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TJ07 - 1st time Liquid Cooling Project

Gareth Roberts

Posted in Liquid Cooling, TJ07, Water Cooling on January 9, 2008 at 12:53 pm

So I’ve been an avid reader of Custom PC since issue 14 or so & have been a subscriber for almost as long. My only complaint about this is the cost of it all… Not the cost of the mag; its pretty good value for money & not too many ads on the whole, but the number of times I’ve gone out to buy the latest approved kit! I’m not a drinker so I guess I need something to spend my hard earned money on though.

My trip down the liquid cooling route started a while back when I treated myself to Intel’s mighty Q6600 (G0). At the time I boought it I was using an E6600 in a BFG 680i, overclocked to 3.4GHz cooled by a Zalman 9700 LED. That rig performed pretty well in the CPC benchmarks but I wanted more.

 I hit my 1st problem pretty quickly after installing the new CPU; I couldnt manage to get anything above 3.2GHz stable. Gutted was probably the best way to describe it. Countless hours of tweaking my BIOS, trying various BIOS updates & reading as many forums as I could finally helped me come to the conclusion that my shiney new quad core wasnt best of friends with Nvidia’s board.

Fortunately for me (unfortunately for my bank a/c) CPC had just landed on my mat a couple of days after I gave up on hitting the big numbers with the Q6600, inside had the review of the latest offering from ASUS, the Maximus Formula SE. With the disappointment of the 680i still stinging me, I couldnt resist driving down to Scan www.scan.co.uk to treat myself to another piece of CPC approved kit.

First impressions were pretty good! The board came bundled with some decent software (Stalker, 3DMark 06 & Kaspersky although this is only of use if you’re using XP as you dont get the option to install it under Vista) The LCD post display is now on a cable so you have some choice where to install it & various hose clamps & tubing to make liquid cooling the NB a little easier.

At this point I started to think seriously about liquid cooling; I was able to run 2 instances of Orthos stable for 24hrs at 3.4GHz by using Task Manager to stress cores 0 & 1 then stress cores 2 & 3 using the blend test so I had all cores & my RAM thoroughly tested. I was able to hit 3.6GHz but the CPU temps were an issue & as I use this PC a lot it wasnt practical.

Luckily for me I’d been a good boy all year & Father Christmas said that even though (s)he (the long suffering fiancée) really didnt want to buy me yet another present that was in any way related to a PC, if I really wanted a new case, she’d get me one. (Thanks babe, you know I love ya! ) This is where I ran into my 1st big decision; What case?!?

I finally ended up with a shortlist of 2;

either the CoolerMaster 830 Evo http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=346059

or the Silverstone TJ07 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=326329

Finally, I decided to go with the TJ07, partly due to the fact that Scan used this in their awesome White Cobra, the fact it had a huge space at the bottom thal could take a triple rad & it came with a side window to show off the internal components.

My next dilemma was what to use for my cooling kit. I knew the different options of water blocks & rad arrangements but that was as far as it went… Different manufacturers make similar products to suit most wallets but I wanted to get the best kit possible so I would only have to buy it once. Custom PC were meant to be running an article on this subject late last year but unfortunately it didnt happen on time (sorry guys, I know you had a lot on, especially with the CPU mega test etc!) so with the help of Combatus & Thermo Marci I took the plunge;

D Tek FuZion CPU Block (with nozzle kit)

Thermochill PA 120.2 + 120.3 rads (5 x Yate Loon 88cfm fans)

XSPC 5.25″ Reservoir 

Lang DDC Ultra Pump

Scythe KamaMeter Fan Controller

1/2″ Tygon tubing & fittings

The next part was the hardest in the whole build; wait for the week between all of the components being in the house until Christmas Day, when I was allowed to open my presents, waiting that ammount of time knowing the case was there, ready to be used almost killed me!

Finally Christmas came (and went) before I was able to sit down & start looking at how everything was going to go together. This is where I started the begining of my steep learning curve & realised it isnt just a case of buying everything then fitting it!

The TJ07 is huge! much bigger than the cheap Aspire Dreamer 2 that I had been using, getting it out of the box was trouble enough to do on my own. When I got the side panels stripped off I thought it would be a quick & easy job. How wrong was I?

Using the Scan White Cobra as a template I thought that the 120.3 rad would sit in the bottom of the case next to the PSU & the 120.2 rad would sit inside the case at the top if I removed the 2 x 120mm fans that come already fitted. I didnt take into account that the Thermochill rads are big too, I can only guess that they’re much deeper than the rads that Scan use, or, the heatsink at the top of the Maximus Formula stand higher off the board as I wasnt able to have my rad + fans internally. I must have lost a few hours trying different positions & ideas to get around this but in the end I decided to mount the rad at the top of the case, outside with the fans blowing upwards through the rad.

