Introduction
Building a small, yet powerful PC has become easier in recent years, especially with the Mini-ITX form factor. At Hardware.Info we enjoy exploring boundaries, so we added water cooling with two radiators to a Mini-ITX system to find out how well that works. Here is how you do it.
Ingredients
A compact gaming system with water cooling fits nicely in a Mini-ITX chassis. The Bitfenix Prodigy is perhaps not the smallest mini-ITX chassis out there, but we did manage to squeeze in a lot:
- Chassis: Bitfenix Prodigy
- Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe
- Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
- RAM: Samsung Green Series DDR3-1600 8 GB kit
- Graphics card: ASUS GTX670-DC2T-2GD5
- SSD: Mach Xtreme Technology DS Fusion Series 120 GB
- PSU: NZXT Hale82 Modular 650 watts
- Fans: Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120 mm white x2, Bitfenix Spectre Pro 140 mm white x2
- CPU water cooling: EK Supremacy full copper & EK LGA115x TRUE backplate
- GPU water cooling: EK FC670 GTX DCII acetal-nickel
- Water pump: Laing Original DDC-1T 12V
- Reservoir: XSPC acrylic for Laing DDC
- Radiator CPU: XSPC Low Profile Radiator EX140 – 140 mm
- Radiator GPU: XSPC Low Profile Radiator EX240 – 240 mm
- Hose: Feser 13/10 mm UV light blue, 2,5 m
- Coolant: EK Ekoolant UV Blue – 1000 ml x2
- Connectors: EK ¼ inch 3/10 mm black x8, corners ¼ inch 13/10 mm black x2
Lots of extra components were used in this system.
Test it first
Before you start assembling your water cooling setup, it's always a good idea to check each component for leaks. To do this, first assemble the water cooling system without connecting it to the CPU or graphics card. Fill the circuit with distilled water, and look closely to see whether any water comes out.
