Gadgetory

welcome to the most overkill build guide we have ever done this system with all the peripherals that we're going to suggest might be appropriate for it is going to cost over six thousand dollars u.s. so it is not for the faint of heart however if you want nothing but the best of the best I can stand pretty confidently behind any of the recommendations on this table so who is this system for exactly well number one is the components we've chosen are optimized for gaming number two is they are optimized for overclocking and number three is they are optimized for a very very quiet operation and we've also gone with a full custom liquid cooling setup in order to help us achieve the goals of gaming overclocking and quiet operation all at the same time now with that said our choices here today were not dictated by performance per dollar or any kind of value metric really we're going for the best possible performance that we can get and that's it for our CPU and motherboard combo we've gone with a 4770k unlocked processor from Intel so this is on the LGA 1150 platform and we've gone with a Maximus 6 extreme motherboard from a seuss now you might ask why didn't we go LGA 2011 with this system the benefits of LGA 2011 are more cores more ram as well as more PCI Express Lanes natively but because this is a gaming oriented system and not a workstation we aren't going to benefit from those things as much as will benefit from being able to use a fourth-generation Haswell architecture because most games are lightly threaded workloads compared to a second-generation Sandy Bridge architecture which at the time of filming this is the highest available on the LGA 2011 platform next up is graphics cards we've gone with to Asus GeForce GTX Titans with coolants water blocks on them the reason we're water-cooling them is that you can get higher boost clocks if you keep these GPUs very cool due to GP Boost 2.0 and the reason we've gone with Titans as opposed to GTX 690 s or Radeon 7990 s is that I personally find that the best scaling and the best compatibility comes with two-way graphics card configurations of no more than two cards now the reason to use two titans as opposed to a single 690 is that you get a six gig frame buffer with GTX Titan that is not available on any other consumer grade gaming graphics card that means particularly when running at high resolutions Titan is going to deliver a better gaming experience with large textures so now and in the future than any other solution on the market storage is very personal but we've gone with two Intel 520 series 240 gig SSDs for a total of almost 500 gigabytes of OS fast raid 0 so accelerated SSD goodness for our applications then we've gone with 2 Western Digital red series 3 terabyte drives in raid 1 for redundancy now we could add more of those drives in a more elaborate raid configuration but the most important point I want to make here guys is for our OS and applications and the things that we can always reinstall if we lose them we're using raid 0 which is fast but not safe and then to back up that SSD array on a nightly basis at least as well as to archive important data we're using a safe raid 1 array on a raid optimized drive such as the WD red also in line with our gaming theme is the use of an asus Xonar Phoebus sound card it's very similar to the zone ours ents that I've been using for quite a while now except it's a little bit more gaming optimized so it has a front control pod you can plug your headphone microphone into it uses all three-and-a-half millimeter connectors and it always gets the latest software updates from Asus for their gaming optimized features so my understanding is that their new radar will be coming to it soon which is a visual indicator of where sounds are coming from just kind of neat we're using primo chill primo flex LRT advanced tubing my personal favorite type of tubing it's awesome we're using coolants 3/8 inch ID 5/8 inch OD compression fittings what I like about these is the fact that they can be wrenched tight or hand tight and they look outstanding we are also using a phobia gold-plated reservoir which looks pretty bling-bling as well as a coolants three adi cpu block which is one of the best performing cpu blocks on the market the last couple water cooling components are a swift tec m CP 6 5 v pump it's really the only one I recommend and a phobia gold-plated reservoir for peripherals these are so personalized but these are some pretty good general recommendations we've gone with a Logitech g7 10 plus it uses Cherry MX brown switches Logitech's excellent software and even includes along with the media keys and programmable G keys an o-ring mod on every single switch making them even a little bit softer to type on we've also got a death outer 2013 although a Logitech G 700 s would be another great pairing for that particular keyboard the thing people like about the Death Adder 2013 is it's one of the highest sensitivity optical mice on the market as opposed to laser mice so there's none of those weird acceleration issues finally for our headphones we've gone with the custom one pro from Bayer dynamic and we recommend checking out the mod Mike if you need something to go along with it or perhaps something like a blue snowball which is an excellent desktop microphone and last but not least the elephant in the room right here the 900 d pretty much the only case maybe not the only but one of the only cases in existence capable of housing this type of a machine especially all those radiators the first step in any successful build endeavor is ensuring that you're at a static safe workstation so I don't recommend working on carpet and in our case we're working on a mod mat Xtreme I recommend using an anti-static wrist or ankle strap I prefer to keep it on my ankle so it's out of my way and last but not least you'll need a multi-bit screwdriver just a Philips head will work for most basic builds but with this one things got a little bit crazy we ended up needing a power drill and some other