and plug them in now before you put in your
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graphics card and you have a bunch of tubing running all over the place and all that stuff so we've done some
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rudimentary cable management with them here on the back panel then we're going
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to plug in basically just the easy stuff front usb 3 front usb 2 front panel
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audio as well as our front connectors
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for our power switch reset switch and indicator leds
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next up remove the five pci slot covers that correspond to where you want to
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install your cards guys there's no shame in consulting the manual at this point
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to find out which slots are most optimal for the kinds of cards you're installing
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for that matter even for that last part where you're installing the front panel
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connectors guys it's all in the manual usually in a little leaflet quick start
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guide that you can consult so once we've pulled those off we're going to install
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the sound card first just because that one's not in the way of anything else
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we're doing then this is where things start to get a little bit tricky because
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with our two graphics cards we're going to be using a special sli fitting that
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allows us to put them very close together which you normally wouldn't be
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able to do with fittings and tubing in between so once we've done that we're
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going to rearrange all the other fittings according to the test fit we
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did before and where we want pipes coming in and out of what is now a
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single graphics card assembly we're going to take that whole thing install
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it into the two slots then put the thumb
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screws back in and our expansion cards are now done
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the next thing i like to do is install the radiators where they're going to go
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according to our overall design for flow
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so the first thing you'll have to do is remove the top cover on the 900d there's
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a little tab in here you basically put your thumb in there and then push
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forward towards the front of the case and that comes off revealing the
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radiator mount there we go
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up there on the top then you're going to have to take each
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of the radiators and plug all the extra holes that you do not need okay we're
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going for slightly positive air pressure here guys so basically on the bottom
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in the basement we're going to have air moving through towards the power
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supplies intake and then out the other side then up in the top we're gonna have
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three intake fans that are not on a radiator behind the drive cages pulling
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air in we're gonna have our rear fan here pulling air in and then we're going
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to have four fans up here on the top pushing air out so this should give us a
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slightly more intake than we have exhaust allowing for slightly positive
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pressure which usually results in less
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dust buildup radiator mounting can be a bit of a bear
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and a big part of the problem is that these guys can't all standardize on
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something they've all got a different way they expect you to attach the fans
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to the rad so alphacool includes two different lengths
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of screws with their rads we're going to be using the shorter of the two now be
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careful when you're mounting fans directly to the radiator that you orient
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the labels correctly if that matters to you as well as the direction that the
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wire leads are coming off for optimal cable management it's going to be
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difficult to undo this later and redo it after the fact for our bottom quadruple
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120 millimeter radiator what we did was we mounted all the fans directly to the
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rad and then because alpha cool again that whole standards can't be
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consolidated thing did not include short screws the good news is they use the
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same threads as an optical drive so we were able to use some of the screws
