Whole Room Water Cooling Part 2 - The Assembly
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,076 words · ~10 min read
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we are going to liquid cool all five of
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our editing workstations together so those are like core i76 cores and GTX
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Titans then we're going to take that water we're going to take it out of the
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building and then we're going to put that on a massive radiator so we're
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actually taking all that heat and dissipating it outside causing not only
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our systems to run cooler but also our room in which we do our work to be
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cooler we got to build things all right
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build things uh you might want to start on a new case uh yeah is this one all
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secured I guess um outside I don't know if they're
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outside or inside I'm assuming I know that at least I see four of them so
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there's one more
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somewhere it's not in that box so
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yes I realized I was using pliers rather than a wrench to tighten the fittings
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onto the radiators that's what happens when Linus decides that one wrench is
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sufficient for the seven people working on a project some sacrifices that seems
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fine we'll probably have to use some extensions to get all these to where
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they need to go but we have those so that's not a big deal um and then it's
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going to push through yeah and then once you get all these mount wanted I might
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send you and David on a on a field trip to Home Depot to figure out figure out
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how like you might even have to do it there and just get everything mounted
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onto something onto something that we can put up there that'll be strong
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enough and just here if we have to
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sacrifice airf flow to the top fan to
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put four screws into it or something then that's what we have to do
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we're realizing now that our idea for
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hanging the radiators might not work we'll see what happens
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I also have no idea how we're going to get a ladder
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here does Home Depot deliver if you buy
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things maybe we could just buy a ladder
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and then have them deliver it okay possibly okay either way we should make
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that happen pretty soon a ladder yeah
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yeah I can give you that like
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said so we also need the uh metal strips
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and then the tubing will run from the window up
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here down to here all
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right were you planning to take someone with you or do you still need
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to
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uh I don't know let me look at it in a
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sec oh uh radiators yeah I was just doing the
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exiting for the camera oh I wasn't I thought you were leaving no okay
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component selection was something that was really important for us these are the workstations that we're going to be
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using to do the vast majority of our work so they need to be really fast and
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they need to be extremely reliable so most of the systems are running the same
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configuration so they're going to have core i7 4960x 6 core processors and the
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I don't know may do a little bit of overclocking we'll see it won't be much
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they're all going to be running on Aus x79 Deluxe motherboards that's a
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motherboard that we're particularly fond of because it's the one that's been on
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our Graphics test bench since its release and it's been extremely reliable
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there they are all going to be running 32 gigs of Kingston memory just you know
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nothing super fancy and really fast or anything but just nice reliable DDR3
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memory and they're all going to be running and this is where things start
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to get really interesting NVIDIA GTX Titan black editions now I had
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originally reached out to NVIDIA to get GTX 780s because Swift te was our water
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cooling provider and their only full cover water block from this generation
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supports the 780 the 780 Ti the Titan and the Titan black on the reference PCB
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and NVIDIA kind of went well you know don't you guys need double precision and
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all that video memory so they ended up sending over Titan blacks uh fortunately
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because I had already asked for the power supplies from Cooler Master at
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that point the v750 modular power supplies that they're sending over are
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80 plus gold and 750 wats is plenty for
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a six core and a Titan black you don't actually want to go that Overkill
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because if you do you can actually lose some of the efficiency that you're
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trying to gain by going with a highly efficient power supply for the cases we
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went with Cooler Master N600 Luke and I
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actually spent a fair bit of time figuring out a case that was compact
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lightweight enough professional enough looking that it wouldn't look out of
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place in an office and yet capable of holding the Enthusiast grade Hardware we
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needed and most importantly was able to
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mount the reservoir radiator combo unit
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on the top that we wanted from swifttech so that we could have one fewer
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component inside each of the individual system water cooling Loops for when we
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wanted to disconnect from the main Loop and run the systems on their own we went
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with 4960 XS for our workstations because when it comes to video and code
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video rendering more cores really does make a difference these aren't gaming
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rigs these are meant for serious work and having the extra cores is going to
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really help people get their jobs done more efficiently which is very important
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to me we went with Kingston for the memory just because well it all comes
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down to your personal experience and none of us has ever had a bad experience
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with Kingston memory so we reached out to them to sponsor the project and they