things as well but you can do most of what you're about to see with just the stuff I've outlined already this step is really really important guys pay close attention particularly with a liquid-cooled build it is extremely important to build the system outside of the box outside of the case just like we've done in the past on our build guide so you can check that out there because the last thing you want is to spend hours and hours putting it together only to have it not boot up because something was dead on arrival particularly for graphics cards now we liquid-cooled these graphics cards in a separate video so you can check that out but you don't want to install a water block on it only to find out that it is defective so install it with an air cooler run the whole system do your burn in tests then it is time to actually assemble the computer for the sake of keeping this video a little bit shorter we're not going to do a step-by-step on it this time around though guys so just check out one of our previous build guides for how to build it outside of the case I recommend using your motherboard box as an anti-static workstation for this step once you've done your safety build outside of the case and grab all the components that you need out of the motherboard box so that you're not in and out of there all the time so all the SATA cables you need to install all of your drives the i/o shield which you'll need for the back of your case as well as the wireless module that also acts as an NG F F upgrade slot and the antenna that goes with it this is a cool antenna it actually attaches magnetically to your case or anything else that's nearby this piece is optional this is a sousou's OC panel it comes with the Maximus 6 extreme it allows you to access some tweaking options whether you mount it outside of the case or orient it this way and mount it in a five and a quarter inch base so that it can sit and operate in a more basic mode from inside the case there's also a custom cable that goes with that speaking of custom cables the last thing we'll need is an SLI bridge because we are going to be running two graphics cards now it's time to install the CPU note carefully the orientation of the Golden Triangle on the corner of the CPU as well as the little plastic triangle on the socket cover you're going to want to line those up when you're installing it next pull up the retention arm you don't need to remove the plastic cover yet position the CPU inside the socket carefully give it a little wiggle to make sure it's in the correct spot then all you have to do is let the arm come down slowly sliding the retention clip under the nut then push down pull out and lock it under the retention arm the little plastic cover will pop off and then your CPU is installed water cooling is all a little different so follow the instructions that's really really important this particular block comes with a large silicone isolating pad as well as a hefty metal backplate if it's not oriented correctly on the back of the board you could have problems later on so make sure that the cutout notch has the shape of the CPU backplate sort of corresponding to it so just be careful is all I'm really saying thermal compound application now I prefer icy Diamond over other thermal compounds but just for lulz I pulled out an ancient tube of OC Z ultra v plus just to show you the method just apply about the size of an uncooked grain of rice in a line down the middle of the CPU and you're golden now that back plates on there but it's not secure at all in order to get it firmed up take four plastic washers and put them over each of the four posts followed by the four thumb nuts now these ones should go down enough that they're quite tight because these are what's going to keep the posts in place now that it's secured you can put the CPU block down on top of the CPU followed by four more plastic washers four springs and finally the four large thumb nuts now these ones you're going to want to tighten in a cross pattern and don't wrench them tight don't go so tight that the board is flexing and the CPU block is flexing it just has to be tight enough that it makes good contact with the processor underneath finally put two of the compression fittings on to the CPU block no need to put the top pieces on yet because we haven't installed tubing yet and that's pretty much it for your CPU block rhyme installation not too complicated guys now do note that this particular board the Maximus six formula has tabs on only one side so I recommend putting the non tab side in first followed by pressing firmly on the tab side until it locks into place we have four dims so we're going to do this four times with the tool list release in the back we can take off the windowed side panel of the 900 D as always I recommend stashing your side panels somewhere safe preferably inside the box that your case came in with the foam in between so that they don't get damaged in any way next up you can open up the basement by pressing the little tab here and pulling it open that's where you'll find the box with all the hardware that you need to install pretty much anything you could possibly want to in the Corsair 900 D now the first thing we're actually going to install is our i/o plate which as with any case is installed simply by aligning it with the hole at the back of the chassis and then popping each of the four corners in individually the M PCIe combo 2 card acts as both a wireless module this is wireless AC as well as an NG FF expansion slot so you can simply plug it in in the top of the board here screw it in from the back then you're ready to mount the board once that's done you'll see that the motherboard standoffs for our standard ATX sized board are already applied so all we need to do is take the appropriate screws out of the box of screws and put nine screws through the board into the back of the motherboard tray you know how your room kind of gets Messier before it gets cleaner this is the part where we actually have to disassemble things