Beta Orionis – Part XI

Build Log:

Since the last incarnation in this series, the loop is done. Mostly. I’ll fill in that detail in a little bit. For now let’s talk building this out, starting with the memory.

Forget about the memory

I’ll just say this up front: trying to install the Koolance RAM-33 block is a pain in the ass. I ended up basically aborting the process, buying new memory for my wife’s machine – a planned upgrade to 16GB that happened a little ahead of schedule – and taking the 8GB from her system and putting it in mine. Seriously it was that much of a pain.

The stock heatsinks on the Corsair Vengeance Pro ram came off without much difficulty and a little gentle prying with a small, flathead screwdriver. What I saw after removing the memory is that the 2x4GB sticks are single-sided, with the other side being a stiff piece of plastic glued on to provide symmetry for the stock cooler. Sliding that into the Koolance cooler required a little bit of work, but it could be done. Unfortunately that can’t happen with the included thermal pads. Trying to install it with thermal paste also was fruitless.

If you manage to get the plastic from the other side off the stick, you still cannot slide it into the RAM-33 with the included thermal pad. So unless there is some kind of expanding foam thermal paste that I could inject into the water block between the memory stick and the surface of the water block, there didn’t seem to be a way to actually install these that I could tell, and there isn’t anything in the way of instructions online that I could find.

If I can find something in the future, I’ll consider it. After giving up on the memory chips, I turned my attention to the graphics cards.

Stuck like glue

After shutting down the system, I first unplugged everything from the mainboard and graphics cards and left it all to cool down. One thing I wanted to do while the system was still warm is get the Corsair H60 off the CPU. Except the thermal compound that had been on the CPU for the better part of a year had turned to glue.

I was not going to force the situation either as I felt doing so would damage the CPU. And given how much money I’d already spent on this, I didn’t want to add another $160 plus sales tax to the mix. So instead, I just let the weight of the H60’s radiator do the work. It eventually came off.

Graphics cards

Now installing a graphics card water block is pretty straightforward. And Koolance’s blocks are no different. The one thing I found interesting is how the instructions said explicitly to put the thermal pads onto the block instead of the specific places on the graphics card.

One thing I mentioned in a comment on my Kraken G10 article is that the PNY GTX 770 OC has a custom cooler with heatsinks underneath: one in a U-shape to cover the memory, and another kind of L-shaped one to cover the VRMs. Removing those heatsinks is pretty straightforward: remove the screws and use a slight twisting motion and they’ll pop loose. What you’re left with is a GTX 680 card with a GTX 770 GPU.

Beyond this it was just a matter of preparing and installing the GPU water block. Again I went with the Koolance VID-NX680 blocks for this installation. And as I have two cards, I had to go through this twice. My back was really thanking me for it later.

Now in installing the graphics cards, I previously said I was going to use a parallel configuration. And I kept with that plan. I also said I was going to use acrylic tubing to accomplish that. I decided against it. In not going with the memory water blocks, two of the hardline fittings were freed up, and as I had two spares, I was able to tube it up using copper instead of acrylic.

As you can probably tell, I was using the Zalman case for the initial test fits. It was just easier that way. I wanted to do as much test fitting as I could before I had no choice but to move everything to the 750D. The next test fit was the tube running from the graphics card to the CPU.

The hooked piece is there to test clearance. The tubing comes straight off the graphics card and does a 90-degree bend to turn toward the CPU, and another 30-degree bend to line up with the fitting. That one was fun to figure out. Unfortunately it didn’t entirely work out the way I thought. As this was the last test fit I could do without having to be in the 750D, I took this apart and moved everything over.

The cat didn’t seem to care. I really wish I knew why he liked my chair so much.

A new home

So again I pulled everything apart and moved it all to the 750D case. Once I had the mainboard seated, I plugged up everything to it and seated the graphics cards and the tubing that had already been fitted.

From here, there were only two things left: top radiator to CPU and graphics cards to bottom radiator. I tackled the former first. Part of the problem here is that the inlet in how I initially had this oriented actually directly lined up with the bottom of the 5 1/4″ drive bays. So I flipped the CPU block around – required a trip to Microcenter as I was out of thermal compound and was not going to use what Koolance provided – and that alleviated the problem.

But this required an interesting extension fitting configuration coming off the radiator.