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included with our 900d to mount this rad down here in the bottom for our rear 120
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millimeter again we weren't able to use the included screws so what we ended up
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using was more of the case screws however we had to use a washer here
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because the holes at the back of the case were so wide that the narrow heads
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that were included with both the rad screws and the included case screws went
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right through them because they're intended for fan screws then we used one
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of the shorter length screws to mount the fan directly to the rad for our top
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mounted radiator again we're going for a pull configuration here we used the
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longer screws because now we're going all the way through a fan all the way
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through the case and into the radiator in order to get them mounted now this is
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again a spot where you're going to want to do any test fits that you think you
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need to do for example here in the back we were not able to orient the 120 ml
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rad in what i would consider to be the optimal orientation with the barbs up
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this makes it easier to bleed the air out of it instead we had to turn it
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around and it was still a very tight fit with our tubing to ensure that we were
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actually going to be able to get water up to that top radiator removing the top
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panel on the 900d is pretty simple once you get the hang of it just flip the tab
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under here slide it off to the left hand side of the case if you're facing it
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from the front and that's how you get access to mounting that top rad
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and this goes to show you guys that no matter what you do there's bound to be a
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minor oopsie we had to take our power supply out and the reason for this is
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with it in we realized we couldn't access the fittings on the quad radiator
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in the basement because it was too close so we weren't going to be able to
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install tubing on it what we'll have to do instead is install our dual radiator
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using the long screws washers and then going through a fan into the rad this
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gives us a very natural airflow path in the bottom of the case here so you can
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see we're pulling air through this way and then pulling it out this way so it's
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all going in the same direction not fighting itself and then once we've done
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that we can run all the tubing run all the fittings in the basement including
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getting tubing installed on the pump which is going to go next to the dual
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rad right down here then we can put our power supply back in
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and start getting the cables hooked up part of getting the basement of the case
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plumbed correctly is installing the reservoir which
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actually is going to go up here by the pci slots now guys get a pen ready write
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this down the order of your loop does not matter you go CPU block GPU block
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radiator doesn't matter we're talking maybe a degree or two of
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difference but what does matter is having the pump pulling water directly
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from your reservoir that way it can never run dry now we used the flexible
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fitting options on this particular phobia gold-plated res in order to make
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sure that we were going to have clearance to install our tubing so it
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has an inlet on the top which i would actually recommend using as a fill port
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otherwise you're going to get trickling noise and then it has two different
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fittings that come out at about sort of 70 degrees on the sides and two on the
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bottoms it's important to use one on either side because there's a baffle in
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the middle of the reservoir that keeps the cyclone effect from occurring
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sucking air into your pump making it louder and less efficient
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phobia ships a pretty robust mounting system with this particular res now we
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could drill holes in fact later on in this build we are going to drill holes
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and stuff but for this one it wasn't really necessary we were able to use
