Ever since I finished my last Windows XP build, I felt something was missing. I had put together something with a case that absolutely exemplified the style I loved, but besides the case, there wasn't much intrigue. From watching RETRO Hardware's videos I started to desire a machine that was absolutely ultimate in terms of modifications and looks. I wanted something that required much more thorough effort and could easily show off such mods. The Raidmax Scorpio has the unfortunate side effect of hiding everything up front behind a big decorative door.
These wants would come to a boiling point as my desire to move away from the family PC and have a machine of my own increased to a maximum. The time was just right, as I soon inherited a performance-segment prebuilt PC from around 2014. I don't have a lot of money, and take pride in recycling or otherwise preserving what still exists, so I gladly accepted the hardware. From this deal, I retained 32GB of Ripjaws Ram, an i7-4790K CPU (with a shitty old AIO), and a fancy MSI Z97A Gaming 7 motherboard. The case it came with was a bit too big for my liking (and too new looking), so it was set aside, along with some other hardware.
For the new case, I went with a Rosewill R5601-BK. This case housed a family pc almost a decade ago, and wasn't doing any good collecting dust at the back of a closet. It was free, could be reused, and would serve as a good blank canvas for my purposes.
Despite how fancy and ambitious the intro statement was, the result would be a lot more disjointed and scatterbrained.
The AIO (Lepa branded) was obnoxiously loud and seemed to have a mind of its own with RPM increases. I wanted to stay true to this system's water cooled roots, and opted for a really budget-conscious, yet thought-out open loop with soft lines. Soft line water cooling was the way it was done in the early 2000s, so naturally I wanted something similar.
There were a ton of things to consider during research, especially with buying budget items. I've only gotten slightly better at making budget purchases that aren't a total waste of money, because it really is like navigating a minefield; reviews can be spoofed and nobody is 100% truthful about specifications. For instance, the first water pump I bought was dead on arrival, and the seller could only comp me a third of what I spent on it. After that mistake, I went with an alphacool unit on the cheaper side and had zero issues. It's a DC-LT 2600, super silent and flows quite good. If you have a decent chunk of case space for a pump+reservoir combo then this is a good choice. There's also two threaded ports on the top, so you can add a fill line running to the top of your case if you want to.
From reading others' testimonies, old computer blogs and forums I determined Polyurethane tubing was the best material to use. It doesn't leech plasticizers (PVC) and isn't permeable (Silicone), and flexibility is decent. Silicone tubing probably has the edge with flexibility, but I don't want my coolant to evaporate through the lines. The size I decided on was 8mm ID and 12mm OD.
For the water block, I mainly used my sense as to which design was most likely to be the most reliable. I wanted to avoid 100% acrylic designs and went with a copper-core block, bolted to a metal frame, and a top acrylic beauty cover. I really liked the transparent top look... being able to see inside of your functional devices is quite cool, that's why enthusiast PCs have had side windows for the past two decades. To finish everything off I got some G1/4 barb fittings. The coolant was some random Honda antifreeze concentrate I found in the shed, 50/50'ed with some distilled water. It has a pleasant blue color, as you can see below.
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| The complete loop being bench tested/bled. |
If you remember the post about the Aspire PSU, that's what I ended up putting in this machine to bring it all together. I'm just naturally lucky because that thing with leaking caps didn't cause a single catastrophic failure during the couple months I was using it as a daily pc.
I'll cut it off here, the next post will detail some of the modifications made in order to get this old case watercooling-compatible, as well as the drive bay stuff.
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