This past week I decided to build a liquid cooled mining rig, with the entire frame custom built from supplies I bought at Home Depot. Turns out that making a case wasn't as easy as I thought, especially since I've never really built anything before. From the beginning I knew that a liquid cooled custom rig would be expensive, but the idea of lower temps was appealing... Oh and the fact that it would look pretty badass.
I decided to build the main frame out of wood, using steel and aluminum to create supports for PC components. I used a variety of cutting tools, but often found myself eyeballing it with my trusty jigsaw (not recommended).
The way I went about building the case wasn't really the smartest. First I cut, painted and screwed the four wood sides together. I then cut two aluminum bars mounted them horizontally with L brackets to act as supports for the graphics cards. Then without disassembling the case, I made a few holes in the case for fans by drilling a small hole and cutting with my jigsaw. Finally I attached some metal supports at the corners and was ready to start adding parts.
I ordered most of the electronic components the week prior, while I was on vacation. It honestly felt like Christmas when I came when home.
Contents of what I ordered:
3 x MSI GTX 1070 Liquid Ready Cards
3 x PCIE Cables
1 x MSI Z170A GAMING M5
1 x EVGA PSU Gold 1300W
1 x Intel Pentium G4400
1 x G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 8GB
1 x PNY 120GB SSD
6 x Thermaltake 120mm Green LED Fans
1 x Quad Radiator
1 x Rad Grille & Mount
1 x Dual Optical Bay reservoir
1 x D5 Pump
..Hard/Soft PTEG 3/8" ID Tubing, Heat Gun, Tube Cutting Set, UV Coolant Green, Shitload of Fittings, and some other junk
Never liquid cooled before but decided to have the water flow from the res to the cards to the rad and back to the res again. I decided to run the cards in series, mainly due to the lack of fittings.
It took me awhile to get the hang of pipe bending with the heat gun, but finally managed to get a suitable bend for the front tubing.
When I finally got all the tubing together, I proceeded to load the coolant with an old beer bong. Unfortunately I had a leak at one of the hard tube fittings but luckily I didn't have any other components nearby except for the pump.
Got the cards up and running to test things. Temps are much cooler than on my other 7x 1070 rig, which runs at about 60-70c with OC.
I mean to eventually add a 4th gpu to this loop and then run a separate loop for 3 more gpus and a cpu ( that's right, I'm gonna liquid cool my Pentium processor lol). It might be a tight squeeze with this case, so I may need to build a new one or make some modifications. The one advantage to liquid cooling, aside from aesthetics, is that you can cram loads of cards into a small space.
Was a lot of work but I'm somewhat satisfied with the results, let me know what you think!
