That's a really nice guid about how to clean a watercooling loop.

Btw. I think I would only do it with distilled water. I wouldn't use tap water at all.

@rewarder: Why no tap water at all? By connecting a radiator or a waterblock directly to the tap, we can produce a lot of pressure to wash out all kinds of residue. And we always finish with destilled water.

We have made very good experiences with this method.


Besucht auch unseren Blog:
www.hitzestau.com/

After the description of our preparation, the goodbye to "hitzestau one" and the cleaning of all components, this is our report of assembling the benchtable system. This last part has become quite extensive and features many pictures. But it would have made no sense to split it up into two parts.

We hope, you enjoy reading it and scrolling down anyway...




First Steps
The very first thing we did, was to assemble and attach the fan mount. This must be done before installing a radiator below, otherwise you won't be able to reach the screws of the fan mount.




The PCI card holder was next.




In the lower level of the benchtable, we started with the PSU.





Installation of the Aquaero
The mounting of the Aquaero had already kept us busy during the preparation. The solution we had come up with was to use a 5.25 bay cover from the old Lian Li case. We drilled the holes into the benchtable case and the bay covers, before we installed the above mentioned parts. After drilling, we carefully cleaned the benchtable.







As you can see, it is easy to plug in cables at the back, while the angled display is well readable from the front.

This is the Benchtable after these first couple of work steps. The mounting plate for the pump is lying where the mainboard will be situated later.





Installation of the radiators
But before starting with the pump, we turned to the two radiators. The benchtable offers no special accessories for mounting radiators.

Included with the Alphacool radiators are the copper-colored screws displayed below. They come in two different lengths (30/35 mm). The Noiseblocker fans had the black screws, flat washers and the rubber buffers included. That was the material we had available. We had already come up with a way to install the radiators during preparation. Here is what we did:




We used the shorter copper colored screws to fasten the left and right fans directly on the radiator. Thereby, the black rubber buffers prevented the screws to slip through the holes of the fans. The longer copper colored screws are too long to be used with 25mm thick fans, they would damage the fins of the radiator.

We used the black screws with the washers to mount the radiator to the benchtable case. Viewed from the side, it looks as shown below. Unfortunately, the positions of the four copper-colored screws do not exactly match up with the holes in the case. The washers are mandatory, so that the screws do not slip through the holes in the side wall.




The black screws are the same length as the longer of the copper-colored ones, but because you have to add the washer and the thickness of the case here, there is no risk of damaging the fins of the radiator. The assembling is best done with a pair of helping hands, since the middle fan is only fixated by the black screws.

The installation of the radiators and the Aquaero are two examples that you always have to look for individual solutions when working with a benchtable.

And it fills up slowly...





Installation of the pump
The pump was bolted directly to the accessory plate for the pump mount. For decoupling, we use decoupling screws from our old system. On the top, there is a Monsoon fitting already in place with a temperature sensor.




In the next picture, you see the pump already installed inside the benchtable. We switched the 45 degree angled fitting with a 90 degree angled fitting to make it easier to connect pump and radiator. We also replaced the angled fitting on the radiator with a standard Perfect Seal fitting. It is quite normal to make changes or improvements while assembling a watercooling rig.




Next, we turned to the cables and the motherboard spacers.





CPU and waterblock
Before we could mount the motherboard on the top of the benchtable, we first had to fit the CPU and its waterblock. In the picture below, you can see the backplate of the CPU cooler. We continue to use the CPU waterblock and its backplate from the old rig, because socket 1156 (old) and socket 1155 (new) are compatible. It is always nice, when you can take over components from an older system. Last year's investment in the CPU waterblock has really proven worthwhile.




The processor and the water block are already coated with thermal grease.




The water block is securely bolted with four screws.




This is another view of the CPU waterblock with the RAM in the foreground.




There is not much room between the audio connectors of the mainboard and the PCI card holder.




Besides the reservoir, everything else is in place now.





Installing the Tubes
For the reservoir, we use the 5.25-inch drive bay, which we still had to mount at the lower level of the benchtable. We did not want to fixate the reservoir, but simply to slide it in or out if necessary. Therefore, we have spread the sides of the drive bay slightly apart, so that the reservoir is not scratched or gets stuck.

Finally, we could start with the tubing. First, we prepared the new tubes and quick-release couplings for the MORA.




Then we continued step by step. Here are some impressions:







The tube between the pump and the radiator is really very short. In the picture you can see that it was better to use a 90 degree fitting on pump top.





Filling and startup
The filling looks a bit adventurous, but was quite simple actually. One reason was the large reservoir, so that we could fill a fairly large amount of liquid. The entire filling took about ten minutes. We made the tubes at the reservoir a little bit longer, so that we can pull it out of the lower level of the benchtable. We lifted up the entire benchtable as you can see below, so that the water could flow into the pump.

For the entire filling process, we connected the pump to an external PSU, so that there was no electricity on the other components. As you can see, we covered all components with paper towel as a precautionary measure.




We continuously poured in water into the reservoir, until the system was full. As usual, there were a lot air bubbles in the loop that we could observe very well thanks to the transparent tube.










After the filling, we put the reservoir back in its place. To prevent vibration and not to put it on the metal directly, we underlayed it with a piece of foam. It took almost two hours until most of the air was out of the loop.

After that, we reconnected the pump to the built-in power supply and started the system. Everything worked right away – the ROG logo appeared on screen. We were pretty relieved.


Subsequent Adjustments
But of course there are still a few details that we want to change and have done so already. The mps flow 200 flowmeter indicates a value of about 190 liters / hour, which startled us a little bit, is this correct? The Aquastream XT in our old rig reached just about 90 liters / hour. Therefore on the following day, we also installed our old flow meter, which indicated only around 160 liters. After asking for some advice in the Aquacomputer forum, we will add a more suitable flow meter in the coming days.

Originally, the pump was connected directly to the PSU and it operated at 4200 rpm (12 V). In order to regulate it, we connected it to a poweradjust instead. Now, it runs at around 3500 rpm (10 V) and is virtually inaudible. The Aquastream XT (4800 rpm at full power) was definitely louder. Nevertheless, the DDC is still quite remarkable: The mps flow meter shows 145 liters per hour, the old flow meter at least 120. In addition, we added an internal USB hub (NZXT IU0) to connect the two flowmeters, the poweradjust and the Aquaero.

What are your experiences with the DDC regarding the flow capacity?

And besides that, there are certainly still a few more improvements to come. One point is the tubing of the two internal radiators. With additional quick-release couplings, we want to ensure that we can remove both radiators from the loop completely, so that we can test additional radiators.








What's next
The project "hitzestau one reloaded" will continue as well, the Shinobi XL from BitFenix is already standing by as a temporary case. Therefore, we will review it in a separate post soon.

And this is where the paths of the benchtable and "hitzestau one reloaded" split up again. With our test system as a basis, we will write our own reviews in the future. The first products will be the benchtable itself and the main components.



Besucht auch unseren Blog:
www.hitzestau.com/