Watercooling inside silverstone fortress FT03 microATX case

[Shinnice]

Hello,

First I would like to say english is not my native language so please excuse me if it's not entirely correct.

I gave my computer to my girl for her birthday. It sits inside the silverstone fortress ft03 case. It runs a I7-2600k and a amd hd5870 (yes it fits, barely but it fits) inside and while everything runs great she finds it to noisy. I've changed fans and used anti-vibration pads but still it's to noisy for her liking, it's fine for me but she has really oversensitive hearing (Or I'm just deaf as she claims). So I have been thinking about putting watercooling inside.

Still watercooling also requires fans and a pump, and thus generates noise. Would I be able to reduce noise using watercooling? I know it reduces noise on high power overclocked systems, but on medium to low power systems?

Also due to space limitations inside such a small case I wander if I can put enough radiatorsurface inside to keep it cool. I've been thinking of putting a 120x120 radiator in the top exaust. and a 80x160 radiator into the bottom intake. water reservoir + pump would be where the side intake is. This means removing the side fan which i'm also not sure of is a good idea. Keep in mind this system does not really need to be overclocked. Noise is the primary concern. A slight overclock would be bonus if it doesn't raise noiselevel.

my loop would go in this order: pump > cpu > 120x120rad > gpu > 80x160rad > reservoir > pump

Regards,
Pierre

 

[Motopsychojdn]

A pump inside a reservoir (like the Xspc X20 750l) is silent if you have the res 100% full of water,
I have two in my Pc and they don't make a sound

**Bear in mind the four fans on the gfx cards kick up, then settle down

if you are just cooling the cpu that radspace will be fine, but if the cards getting cooled as well, you may want to look at another approach, like an external radbox,
Moto

 

[boiler1990]

The GPU fan is generally the loudest fan in any computer case; watercooling may help, and you can also get much quieter fans.

Air convection is only so good for cooling; at some point you have to use something with a higher heat capacity and coefficient of heat transfer in order to get better results.

 

[Shinnice]

The fans currently inside the case are
Case Fans: 2x noctua 120mm nf-p12 1300RPM
GPU cooler: Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME Plus II
CPU cooler: Corsair H80

Maybe I can change the fans on the corsair still, I think the noctua fans aren't to bad of a low noise choice or?

So can I lower the noise with water cooling? Should I have enough radiatorsurface?

Or maybe I should just buy her earplugs, would be cheapest of all.

 

[Shinnice]

I've been fidgetting with the case and maybe i can replace the 80x160 rad with a 120x240 if I mod it into the back of the case using a slim 30mm rad with slim 12mm fans. That is if I would need more radsurface

 

[Rojo1982]

I just finished a FT03 build myself. I actually fit three radiators in there. I'm running a 2500k at 4.5ghz and a gtx 680 both with ek waterblocks. I can show you some pics if you are interested. I never thought it was possible to fit everything but it is. It takes some modding to the case but nothing major.

 

[Dr00b]

I just finished a FT03 build myself. I actually fit three radiators in there. I'm running a 2500k at 4.5ghz and a gtx 680 both with ek waterblocks. I can show you some pics if you are interested. I never thought it was possible to fit everything but it is. It takes some modding to the case but nothing major.

Hey Rojo, I know this is over a year old, but if you have those pics of how you fit 3 rads in your FT03, I'd love to see them. I'm building a custom setup and need to figure out how I'm going to fit my RX120 & 240 inside. The 120 will fit on top by the CPU, I think, but the 240 I'm trying to squeeze in the bottom.

I'm going to load my Sketch Up when I get the mock up done, but your setup could be useful.