Danger Den / Nvidia Tri SLI water cooled Gaming PC

A year and a half ago, I built a hefty gaming rig, now its old hardware. I was going to update it, mainly swapping my 2 GeForce 8800 GTX for a shiny new GeForce GTX 280. But I went "mad scientist" and build and entirely new rig, starting with an acrylic case made by Danger Den, and inside a triple Nvidia SLI water-cooled monster.

Here's a shopping list:

Case: Danger Den Tower-21

Motherboard: XFX nForce 790i

CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Quad processor

Memory: Corsair XMS3 DHX DDR34GB Dual Channel Memory Kit

Graphic cards: 3 Nvidia GeForce GTX280. 2 from PALIT and 1 from BFG

Power Supply: Corsair HX1000W

Hard Drives: Western Digital VelociRaptor

Watercooling supplies: Danger Den

Step 1: Building the Case Danger Den's Tower-21

Take a look at Double Ds Tower-21 acrylic case. The Tower-21 is large, structuraly very solid, strong, and extremely heavy. I'd put the quality up against the best metal cases out there. And forget thoes cheap ready-built no name acrylic cases. They are like tissue paper in comparison. All the acrylic pieces comes covered with a protective paper film, protecting it from scratching. Danger Den cases uses a 3/8" acrylic for almost all of it, and the acrlyic can be custom ordered in a variey of different colors and UV. I got black and clear. Expect to spend around 1 1/2 to 2 hours for the assembly. The directions are easy to follow, the

parts come labeled and each set of screws come in a separate bags. Danger Den's kind enough to throw in white gloves, here a tip..use them! When I started without them I got fingerprints everywhere. This case is a showstopper so treat it like one.

Comments

[ewolvin]

I had hoped to see "home made" water blocks instead of store bought ones. Anyone with $$$ can build this. Had you made a vid with water blocks made from scrap around your home Now that would have been a video !

[Shadow Of Intent]

Dunno if this is still relevant to your interests, but in parallel, they would all recieve cool water, but since the water is divided between more tubes, it would pass through slower. In series, it would go through much faster, but successive GPUs would recieve water heated by the previous GPU, which would lead to the last card in the series running hotter than the others.

So, for a fixed volume of water pumped per second, series would have a greater temperature variation (Though if the flow is fast enough, this may be reduced to just a few degrees' difference), and parallel might have a lower maximum temperature, but many more tubes.

I'd go for series, both for neatness, and because the slower water flow of a parallel setup would probably result in poorer cooling on average compared with "second hand" water in a series setup.

Hope this helps!

[egammoc]

what would it cost just to buy one off some1 with this kinda skill?

[Muscelz]

i have to ask how did u manage to link the GPU water blocks together? iver never seen a 280 SLI waterblock setup :/

[AnthonyV]

wasent easy, when i did it but if you go to Danger Dens site they have the custom parts for the triple setup.

[menahunie]

I am considering water cooling. I am currently using tec/air cooling.
My question is I have seen mose system hook the gpu's in series; what is moree better? Series or hooking them up in paraell?

[zack247]

what is that paper stuff you are holding with the tweezers in step 5?

[awang8]

Looks cool, but agin, isn't this kinda overkill?

Ah well, what the average frame rate for Crysis high detail on 1900x1200?

[AnthonyV]

overkill is half the fun, + now i dont have to worry about frame rates on crysis

[naruto the ninja13]

you think you could play crysis with ultra high settings on a three screen setup?

[tinkerC]

So what? The over-kill makes you be able to update individual parts, so more can be cooled, without updating the cooling system.

[awang8]

I'm talking about the GPUs...

[tinkerC]

More screens mean more space to put your windows. Also, the quality counts, because then it looks better.

[anarchysk8]

great job next time go AMD SLI the two pair better than intel does and for $1000 for 3.3ghz compared to $240 for 3.3ghz i think its way better on the budget

[sqeeek]

Unless you ended up tight on money, which is understandable with a computer like this, I'd use a Seagate drive instead of the WD. I've been repairing computers for a job for about 5 years now, (doesn't seem that long unless you consider I'm only 18), and WD have _always_ been the first ones to fail, Maxtor being next after that. Seagate drives, however, seem to last forever. And when they do have problems, you can usually send them back and get a new one for free. Not that you'd need to - I have a RAID-5 array of 70gb SCSI Cheetah's from an old server that are around 6x their MTBF, and they're still going :D Only problems I've ever had were with some 500gb drives a couple of years ago, but Seagate was very nice about replacing them with drives that, as far as I know, are still working. No offense to anyone involved, but IMO, Seagate drives are worth the extra $.

