Bigwater Conversion

Log Date; May 8, 2006

We receive a lot of calls from people who bought small water cooling kits when they first entered into water cooling as entry level kits. The reason for these calls is that the cheaper kits often fail due to the quality of the components leaving the purchaser with a pile of parts and a large re purchasing cost if they wish to replace their existent water cooled system.

Most failures seem to occur with the pumps of these units as they strain to push fluid through a 1/4" tubing diameter. When the pumps fails the chances of finding a replacement pump that "fits" are small due size of the threaded fittings used and the small tubing diameter already mentioned. Modification of existing pumps is possible but does not really help as they are then flow rate restricted for the reasons mentioned above.

What if you could change out the pump and increase the performance of your current system without throwing the whole lot in the garbage bin. Well you can. Simply by fitting larger barbs to the various components you can quickly address the swap out to a new pump. The problem of small diameter tubing would however still remain creating a performance hit of some magnitude.

To address the restrictive nature of small bore tubing you also would need to address the internal size or ID of the tubing being used. We will be doing this here by converting a Bigwater kit to 3/8" tubing size (The tubing size could also be increased to say 5/16" as an alternative should that be required).

Why Bigwater

We are using the Thermaltake Bigwater kit for this conversion because we receive the most requests for replacement pumps for this unit. We are not doubting the quality of this product simply offering an alternative to increase the performance of the current working or failed system.

Usual disclaimers out of the way its on to the conversion.

The Block

The original block shown below is supplied with compression fittings to suit the 1/4" tubing used in the kit.

The CPU block compression fittings will be the first casualties of the conversion process. They are replaced with 3/8'' threaded barbs as illustrated here.

Just to give you some idea of the flow rate advantages of changing up the system components can be seen here in a top view of the barbs internal bore.

The Radiator

Having completed the CPU block conversion we can now move onto change out the barbs on the radiator housing. In this unit the radiator has the convenience of a threaded brass nipple on the inlet and outlet barbs.

So we simply remove the old and install the new 3/8" barbs.

To give you some idea of the difference in internal size of the barbs we have included this top down shot.

Pretty large potential for flow rate increase here I think you will agree.

The Pump

The all important pump swap is made using an Eheim Compact 600 12 volt Pump Station from Alphacool.

Here we have added the 3/8" barbs.

And to demonstrate the adaptability of the new pump unit we have added the mandatory right angled bend to the pump top.

Pump Wiring

The Eheim Compact 600 Pump Station has a convenient connector for the power supply using the supplied PCI pass through plate. Wiring up the pump is a simple operation just attached the two bare wires blue and brown to the two screw mounts on the pass through PCB and plug in a spare Molex plug from the power supply and you are ready to fill her up and leak test.

Handy Hint.

When attaching metal barbs to Acrylic items such as the pump case and CPU block above glue the parts in place with epoxy. Simply add some mixed up Epoxy to the threads of the barbs and screw in finger tight only. Allow the Epoxy to cure and there you have a sealed joint without risking cracking the Acrylic by over tightening. To remove the barb heat the barb only with say a hair dryer and when the Epoxy softens unscrew the fitting.

Upgrade Pathway

Up to this point in time these sorts of kits had a zero upgrade pathway. By adjusting the barb and tubing size this is no longer the case.The potential now for the inclusion of a GPU block to the Bigwater kit can now no longer be ignored. With the increased flow rate options provided by this pump that second radiator also looks like a further improvement to this kits performance.

So there you have it a very simple conversion to revive your failed or under performing small bore kit.