Cptn Vortex
Well-known member
So I managed to get the whole loop done in 3hrs. I couldn't get my bends to work with the Bending guide kit I got, for some reason it would always kink really badly, so I ended up doing the whole thing by hand...
Before:
Ugly mess:
First couple runs were easy and straight, with the long one needing a bit of a "S" curve to meet up to the top rad:
MUCH cleaner down in the pump area, this I am pleased with:
And I didnt take pics of the progress to get to this point, cause I was in head-down power work mode lol:
The bends could have been better if I could only get the guides to work. That one piece, from top RAD to CPU was a PITA. It took 3 tries! So hard to get the distance between bends right by just eye-balling it.
Luckily some of the bends on my screw-ups were quite good, so I re-used one for the CPU to GPU part. And the GPU to Res was a little more forgiving since I could rotate the Res a few degrees if I was slightly off.
Bends look a bit better from this angle:
Here's my take-away thoughts if you are thinking of doing this:
Before:
Ugly mess:
First couple runs were easy and straight, with the long one needing a bit of a "S" curve to meet up to the top rad:
MUCH cleaner down in the pump area, this I am pleased with:
And I didnt take pics of the progress to get to this point, cause I was in head-down power work mode lol:
The bends could have been better if I could only get the guides to work. That one piece, from top RAD to CPU was a PITA. It took 3 tries! So hard to get the distance between bends right by just eye-balling it.
Luckily some of the bends on my screw-ups were quite good, so I re-used one for the CPU to GPU part. And the GPU to Res was a little more forgiving since I could rotate the Res a few degrees if I was slightly off.
Bends look a bit better from this angle:
Here's my take-away thoughts if you are thinking of doing this:
- Go with 16mm OD tubing. I imagine it may be a little more forgiving to work with compared to this small 12mm OD
- Buy plenty of tubing. I bought 6M, and ended up using 3M of it. I can imagine it would have been easier to quickly use up more if I hadnt gotten lucky on some of the bends
- Dont worry at all about block order. I did a quick test. Fired up furmark on my GPU and let it run for 10 mins. The temps stabilized at 46c. Then I fired up multiple runs of wPrime 1024m. In my case the CPU gets to about 65c on the package. The GPU temp remained Exactly the same, 46-47c. So it's not like you are dumping extra heat from the CPU to the GPU, the coolant cycles way too quickly for it to make any direct impact.
- Dont get coloured tubing! It's really tough to tell when the tube gets to the right temp!
- Dont be too intimidated, it is totally do-able. Just take your time and don't give up.