custom, hand-built external water cooled i5-2500k @ 5.0 Ghz

This is my desktop I built. My Intel i5-2500k CPU is liquid cooled by a custom external water cooling loop I assembled. The chassis that everything is mounted in is hand built by myself, completly custom from acrylic and aluminum. The idea started on graph paper and the rest came together with some power tools in my garage.

System Specs:

Intel i5-2500k cpu 3.33 Ghz quad core (Overclocked to 5.0 Ghz @ 1.46v)
Asus Sabertooth P67 TUF B3 motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 8 GB DDR3 1600 Mhz 9 9 9 24 @ 1.5v
Asus Nvidia GTX 570 Direct CU II with 1.25 GB GDDR5
Corsair HX 850 Watt modular PSU
1 Crucial M4 128 GB SSD for OS (Read 520 MB/s)
2 WD 320 GB HDs in RAID 0 for Game data
1 WD 2 TB for storage
1 WD 1 TB external for backup
Lian-Li PC60 case (that i bought in 2003!)

Watercooling specs:

EK Supreme HF full Nickel CPU block
XSPC 360 Radiator with 3 Scythe Gentle Typhoons in pull config.
Swiftech MCP655 pump with variable speed (@2)
FrozenQ 250 mm Fusion reservoir
EK 150 mm secondary reservoir (with inline liquid temp. sensor)
NZXT Sentry LXE Touch screen fan controller

Idle temps: ~ 25 C
Full load: ~60 C

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• i5-2500k
• water
• cooling
• external
• custom
• nvidia
• gtx
• sandy
• bridge

[IceFried]

I have an almost exactly the same computer except the processor, i got the i7 2600k 3.4ghz and i don't have nearly the balls to overclock as much as you do..

[srbananaphone]

@IceFried lol im running at 5.1 Ghz now too.. if youre watercooling i wouldnt worry about overclocking your i7 2600k to 4.5 at least. if youre on air you can hit 4 no problem! just up your cpu voltage a tiny bit, like 0.025v at a time and see what the min v is needed to be stable, cant hurt unless you overvolt and go like 1.6v and up, im running 1.48 v for 5.1 ghz stable...

[Nosoulnomore]

I'd stick some grommets on the sidepanel where they lines go into the case proper, just for tidy's sake as the rest of it looks nice

Moto

[srbananaphone]

@Nosoulnomore ya that was planned, ive just been lazy :P youre right though i do gotta get around to doing that

[seriousman006]

well...thts a helluva of a quiet computer O.O

mine looks like a vaccum cleaned due to the cooler fan and the gpu O.O

btw...just asking...i recently did an oc on a i5 to 4.3...and its running at 36º idle and 76 full loda on prime95...and im wondering if its too much...should i underclock it again, cuz i played crysis 1 the whole day the night before and it showed zero flaws and 0 crashes...thnx in advance :3

[srbananaphone]

@seriousman006 thanks hah. the fans i bought pull the most cubic feet per min of air with the least noise possible. is your i5 a sandy bridge model? like an i5-2500k? if so your idle is good, the load is high, you should try not to hit more than 65C load, 76C wont kill your CPU but it isnt very good for it. what voltage are you giving the cpu? what heatsink fan do you have? try lower voltages by tiny amounts. otherwise you need a bigger heat sink and fan for lower temps.

[MrOctopi]

I'm looking to build something similar. Would it be possible to provide an in-depth view of the case itself? Thanks a bunch, nice video!

[OneVerce]

wow thats a really nice system

[ZabraliMiNicka]

@Emeianoite depends on game dude :D

[IceFried]

@Emeianoite Got money to waste.

Any difference, even small ones are important because i live in a shit country where you can't even find an sli motherboard without a tremendous amount of trouble.

Truth be told i just selected the most powerful components i could find, i was lucky they had the 2600k. Custom building a computer is a pain in the ass here and the pre-made ones are crap.

[Emeianoite]

@IceFried are you stupid? Games are barely optimized for 4 cores, yet alone 4 extra lanes (HT) almost every single game out there will run better with HT off, or none existant, you could even get away with setting affinity. Thus, 2600k over a 2500k is a WASTE of money for gaming. You can keep babbling much ado about nothing, be my guest, but having the more expensive CPU doesn't make you any more logical, it just means you paid more for basically the same performance in gaming. lol

[Emeianoite]

@IceFried Overclocking is about being able to push the limit... nothing more. After about 4Ghz, you barely see gaming performance increase.

[IceFried]

@Emeianoite uhuh... well maybe you should tell that to every single game i'm playing on my computer on ultra because they don't seem to know that and run without any lag...

And the ubersampling is notorious for it's fps eating.

Also the 2600k is pretty much one of the best gaming cpus second only to the 2700k...

[Emeianoite]

@IceFried if you game mostly, the 2600k is a waste of money.

[IceFried]

@srbananaphone I stupidly added bad cooling when i was building my computer, it's air but barely anything special. I got a 700w psu so i'm not sure it's the best one for overclocking anyway.

I have no need to overclock yet anyway, for now every single game that i've played ultra on this pc runs perfectly, the witcher 2 staggered a little bit when i enabled ubersampling but even then i still had about 40-45fps.

Thanks for letting me know, i'll probably do it when i start having framerate problems