Build Log : Water-cooled CaseLabs S8

[DanielCoffey]

I have recently finished moving my gaming PC innards to a new CaseLabs case and have been asked by keithinhanoi for some pictures and thoughts on the process since it was not only a water-cooled build but also used rigid tubing. Instead of opting for acrylic, I went for 12mm copper tube and keithinhanoi wanted to know what it looked like.

 

CaseLabs are a premium case manufacturer and have an unbelievably huge range of customisation options for their cases. They are all modular, powder-coated aluminium and are primarily aimed at water-cooling. In my situation, I was guided in my choice by the fact that I had a full ATX motherboard but only a single graphics card. This pushed me towards either the traditional vertical SM8 tower or their relatively new horizontal S8 cube case.

 

The hardware that I brought from my previous case was a single Intel 4770K clocked at 4.5GHz, a single nVidia 780ti heavily overclocked, a pair of 2.5" SSD and one 3.5" HDD. This meant I didn't need any of the larger cases in the CaseLabs range with space for huge radiators or racks of drives.

 

I opted for copper tubing because, unlike flexible hose, there is no plasticiser to leech into the coolant over time (although there is no point in getting coloured coolant since you can't see it). While 10mm is the minimum diameter recommended for water-cooling, it is hard to get a decent quality hard tube for bending. You can get annealed soft 10mm tube but it doesn't give nice straight lines - the softness means bends are not precise. I went up to 12mm OD, 1mm wall because it was available in a semi-hard (R250) variety. It was just soft enough to bend in a tool but hard enough to give perfect lines. The 1mm thick walls are enough to prevent flattening on the outsides of the bends. The tool used was a Rigid 412M bender.

 

All the fittings are 12mm push fit from landefeld.de. They are food and medical grade and cost about 5 euros each for the straight ones and about 8 euros for the 90-degree rotating elbows or 90-degree double push fits. I only used elbows where absolutely necessary due to tight corners or excessively complex sections where a mistake would have wasted too much tube.

 

Here is the outside shot of the S8. I have completed the tubing but not the custom wiring yet. I need to create and sleeve custom leads for the power to the motherboard and graphics card as well as the drives.

 

 

The nice thing about the CaseLabs cases is that all panels are removable to reveal the skeleton of the case. You can get right in when building and approach your loop from every angle.

 

 

I have popped the right side and top off here to show the general layout of the build.

 

There are two D5 vario pumps in the lower left of the image in an EK dual top with the reservoir. They are in the "PSU bay" of the case. The offset tube you can see in the lower centre is the drain. It is currently rotated out of the way but can swivel down to present the tap to the side of the case when needed.

 

The outlet of the pump comes up and over to the CPU block. I didn't have the nerve to de-lid my 4770K since it was too risky for my modding experience.

 

 

After the CPU, the tube comes up and forward in the shot in a lovely 180-degree bend to the motherboard MOSFET cooler. Here I ran into the first serious issue in the build. The motherboard is an ASUS Maximus Formula VI and as shipped it has a metal back-plate and plastic shroud which obstructs the MOSFET area. EK kindly offered some extenders to bring the connection up above the plastic but I did not check the thread depth. EK clearly state to only use their components with their connectors which is fine... but it does mean that, due to the shallow threads in the extender, you run into issues when you bring in parts from the food industry which insist on the full depth of thread in a connector.

 

My first fill attempt resulted in about 150ml of purified water piddling all over the CPU and MOSFETS. It was escaping from both ends of the MOSFET block and I had to do a full drain, strip down and drying exercise, right down to the CPU, MOSFET cooler and motherboard shroud. Fortunately I had followed the cardinal rule of watercooling which is NEVER connect anything to your PSU apart from the pump till you have PASSED the leak test.

 

Since I could now see the tiny gap between the EK Extender and the push-fit connector, I bought some 1.8mm ring spacers to solve the issue.

 

Next fill test resulted in water everywhere again. Damn! This time I could see that the O-rings on the spacers were bulging sideways. The top of each EK extender was domed. The slightest pressure on the o-ring and it bulged out. The extenders had to go... but how could I reach the push-fits with a spanner in all that plastic on the motherboard without them?

 

Out came the hacksaw, snips and files. Warranty out the window, I now had a motherboard shroud with enough access to the MOSFET block to allow tightening of the push-fits without the extenders. A check of the MOSFET cooler revealed the same shallow threads as were on the extender so I had to use the spacers anyway.

 

Third time's the charm, yes? It was. With the leak test passed, I carried on.

 

Up out of the MOSFET and into the first radiator... an AlphaCool UT60 360mm radiator. It is a heavy beast but great for dumping heat and I had two of them. There are 90-degree connectors between the pair with a sweet little straight bit of copper.

 

Down out of the second UT60 and we hit the next snag I found with the bending. The tube would come down, bend 90 degrees forward and then bend 90 degrees sideways into the graphics card but the bends are too close together. I opted for a double push-fit elbow and a short straight to do the job.

 

I then hit the thread depth snag again. The EK GPU cooler has short threads AGAIN and a full depth connector completely obstructs the slot for the water to enter the GPU block. Good job I bought two extra spacers, yes? One on the inlet and outlet of the GPU block solved that.

 

A right-angle fitting and neat 60-degree bend and we are onto the motherboard northbridge cooler. Up, forwards, an elbow, across and down ad we are back at the pump.

