Help me build my first watercooled gaming rig, ivy bridge +680gtx!

[Edmontonsoap]

Hey there, new to the forums and looking for some advice for a newbie. Over the next two weeks Im going to be planning my watercooling purchases and then installing the unit, I will post pictures of everything during the build to show progress and finally some after completion.

My unit so far consists of a 1200w thermaltake toughpower cable management psu, a asus p8z77-v motherboard (which might be switched out for a sabertooth z77), patriot viper black momba ram 8g (might switch this later on also), a evga 680gtx ftw 4g gpu, a I7 3770k cpu, a xfi sound card and it's all sitting pretty in a corsair 600t special edition white case.

Been doing a little looking around and found a guy using the 600t on youtube (his is a black one) and he has two rads, one 200mm sigle in the front and one custom mounted to the top, a slim profile triple 120mm. I'm thinking of doing the same setup but after reading his 3d marks score it seems that his custom rig is being beat by my air cooled rig, which is all stock cooling atm.

Here is a video of that rig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZD4p1Lb2HQ&feature=channel&list=UL.

So anyways I have to get good performance if I'm spending the time and money and I want it to look clean, 500-600 hundred is my budget, which should leave room for a nice setup. I want both my video card and cpu cooled with water, no outside of the case setups, although I'm sure I will see better performance, I'm not looking to sacrifice a nice clean look.

So some suggestions would be great. I'll also post pics of my current system later today.

 

[toolmaker_03]

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/12174/cas-416/Danger_Den_External_3_x_360_Radiator_Liquid_Cooling_Housing_Enclosure_CAS-EX10-2.html?tl=g30c95s162

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/12735/ex-rad-233/Watercool_MO-RA3_9_x_120mm_LT_Extreme_Radiator_-_Black_Powder_Coat_22000.html?tl=g30c95s667

this Is a nice way to mount external radiators like 2 360’s, pump, and reservoir will all fit nicely inside of it leaving lots of room in the case, Leaving it clean. Add a couple of QDC’s and the radiator stand can be easily separated from each other making the case easy for moving the two. you can also mount one large radiator inside with the rest of the components mounted to the exterior sides of the stand there are a lot of options here but that is up to you.

 

[Edmontonsoap]

That's a pretty hardcore setup, looking for a good setup inside a case to look nice and not use up space. Really just needing advice on things like should I use two rads inside the case or just one, what kind of pumps should I be looking for, what's the difference between barbs and compression fittings, what size tubing should I be looking at and should I be doing dual loop or single loop when cooling both the cpu and gpu.

 

[toolmaker_03]

Yea I totally know what you mean I have asked myself the very same questions many times and this is what I have come up with have a look and see if it helps any at all

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/page-274855_29_500.html

Water cooling is a hobby for me so it is always evolving and improving on previous builds at least that is what I try to do anyway

 

[manofchalk]

^
1. The thread has died, the last post was in October last year.
2. Why would you say the H100i is a good choice if he wants the CPU and GPU to be water-cooled? Then go on to recommend a H80i, which even though neither can, would be even more insufficient for cooling a CPU+GPU.