I think that’s 2xBitspower 40mm extension fittings, or one of them may be a 30mm. I’m not entirely sure. The one in the middle is a Swiftech 15mm extension fitting. That gets it almost perfectly lined up. Somehow. From there I turned my attention to the bottom radiator. I tried to see if I could bend tubing to join the two, but with my tubing bender, nothing would work.

Luckily I ended up discovering this:

That’s a Koolance 90-degree fitting to a Swiftech 15mm extension to another Koolance 90-degree fitting. Somehow that closes the gap needed to get the tubing lined up almost perfectly straight under the graphics card fitting.

And with that the loop was complete. Time for the leak test. The green glow in the background is Absinthe. The black thing on top is Shadow.

Leak test

One point to note: if you use the PrimoChill syringe to fill your loop, 1/4″ ID tubing will fit over the tip, allowing you to directly inject the coolant into the reservoir. Like with Absinthe, this initial leak test was with distilled water. After getting it filled and bled, I left it to run overnight, even plugging in the lights before going to bed.

The next day I drained the loop and finished up the cable management as far as I could. I refilled the loop and let it run for a while longer before draining it again, that time with the intention of pulling it apart so I could clean the tubing with Brasso.

Looks pretty empty, doesn’t it?

Now one thing I should clarify that I didn’t in Absinthe’s build log: cleaning the tubing isn’t about cleaning off tarnish. There actually wasn’t much in the way of tarnish on the copper, and that is why I didn’t go with something like Tarn-X – not to mention the fact I’d have to treat it and any leftover as hazardous waste. The idea here isn’t to de-tarnish, but clean, as in clean all the stuff that ends up coating the tubing from its manufacture and transport so it’s nice and shiny before being reinstalled. As in the stuff that I also have to use pumice soap to clean off my hands after handling copper tubing while straightening, cutting and bending it.

Before filling it with coolant, I plugged up the lights for a couple more pictures before my wife and I went to Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner.

When I got home, I filled the loop with coolant and left the pump running overnight to bleed out all the air.

Finishing up, almost

The next day, Monday, I picked up the memory I had overnighted through Amazon. Courtesy of my Prime membership, the overnight fee was only $4. This allowed me to finish up the loop, get the computer plugged back up and get everything actually running without any problems.

So let’s talk temperatures.

With Prime95 running Large FFT, since it says it’ll produce maximum heat, the temperature would not break into the 30s C during my test. I let it run until all workers had passed the 480K test, which took about 20 minutes. The temperature reached 29C at most, and hovered more around 28C.

That is certainly pretty… freaking… insane performance out of this loop.

For the graphics cards, I ran Unigine Heaven Benchmark on the highest settings I could at 1080p resolution and ran the benchmark. Here’s where the anomalies started coming in. One card hit 60C during the test while the other maxed out at 48C during the benchmark, and the hotter card stayed about 10C hotter for much of the test. Now after the test was done both cards bottomed out back to the low 30s relatively quickly, but the fact one card was getting significantly warmer than the other is concerning.

I have two hypotheses.

First is the parallel configuration. Now I’m not talking about the fact I have them in parallel, but the way I have it in parallel, in that the copper tubing going between the two cards may not be perfectly straight and it’s creating resistance, slowing the flow through one card, giving it a hotter temperature.

The second hypothesis is that there might still be air trapped in the warmer card. I’m leaning toward unlikely on this one, though, that there would be so much air still trapped in the block that it would create a 10C difference between them. Something else must be at play here.

So in trying out the first hypothesis, I have on order a couple fittings from Swiftech. I’m going to replace the current setup with Swiftech’s SLI fittings, keeping the parallel configuration, but just ensuring everything will be perfectly straight between the two so resistance is about even through all flow channels. The computer is still perfectly usable in the mean time. I just don’t like seeing such a temperature difference between the two. So there will be more to come later this week. Hopefully I’ll be able to get those temperatures stabilized.

It’s still unbelievable what I was seeing on the CPU, though.

Beta Orionis – Part X

Build Log:

Building finally begins!

As I mentioned the tubing straightener shipped on October 31. It arrived November 4, so that was pretty quick, certainly sooner than I expected it to arrive. The tool was also a bit smaller than I thought it’d be.