 

Phew!

 

So, how did I get the copper looking like that and why didn't it just tarnish back to brown? I had decided to use a satin finish rather than highly polished. I cleaned with 400-grit wet-and-dry, went to 800-grit then 1200-grit and finished with Brasso. That gave me a lovely pink-orange copper surface which would have been highly prone to tarnish and fingerprints so I coated it. Apparently lacquer (hair spray or clear varnish) is ideal but I didn't have any. I did have some Rennaisance Wax which is a museum preservative for metal objects. It is a micro-crystalline wax that is pH neutral. It did make the copper darken to orange but should prevent the browning. After a couple of weeks, a test piece is holding up well.

 

 

 

So that is the saga of the build so far. How does it perform under load?

 

I am in Scotland and even in the summer indoors it rarely passes 20C here. Since I have 6 Noctua NF-F12 PWM fans in one channel pushing cold air from outside down over the rads, 6 more NF-F12 in a Pull channel and three NF-S12 PWM passing air through the case, I have a ton of cooling but it would be noisy at 100% speed. I have attached the fan splitters to an Aquaero 6 fan controller along with water and air temperature sensors and have configured the Push and Case fans to be on all the time at 35% unless the machine heats up. The Pull fans only come on when gaming to assist. The D5 Vario pumps are set to 1.75 out of 5 and I have redundancy since there are two of them in series.

 

At idle, the water temperature is about 4C over ambient, the Push and Case fans are silent at 35% speed. Under load, the Push and Case fans are at about 50%, the Pull fans are at about 40% and all are still inaudible. The GPU under both Valley and Heaven benchmarks only reaches 39C despite the overclock.

 

All in all it was an expensive build but gaming PCs are never cheap. I can play Skyrim at 1440p with Vividian ENB and get a rock steady 60fps indoors and 50fps outdoors even in cities on a single graphics card.

 

I think that is about all of the saga at the moment but if any questions crop up, feel free to ask and I will try to help.

[Razorsedge877]

Is it possible to check for leaks with air to prevent water getting everywhere? I know that the cpu and such are delicate but was just wondering

[keithinhanoi]

Thanks for humoring my request. 

 

That's a beautiful build, so very clean and clearly assembled meticulously and with great care. Personally, I think the copper looks great, very classy, and you did right with your anti-tarnish treatment. It's amazing seeing all of that space, when I think back to squeezing everything into my little "shoebox" build.

 

It's way out of my price range, but I have to wonder how such a rig would fare in my local, with ambient temperatures here at my place in Hanoi of 27 to even 35 celcius, and humidity levels never going much below 70%, but generally 80-85% or higher.

 

With the 780 Ti running at 39C you will never have to worry about throttling.  It's interesting that with my new 760 I wouldn't even dream of attempting anything above 1080p with Vividian, though a lot depends on what else you've got in your Skyrim mod-mix, of course.

 

After finishing up with Lost Library - are you finally going to get to log some real in-game time on this thing? With all that effort, I sure hope so!

 

Again, thanks for sharing.

Edited September 21, 2014 by keithinhanoi

[DanielCoffey]

I suspect a pressure gauge and hand-pump would work if you had one (like the central-heating engineers use) but the current best practice is to only connect a pump, fill with purified water, test, drain and adjust till it is correct then empty the loop and refill with the proper pre-mix coolant.

 

I forgot to mention that all air intakes are covered with DEMCiflex filters to protect from dust. They are washable and can be custom sized for your case at a very small cost direct from DEMCiflex themselves.

 

EDIT to answer keithinhanoi : You could do what an Auzzie builder does and vastly overspecify the radiators needed. As it stands, the S8 can handle 2x 360 in the roof, 1x 360 in the lower left drive bay area and 1x 280 in the front flex-bay area. You can also opt for the pedestal and put 2x 360 down there too but the plumbing is becoming a nightmare at that point. It is precisely for that reason that CaseLabs have the super-sized cases that can take multiple 4- and 5-fan radiators. They are primarily aimed at 4xGPU, 2xCPU and 2xPSU builds with around 20 HDDs but are brilliant for high-ambient homes too... if you have the space and the $$$.

Edited September 21, 2014 by DanielCoffey

[DanielCoffey]

I know what you mean about spending effort on something and then never getting to enjoy it. I have not played Skyrim since February 2013 when I took over the Book Covers mod, believe it or not. Before I had even finished the Book Covers, I had committed myself to working on the Lost Library mod too. Even though I have done the covers for that mod, I am now having to learn to handle scripting to cater for the Book Hunts and Quests that I have dreamed up. I still have the Developer texts to include too.

 

I really should learn when to say no... to myself mainly.

 

I have recently had some time to relax while playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 and I am waiting for Pillars of Eternity to release in a couple of months which is likely to be a major time drain if the beta videos are anything to believe. In the mean time I am about to learn the CK quest scripting necessary to handle the book hunts.

[Nozzer66]

Am digging the copper pipe. Gives it a bit of a Steampunk vibe. :)

[crime_syndicate]

"The GPU under both Valley and Heaven benchmarks only reaches 39C despite the overclock." haha jesus. Shame proper WC is that much more expensive compared to aircooling, it must be pretty cool to be able to play silently, with oc/d hardware, and with cool temperatures, all at the same time. Congrats on the build, that copper tubing gives it a unique, sort of industrial look in my opinion. Looks pretty amazing.