before we can continue assembling them so we're going to take out the rear fan we're going to take off the front aluminum plate and take off the front fans by undoing the screws we are going to remove all three of the existing triple drive cages that are in the 900 D by removing the screws at the back and finally we're even going to remove the screws that are holding in the additional mount point for another one of those drive cages remember you can get them optionally now we have a clearer idea of what we're dealing with now this my friends is when things start getting really serious business so just for the sake of knowing where it is so we don't accidentally install any radiators that interfere with it we're going to put the power supply in now so I recommend putting the power supply in on the side of the case that is nearest to the motherboard tray the reason for that is it's shorter runs to the components particularly up the back of the tray however this case does support dual power supplies and you can put it in whichever Bay you prefer now mounting radiators most of the radiator mounts in this case are Native however there are two pieces of metal that were hidden that we actually took the screws that hold them in place out when we were removing the cage mounts on the bottom of the case one of them is cleverly labeled down and the other is cleverly labeled up these simply mount to the case using little hooks as then and then screws to hold them in place permanently once they're in these are what are going to allow us to mount that quad radiator that goes on this side now we're ready to start physically planning the layout of our loop in terms of where we want to install fittings radiators and tubing this is the point in the build where you want to actually make sure all of your carefully laid plans are even going to work take those radiators do quick test fits make sure that you not only have room for the radiators and graphics cards and other bulky components but also that you have room for the associated cables and fittings and tubing that's going to go with them because even the best laid plans well it is possible to make mistakes once you've done your test fit it's a great idea to take some of the little difficult hard-to-reach connectors and plug them in now before you put in your graphics card and you have a bunch of tubing running all over the place and all that stuff so we've done some rudimentary cable management with them here on the back panel then we're going to plug in basically just the easy stuff front USB three front USB two front panel audio as well as our front connectors for our power switch reset switch and indicator LEDs next up remove the five PCI slot covers that correspond to where you want to install your cards guys there's no shame in consulting the manual at this point to find out which slots are most optimal for the kinds of cards you're installing for that matter even for that last part where you're installing the front panel connectors guys it's all in the manual usually in a little leaflet QuickStart guide but you can consult so once we've pulled those off we're going to install the sound card first just because that one's not in the way of anything else for doing then this is where things start to get a little bit tricky because with our two graphics cards we're going to be using a special sli fitting that allows us to put them very close together which you normally wouldn't be able to do with fittings and tubing in between so once we've done that we're going to rearrange all the other fittings according to the test fit we did before and where we want pipes coming in and out of what is now a single graphics card assembly we're going to take that whole thing install it into the two slots then put the thumb screws back in and our expansion cards are now done the next thing I like to do is install the radiators where they're going to go according to our overall design for flow so the first thing you'll have to do is remove the top cover on the nine hundred d there's a little tab in here you basically put your thumb in there and then push forward towards the front of the case and that comes off revealing the radiator mount there we go up there on the top then you're going to have to take each of the radiators and plug all the extra holes that you do not need okay we're going for slightly positive air pressure here guys so basically on the bottom in the basement we're going to have air moving through towards the power supplies intake and then out the other side then up in the top we're going to have three intake fans that are not on a radiator behind the drive cages pulling air in we're going to have our rear fan here pulling air in and then we're going to have four fans up here on the top pushing air out so this should give us slightly more intake then we have exhaust allowing for slightly positive pressure which usually results in less dust buildup radiator mounting can be a bit of a bear and a big part of the problem is that these guys can't all standardize on something they've all got a different way they expect you to attach the fans to the rad so alpha cool includes two different lengths of screws with bare rads we're going to be using the shorter of the two now be careful when you're mounting fans directly to the radiator that you orient the labels correctly if that matters to you as well as the direction that the wire leads are coming off for optimal cable management it's going to be difficult to undo this later and redo it after the fact for our bottom quadruple 120 millimeter radiator what we did was we mounted all the fans directly to the red and then because alpha cool again that whole standards can't be consolidated thing did not include short screws the good news is they use the same threads as an optical drive so we were able to use some of the screws included with our 900 d-- to mount this rad down here in the bottom for our rear 120 millimeter again we weren't able to use the included screws so what we ended up using was