Voided the warrenty

Internals

After unscrewing the fan you need to find where it is connected. It is under the black shield

New fan fitted

After completing this, I was amazed that Antec could get away with saying it was quiet. This mod has made a huge difference.

Here is a before and after shot of the FuZion:

The northbridge blocks and the mosfet heatsinks:

The Northbridge block did not require lapping. Before attaching the blocks to the motherboard I removed the stock cooling from the motherboard. To do this you need to remove the small screws on the bottom of the board.

Next I secured the motherboard in to the chassis, and installed the two 8800 GTX’s. I had fitted the water blocks to these earlier.

The first thing I needed to do, before putting together the acrylic panels of case was attach the pumps to the bottom of the case. The Laing DDC’s do vibrate a lot and need to be de-coupled from the case to avoid buzzing noises, these pumps are also 18 watt version, so noise dampening was even more important. After attaching the reservoirs to the pumps, I tried out a few different ways to mount the pump of a spare bit of acrylic. There are some off the shelf dampening kits; however these would not allow me to mount the pumps in the front of the case. I finally decided on mounting the pumps on top of 8 rubber washers, and then bolting the pumps to the bottom of the case. This allowed air flow under the pumps, which means the pumps are less likely to overheat, and dump excess heat in to the loop. The bottom of the case would also have rubber feet to futher dampen the pumps. Here are a few pictures of the test setup:

This next picture shows the washers in place, and the anti vibration feet. This really helped dampen the sound.

I would always recommend trying out all the water cooling equipment before installation, to check for leaks, and that it actually works. This can avoid the headache of uninstalling the water cooling loop, or worse, fried circuits!

After trying out this dampening method, I repeated it and secured the pumps to the bottom of the case. To do this I needed to drill holes in to the acrylic. When working with acrylic, it is always important to work slowly, as acrylic can melt. When working with acrlyic use a low rpm on a drill.

Next I needed to mount the radiator to the top of the case. Here is a picture of the end product, I’m quite happy with the look:

The next radiator needed to be mounted on the side of the case. I detached the side panel, and covered the acrylic with masking tape, this is important, as the plastic can scratch easily. I marked the drill holes and worked at a low RPM. I decided to to power up the fans to have a look at what the system will look like.The final case modification was to allow the tubes from the external radiator to pass through the side. I needed to put two holes in the side of the case, to do this I used the circle cutter attachement with my dremmel:

After cutting the holes, I polished the inside of the them to geat rid of the frosted look

I put in rubber grommets, this is to make sure that the tubing does not get snagged, or cut by the panel.

The case modifications, and the water cooling was now in place. Next I needed to prepare the motherboard.

RAM: 4 GB’s of OCZ Reaper PC-9200, this RAM is rock solid at high frequencies.

GPU’s: Two 8800 GTX’s XFX. These have dropped in price since the release of the 200 series, so they were a bargain, but will also perform well at high resolutions. XFX cards are known to overclock well. I decided to get a pair which were not factory overclocked, as you can save a lot of money doing that yourself. EVGA cards are also known to overclock well, however they do cost more.

PSU: Antec Quattro 1000. I choose this PSU because of its stability, and I would need enough power for the 8800 GTX’s as they are power hungry cards. The 1000 w is also needed for the 9 120mm fans, the two Liang Ultra 18w DDC pumps, and the LCD. The size of the Quattro compared to other 1000 w PSU’s is relatively small, compared to the Galaxy for example. I also heard the 80mm fan in the PSU is very noisy, even though it is advertised as Quiet, so this needs replacing.

Motherboard: EVGA 780i sli. I bought this board as I had had experience of the 680i from EVGA, and that board overclocked well. The board also supports 45nm CPU’s, so it is also future proof. 

Water cooling system

Loop1: This cooling loop will be for the CPU and the SPP (Northbridge). The northbridge on the 780i gets very hot when overclocking, EVGA supply a fan but it can get very noisy. To cool the northbridge I choose a D-Tek FuZion water block with the Quad nozzle (v1), this will also be lapped. The SPP has a Viper John water block, Viper John makes custom water blocks, and he is well known in modding circles, this particular block has had great feedback from other users. This loop is powered by a Liang DDC Ultra 18w, which has a XSPC reservoir attached to the top of it. The tipple radiator from black ice can be mounted internally in the top of the case.

Loop2: This loop is for the two 8800 GTX’s, the loop is also powered by the same pump as the first loop. The radiator is different, it is from XSPC and will be sided mounted on to the case. I choose full cover blocks from EK.Originally I was going to have one loop, but after finding out how hot the 8800 GTX’s would get, I decided to have dual loops. I did not want the overclock on the Q6700 to be limited by heat.

Case: KXNG from AC Ryan, this is less of a case, and more of a foundation on which to build your mod. The case is also made of acrylic, I have not always been a fan of acrylic cases, I always thought they looked a bit tacky, and fragile, but this particular case looks great, and has a lot of modding potential. I was worried about cable management in a case like this, there is nowhere to hide!