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some of the vent holes at the back of the case in order to get our two c-clips
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installed then all we had to do was put the plastic washer on then put on the
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metal nut tighten it with a screwdriver and we were ready to snap our reservoir
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into place now the one challenge here is that once you've already got all of your
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expansion cards installed you're going to have to remove your reservoir to change them but you probably won't be
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changing them that often so you might want to try and find a different place
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to put the res this was the place that we found that made sense
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when you're actually installing tubing some people believe in sort of putting
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it in the spot and like measuring it and then cutting to measure i don't what i
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usually do is i install one end of it so remember guys you've already got the
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fitting component of your compression fitting screwed into whatever component
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it happens to be whether it's a block or radiator so make sure before you put the
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tubing on it you actually put the retention ring on top of the tubing
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otherwise you're going to have to run it all the way in from the other end now go
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ahead and install it on there tighten it down finger tight pretty much as far as
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you can go remember that's holding it on and compressing it for a good seal then
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line it up run it to where it needs to go and just mark it with your finger
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then pull it out and cut it with either a tubing cutter or a very sharp pair of
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scissors if you have dull scissors you might end up with an uneven cut which
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can potentially cause leaks and particularly in cases where you're not
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using compression fittings it can look cosmetically not very appealing now
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some people do this some people don't i like the d5 pump or the mcp655 from
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swiftech unfortunately it has half inch barbs integrated you can buy an
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aftermarket top that you can change out the fittings on but i usually don't do
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that what i do is i stretch my 3 8 tubing over the half inch barbs it does
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require a little bit of elbow grease however there is a couple tricks that
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you can use to make it easier number one is boil a cup of water then soak the
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tubing in it for even about five seconds and then try and go at it if that then
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doesn't work then soak it again stretch it in four
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different directions using a pair of pliers soak it again and try one more
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time now i can pretty much guarantee you'll be able to get it on there
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there's one trick though guys remember no matter how hard you've stretched the
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tubing i always recommend using a retention mechanism of some sort whether
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it's a plastic clip a compression fitting or even a zip tie so make sure
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that you put something on there to prevent leaks in the future
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it should be noted that if the tubing routing in the basement looks a little
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weird it's because i'm trying to have water go in the bottom and out the top
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of radiators whenever possible it makes it much easier for the air to travel up
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through it and then be driven out of it even though we don't have a super
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powerful pump considering the fact that we have so many components in this
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system now when it comes to wiring up the fans this is the point where i would
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be doing it now you have a ton of different options there's advanced stuff
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like the m-cubed t-balancer which is what i use in my own personal machine
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allows advanced software curves and stuff like that it's expensive and it's
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quite difficult to set up but for what we're doing here we're going for a much
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simpler option we're using swiftex pwm splitter which can actually be used to
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have pwm control on up to eight fans
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with a single motherboard header and a single molex power connector very cool
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little device but we're actually going to use it in an even simpler fashion so