more of the cased screws however we had to use a washer here because the holes at the back of the case were so wide that the narrow heads that were included with both the rad screws and the included case screws went right through them because they're intended for fan screws then we used one of the shorter length screws to mount the fan directly to the rad for our top mounted radiator again we're going for a pull configuration here we used the longer screws because now we're going all the way through a fan all the way through the case and into the radiator in order to get them mounted now this is again a spot where you're going to want to do any test fits that you think you need to do for example here in the back we were not able to orient the 120 mil rad in what I would consider to be the optimal orientation with the barbs up this makes it easier to bleed the air out of it instead we had to turn it around and it was still a very tight fit with our tubing to ensure that we were actually going to be able to get water up to that top radiator removing the top panel on the 900 D is pretty simple once you get the hang of it just flip the tab under here slide it off to the left-hand side of the case if you're facing it from the front and that's how you get access to mounting that top rad and this goes to show you guys that no matter what you do there's bound to be a minor oopsy we had to take our power supply out and the reason for this is with it in we realized we couldn't access the on the quad radiator in the basement because it was too close so we weren't going to be able to install tubing on it what we'll have to do instead is install our dual radiator using the long screws washers and then going through a fan into the rad this gives us a very natural airflow path in the bottom of the case here so you can see we're pulling air through this way and then pulling it out this way so it's all going in the same direction not fighting itself and then once we've done that we can run all the tubing run all the fittings in the basement including getting tubing installed on the pump which is going to go next to the dual rad right down here then we can put our power supply back in and start getting the cables hooked up part of getting the basement of the case plumbed correctly is installing the reservoir which actually is going to go up here by the PCI slots now guys got a pen ready write this down the order of your loop does not matter you know CPU block GPU block radiator resident it doesn't matter we're talking maybe a degree or two of difference but what does matter is having the pump pulling water directly from your reservoir that way it can never run dry now we used the flexible fitting options on this particular fobia gold-plated res in order to make sure that we were going to have clearance to install our tubing so it has an inlet on the top which I would actually recommend using as a fill port otherwise you're going to get trickling noise and then it has two different fittings that come out at about sort of 70 degrees on the sides and two on the bottoms it's important to use one on either side because there's a baffle in the middle of the reservoir that keeps the cyclone effect from occurring sucking air into your pump making it louder and less efficient fobia ships a pretty robust mounting system with this particular res now we could drill holes in fact later on in this build we are going to drill holes and stuff but for this one it wasn't really necessary we were able to use some of the vent holes at the back of the case in order to get our two c clips installed then all we had to do was put the plastic washer on then put on the metal nut tighten it with a screwdriver and we were ready to snap our reservoir into place now the one challenge here is that once you've already got all of your expansion cards installed you're going to have to remove your reservoir to change them but you probably won't be changing them that often so you might want to try and find a different place to put the res this was the place that we found that made sense when you're actually installing tubing some people believe in sort of putting it in the spot and like measuring it and then cutting to measure I don't what I usually do is I install one end of it so remember guys you've already got the fitting component of your compression fitting screwed into whatever component it happens to be whether it's a block or radiator so make sure before you put the tubing on it you actually put the retention ring on top of the tubing otherwise you're going to have to run it all the way in from the other end now go ahead and install it on there tighten it down finger tight pretty much as far as you can go remember that's holding it on and compressing it for a good seal then line it up run it to where it needs to go and just mark it with your finger then pull it out and cut it with either a tubing cutter or a very sharp pair of scissors if you have dull scissors you might end up with an uneven cut which can potentially cause leaks and particularly in cases where you're not using compression fittings it can look cosmetically not very appealing now some people do this some people don't I like the d5 pump or the mCP 6 v 5 from Swift tech unfortunately it has half-inch Barb's integrated you can buy an aftermarket top that you can change out the fittings on but I usually don't do that what I do is I stretch my 3/8 tubing over the half-inch barbs it does require a little bit of elbow grease however there's a couple tricks that you can use to make it easier number one is boil a cup of water then soak the tubing in it for even about five seconds and then try and go at it if that then doesn't work then soak it again stretch it in four different directions using a pair of pliers soak it again and try one more time now I can pretty much guarantee you'll be able to get it on there there's one trick though guys remembered no matter how hard you stretch the tubing I always recommend using a retention mechanism of some sort whether