OK well, being the first time I have used a DFI board I figured I may as well welcome it with a more attractive place to live.

Before:




Did not like the face and teh hoses coming out the top. Wanted to remount the plug for the second PSU to the back and a lot of other little things.

After:






Still need to finish the grille around the rad and the case that will be yellow but I got her up and running XP 64-bit and Vista build 5744 64-bit. Very pleased with this new board.

Very clean. =) I'm digging the front panel. ^^

God damn thats nice. do the brass L bends help dissapate heat also?

Heat dissipation from the elbows is slim-to-none. While Brass does conduct heat well; the elbows are quite thick and there is very little surface area in contact with the air; Rads are very effective because they have an immense amount of surface area in contact with the moving air.

The 90 degree fittings kill your flow.

Great color choice and I like the added wings to the logo. And like the others are saying those 90s are destroying your flow but other then that great job.

I know that the 90s kill my flow but the D5 handles it well and I'm a little more concerned with asthetic. I may be switching out the GPU and chipset cooler b/c a video card will not fit in the first slot because of the mounts. Not to mention I'll want to get a different cooler for my crossfire R600 setup when I can. Just wanted to see how things went. The NF4 chipset I'm coming from got WAY more heat than RD580 here. Really quite striking. I dunno. What do you guys think?

Awesome mod.

Cooooool

Hot cha cha ...

nice.

very clean, getting the tubing cut to the right lengths must have been a bear

Thanks for all the great feedback!! Changed out the Coolermaster PSU fan for one that is MUCH more quiet. Its very nice indeed. Still no progress on what more to do about the rad grille. Looked at about every hardware store in town. baah

A floppy drive on the side?

Yeah, Only gonna need it if Something is wrong so... conceal it.

wowowowowowow!! good job!!

luvin the whole DFI theme... IMO the sticker that comes wit the board is abit cheesy, but on ur case (pun defintiely intended) it fits great!

gj

Well, Did an update. Not sure I like the grille on the top around the rad. I also added a toggle and pushbutton to reset the CMOS without taking the case panel off.

I love that rad grill.

breathe taking my friend good work

I like it, looks good.

So, In trying to get a good OC (3Ghz or above) I think I am running into some heat problems. So... To reduce the fan noise and heat problem... I made a shallow mount for my NB block. The mounts were too tall for me to use a card in the #1 PCI-E slot. So now I should be able to use the push-clips that are on the stock NB fan and mount the water block nicely.

Nice work on the mount for the NB. Great work!!!

Pretty cool, what tools did you use to actually make the bracket?

Uhh... that would be a sheet of metal from Home Depot, Metal sheers and a dremel. Used a pair of pliers to help me make the bends. For my first endeavor in metal working I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. I am a much better carpenter.

So how are the temps with that home brew? Sounds pretty much like the way I'd go about it, I work in construction as well.

OK, just put the kid down so I'll be starting work now Reel. Gimme a bit to get it all together.

OK, back up after a few glitches. Had to make a few cuts in the bracket to have it not touch components on the board and then had to get stronger springs to hold the block in place.


So my tubing now looks like....

lol I like the floppy drive in the hd bay.

I keep mine internal as well, rarely us it, so why not?

I hardly use mine either but I just leave it in my box 'o computer stuff. When I need it just hook it up outside the case. It's also nice to not have the fdd cable in the way too.

Hum, never thought about it! You right its never used!

Looks kinda risky Metal against electrodes...hmmm might want too reconsider that!

All those 90 degree fittings are killing the flow.

I flipped my floppy around so it is only accessible when the side panel is off as well. Sort of a PITA when doing a system install, but for normal operation, it doesnt matter, I rarely use the floppy anyway. It is rarely even powered as my PSU only had one floppy power connector.

Dood I like the idea of the floppy because it looks fugly on my front panel I might use that because you only really need it for bios or whatnot. anyways are you serious about the victorias secret thing in your sig?

also if I have not said before nice job.

I was about to say the same thing. The flow is literally getting gangraped with all that 90 degree fittings.....Dman! counting almost 12-14 of them right angle fittings.


Dude.....not to be rude! But you really gotta get rid off all those right angles if you want to get the best performance from your water cooling setup.

I agree. I have the same pump, I can run it at a lower speed, without the high pitched whine and still get better flow due to the lack of flow-killing right angles.

My setup is caseless. I have to say, with 1/2" tubing, I have no clue where I'd start fitting it into even a large case.. so good job on fitting that all in.

Osama... yes I am serious. Before I went to water I was into extreme air cooling and victoria's secret just has the best stuff. It catches the most dust and allows the best flow for it. And its cheaper in the long run than the other stuff you buy out there. one set of hose is like 5 bucks then hack it into pieces.

All of this talk about my fittings is putting a little peer pressure on me!! I am considering loosing the fittings on the inside now but the ones that allow me to have the rad face down the way it is will stay. I really did not like the way that the hose went in the previous build. That leaves only 5 fittings total. So if 6 were to diasappear then would everyone be happy? not being a jerk here I just take critique seriously.

The floppy originally went to the HD rack in the previous build because I had ALL of the wires that came with the second PSU stuffed into the 3.5" bay area so it woud not fit. I left it there on this build just because I really never use it unless I am working on something... and not so anymore since I moved the CMOS jumper to the toggle and button on the front of the case. I have been thinking about ditching it for another hard drive. I really want to loose my PATA drive and get a 500Gb SATA drive. It jut has not been the priority lately.

It's your system. If the performance level of the cooling is satisfactory to you it's irrelevant if anyone else is happy or not.

As huge as the tubeing is I bet it isn't affetcing it as much as is thought. Of course I don't know the cfm of the pump either and rpm's. What is the diam of the tube? 5/8? 3/4? Nice floppy placement and what 2 PSU's

I agree with the majority here about the elbows. I did a little digging and found this site to calculate head loss. it is pretty crude, but I think you will get the point.

With 14 elbows, you would need a pump with a pump head of 9.9 feet!!!
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g189/Neezer96/headloss.jpg

I looked around danger den and other sites and found that the most common pump head values are right around 2 meters or 6.3 feet or so. I found a few with pump heads at 2.5 meters(8.2 feet), but this still falls short of the 9.9 feet needed from the aquaculture site.

A few solutions that I thought of:

-use 45 degree fittings instead of 90.
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g189/Nee...oss45degree.jpg

-use 2 pumps in series!!! possibly a waste of money. You will have plenty of flow rate, and you could run them both at lower settings.

- use two completely independent loops with two pumps 2 rads and the whole nine yards.

All of the things I have said above have to be taken with a grain of salt. right now the rig looks awesome, and if it cools enough for you, then it is fine. I love the way it looks now and it would be a shame if you had to change it, but if you did, I am sure it would still look great.

Great job and keep us updated with what you decide to do.