And it works like a charm. It won’t get the tubing perfectly straight, but it gets it pretty close, about as straight as I could get the tubing with the bench vice-vice grips-mallet method, but without the noise and associated pain in my hand. I was able to start pulling and bending copper tubing to get part of the loop built. Now this is about the furthest I can make progress before having to tear apart everything out of the Zalman case and start moving everything over, something I’ve been eagerly anticipating for the last couple months – the first article on this build was a little over two months ago. That move will likely be more toward the weekend.

Now the drain on the front radiator on this side of the case had to be changed. The 90-degree fitting I originally had used to take the flow off the front radiator put the fittings too high for the radius of the tubing bender. So I took it off the 90-degree fitting and changed it to what you see. It’s a male-to-male rotary fitting into the 4-way block. The drain valve is on the 90-degree fitting I originally used so it’s pointing out to the side like the drain on the bottom radiator to the left of the pump.

The line going from the front radiator to the bulkhead fitting worked out perfectly, as did the line going from the 90-degree dual rotary fitting to the top radiator.

This small piece of tubing was a little interesting to place.

It should be easy to see what is going to be happening next. Everything will need to be taken out of the Zalman case and moved to the 750D. The CPU water block will be installed along with the memory water blocks. Tubing will be run from the memory water block to the CPU water block – a 15mm extension on the CPU block may be able to get two 90-degree fittings lined up for a straight run. Tubing will also be run from the 90-degree fitting just hanging out in the picture above to the memory water block – straight run plus a 90-degree bend is what I think it’ll take, but I’m not entirely sure on that.

I need to buy a miter box or something similar for cutting the short pieces of tubing for going between the graphics cards. I bought the hacksaw for that on my last trip to Harbor Freight. Unfortunately the only miter box they have comes with a saw, and as I’m not going to be hacking lumber any time soon, I don’t need the combo deal. I should be able to find just the miter box without the saw at Home Depot or Lowe’s.

Once the graphics cards are in place, I’ll know what I’ll need to tube up from the lower radiator to the lower graphics card, and from the top graphics card to the CPU – that I expect to be most difficult run of the entire loop.

Like with Absinthe, once everything is put together, there will be an initial fill and leak test, along with a drain test followed by another leak test. All of that will be with distilled water. Once everything is fully tested, it’ll get filled up with coolant and bled again for the initial boot with the new cooling system.

Beta Orionis – Part IX

Build Log:

Courtesy of a train that was going through the western district of KC that includes Kemper Arena, I barely made it to UPS on time to pick up the package. When I got home, I did the obligatory inventory confirmation (everything correct) and started to work. This order was the 3xKoolance 90-degree fittings, 2xBitspower 30mm extensions, 1xKoolance male-to-male rotary fitting, 1xKoolance 4-way splitter, and a pair of EK 16mm hardline fittings.

In the background are the two GTX 680 water blocks for the graphics cards.

One thing I should point out: I decided to turn the top radiator back around so the fittings were on the front. The flow of the loop will go from the pump to the front reservoir, then to the top reservoir through one of the bulkhead fittings. From the top radiator it’ll go the the memory, then the CPU, to the graphics cards (in parallel), to the bottom radiator, then back up to the reservoir.

Adding a few more drains

Part of building the loop is figuring out how to drain it, and draining it requires figuring out where all the various catches could be. In the loop design for Absinthe, there are in actuality two places where drains should be: the front radiator and the pump. Currently there is only one on the pump, which is why trying to drain it is a pain – something that will be resolved with future upgrades.

With β Ori. there are actually three places where drains are needed: on the bottom radiator, on the front radiator, and on the pump – alternatively there can also be two drains on the front radiator instead of one on the pump. The idea is to allow gravity to take the fluid out of the system as best as possible, preferably without having to tilt the case into all kinds of weird angles to accomplish it, or going nearly faint trying to blow tons of air through the loop. In β Ori., the front radiator is tanks down, meaning the fittings are on the bottom. Vertical radiators are always going to be a pain to drain, so having a drain on both sides of the radiator should help that – and with tanks down I don’t have to fight gravity to get the liquid out.

So I placed another order that arrived ahead of Halloween for fittings to construct the drains. The first drain on the lower radiator had already been built using two male-to-male rotary fittings, a Bitspower tap, and the Koolance 4-way splitter block I mentioned earlier. It’s the others that needed built.