it's a plastic clip a compression fitting or even a zip tie so make sure that you put something on there to prevent leaks in the future it should be noted that if the tubing routing in the basement looks a little weird it's because I'm trying to have water go in the bottom and out the top of radiators whatever possible it makes it much easier for the air to travel up through it and then be driven out of it even though we don't have a super-powerful pump considering the fact that we have so many components in this system now when it comes to wiring up the fans this is the point where I would be doing it now you have a ton of different options there's advanced stuff like the M cubed T balancer which is what I use in my own personal machine allows advanced software curves and stuff like that it's expensive and it's quite difficult to set up but for what we're doing here we're going for a much simpler option we're using Swift X PWM splitter which can actually be used to have PWM control on up to eight fans with a single motherboard header and a single molex power connector very cool little device but we're actually going to use it in an even simpler fashion so rather than running the wires up to the motherboard or anything like that we're just going to plug it in via molex and use the included low noise adapters that come with our Noctua fans will be using extension cables as well as those adapters to hook up the three front fans and the six that are on the radiators in the basement alright so we Jen that power supply back in there is a little bit tricky but she's in there no problem we've now got modular cables to deal with and some implementations are better than others so we have an aftermarket individually sleeved cable kit for this power supply but that doesn't change the fact that I like the way they've done their modular cables in general so instead of just giving you you know 10 connectors on the back of the power supply and 10 cables and you can unplug your plug in as many as you want courser goes well they bought a 1200 watt power supply they're probably going to need most of the cables anyway so instead they give you options in terms of what kinds of connectors you want so for example the PCI Express connectors you can either have a single two dual connector so that's specifically for running to a graphics card so that you don't have to run two discrete cables or you can have a one to one connector which is great for things like an auxiliary connector on a motherboard or a 6 pin PCI Express connector on say for example a sound card like what we've got so we can have the best of both worlds we don't have extra you know plugs hanging off things and we don't have to run extra wires we ran our 24-pin and pretty much the standard fashion it should be noted that this case has a ton of cable management room so we were able to get away with crossing you know connector harnesses in the back and we're still going to be able to close the side panel but if you have a case that doesn't have quite so much room you're going to want to be careful to make sure everything's laying flat in the back and use cable ties to tidy things up last but not least we connected our eight pin connector to the CPU up in the well not to the CPU to the motherboard but it's the CPU connector and it should be noted we only plugged in one eight pin CPU connector even though it has another spot for an additional four pin that additional four pin is optional and it is my personal belief that on an LGA 1150 platform unless you go on liquid nitrogen there's no way you're going to exceed the current that can be delivered by a single eight pin so we're going to leave it at that and there you have it my friends that is how you install five radiators in the nine hundred DN still have room for two harddrive cages giving you a total of four three and a half inch drives or two and a half inch drives potentially so what we had to do was we had to mark off a couple spots on the motherboard tray so normally you wouldn't put a radiator there but we were like well we want to put more radiators we want more drives no big deal so we marked off a couple spots there discovered that that really wasn't strong enough to hold up our radiator with the three Noctua fans loaded on to it of course in the optimal configuration we've pre-installed all of our fittings and all of that good stuff so we added a third mounting point just to the side of the drive cages we found with three mounting points that was good enough but if we could get some other more different custom brackets we could probably actually a fix it to this radiator on the top here as well and then we could get a really really solid mount for it but guys honestly we're going to take this build apart when we're done so you can come up with something a bit more elegant we just used L brackets from Home Depot with some self-tapping screws to drill into things as well as little washers for making fine adjustments to the fit and finish to make sure that it's sitting there correctly we're wiring up all the fans in the top of the system so the four on the top the one at the back and the three in our motherboard tray radiator to the motherboard itself so the ones on the bottom are all going to be static according to how we installed them and the ones on the top will be able to be controlled using AI suite just as a reminder guys we're running 2 until 5:20 series SSDs in raid zero and we're running 2wd three terabyte red drives so these are Nazz or raid operation optimized drives in raid 1 for safe storage because we have more bays we can either leave them for now and expand our storage later or we could actually run up to 4 drives right off the bat for our storage array in fact you could probably run six and just hide these SSDs somewhere if you wanted but for the sake of doing things by the book which we haven't done up until now we're going to install them in the actual drive cages now you've got a couple of different options here for installation so number one is the