Antec 900 "Tardis" Project

Date Log; August 23, 2007

Part Two

It is not difficult to imagine that with the "big bits" such as radiators fitted to this case that the already small amount of usable space has been used up. The problem is how to fit the remainder of the parts such as the pump, reservoir and tubing required to bring our beast to life into the case.

In the first part of this project we looked at some of the space saving measures we would be using. The first measure to be considered is the tubing size we will use. If we use 7/16" tubing we have a ready made answer to our space saving questions. By using 7/16 tubing we gain quite a bit of space that would normally be taken up by the more "chunky" 1/2" tubing. Another alternative that will save even more space is 3/8" tubing. So what is so remarkable about 3/8" tubing? The answer is quite simple 3/8 bends well in confined spaces and does not markedly differ in performance to regular 7/16" tubing. With those credentials we have made the decision to use 3/8" tubing. Next stage is tubing out and deciding on the parts we are likely to be cooling.

Being a bit of a purist installing water cooling is simply water cooling anything that was previously air cooled. The usual contenders in the firing line are the CPU,GPU and Chipset. On this occasion though we will not be water cooling the hard drive as it is already serviced by fan cooling in the lower caddy.

Tubing Out

To start out the tubing process we prefer to loose fit blocks to all the parts that are going to be liquid cooled and plan the pathway the coolant will travel to form the loop.

We have started setting out the flow pathway in the picture shown below. The tubing position used is still likely to be adjusted at this stage due to other issues like final pump placement. By doing this we can highlight any difficult areas where additional tubing support is required to reduce the risk of kinking of the tubing over time. One perennial issue is the short radius turn between graphics card and chipset. Care should be exercised in this area to avoid gradual tubing compression. The use of helicoil's or hard bridges of solid tubing may be required to maintain the internal shape of the tubing.

Another option is to look at altering the inlet and outlet tubing to the various water blocks to see if the radius can be enlarged thereby reducing the stress on the tubing walls. The graphics card to chipset tube out is a good point of illustration so it may be worth looking at the layout here. The current tubing layout is shown below.

In this picture you can see the early stages of tube wall compression or "flattening" which will most likely form a tubing kink over time.

By moving the tubing from its current position to the other barb on the GPU block the pressure on the tubing wall is relieved and the loop will flow correctly with less stress being placed on the pump. So simple really but so often missed in the rush to get the machine up and running.

The final part of the tubing out process is the installation of the pump and reservoir into the space we have chosen so its time to look at pumps and placement options.

Pumps and other Things.

There are two vacant spaces for our pump to fit in this case. Both of these places are size restrictive being either at the rear of the power supply or above the hard drive caddy. In either position we are limited by the pump that can be fitted. The pump of choice for this type of application would be the Laing D5 pump or preferably its smaller brother the Laing DDC.

The Laing D5

The Laing D5 presents a bit of a problem in that it has pre-molded 1/2" inlet and outlet barbs. If you were to use 7/16" tubing this would of course not be an issue. We took the position that in using 3/8" tubing we would not be able to successfully fit our tubing without the use of space occupying and unsightly tubing reducers. So as we have done previously we modified the pump instead. Off with the 1/2" barbs and then modify the inlet and outlet to adapt 3/8" barbs and the problem is solved.

The pump can then be mounted to the position above the hard drive caddy like so.

Or behind the PSU as shown below.

The problem with mounting the pump behind the PSU is the congestion to the hard drive cabling that this pump placement would create. So we finally settled on the "above the hard drive caddy" position for our pump. With this position for placement we would be obliged to use a 'T' line for filling and bleeding as most of the available space has been used up.

The Laing DDC

Using the Laing DDC eliminates a lot of the problems found with the Laing D5. The very small footprint and the natural 3/8" fittings really make the job a lot easier. Placed in position it looks as though it was made for this case.

At this point most people would fit a 'T' line to the inlet of the laing DDC say "Good job problem solved" and move on. We think differently. What if we could increase the power of the pump with our Radiical Turbo Head and fit a reservoir at the same time. We could then provide more flow at higher head pressure and overcome any inherent flow rate reductions from using longer tubing runs and restrictive blocks. Okay, sounds good so we went ahead and did just that.

We cobbled together from the parts here a marriage of 'T' line and reservoir for our purposes. Now we can fill and bleed without the risk of running the pump dry on startup using the priming port we have constructed. We can fill and bleed the system, monitor coolant levels quickly and add coolant should the levels drop. The added benefit we found was the minimalist impact of this type of filling design.

With the final choice of the Laing DDC pump and primer port made we can complete our tubing and move on to final construction and leak testing.

Just to recap before we go onto our performance section. So far we have fitted a triple core radiator into this case. We have cooled not only the CPU but chipset and graphics card as well. We have zone cooled the CPU to graphics card bridge and retained provision for three hard drives to be fitted.

Next.............Fire in the Hold!..........our creation comes alive.