Foreword

See this time, I learned from my mistake. I took the parts out before I started working on the case.

Only problem was that then I made another mistake. I trusted another person to do a better job than I would have myself. Lets face it, that person didn't spend the $250 for the case and water cooling parts. If the job looks like junk they probably aren't really going to care.

But aside from that, the first thing you need to do (apart from buying the equipment) is figure out where all the big parts are going to fit. You need to have a:
* Pump
* Radiator
* Fan (for the radiator)
* Pipes
* Resivwa (don't need but I recommend it)
All fit inside that one box or else it becomes too hard to move and then you can't take it to those LAN parties to show off.

Case-less 1

When I first got all of my equipment and began working on the case, I actually cheated. I couldn't wait to see it work.

I set the system up, components and all to see how well the device would run. I was careful to insulate the cards and motherboard from anything and tried to keep the water component quite far away.

I also turned on the water components while the computer was off, just incase they leaked.

Case-less 2

Not a drop came out and I was pleased to see that once I turned the computer on, it ran at a maximum of 1 degree above air temperature.

Actually, even when I turned the water pump off, it still ran cooler than with the normal Intel heat sync.

All I need now is to replace my Celeron 900MHz with a Pentium 3 1GHz and I can over clock it nicely.

The Water Pump

Back to the case stuff.

I marked out the mount points from my water pump on cardboard and tested it first. I then marked and drilled the holes and it fit wonderfully.

I need to remove the 3½" bays to do work on the water pump and resivwa but that isn't very often.

The Radiator & Fan

Next thing I did was mount the radiator and fan. I decided to have mine on top of the case so that it wouldn't get blocked if I put the computer between two other PC's.

It meant I couldn't use my top two 5¼" bays and it screwed up my air flow through the case but with no heat from the CPU it didn't end up mattering.

Make sure your fan has a adjustable speed knob too. You don't need much air flowing through the radiator at all and the quieter your PC the better.

The Radiator & Fan -cont

Here you can see the crappy circle hole cut by a tradesman. I could have done a better job myself and next time I will.

I also removed the long pointy screws when I finished. Didn't look REAL great but unfortunately because I couldn't get to the head of the screws it was the best I could do.

The Yin-Yang cover I purchased with some other cool "accessories" as shown in the next page but I do recommend some sort of free flowing cover for your radiator. Or else it's likely jealous people will poke and break your radiator fins.

Water Pump Power

Now comes the hard part.... Asking your father (who just happens to have a electrical license) to help you install a relay to turn on and power your water pump when you turn your computer on. Or else you have two switches and two power cords for your PC.

I used a double poll, double throw relay to draw switch when the power supply fan started. It then drew 240v strait from the incoming socket and fed it through a nicely mounted plug on the inside of the power supply.

If you can't do this, then don't. Get a 12v converter for your pump!!!

Motherboard Mounting

I then began the task of putting the computer back together and connecting all the pipes.

The CPU uses ArcticSilver as the heat grease and I swear by it. My IBM servers at work actually seem to run a little better with it too..

The chipset cooler is attached with ArcticSilver thermal-epoxy. It didn't end up doing much for the PC as the Celeron wasn't stable when over clocked but if your running the real Pentiums or AMD chips then I strongly recommend you do this.

Connect the Pipes

It's up to you what order you connect your components up however I decided to send water from the pump, through the CPU heat sync, through the chipset heat sync to the radiator and back to the resivwa.

It worked well for me but if you want to cool your graphics chip also, I would recommend putting a splitter and having two runs, one for the CPU one for the GPU.

It should make the cooling better but might be a bit of an overkill.

Connect the Pipes -cont

The good thing with running a resivwa is that filling up your system is easy. You turn it on, and slowly fill it up with water until there are no bubbles left.

I ran normal tap water from Fiji and in 6 months didn't notice any problem with the clariti or anything growing in it.

If you want to it might be wise to put some disinfectant in the water also so that it doesn't start growing mold or anything else. Just make sure it is not corrosive to metal or plastic or else your PC will get a nice cold bath!

Fill Him Up, Turn Him On

Here is a final shot of the PC with everything inide and running well.

I have cable-tied the power cables together that way they don't get so messy but the ribbon IDE cables still cause a bit of problems with air flow.

The whole job took about a month of working around my normal (if you can call it that) job.

If I was to do it again it would probably take me far less time and look much better because most of the hardware I used is now easily available in Australia.

Dinner Time

As you can see at the rear of the photo, when I wasn't working I was water cooling. We only had one table at the house so when we had dinner, the water cooling gear was carefully put to the side and then we would eat.

Not recommended either as food disagrees with computers as much as water does.

A Final Look

A shot taken with a better camera shows what the PC looked like when completely put back together.

BORRIS was a first try to make sure water cooling was feasible and after completing this project it most definitely is.

I still have not done it to my main PC at home yet but I intend to do it if and when I return to Australia.

If you only learn one idea from my site I hope that it is "Read up on and compare products first, make sure you get the type of system that suits how you intend to use it."