The Marine goes aquatic: July 2008

1 of the Xilence Red Wings outside the rear of the case, puling air out through the single rad inside.
The molex connector will just fit through one of those unused tubing grommets.

The 9800 GTX is not in place yet. When it is, at least one of those SATA connections will be taken out. Lucky there are 6.

Bit of contention for tubing space with the 2 rads being so close together. I tried mounting the single rad upside down, but the case prevents this.

I had to move the HDD cage up 3 drive bays to accommodate the Laing D5 pump, which will be velcroed to the base of the case, unless I feel like drilling some holes.

Most of the main components are in the case now, so I can measure accurately the hose lengths required.

Shows 2 of the 3 Xilence Red Wings that will be venting out the top of the case, through the triple rad inside the case below.

The case holes and rad holes do not line up. Of the 16 holes available, 2 are unusable because of this.

Either the mobo needs some spacers to raise it a bit, or the I/O cutout Asus provides does not match the I/O ports exactly. The keyboard/mouse PS2 port is unusable as things stand.

DVD drive in place. Just waiting for the reservoir to be returned to me from WatercoolingUK.

Also waiting for the RAM - OCZ 4GB DDR2 FlexII XLC PC2-9200. Nowhere in the UK seems to have any of this. Amazon Germany has some, but it is way expensive. OCZ say they will start shipping it 'soon' but they have no ETA.

Until I know I can get hold of some of this watercooled RAM, I can't finalise the cutting of the tubes.

Some parcels arrived for me this week!

:o)

Samsung 22" widescreen monitor with 2ms response time

I couldn't wait for the 9800 GTX+ to hit the shops, and didn't know what driver problems it might have, so I went for a tried and tested 9800 factory overclocked by BFG. Shame I won't be taking advantage of their "lifetime" warranty ;o)

A modest bundle

This Logitech 5.1 speaker system gets good reviews. I will be playing a lot of music on this system, so the speakers need to be up to scratch.

Outputs to an external hi-fi system if required

Woof woof!

A solid motherboard with support for up to 1200MHz memory

Plenty of bits and pieces with that, incuding an optional fan for the northbridge.

I'm not too keen on the Asus advertising on the heatsinks, might have to remove that to improve airflow.

Lots of connections - always good.

Should be room for the EK water block...I hope!

Picked up an E8500 for the price the E8400 was when I started this project.

Some 4" UV lighting for the reservoir.

The bigNG fan controller that I'm hoping I can just fix-and-forget.

An excellent bundle of stuff for fixing in a bay, in a card slot or standalone with acrylic tops. Plus you can buy extra sensors if you need them.

Looks big, but in fact it's only about 3-4 inches long.

Same with this PCI-e sound card from Creative. It looks huge, and I was concerned about bending tubes around it, but in reality it's only about 4 inches tall.

Feser F1 UV Red coolant - anti-freeze anyone?

All those components need some quality amps running through them. This PSU from Enermax gets excellent reviews, some awards and is modular, so no unnecessary cables.

And a free wallet. Not that I need one any longer, after buying all this gear!

Now we're finally getting to the interesting bits. This is a GTX 9800 water block from EK, which I'm hoping is going to fit to my GTX 9800 OCX card.

Acrylic top - shame it's going to be face down in the case.

All the necessary, including stoppers (wish I'd known), O-rings, mounting screws, allen key and thermal pads.

Hewn from a solid block of copper in the mines of Moria...er sorry, getting a bit carried away. I do love these w/c components though.

Some bits and bobs.

1/2 barbs, stubby barbs, PSU bridging tool and Acousti fan mounts.

Jubilee clips - I'm taking no chances!

T-piece and ball valve for a drain line

Tygon R-3603 - couldn't get hold of any 7/16" / 11/16", so this is 7/16" / 5/8" - the next best thing.

4 120mm fans from Xilence - a good trade-off between high volume of air and low noise.

Flange-type

3 and 4-pin connectors

A couple of 12" UV lights for the case.

XSPC RS120 UV-reactive "red-orange" radiator.

Looks a bit too day-glo orange for my liking, but under UV light it might be redder.

XSPC RS360 for the top of the Cosmos S case. They supply screws that look like 1.25" M4. These should fit through the case holes and through the flange of one fan (1" thick).

Arctic Silver Ceramique and some red and UV LEDs

These acrylic stoppers for the GPU water block have holes for 5mm LEDs, so I plan to take advantage of that.

I may have over-ordered on the UV lighting front...

EK Supreme Plexi CPU water block.

Supplied with all mounting bolts, nuts, washers, etc. And both mounting plates, in case your motherboard heatsink real estate is too high-rise for the larger plate and you have to use the "universal" mount.