Lian-Li A05: Upgrade path

I

indokyne

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 21, 2006
Messages
2,159
here's my prior rig:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/stormshadow3500/Worklog/DSCN6217.jpg
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/stormshadow3500/Worklog/DSCN6043.jpg

I was actually quite pleased with it but just wanted some change.

Specs:
MSI Neo2 Platinum
Opteron 175 @ 3.0GHz
2GB Corsair XMS PC3200
300GB HD
(coupla external drives)
6800GT AGP(!)

Swiftech Apogee
MCW60
120mm Radiator
DDC Pump w/ acrylic top

I wanted to upgrade a few parts to my current setup. Namely, I wanted to bump up to
- 2x120 (240) Radiator
- 7/16" tubing
- 1/2" barbs
- chipset watercooling
- but do this all in a smaller case


the case i chose was the new Lian-Li A05B
shown here:
pc-a05b.jpg



First step was to cut the top panel to make way for the radiator and radgrill:

P1000437.jpg



old chipset cooler:

P1000424.jpg



new chipset block:

P1000427.jpg



1/2" barb upgrade:

P1000464.jpg



Along w/ my 300GB OS Drive, I'll be mounting internally my 500GB documents drive:

P1000439.jpg



Drives test fitted:
(i wanted to flip them around to hide the cables but the front mounted 120mm fan was in the way. I still might flip them

around and externally mount the 120mm fan since there's enough room and put a radgrill in the front of the case)
P1000459.jpg



Fan installed:

P1000457.jpg



initial test fit:

P1000442.jpg




test fit w/ video card:
(and as most watercooled neo2 owners know, the socket location and chipset location can prove to be difficult. Looks like tubing management is imperative here. But nothing new for me...)

P1000467.jpg



hit a snag w/ the screws I use to mount the radiator. Including the radgriill and case wall, the screws come up a little short.

I'm going to have to pick up a new set at the hardware store and cut off excess length...


more to come :)
 
You did an awesome job on your last rig, good luck with this one.

I also wanted to point out that you should really route those Firewire, IE, USB, Hard Drive activity, reset + power cables, etc. to the back and cut a hole to connect them in their respective ports.
 
Kuyt said:
You did an awesome job on your last rig, good luck with this one.

I also wanted to point out that you should really route those Firewire, IE, USB, Hard Drive activity, reset + power cables, etc. to the back and cut a hole to connect them in their respective ports.
Click to expand...

thx - i was thinkin about it but aesthetically, it's all gonna be covered up by the radiator / fans...
(and i don't feel like breaking out the dremel again lol)

aznbumbaclot said:
nice stufF!
Click to expand...

thx bud.
 
currently leak testing - i'll have pics up tomorrow...

no other real update but i do have to get this off my chest...

INSTALLING 7/16" TUBING OVER SWIFTECH 1/2" BARBS IS HELL ON EARTH

ugh.
 
ok - managed to snap off a coupla pics...

P1000486.jpg


P1000490.jpg


installing the rest of the components tomorrow and wire management...

what do you guys think?
 
Looks good; reminds me a lot of my own rig! You need to make sure that there is SOME airflow running down onto the mb mosfets....either a side fan or a duct on the rear fan blowing in would do.

If you had trouble with the tubing over the barbs, first dip them in boiling water next time. I got 3/8" tubing over 1/2" swiftech barbs using that method! They're on there so tight that I have to cut them off.

With my rad at the top of my case, blocking the top of my mobo like yours, I had to do some mods to the usb/firewire/frontpanel headers up there. PM me if you need help with that.

Great work!
 
thanks :)

in terms of your airflow over the mb situation, fortunately, that case is designed with reverse airflow. the rear fan is an intake and the front fan is the exhaust (the front fan is located in front of the hard drives)

good call on the boiling suggestion - i'll def. try that next time...
 
Nice job Storm. I have this very case coming soon and its good see some work being done in it to get a better idea of what working in it is like. How's the case window mod going?