The drain on the lower radiator will drain most of the top radiator, memory, CPU, and graphics card blocks along with the bottom radiator and reservoir. The drain on the front radiator nearest the window will take care of half the front radiator, pump, and whatever is left in the reservoir. And the other drain on the front radiator will get the rest of the top and front radiators. There will still be fluid trapped in pockets in the memory and graphics card water blocks, along with the bottom radiator, so this won’t be able to get everything, but it’ll come pretty close. Draining the bottom radiator completely is also going to be a little involved.

The taps in the first picture are looking a little “drunk” due to the rotary fittings not being secured by anything.

Time to drill

I bought a 3/4″ step bit from Harbor Freight. I actually already had one but couldn’t find it, so I decided to lay down the $6 to buy another, especially since there were a couple other small tools I needed, such as a small hacksaw. I still need to get a miter box (without the saw) from Home Depot or Lowes for cutting the tubing, along with some sandpaper.

Unfortunately in trying to drill the holes, the drill ran out of juice, so I could only get one drilled initially and had to wait to get the second one. And after getting them both drilled out, trying to test fit the bulkhead fitting through, it wouldn’t fit. Not entirely shocked there: the fitting is an M20 thread, and 3/4″ is about 19mm. So I went back to Harbor Freight to pick up a 2-bit set since the smaller one in that set goes up to 7/8″ with a 13/16″ step (just a little north of 20mm) above the 3/4″ step.

After opening up the holes to 13/16″, I used my trusty Dremel to clean them up. The step bit pushed through the metal and left a crater of sorts on the other side – pictures of what metal looks like after having a bullet through it will show about what this looked like. After cleaning it up, I was able to get the bulkhead fittings seated without a problem.

Yes, I have two bulkhead fittings set even though only one will be used. Now these aren’t directly under the inlet and outlet for the radiator. But I did discover that a Swiftech dual-rotary fitting can take care of the offset. The only downside is that it’ll be a very short piece of tubing going between the two. In hindsight, I wonder if an SLI fitting would fit without having to use tubing at all here.

I’ll probably try to do tubing anyway, but I might hand-bend some copper to fit into that area so I don’t have to use the dual-rotary fitting. We’ll see.

Playing the waiting game

The tubing straightener I ordered through eBay finally shipped on October 31, almost three weeks after ordering it. It was shipped via Royal Mail International Tracked and Signed, which claims to have a delivery speed of 5 to 7 working days, or about 7 to 10 calendar days – expected delivery of November 7 to November 12 – November 11 is a Federal holiday in the US, so no postal services that day. So if you’re planning to order this straightener, make sure to take that into consideration.

And the seller also didn’t respond to any of my messages through eBay prior to shipment.

I was really hoping to have it by now. I’m putting off tearing down my computer until I have the straightener, otherwise I’d be tearing it down only to wait about two weeks to have it back up and running again. And there’s not really anything left for me to do at this point except wait for the tubing straightener to come in. Sure I could start pulling and cutting tubing using the same technique I did for Absinthe, but I’d rather not do that. For one it’s a bit painful, given you’re slamming vice grips with a mallet while you’re holding them. Second it’s loud – again, you’re slamming vice grips with a mallet that are holding a length of copper clamped by a bench vice that is clamped onto a counter or bench.

And with 1/2″ OD tubing, it’s also not the greatest option at getting tubing straight. It gets very nearly straight, straight enough that it’s not immediately perceivable, but I’d rather go for straight this time. It works better in the bender when it is completely straight.

Misconstruing free speech, revisited

Back at the end of December ahead of the Christmas holiday, the country was polarized around the suspension of Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty. I don’t care what side you took in that, but my concern was the fact that so many people took his suspension by a private organization to mean that everyone’s right to free speech was somehow in jeopardy. Let me restate that: a suspension by a private organization meant that everyone’s constitutionally guaranteed right to speech without infringement by the government was somehow in danger.

So why is Chelsea Handler basically alleging the same?

For those who aren’t aware, Chelsea Handler recently tried to post a topless photo to Instagram mimicking a photo featuring Vladimir Putin riding a horse shirtless. Now how anyone feels about women being topless is immaterial in this discussion. Instead what is material Handler’s response when Instagram removed the photo: “Taking this down is sexist. I have every right to show I have a better body than Putin.”