Installing the CPU block was easy enough, the instructions from D Tek were suprisingly good, just remember that if you buy the nozzle kit to go with the block to inset this fist, before mounting the block. I didnt so I had to strip it back down again.

The removable motherboard tray in the TJ07 made life a little easier securing the board outside of the case & also when trying to decide on the final position of the top rad. It also helped when running some of the power cables inside the case too.

 The next task was fitting the adapter kit that came with the board to the North Bridge Fusion block, I had decided on 1/2″ tubing to get the maximum flow possible with the lowest flow resistance so I had to clamp the short tubing onto the block then use the adapter to fit my main tubing to.

With the blocks now ready to be piped up I secured the board into the case & got to thinking about where the tubing would go. If I’m honest it was a bit of trial & error. I knew the triple rad was going at the bottom of the case so using the PSU mounting kit that comes with the case I moved the position of the PSU to the opposite side to make room for the rad. This is a compromise as the PSU does partly cover the first fan on the rad but there is some room between the two to allow for airflow.

I next fitted the 5.25″ reservoir, this helped me get an idea of how the loop would finally be arranged;

 Reservoir -> Pump -> CPU Block -> NB Block -> PA120.3 Rad -> GPU Block -> PA120.2 Rad -> Reservoir

 After deciding on the final layout of the loop, actually cutting the tubing & routing it all was pretty easy. There were a few issues that came to light pretty quickly though;

The Yate Loon fans had molex power plugs, my fan controller didnt. I originally intended on having the fans on each rad wired in series so I could control the speed of them this wasnt to be, I’ve had to power them directly from my PSU so I cant quieten them down. They arent exactly noisy, especially as I spend most of my time at the PC wearing a pair of Razer Baracuda headphones while gaming in the cellar so I dont disturb ’the boss’ watching TV directly above me! I still control all of the other fans with the controller & have the output of the pump connected so I can monitor the speed of it so I guess I didnt waste too much money on that bit of kit.

 My next issue was where I was to mount the pump. Initially I had this stuck using velco into the recess where the 5.25″ bays are. I wasnt happy with this nor was the velco actually strong enough to keep the pump level as you can see in the above photo. So using the layout supplied with the pump I cut, drilled & bead-blasted a piece of aluminium to sit on the dividing floor behind my HDD’s.

While I was in the creative mood I also made a frame for the top radiator out of aluminium plate to try & keep the outside of the case looking as neat as possible, for some reason the big black rad just didnt look right!

Finally, after tidying up the wiring, fitting the optical drives & UV Cathodes it was time to test the loop. I know that I should have really tested everything BEFORE fitting it all into the case but I was of the opinion that if something is going to leak, it’ll leak from a fitting, not any of the actual cooling components. I decided on Fesser One coolant so was pretty sure that if I had a leak it wouldnt be too catastrphic, especially as I was going to run the pump without any power on the board its self.

Actually powering up the PSU / pump was an easy job once I’d found the info on the ‘net. All thats required is a peice of wire in the main power plug that goes into the motherboard linking out pins 16 (green wire) & any common (black wire). After filling up the reservoir with coolant & holding my breath (making sure I had rolls of kitchen paper handy should the worse happen) I flicked on the PSU.

Not much really happened, a slight buzz from the pump & hardly any coolant moved at all! After thinking about things for a while I unscrewed the bleed screw from my top rad & tried again; a little more fluid went down the tubing towards the pump. I turned the PSU off & on a good many times to get a lot of air out of the system until eventually I had to tighten the bleed screw & repeat the process some more.

When the loop appeared full & after 1.5ltr of coolant, I left the pump running, checking every few minutes for leaks. Confident I went to bed with the loop still running, hoping that in the morning I’d have no leaks & could finally power up the rig & get back to overclocking it some more!

I’m pretty pleased with the end result, a lot of hard work & money has gone into building my ‘Dream PC’ If you’re interested you can view a few more pic here:

http://s248.photobucket.com/albums/gg174/GlowingBulb/Liquid%20Cooled%20TJ07/?action=view¤t=dc3d29df.pbw

Final spec:

Q6600 (G0) @ 3.9GHz Orthos stable

ASUS Maximus Formula SE

2 x 1GB OCZ DDR2 PC-8500

BFG 8800GTX OC2

Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic

Gigabyte Odin 800W Pro

Silverstone TJ07 (with 5.25″ HDD adapter Caddy)

D Tek FuZion CPU Block

Fusion NB Block

Aquacomputer G80 GPU Block

Thermochill PA120.2 + PA120.3 Rads

Plus a whole lot of love!

• TJ07 - 1st time Liquid Cooling Project
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• TJ07 - 1st time Liquid Cooling Project (94.2%)