[Muscelz]

this is the most irritating step apart from pulling apart the vids, so fiddly. ahha dnt cha just hate those little scratches, they irritate you till your ripping out your hair then your sittin there for ages trying to get them out lmao

[AnthonyV]

heck yea, and the plastic faces get fingerprints all over them.

[sqeeek]

There's a window cleaning spray solution I get at the local car parts shop, works great for cleaning those off :) Wish I could remember what it's called.

[Muscelz]

u got your hands on a corsiar powersupply nice, highest quality PSU on the market, i guess you would want reliable power for a 8grand machine ayee :)

[anarchysk8]

hahahaha lol no offense but corsair is a memory company not psu try ultra or thermaltake or even kingwin and they have modular way more efficient

[Hycro]

Take a close up look at the picture of the PSU...I was reading what you both said, and was wondering what you were talking about, checked it out, and it says on the side of the PSU that it's Corsair, but so does the RAM...

[anarchysk8]

yea corsair is a company that focuses on making ram and to expand their profit and consumer base they decided to make psu's and other parts for computers its just like OCZ which  is THE #1 IN MEMORY AND SSD'S  ocz makes psu's and other parts like cooling but i would never in my right mind buy a ocz psu for the fact that its just not as good as a company that makes psu's before others!!!

[SmAsH!]

What are the actual specs of this beast? You've got me drooling in my chair!

[Eddiepers]

and now they have comps with 10+ gigs of ram STATNARD!!

now thats futureproffing

[ashchetm]

wowzers...

[Muscelz]

i advise you RIGHT now to change water blocks from plastic faced! alwayz get solid copper and aluminium blocks, ive see to many plastic faced water blocks crack around the gasket, screw and inlet and outlet base :/

[anarchysk8]

lol danger den has never failed me and it actually works better the copper blocks they use have a better heat draw than koolance and others so just use DD and not a cheapo and you will be fine o and by the way its not a normal "plastic" its made out of acrylic and its hard enough to take on the best liquid cooling up to 90psi (twice as much as you should ever use on liquid cooling)

[anarchysk8]

its not the biggest improvement but its a good idea get a can of "Aqua Net" and spray it on the pieces (outside of the case only for static reasons) when you are building it no finger prints i did it on 3 different builds and they are still as shinny as when i opened the box

[venomireland]

Oh man, this is beautiful. Looks a lil cramped though but, man, it is beautiful. How much did it cost? did you have to put your house up for collateral?

[AnthonyV]

yea its cramped! it all just fit!. ps im now living out of the boxes all the stuff came in (lol)

[TheScientist]

really nice, good instructable! i'm curious about a couple of things though: most setups i've seen have a reservoir, how come yours doesn't? and how hot does it run? those three cards under load + cpu must get pretty warm still all being on one loop? although that's a pretty huge radiator :-D

[AnthonyV]

the fill tube is acting like a res. and my temps are icey cold, on load cpu is around 50-55 c and gpus 46-50c

[AnthonyV]

the reservoir is the fill tube, same thing. as for the temps idle everything is running around 40c CPU and GPUS. I played Dead Space for about 3 hours and my temps never went past 55c.

[TheScientist]

cool :)

[Dantex]

You ca buy uv colour and uv light for a hell good light show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3eiGWQHrxo

[AnthonyV]

with what ive got in there my glass desk light up like a christmas tree

[Muscelz]

waz ther any board difrences between the BFG and PALIT boards? ram location? for eg

[AnthonyV]

no differences

[Muscelz]

how u like myne :) built it myself, cost enough (toooo much *pulls collar down*) , does the job :) Intel Core i7 965 @ 4ghz (45oC idle "liquid") ASUS Rampage II Extreme Motherboard (I7) Gainward Radeon 4870 X2 Rampage700 GS GLH Edition x2 OCZ DDR3 PC3-15000 Reaper 4x2gb 8gb total @2ghz Thermaltake Sword Aluminium Liquid Cooled Case Thermaltake Toughpower 1.2Kw Modular

[AnthonyV]

nice i building an i7 rig ill post it soon