 
Dark Prodigy said:
Nice job Storm. I have this very case coming soon and its good see some work being done in it to get a better idea of what working in it is like. How's the case window mod going?



Click to expand...
Thanks DP
still undecided as to which approach i should take...

definitely looking forward to your ppc window....
 
oh - and another thing about this case. Out of the box, there really isn't too much in the way of PSU intake... so I don't know if you guys noticed in my post above but I cut out an intake hole and flipped the PSU around so the intake fan was at the bottom.

Then I used rubber bump stop things to support the PSU from the back as well as decrease vibration and noise...

P1000457.jpg
 
redface.gif


yah... still waiting for crysis before upgrading to dx10...

handles what i do just fine (far cry, virtual pool) lol.
 
Oh yeah, that looks pretty nice.

Why didn't you go for a tripple rad and just remount your optical drive on the bottom slot?



The optical drive cover plate looks very nice too. I think I might just grab that for my case.
 
Ockie said:
Oh yeah, that looks pretty nice.

Why didn't you go for a tripple rad and just remount your optical drive on the bottom slot?



The optical drive cover plate looks very nice too. I think I might just grab that for my case.
Click to expand...

a triple rad would really be tough on this case. Considering that the barbs would have had to be on that end, it may have taken up more than one drive bay.
And considering this case only has two 5.25 bays, I couldn't really go down the triple rad route.

Besides, one of the reasons I did this project was to try and fit a top mount rad and a top mount optical drive... that's kinda where these LianLi mini tower's have a little advantage - they're abnormally long.

and just a note on the Lian Li drive covers... Out of the box, the mounting holes did not line up.
PLUS, the case rivets interfered with the covers as well.

I had to dremel out the mounting holes and also make clearance holes for the case rivets.

it was extra work but it was necessary. Otherwise the drive covers would have sat about a half centimeter down (blocking the lower bay) and also would've been tilted out (because of the case rivets).
 
stormshadow said:
a triple rad would really be tough on this case. Considering that the barbs would have had to be on that end, it may have taken up more than one drive bay.
And considering this case only has two 5.25 bays, I couldn't really go down the triple rad route.

Besides, one of the reasons I did this project was to try and fit a top mount rad and a top mount optical drive... that's kinda where these LianLi mini tower's have a little advantage - they're abnormally long.

and just a note on the Lian Li drive covers... Out of the box, the mounting holes did not line up.
PLUS, the case rivets interfered with the covers as well.

I had to dremel out the mounting holes and also make clearance holes for the case rivets.

it was extra work but it was necessary. Otherwise the drive covers would have sat about a half centimeter down (blocking the lower bay) and also would've been tilted out (because of the case rivets).
Click to expand...

You could have used either a 90 degree barb or turned the rad around so your barbs take up slot space in the rear of the case.... but yeah, the top drive bay is also handy to have, so I agree... I was just wondering why you didn't go all the way with it :)

Thanks for the info on the drive covers, perhaps I'll just pass up on that for mine. It does look good though.
 
UPDATE.

My 3rd copper BGA ramsink popped off during working on the loop... and those things don't go back on very well... even w/ thermal paste etc...

so I tossed them.

and i replaced them with (eek) the swiftech BGA ram cooling block (1/4" tubing :eek: )

and added the chipset to that parallel loop...

pics to come.
 
though it may not be the most popular solution, it works quite well...

DSCN7292.jpg


DSCN7299.jpg


with sound card:

DSCN7302.jpg


pending installation...

DSCN7310.jpg
 
i like it a lot. good job.

do those f connectors affect the flow rate?
how's your oc?
 
fameless said:
i like it a lot. good job.

do those f connectors affect the flow rate?
how's your oc?
Click to expand...

yea - those "F" barbs shouldn't be your first choice if you want to run multiple loops but in this case with the limited space and only wanting one pump / res / rad, it works just fine.

My opty 175 is dual prime stable @ 273x11 (3003MHz) and tops out around 42-43 deg during the stress testing.
(don't know what the room temp is)

i'll post up GPU temps later tonight
 
latest addition...