two different types of SATA cables that are included with your board there's straight ones and right angle ones go with on an individual drive basis whatever makes for the most natural run without kinking the cable then for power we unfortunately don't have as many options as I would like corsair only includes 4 port harnesses 4 SATA power i wouldn't have minded seeing them include a couple of two port harnesses so you have the option to use those because we're going to use a single 4 port one to run to our drives here in the front of the case then for our optical drive up in the top we're going to have to run a full additional 4 port harness in order to get power up there it should be noted once again that I do consider a blu-ray drive highly optional in a modern computer but if you want to have it and there you go we're going to show you how to install it here just like that and finally my friends it is time for tubing we're close to the end when you are sort of eyeballing out your runs and measuring them out don't cut extra it's actually quite difficult to cut the last sort of three millimeters of extra tubing that you have that makes it bulge out funny so you're better off to just try to cut it as close as you possibly can and then you know just kind of suck it up and use another piece if it ends up being too short because odds are excellent that especially if you work from longest pieces to shortest pieces that you'll be able to use that slightly too short piece somewhere so you're not wasting the entire length of it so I did bring in 20 feet of tubing to do this but we managed to get this whole thing plumbed up with less than 10 feet of tubing which is a kind of fantastic now there are a few things needed that few things I want to point out about the tubing process while you guys watch this accelerated video number one is go with the Bend of the tubing never try to fight it it's much more likely to kink if you go against the natural Bend that has been there since it was originally produced and put onto a spool number two is that this is one of the things I have actually come to really enjoy about the 900 d is there's the space to do what we're doing here you can actually run tubing behind the motherboard tray on this case and get away with it there's enough space oh it's a via Harry oh oh that's hard there's enough space to have tubing back here and have wires and all that and you're still going to be able to close that side panel which is pretty unique there's not too many cases out there wow it's heavy though that are going to be quite like that alright next thing I wanted to mention is that yeah the way we did it is not really that optimal buying all straight fittings and then just kind of going with the flow and making it work it doesn't work necessarily as well as buying things like angled fittings that's the way that you might be able to get cleaner runs for example here around the CPU socket without having so many unsightly bends but I think we did pretty well considering the lower cost of straight fittings I mean bearing in mind we already spent about a thousand dollars on the liquid cooling setup for this computer like do we need to spend another couple hundred on fittings I don't know it's up to you but we went with pretty basic fittings and and then the fact as well that we don't have to do like a Google Sketchup model of the system just to find out if the fittings are all going to actually work together the way that we intend now before filling the system there are a couple of different schools of thought for a couple of things number one is preparing the system so many people believe in cleaning out the radiators with hot water and a vinegar solution before you even assemble anything it is a good idea there can be residue left over in them from manufacturing that is easy to remove if you flush prior to building the other thing is which coolant to use I personally am an advocate of colored tubing with clear distilled water simple no dyes or anything fancy like that if you want to have a biocidal agent I suggest putting a chunk of silver into your reservoir and just calling that a day as opposed to using clear tubes and a bunch of dyes I've just seen them gunk up too many times I'm sure there's good ones out there but that is my personal approach this is just a random bottle from some fessor coolant that I use to put distilled water and you can get at the grocery store it's pretty inexpensive what we can all agree on however is the procedure of using a separate power supply or unplugging your existing power supply from all the sensitive components inside in order to prime the system so that is to say what you'll do is you'll get like some kind of conductive piece of something so I usually bend a paperclip you bridge the green pin on your power supply and if you can't find which one's the green power on your power supply say for example if you have a custom sleeved one like this then you can check out manuals online or diagrams online so you bridge the green pin with any black pin on the power supply then you are able to easily control the on/off functionality with the switch at the back it will automatically turn on anytime you have the on switch on at the back so what that means is you can plug this into just the pump and you it allows you to do the quick cycles that you need in order to fill the loop so basically what you'll do in this case I've taken an extra scrap piece of tubing and I've attached another fitting to the top of my reservoir so that I can fill it so you'll fill up your reservoir as much as you possibly can just like this then cycle the power on so that all the liquid comes out of the reservoir and is taken somewhere else in your loop your pump should be gravity fed if you set up your loop correctly it should be the next component and nowhere for air bubbles to get trapped then what you do is fill it up again cycle the power again as soon as that res is empty turn the power back off and rinse and repeat rinse because water near the end