CUSTOM LOOP LEAK! Turned into an upgrade opportunity...

My home PC setup was a treat from me, to me as a little (or actually, fairly big...) celebration for graduating from University with fantastic grades and also walking straight into a job! Sadly the job turned out not to be the career path I was hoping to go down and I have since left, but my home PC soldiers on and it has some pretty decent specs.

My PC building experience back then wasn't top notch and I didn't feel like I had the skills to successfully build custom loop watercooling into my system. Thanks to the guys at Scan, UK my dreams COULD be realised and I commissioned a custom setup with the following specs:

• OS : Windows 10
• Storage: 1 TB Seagate SSHD 7200rpm
• Boot Drive: 250GB Samsung 850 EVO
• Memory: 64GB Corsair DDR4 @ 2133Mhz
• CPU: Intel Core i7 6700k overclocked to 4.4 GHz
• GPU: Asus Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB Founders Edition
• Case: Fractal Design Define R5
• CPU Cooler: Custom Loop onto dual fan 240mm radiator
• PSU: 650watt Corsair RM650X

*(Image: A pic of the assembled build taken by the shop)

This thing was, and still is, a bit of a beast. Fantastic for running virtual machines, plotting drives, running games, rendering models and more. Over the past year I have only ever had a couple of issues with the build, the first of which was with the power supply which actually died pretty quickly. Though I put that down to the frequent power surges I had and the dodgy electrics in my last house. Managed to get that swapped really quickly and easily and the benefits of fully modular really came into their own here as it was one of the quickest fixes I have ever done to a pc!

The second issue I had was with the seal perishing on the reservoir which caused a fluid leak - luckily this was only onto the grill below, all the components got out unscathed! This leak caused the res level to drop to a point where there was not enough liquid inside for the pump to spin up. This had the knock on effect of causing the CPU to overheat within a minute of powering on the system which completely took the PC offline. This is where I saw a window of opportunity. As the machine was still under warranty, I decided to add the GPU into the loop while it was in the shop for repair and also add a bigger reservoir to cater for the new heat load in the system. I'll let the pics and captions below tell the story:

*(Image: The leaking reservoir - I was absolutely gutted.)

*(Image: The upgraded system! 1070 now included in the loop and bigger res!)

New additions:

• Boot Drive: 120 GB Intel 700p M.2 SSD
• 250mm EK Reservoir
• 120mm Case Fan bringing more cool air over reservoir
• Copper EK GPU Waterblock Bringing GTX 1070 into the loop
• Palit 3GB GTX 1060 - Mining Card

*(Image: M.2 Drive installed - was very easy, just slotted in with one screw to hold it in place. I used Paragon migration software to transfer windows over from my 850 EVO to this drive.)

*(Image: I added the spare case fan back into the system to improve air flow over the reservoir to act as a secondary / supplementary heat exchange point in addition to the 240mm rad.)

*(Image: The PC internals as it currently stands - you can see the 1060 below which mines Zen 24/7 and I enable / disable the 1070 as and when required to boost this during the downtime.)

*(Image: My setup in the flat. The monitors are both 24", one is 144Hz Acer and the other is a 4k Samsung. Also have some logitech speakers + subwoofer, dre beats with an antlion modmic for voice chat, a Microsoft HD webcam and some chinese mouse & mechanical keyboard with dampeners fitted.)

Thanks for taking the time to look through this wee log, and if you have any questions or comments on my system feel free to leave a message and I'll try and get back to you :)

Cheers!

A