DSCN7394.jpg


Matrix Orbital display..
now just to figure out how to work this thing...
 
Man, I super dig the matrix orbital. My A05 build will use one too whenever it gets here. I love the front of this case... short non cluttered and clean looking...Using different diameter tubing is unorthodox but kind of cool. Any luck with the window yet?



 
You know anti-freeze is not meant for water cooling. "Anti" means not and "freeze" well you know what it means. Me personally i would want the liquid to get little ice chunks in it.
 
Dark Prodigy said:
Man, I super dig the matrix orbital. My A05 build will use one too whenever it gets here. I love the front of this case... short non cluttered and clean looking...Using different diameter tubing is unorthodox but kind of cool. Any luck with the window yet?



Click to expand...

yea - def. can't wait to see your progress... the window is still a headscratcher for me... don't know what route to take. Kinda looking forward to seeing what PPC can offer and go from there...

tylerdustin2008 said:
You know anti-freeze is not meant for water cooling. "Anti" means not and "freeze" well you know what it means. Me personally i would want the liquid to get little ice chunks in it.
Click to expand...

wtf
 
stormshadow, first off I love that case and the way you setup you were able to setup that loop in such a small case is awesome. I plan on copying you kinda :) but before I do I have 2 questions which will be pretty much a deal maker/breaker:

(1) Can you use your second to last (ie. the one just before the orange slot) PCI slot? The rad looks very close to it but I can't tell if it is actually unusable or not.

(2) If you were to slide the radiator to pretty much all the way in the front (even taking out the top I/O), do you think it would completely "clear" the orange PCI slot?

I am asking because with my current motherboard (DFI NF4 Ultra-D) it only has the last 2 slots as PCI slots and I use a PCI soundcard (Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic) which I won't stop using just so I can get this case.
 
kuhla said:
stormshadow, first off I love that case and the way you setup you were able to setup that loop in such a small case is awesome. I plan on copying you kinda :) but before I do I have 2 questions which will be pretty much a deal maker/breaker:

(1) Can you use your second to last (ie. the one just before the orange slot) PCI slot? The rad looks very close to it but I can't tell if it is actually unusable or not.

(2) If you were to slide the radiator to pretty much all the way in the front (even taking out the top I/O), do you think it would completely "clear" the orange PCI slot?

I am asking because with my current motherboard (DFI NF4 Ultra-D) it only has the last 2 slots as PCI slots and I use a PCI soundcard (Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic) which I won't stop using just so I can get this case.
Click to expand...

hmmm... lemme go home and check. Last I looked, i didn't see much room for that particular slot.

Not to mention that even if a card did fit, you'd almost completely block the air going into the radiator...

i'll take a look tonight and let you know.
 
kuhla said:
stormshadow, first off I love that case and the way you setup you were able to setup that loop in such a small case is awesome. I plan on copying you kinda :) but before I do I have 2 questions which will be pretty much a deal maker/breaker:

(1) Can you use your second to last (ie. the one just before the orange slot) PCI slot? The rad looks very close to it but I can't tell if it is actually unusable or not.

(2) If you were to slide the radiator to pretty much all the way in the front (even taking out the top I/O), do you think it would completely "clear" the orange PCI slot?

I am asking because with my current motherboard (DFI NF4 Ultra-D) it only has the last 2 slots as PCI slots and I use a PCI soundcard (Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic) which I won't stop using just so I can get this case.
Click to expand...
ok - took some pics... it's possible that a card can fit in that slot... but it literally would be right up against the radiator impeding air flow and touching fins... (!) so in a word, I guess it's "no"...

DSCN7400.jpg


DSCN7401.jpg
 
ok - a little mini update...

completed the upgrade to Yate Loon fans all around. Night and day difference in sound.

I was going to 7V mod the AC fans with some zener diodes i picked up from radio shack but no need now...

DSCN7403.jpg


DSCN7405.jpg
 
Looks great!
Would Asus p5w delux mobo fit this case without a problem?
 
Just making shure, thanks. newegg has it for $10 less now, so I bought one :D
 
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