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actually agreed to chip in not only 32 gigs of RAM per system but also boot SSD
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so got 240 gig Boot ssds and they also
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chipped in 64 gigs of hyperx memory for
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edel's system because he apparently thinks that he actually needs 64 gigs of
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RAM the PC building process was actually
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kind of fun it takes me back I haven't done a project this big in a long time
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and you know the camaraderie and the pizza and Subway and all that good stuff
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that's all part of that team building experience I thought was uh was pretty
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entertaining one thing that was a bit of a challenge for me is that I ended up
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doing the finishing touches on most of the systems because I water cooled the
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internals of all five of them I was expecting to have some help but Luke
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ended up doing a lot of benchmarking on an Intel CPU launch rather than helping
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me build systems so I had to do uh all
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the the finishing moves myself when we finally took all the systems over to a
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table plugged them into a keyboard and mouse and had 30 seconds or so to make
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sure that they post because they didn't have any water in them it was a huge
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relief for me when each one of them powered on and uh displayed that you
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know all the RAM was detected and all that good stuff I love the wall deal I think
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they're absolutely amazing I'm extremely
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pleased with them um in spite of our best efforts to measure them out and put
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them exactly centered I'm pretty sure the W stealth one is about 3 in off
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center but uh doesn't really matter the
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point is I think they look great they were quite a bit bigger than I was
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expecting I know how big 3 ft is but I never actually held the tape measure up
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to the wall and kind of went yeah we're going to put this one here and this one
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there because we didn't have the copper piping on the wall yet so I didn't
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really know exactly where the drops were going to come down or anything like that
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I left that up to Luke's dad so they're
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a little big but they're super cool I I think the funniest thing about the decal
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process was that it apparently takes three people to apply one wall decal
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they came with two different application methods one was with a a front paper
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piece so you just take the whole thing put it on and then kind of peel that off
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and the spacing is all right and that one was easy but the other one didn't
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come with a front piece cuz it was just a single decal and that one that one was
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a a three-man job if you can support the sticker or
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actually here if I support the sticker can you go cross hold
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on ah okay in that case um we're going
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to capture this moment and then take it away you take them look take it in
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go Nick also does not use drills very
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often and first was screwing things backwards so that was difficult aside
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from the things David told me which I wasn't even aware of Nick had additional
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challenges with the drill he was using a masonry drill bit the first time that I
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saw him using it and I corrected that little embarrassing to realize I was
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using the wrong one but you know I was I was actually pretty out of my element on
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this project I don't have much experience with building anything so I
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think it was just part of the learning process and uh luckily we got it fixed
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at the end of the day now the original plan for the
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radiators on the window was I think three or four triple RADS so we were
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going to have a total of 9 to 12 fans
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and it wasn't going to be that heavy so the idea was to hang it from the facial
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board but we got all the RADS and fans assembled and realized that once we
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filled that with water there was no way
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that was going to hang from the fascia board we came up with a new plan and it
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was you know three trips to Home Depot later including one trip where we had to
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try to buy a ladder which was a challenge because they wouldn't let us
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even try to put it into the rental van and instead we had to pay some guy in
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the parking lot to let us just kind of
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put it in the back of his truck and bring it to the uh to the office for us
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but uh I think the plan we've got now is going to work with all of the radiators
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mounted to the frame uh we did a leak test on it and none of them are leaking
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I am a little bit worried about the head pressure of the pump I had thought and
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it's a long time since I've used that pump I thought it had over 20 ft of head
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pressure it looks like it's 12
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so I'm really uncertain about whether it's going to be strong enough and I
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wonder if we are going to need an additional pump a bubbles yeah there
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goes the
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water is an ass ton of
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water so now we want to over
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here the not Cal down ladies and gentlemen
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leave the world and bring your friends
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Wars and St cuz we
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built all castles in the
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SK as we Flo on
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time cuz virt is where we live live live
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cuz virt is where
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from December 13th to 20th 2014 you can save on select Intel CPUs KN and ssds
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with special holiday rebates from select retailers click now to learn
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more oh my God okay of that for now
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don't worry
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okays actually in the opposite
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direction sh me like an
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earthquake tell me I'm fall