Forzen Steam Machine, a balance between performance and silence
Great thing on H200 is that there is kind of prebuild mount for the reservoir
First touches on tubes
Used a step drill to get the drill hole exactly to 22mm like the fill/drain port.
But this approach seems be a bit to strong and slightly bended the metal plate. Next time I will go with a Dremel here as well.
Can recommend the connection between reservoir and fill port, as their are no vibrating parts and so no sound/vibration is transmitted to the case. And the easiness of filling the system is excellent.
Some compromise between airflow vs. static pressure fans and thickness.
What I will not do again is connecting the drain port with the case as here seen you have direct connection between the vibrating pump and the case. Sound transmission is okayish but not ideal.
Dismantling a 600$ piece of hardware is bit freaky the first minutes
Unfortunately the video card was triple slot where the NZXT H200 only offers two slots. So this is were the Dremel came into play. Used and old wooden tile to fix the bracket
Now the tricky things start
Measuring in three dimensions is one thing
First time bending is another story. Quite a sharp learning curve as I had limited tubes in spare.
Again used the rest of a Ikea wooden tile and a wooden plate to have an flexible and adaptable bending templet.
To shortcut the 24 hours leak testing with liquid, I used the EKWB Leak Tester.
Put pressure on it and ensure the needle remains 15min in the same place and you are good to go and fill your system. (Unfortunately there was a big leak at the first try, so right choice for me to stay dry)
Exciting moments!
System is leak proof and ready start burn-in testing
Frozen Steam
The design principal of this build was to combine high performance and maximum silence in the smallest space as possible.
Basic setting:
Dreamed of a water-cooled gaming system since I became 16 years old (now I am more then twice that old), now the pandemic was the perfect time to work on this.
Although I build all my previous PCs myself, this was the first one with liquid cooling and I decided to go for hard tubing as I simply like it more than soft tubing.
Anyway as bending hard tubes is not that easy at first time, I was during this journey sometimes not sure if this was maybe too ambitious.
Finally I spend around 25 hours on this build and guess will stay with liquid cooling in future as well.
Basic setting:
- Hide pump behind buttom panel
- Fill port on top of the case
- Drain port bottom of case
Dreamed of a water-cooled gaming system since I became 16 years old (now I am more then twice that old), now the pandemic was the perfect time to work on this.
Although I build all my previous PCs myself, this was the first one with liquid cooling and I decided to go for hard tubing as I simply like it more than soft tubing.
Anyway as bending hard tubes is not that easy at first time, I was during this journey sometimes not sure if this was maybe too ambitious.
Finally I spend around 25 hours on this build and guess will stay with liquid cooling in future as well.
Color(s): Black White
RGB Lighting? Yes
Theme: Steampunk
Cooling: Custom Liquid Cooling
Size: Mini-ITX
Type: General Build
Contests
This build participated in 2 contests.
| Rank | Contest | Date |
|---|---|---|
| #440 | EK 10K Challenge | ended |
| #165 | SFFPC meets builds.gg Contest | ended |
Hardware
CPU
$ 389.95
Motherboard
$ 272.94
Memory
$ 85.96
Graphics
$ 598.68
Storage
$ 333.33
Case
$ 69.99
Case Fan
$ 67.80
Cooling
$ 186.04
Cooling
$ 90.77
Cooling
$ 222.18
Cooling
$ 149.99
Keyboard
$ 189.00
Mouse
$ 40.97
Estimated total value of this build:
$ 2,880.29
Approved by: