This build is named after the mythical Midgar Serpent. Jörmungandr was a bringer of Ragnarok and featured in God of War. A fitting name for this full custom loop built in the Hydra Mini ITX. I built this for my buddy's daughter (I built her a gaming PC about 4 years ago). She landed a great job a 2 years ago and saved her money for this upgraded PC. She's using this build strictly for gaming on the Samsung Odyssey G50A 32 inch 165Hz monitor.

She’s been interested in custom water cooling, seeing a few of my builds over the years. She’s a bit of a tinkerer and wanted to learn to perform her own maintenance and one day, build her dream loop. After a bit of discussion and debate, she talked me into building a SFF custom loop to reduce PC footprint and have a baller machine. Although I enjoy building SFF loops, I explained to her the complexities involved when performing maintenance in SFF loops (i.e., access to fittings), higher temps due to less radiator and increase cost. We came up with an interesting solution to build a mini-ITX, open air SFF loop, where everything is accessible to her. To maximise cooling I planned to fit two radiators (somehow???) on to this lil serpent.

The black version of this case was finished with a matte paint that scratched easily. Before starting the build, I repainted the entire case using 3 coats of Krylon Fusion Mat Black spray paint. After drying I sprayed two coats of an enamel finish to further protect the finish. Another issue we encountered was the long power button. It took up almost 6 cm of length, preventing us to mount the FLT80 under the motherboard tray. We simply routed the cable behind the PSU, with the power switch off to the side.

But the real challenge for this build was the limited case dimensions and design to mount two radiators. I gave her my plan for case modding, however, she was against the idea of drilling holes or resorting to physical deformation of her case🥺. We thought about the MO-RA solution, but that would have added almost $500 extra cost and defeat the small footprint she needed. Instead, I thought about putting together a wall of radiators, similar to the MO-RA idea, attached to the case. I cut to size and painted a a custom radiator mount, made from 1/8 thick aluminum and two XSPC rad stands, that attached to the bottom of the HYDRA case. The case would become heavier and less stable, so to prevent that, I purchased 4 larger gold-toned speaker feet to replace the existing HYDRA feet. The solution was stable and worked very well.

Routing the ZMT runs was straightforward fittings seemed to line-up with no issues. To make "gold" fluid, I found the recipe which calls for 40 drops of the yellow and 3 drops of the red dye in 1000ml of Cryofuel clear. I decided to replace the existing PSU cables with unsleeved cables to allow better fit in the cramped space under the motherboard tray.

Jörmungandr runs cool, idle CPU temps hovering just under 32C, with GPU idle temps at about 28C and load 52C. The build is eating the Samsung Odyssey G50A 32 inch 165Hz monitor for lunch. She's excited about gaming and maintaining this lil' serpent herself. Enjoy the build!