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rather than running the wires up to the motherboard or anything like that we're
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just going to plug it in via molex and use the included low noise adapters that
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come with our Noctua fans we'll be using extension cables as well as those
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adapters to hook up the three front fans and the six that are on the radiators in
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the basement all right so we jam that power supply
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back in there it's a little bit tricky but she's in there no problem we've now
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got modular cables to deal with and some implementations are better than others
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so we have an aftermarket individually sleeved cable kit for this power supply
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but that doesn't change the fact that i like the way they've done their modular cables in general so instead of just
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giving you you know 10 connectors on the back of the power supply and 10 cables
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and you can unplug or plug in as many as you want Corsair goes well they bought a
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1200 watt power supply they're probably going to need most of the cables anyway
26:21
so instead they give you options in terms of what kinds of connectors you
26:25
want so for example the pci express connectors you can either have a single
26:31
to dual connector so that's specifically for running to a graphics card so that
26:35
you don't have to run two discrete cables or you can have a one-to-one
26:39
connector which is great for things like an auxiliary connector on a motherboard
26:44
or a six pin pci express connector on say for example a sound card like what
26:49
we've got so we can have the best of both worlds we don't have extra you know
26:52
plugs hanging off of things and we don't have to run extra wires we ran our 24
26:57
pin in pretty much the standard fashion it should be noted that this case has a
27:00
ton of cable management room so we were able to get away with crossing you know
27:05
connector harnesses in the back and we're still going to be able to close the side panel but if you have a case
27:09
that doesn't have quite so much room you're going to want to be careful to make sure everything's laying flat in
27:13
the back and use cable ties to tidy things up last but not least we
27:16
connected our 8-pin connector to the CPU up in the well not to the CPU to the
27:20
motherboard but it's the CPU connector and it should be noted we only plugged
27:24
in one eight pin CPU connector even though it has another spot for an
27:28
additional four pin that additional four pin is optional and it is my personal
27:33
belief that on an lga 1150 platform unless you go on liquid nitrogen there's
27:36
no way you're going to exceed the current that can be delivered by a single eight pin so we're going to leave
27:41
it at that and there you have it my friend that is
27:45
how you install five radiators in the 900d and still
27:50
have room for two hard drive cages giving you a total of four
27:54
three and a half inch drives or two and a half inch drives potentially so what
27:58
we had to do was we had to mark off a couple spots on the motherboard
28:02
tray so normally you wouldn't put a radiator there but we were like well we
28:06
want to put more radiators we want more drives no big deal so we marked off a
28:10
couple spots there discovered that that really wasn't strong enough to hold up
28:13
our radiator with the three Noctua fans loaded onto it of course in the optimal
28:17
configuration we've pre-installed all of our fittings and all of that good stuff
28:22
so we added a third mounting point just to the side of the drive cages we found
28:26
with three mounting points it was good enough but if we could get some other
28:29
more different custom brackets we could probably actually affix it to this
28:33
radiator on the top here as well and then we could get a really
28:38
really solid mount for it but guys honestly we're going to take this build
28:41
apart when we're done so you can come up with something a bit more elegant we
28:44
just used l brackets from home depot with some self-tapping screws to drill
28:49
into things as well as little washers for making fine adjustments to the fit
28:53
and finish to make sure that it's sitting there correctly we're wiring up
28:57
all the fans in the top of the system so the four on the top the one at the back
29:02
and the three in our motherboard tray radiator to the
29:06
motherboard itself so the ones in the bottom are all going to be static
29:09
according to how we installed them and the ones on the top will be able to be
29:13
controlled using ai suite just as a reminder guys we're running two Intel
29:17
520 series ssds in raid zero and we're running two wd three terabyte
29:23
red drives so these are nas or raid operation optimized drives in raid 1 for
29:29
safe storage because we have more bays we can either leave them for now and
29:33
expand our storage later or we could actually run up to four drives right off
29:38
the bat for our storage array in fact you could probably run six and just hide
29:42
these ssds somewhere if you wanted but for the sake of doing things by the book
29:46
which we haven't done until now we're going to install them in the actual
29:49
drive cages now you've got a couple of different options here for installation
29:53
so number one is the two different types of SATA cables that are included with
29:56
your board they're straight ones and right angle ones go with on an
30:00
individual drive basis whatever makes for the most natural run without kinking
30:04
the cable then for power we unfortunately don't have as many options
30:08
as i would like Corsair only includes
30:11
four port harnesses for SATA power i wouldn't have minded seeing them include
30:16
a couple of two port harnesses so you have the option to use those because
