Ok, well the next step was to mount the pump as I had installed the pump monitor on the top of the case I needed to place it near to it to reduce the cable clutter. I originally wanted to put it in the HDD bay at the bottom but was worried that it would interfere with the 3 drives I had in there and I really didn't want to change the original plan of two drives in Raid 0 and 1 standard back up. To go along with the DVD burner and the DVD drive.
After playing around I realized the only way to do this is with L-bend barbs on the pump. So again I caught the train to Akihabara and bought some more! They are beginning to think I want to work there!
After working out how far back to place the pump I decided to place it so it couldn't be seen, this meant removing the totally ineffective fan cage mounted in the HDD bay. Again using rivets so out with the Black and Decker to remove those annoying rivets!
Well due to the irremovable drive bay (Did I mention I should modify that?) It was very hard to drill the holes. I prefer to work on the side that won't be seen even though the underside won't be seen I still consider it a visible area don't know why. But in this instance I had to flip her on her back and mark out the mounting holes and drill, I was a little worried as I wasn't sure if those rivets could withstand the force of the drill coming through on them but the seem to have held firm.
As you can see by the two photos there really isn't a lot of space between the outlet on the pump and the 1st HDD.
As you can see I have lost 2 of the HDD slots leaving me only 3 to put drives in! Thank God thats all I need!
You might be wondering what that T-section is? Well after numerous setups and leak testing I decided that one of these would be extremely useful needless to say it prevents a lot of mess.
After all the hardware was in place the next step was to cut the tubing, as most of you would agree it's probably one of the most time consuming things. Cut the tubing, get everything in place, fill it with water, find out the bend is too tight and it leaks, empty the water, cut more tubing fill it with water and so on.
One of the tricks I did learn was that if you are using hard tubing warm it up in hot water, around 40-50c is good as this will allow the tubing to bend and be more pliable and once the cold water runs through it hardens back up and doesn't leak while retaining the bend you put in it.
I first mounted the water block on the GPU and had real problems getting all the tubing set up as I had a split so that the CPU and GPU weren't in series but used separate lines but it kept leaking (This is how I found up the heating trick!) and had to return to the store twice to buy L-bend barbs, the store is 1 and a half hours away by train so I was getting quiet tired that day.
I finally got it all set up and in place, by the way the GPU water block has the same excellent lapping as the CPU water block. Did I mention you can get them in sterling silver?
But I kept on getting leaks and couldn't work out where or why!