of your filling adventure you're going to get to a point where the reservoir isn't full yet but the water cycles continuously without the pump sounding like it's not working properly you never want your pump to run dry that's really bad but once we get to this point what we can do is we can actually leave the system running while we top-up the reservoir the rest of the way I recommend leaving it in this state without any of the components actually powered on and risking getting shorted out and damaged for at least 6 to 24 hours maybe even 48 hours if you want to be super sure what you can do to prevent water from dripping under any loose fittings or anything like that on your valuable components is use folded up paper towel then come back and inspect it frequently to see if anything is dripping water and leaking inside your system now we were careful to install all of our SATA cables into the Intel chipset on this particular motherboard the Intel chipset SATA ports they're all say 2 6 with this generation of products so you don't have to worry about which two of the Intel ones to get the best speed out of your SSDs for example setting up raid 0 is a snap once you've got raid enabled within the BIOS all you do is press ctrl I to enter the configuration utility where we can configure our SSDs as raid 0 and our hard drives as raid 1 from there we can install Windows off of a USB Drive or off of a CD and I've covered this topic before in the past guys were finally done here she is was it worth all the work I guess it's up to you was it worth all the money I guess that's up to you - is this the system I would build personally the answer is no but what was the benefit why did we put 17 Noctua fans running at low rpm well here here's my microphone I'm gonna point that at the system you can't hear it over the refrigerator that's running like 2 meters to my right that way it is extremely quiet it also runs extremely cool in spite of the fact that we haven't even optimized this 900 d for airflow by removing things like these solid covering panels that are down on the bottom we have done absolutely nothing to optimize the build and it still runs like a champ that gtx titan has been running the combustor overclocking stress tests for about 15 minutes now and the GPU is running at 40 degrees celsius unfreaking believable so that is the point of a system like this it's totally overkill it's totally unnecessary you could get similar performance for half the price well maybe not half the price but significantly less so for all of you in the comments saying oh he could have done yes I know absolutely I know the point of this was we wanted to show you guys the most overkill build we could so we put 5 radiators in a 900 d we put dual Titans in a 900 d we put a 4770k in there we loaded up with 32 gigs of 2400 mega Hertz memory but again kind of unnecessary but it's for fun it's for looks I personally think it looks awesome the only things I'd change probably about the appearance are maybe I'd take out the optical drive and that was also the reason we didn't install the OC panel from Asus so that fits into a five and a quarter inch Bay you can run this externally as well so you can just sit it on your desk or or you can installed it in the five and a quarter inch bay if you don't mind that I would also probably add some BitFenix alchemy lighting strips I really like these the the defect rate on them is very low compared to other LED strips that I've used in the past where some of the LEDs will start to fade very quickly we've had very good luck with the alchemy ones so we definitely recommend them around here and man guys I'm going to sort of ramble for a bit here while you can check out some glam footage of the system here there were some challenges with this system any time you strive to do something that's really out of the ordinary you can expect there to be some hiccups I wasn't actually expecting to get all five radiators in it at first because I had kind of looked it up and I'd gone ah ok supports five radiators didn't really think about it that much you know called up alpha cool I was like hey guys I need this this this and this and then I got it here and I realized the triple in the front doesn't fit natively if you also have a quadruple and a double in the bottom so that was where we came up with the idea to mount it on the motherboard tray which actually is pretty effective because it's going to be able to take in some of the intake air from those front three 120 millimeter fans and it gives you still more radiator surface area we also had some definite challenges with respect to fittings and water cooling tubing and getting everything to fit just right because it's uh it's pretty tight in there but it was a lot of fun to build we actually didn't undo that many things along the line and I'm extremely pleased with how effectively we were able to fill up a 900 d to the point where it doesn't look empty in there which is what most of the 900 D builds I see look like they just look like the case is so big and there's not enough in there we were able to fill it up with stuff that actually made sense like what I'd probably do as well as I'd use all six of those front Bay's for hard drives and then I moved the SSDs around to the back of the motherboard tray where there is still tons of room because there's just a ton of cable management room in this particular case it's a very cool build but it's also extremely heavy to the point where I'm not exactly some kind of muscle man so me saying I can't move it might not mean anything to you but I would have a difficult time moving this system around unaided it has five radiators hard drives heavy copy copper water blocks and it has over two litres of coolant in it so it is extremely extremely heavy thank you guys very much for checking out our overkill build guide with the Haswell 4770k this build guide was brought to you guys by Intel and stay tuned - all - tech tips don't forget to subscribe because there will be more of these build guides you