30:19
we're gonna use a single 4-port one to run to our drives here in the front of
30:23
the case then for our optical drive up in the top we're going to have to run a
30:28
full additional 4-port harness in order
30:31
to get power up there it should be noted once again that i do consider a blu-ray
30:35
drive highly optional in a modern computer but if you want to have it then
30:40
there you go we're going to show you how to install it here just like that
30:44
and finally my friends it is time for tubing we're close to the end when you
30:49
are sort of eyeballing out your runs and measuring them out don't cut extra it's
30:55
actually quite difficult to cut the last sort of three millimeters of extra
30:59
tubing that you have that makes it bulge out funny so you're better off to just
31:03
try to cut it as close as you possibly can and then
31:06
you know just kind of suck it up and use another piece if it ends up being too
31:11
short because odds are excellent that especially if you work from longest
31:15
pieces to shortest pieces that you'll be able to use that slightly too short
31:19
piece somewhere else so you're not wasting the entire length of it
31:24
so i did bring in 20 feet of tubing to do this but we managed to get this whole
31:28
thing plumbed up with less than 10 feet of tubing which is uh
31:32
kind of fantastic now there are a few things
31:36
needed that few things i want to point out about the tubing process while you
31:40
guys watch this accelerated video number one is go with the bend of the tubing
31:46
never try to fight it it's much more likely to kink if you go against the
31:50
natural bend that has been there since it was originally produced and put onto
31:55
a spool number two is that this is one of the things i've actually come to
31:59
really enjoy about the 900d is there's the space to do what we're doing here
32:03
you can actually run tubing behind the motherboard tray on this case
32:07
and get away with it there's enough space whoa it's heavy there we go oh
32:14
that was hard there's enough space to have tubing back here
32:17
and have wires and all that and you're still
32:20
going to be able to close that side panel which is pretty unique there's not
32:25
too many cases out there wow it's heavy though that are going to
32:30
be quite like that all right next thing i wanted to mention
32:33
is that yeah the way we did it is not really
32:38
that optimal buying all straight fittings and then just kind of going
32:42
with the flow and making it work it doesn't work necessarily as well as
32:46
buying things like angled fittings that's the way that you might be able to
32:50
get cleaner runs for example here around the CPU socket without having so many
32:55
unsightly bends but i think we did pretty well considering the lower cost
33:00
of straight fittings i mean bearing in mind we already spent about a thousand
33:03
dollars on the liquid cooling setup for this computer like do we need to spend
33:06
another couple hundred on fittings i don't know it's up to you but we went
33:10
with pretty basic fittings and uh
33:13
and then the fact as well that we don't have to do like a google sketchup model
33:17
of the system just to find out if the fittings are all going to actually work together the way that we intend
33:22
now before filling the system there are a couple of different schools of thought
33:26
for a couple of things number one is preparing the system so many people
33:30
believe in cleaning out the radiators with hot water and a mild vinegar
33:33
solution before you even assemble anything it is a good idea there can be
33:37
residue left over in them from manufacturing that is easy to remove if
33:41
you flush prior to building the other thing is which coolant to use i
33:47
personally am an advocate of colored tubing with clear distilled water simple
33:53
no dyes or anything fancy like that if you want to have a biocidal agent i
33:58
suggest putting a chunk of silver into your reservoir and just calling that a
34:03
day as opposed to using clear tubes and a bunch of dyes i've just seen them gunk
34:06
up too many times i'm sure there's good ones out there but that is my personal
34:10
approach this is just a random bottle from some professor coolant that i use
34:14
to put distilled water in you can get it at the grocery store it's pretty inexpensive what we can all agree on
34:20
however is the procedure of using a separate
34:24
power supply or unplugging your existing power supply from all the sensitive
34:28
components inside in order to prime the system so that is to say what
34:34
you'll do is you'll get like some kind of conductive piece of
34:38
something so i usually bend a paper clip you bridge the green pin
34:42
on your power supply and if you can't find which one's the
34:46
green pin on your power supply say for example if you have a custom sleeved one
34:49
like this then you can check out manuals online or diagrams online so you bridge
34:54
the green pin with any black pin on the power supply then you are able to easily
34:59
control the on off functionality with the switch
35:03
at the back it will automatically turn on any time you have the on switch on at
35:07
the back so what that means is you can plug this into just the pump and you it
35:11
allows you to do the quick cycles that you need in order to fill the loop so
35:16
basically what you'll do in this case i've taken an extra scrap piece of
35:20
tubing and i've attached another fitting to the top of my reservoir so that i can
35:23
fill it so you'll fill up your reservoir as much as you possibly can
35:29
just like this then cycle the power on so that all the
35:33
liquid comes out of the reservoir and is taken somewhere else in your loop your
35:37
pump should be gravity fed if you've set up your loop correctly it should be the
35:41
next component and nowhere for air bubbles to get trapped then what you do
35:45
is fill it up again cycle the power again and as soon as that res is empty
35:48
turn the power back off and rinse and repeat
35:53
rinse because water
35:57
near the end of your filling adventure you're going to get to a point where the
36:01
reservoir isn't full yet but the water cycles continuously
36:06
