Danger Den Water Box Plus Case (Part 5)

Installation:

The anticipation...it's killing me. We have taken a look at all of the water cooling components we will be using with this case project, so now it's time to dig in and get it all set up. We will show the installation step-by-step to show what is really involved with a project of this kind. The system components that will be installed in addition to the case and cooling components are listed below.

System Setup:

• Processor: Intel E6700
• Motherboard: DFI NF 680I-LT
• Memory: Mushkin HP2-6400  2x 2048MB 4-3-3-10
• Video Card(s): 2x EVGA  8800GTS 640MB in SLI
• Power Supply: Mushkin XP-650 Enhanced
• Hard Drives: 2x Western Digital 74GB Raptors in RAID 0
• Optical Drives: BenQ DW-1655 DVD-RW, Sony DVD-ROM

Upon completing the installation, I will do a series of tests to validate the cooling performance that the components we have chosen have given us. Cooling performance will be measured at both idle and load settings with comparisons being made against the air cooling setup the system previously used. Another item we will look at is the change in overclocking ability of the hardware. Currently, the CPU being used in this project tops out at 400x9 prime stable with 1.61v on the core. This gave my air cooling setup fits and it was unable to manage the heat at that voltage. With the cooling capacity of a liquid cooled system, I look for some serious improvement in load temperatures as well as an increase in overclockability. The two video cards being used for this setup top out at clock speeds of 600MHz on the core and 950MHz (1900) on the memory when air cooled. Danger Den quoted that a performance improvement of up to 30% is possible with the lower temperatures the full coverage blocks for the graphics cards provide. We shall put that claim to the test. Follow along in this final installment of Project Danger Den.

What I found out while building this project is that the bottom half is built from the inside out. This means that once it's in there, very little room exists for people like myself with big hands to maneuver around inside the lower compartment. With that being said, the first item I installed was the radiator. It is held to the case with 8 number 10-32 screws. I used standard wire grills because I feel they offer the least amount of obstruction to the incoming airflow. The biggest thing to be careful of is that the screws do not protrude into one of the liquid tubes in the radiator. These tubes run right under the screw holes, so measure carefully. I had pre-installed the fans because it would have been a bear to get them in otherwise, so the whole assembly is screwed onto the case. Tighten the screws evenly to prevent twisting the radiator out of shape.

The hard drives mount one of two ways, either upright on the side or mounted directly to the case wall. I chose to mount them to the case wall to keep as much free space as possible to provide as much airflow through the case as I could. The head screws provided with the case do a great job holding the drives in place. Before I mounted them in place, I attached the SATA cables and power supply cabling because once mounted, the process was more difficult.

Seeing as how things will get tighter down the line, I went ahead and ran the 8-pin 12v auxillary power supply connection up to where I wanted it in the back corner. This puts it behind the optical drives back out of the way .