Hello all,
It has been a long time coming, and I have put it off because I was hoping to wait until I had a pair of different graphics cards, but I decided not to wait any longer.
Here I present the final* build fully liquid cooled, and also a walk-through of the conversion from Air to Liquid.
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The first thing I had to do was to remove the components which will be converted to Liquid. I removed the Heatsink and Fan from the CPU, as well as both graphics cards.
Next I clean off the old Thermal Paste from the CPU, and install the water block with some newly applied Thermal paste.
And now, the fun stuff begins. The two Kingpin cards need to have their air coolers removed, and the water blocks get installed.
First, I remove the back plates from the cards, so that I can access the screws needed to separate the cooler from the cards. (Those are my friend's hands, haha)
Now once all the screws are removed, with a gentle pulling/twisting motion the cooler can be separated from the card. Extra care must be taken to make sure that the fan power plug is unplugged without being pulled on too hard which could damage the card.
Then, I clean off the old Thermal Paste from the cards to prepare them for the water blocks.
The blocks are installed! It's as simple as putting some new Thermal Paste on the GPU, then seating the blocks on and screwing in the screws. Making sure to securely and evenly screw down the block to get even and secure seating of the block on the GPU for proper heat transfer.
Unfortunately I didn't get many detailed pictures of the tubing installation, but as you can see here the cards are now re-installed into the system, with all the tubing cut to length and secured to the graphics cards and the CPU block.
Now here I install a "jumper" plug to the 24 pin power connector. This allows me to turn on the Power Supply and it will turn on the auxiliary power to things such as fans, and most importantly the Water Pump. So that I can move the Liquid through the system WITHOUT turning on the computer. It is incredibly important that the computer does not get powered on until the Liquid is properly flowing through the system, because without proper flow, the CPU and GPUs would overheat rapidly and possibly be damaged.
Now, I stuff some paper towels into the system around where my fittings are, so that when I get the liquid flowing I will see if any leaks occur. That way I can identify any and fix them before any power is applied. This prevents any short circuiting.
Very slowly I fill the system by pouring in the Liquid at the top where you can see the hose sticking out, once the Liquid starts to get close to overflowing I flip the power supply switch on and off quickly. This activates the pump and pushes the liquid further into the system. I keep doing this until the hoses and blocks are all fully filled with liquid.
Finally, once the Liquid is fully flowing through the system I have to remove as many of the air bubbles in the loop as possible. I do this by cycling the pump on and off, tipping the computer from side to side/forward and backwards.. Things similar to that which help to dislodge air bubbles and push them into the reservoir where they don't get sucked back into the system because the volume is displaced by residual liquid in the reservoir.
And the system is done!
If anyone is curious about temperatures/performance let me know, and I will crunch some numbers! It was a lot of fun, and a huge undertaking to build this system. It's truly a marvel.