without the pump sounding like it's not working properly you never want your
36:10
pump to run dry that's really bad but once we get to this point what we can do
36:14
is we can actually leave the system running while we top up the reservoir
36:18
the rest of the way i recommend leaving it in this state without any of the
36:22
components actually powered on and risking getting shorted out and damaged
36:26
for at least 6 to 24 hours maybe even 48 hours if you
36:30
want to be super sure what you can do to prevent water from dripping under any
36:34
loose fittings or anything like that on your valuable components is use folded
36:38
up paper towel then come back and inspect it frequently to see if anything
36:42
is dripping water and leaking inside your system now we were careful to
36:47
install all of our SATA cables into the Intel chipset on this particular
36:51
motherboard the Intel chipset SATA ports they're all say to six with this
36:55
generation of products so you don't have to worry about which two of the Intel
36:58
ones to get the best speed out of your ssds for example setting up raid 0 is a
37:03
snap once you've got raid enabled within the BIOS all you do is press ctrl i to
37:08
enter the configuration utility where we can configure our ssds as raid 0 and our
37:14
hard drives as raid 1. from there we can install Windows off of a usb drive or
37:18
off of a cd and i've covered this topic before in the past
37:22
guys we're finally done here she is
37:27
was it worth all the work i guess it's up to you was it worth all
37:31
the money i guess that's up to you too is this the system i would build
37:34
personally the answer is no
37:38
but what was the benefit why did we put 17 Noctua fans running at low RPM well
37:43
here here's my microphone i'm going to point that at the system
37:48
you can't hear it over the refrigerator that's running like two meters to my
37:52
right that way it is extremely quiet it also runs extremely cool in spite of the
37:57
fact that we haven't even optimized this 900d for airflow by removing things like
38:03
these solid covering panels that are down on the bottom we have done
38:07
absolutely nothing to optimize the build and it still runs like a champ that gtx
38:12
titan has been running the combustor overclocking stress test for about 15
38:18
minutes now and the GPU is running at 40 degrees celsius
38:22
unfreaking believable so that is the point of a system like this it's totally
38:27
overkill it's totally unnecessary you
38:30
could get similar performance for half the price well maybe not half the price
38:34
but significantly less so for all of you in the comments saying oh he could have
38:38
done yes i know absolutely i know the point of this was we wanted to show you
38:43
guys the most overkill build we could so we put five radiators in a 900d we put
38:48
dual titans in a 900d we put a 4770k in
38:52
there we loaded it up with 32 gigs of 2400 megahertz memory but again
38:57
kind of unnecessary but it's for fun it's for looks i personally
39:02
think it looks awesome the only things i'd change probably about the appearance
39:06
are maybe i'd take out the optical drive and that was also the reason we didn't
39:10
install the oc panel from ASUS so that fits into a five and a quarter inch bay
39:14
you can run this externally as well so you can just sit it on your desk or or
39:17
you can install it in the five and a quarter inch bay if you don't mind that i would also probably add some bit
39:22
phoenix alchemy lighting strips i really like these the the defect rate on them
39:26
is very low compared to other led strips that i've used in the past where some of
39:29
the leds will start to fade very quickly we've had very good luck with the
39:33
alchemy ones so we definitely recommend them around here and uh man guys i'm
39:38
gonna just sort of ramble for a bit here well you can check out some glam footage
39:42
of the system here there were some challenges with this system anytime you
39:46
strive to do something that's really out of the ordinary you can expect there to
39:49
be some hiccups i wasn't actually expecting to get all five radiators in
39:53
it at first because i had kind of looked it up and i'd gone oh okay supports five
39:56
radiators didn't really think about it that much you know called up alphacool i
40:00
was like hey guys i need this this this and this and then i got it here and i
40:03
realized the triple in the front doesn't fit natively if you also have a
40:07
quadruple and a double in the bottom so that was where we came up with the idea
40:11
to mount it on the motherboard tray which actually is pretty effective
40:15
because it's going to be able to take in some of the intake air from those front
40:19
three 120 millimeter fans and it gives you still more radiator surface area we
40:25
also had some definite challenges with respect to
40:28
fittings and water cooling tubing and getting everything to fit just right
40:31
because it's uh it's pretty
40:35
tight in there but it was a lot of fun to build we actually didn't undo that
40:39
many things along the line and i'm extremely pleased with how effectively
40:44
we were able to fill up a 900d to the point where it doesn't look empty in
40:48
there which is what most of the 900d builds i see look like they just look
40:52
like the case is so big and there's not enough in there we were able to fill it
40:55
up with stuff that actually made sense like what i'd probably do as well is i'd
40:59
use all six of those front bays for hard drives and then i moved the ssds around
41:03
to the back of the motherboard tray where there is still tons of room
41:06
because there's just a ton of cable management room in this particular case
41:11
it's a very cool build but it's also extremely heavy to the point where i'm
41:16
not exactly some kind of muscle man so me saying i can't move it might not mean
41:21
anything to you but i would have a difficult time moving this system around
41:25
unaided it has five radiators hard drives heavy copper water blocks and it
41:31
has over two liters of coolant in it so it is
41:35
extremely extremely heavy thank you guys
41:39
very much for checking out our overkill build guide with the haswell 4770k
41:45
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