She attempted to repost the photo, saying “If instagram takes this down again, you’re saying Vladimir Putin Has more 1st amendment rights than me.” So let’s see if I have her position straight. A private organization removes from its service a picture determined to be in violation of its community guidelines, and she somehow has fewer First Amendment rights than the president of Russia?

Bullshit.

For one, Instagram is a private organization owned by Facebook.  Under its terms of service is this: “You may not post violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or other content via the Service.” Now we can debate till the sun explodes whether a woman posing topless counts as “partially nude”, but most of the societies across the entire world agree that it qualifies, so online community guidelines tend to abide by those definitions.

Second, there are numerous other sites that will allow her to post a picture showing her topless riding a horse. Tumblr is one. Flickr might, depending on how they interpret obscenity. Imgur typically aggregates from reddit, and her picture would certainly be allowed on reddit as well. Many websites don’t, and each website has the right to determine what content they will allow, your free speech rights notwithstanding.

The service that hosts this blog has this as part of its terms of service: “You agree and warrant that Your Data shall not violate any Laws concerning obscenity and shall not contain or link to any pornography, or depictions of bestiality, rape, sexual assault, violence, torture or disfigurement, or other content deemed objectionable by 1&1, in its sole discretion.”

Most websites will not allow her to post such a picture. But there are some that will – again Tumblr is one.

Instagram is not violating her free speech rights, and Putin does not have any more of a right to free speech because a private company removes content hosted on its servers. Here’s the thing about the First Amendment: it only restricts the government from infringing upon your rights. You do not have the right to post whatever you want to someone else’s servers, whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, or what have you, and you only have the right to post whatever they deem allowable.

If you don’t like that, find a service that is a little more open, or start your own. Nothing is stopping you from doing so.

Follow-up on AquaTuning

It has been a while since I’ve written about the situation I’ve had with AquaTuning and the concern with regard to the CPU block catastrophe. I’m not going to recap what happened. You can instead read all about it in Part V of the original build log.

Where I last left off, I had yet to hear back from AquaTuning’s insurance company regarding the liability claim. Well that changed on August 19, when they told me they were still waiting on additional information from AquaTuning. I replied back saying that I was under the impression AquaTuning had already turned over everything, while also volunteering to try to answer any remaining questions, depending on what they were.

The one thing about this situation that was mildly frustrating is that AquaTuning didn’t tell me in advance they were handing it all over to the liability company. It was only when I heard from the insurance company saying they were rejecting my claim for liability that I learned they even existed. And the fact they made that erroneous conclusion that had no support whatsoever from the pictures I’d sent only made things even more frustrating.

Trying to contact that company via e-mail was, for the most part, fruitless as well.

Until finally hearing from them on August 19, I was sending them an e-mail about every other week requesting follow-up. In the interim I also contacted AquaTuning, and that’s where I learned on August 14, to quote the person with whom I was in contact, that the "ball was firmly in the insurance agents court." About all I could do was be patient. But patience can only take you so far. I was also preparing to send a letter to them through the mail, but on October 9, that was no longer necessary.

The e-mail I received was from a different person within the company to request a loss inventory. For those who’ve never had to deal with property insurance companies, a loss inventory is basically as it sounds: an inventory of the items that were lost during an event and the replacement cost or nominal value of those items. In my case, I provided invoices showing what I paid for the mainboard, graphics card and water block, along with adding in the cost to ship the water block out to Germany.

I received a reply the next morning requesting my bank information. Now obviously it’s never wise to send this kind of information across e-mail, so I replied asking if they could provide the reimbursement via a financial instrument such as a bank draft. Their reply was that they could not. So I provided the necessary bank information via a secure contact form on the company’s website. The deposit showed in my bank account the next week.

So all-in-all it took about 5 months, about to the day actually, from the initial component leak to the reimbursement. But at least the matter is now completely settled.

Beta Orionis – Part VIII: Delays

Build Log:

Delays, delays and more delays. That is the one thing I really, really hate about places getting orders wrong. It easily turns what should’ve been only a few days wait for components into a week or longer, depending on how quickly they correct the situation. Performance-PCs was typically quick on the draw, often getting something out the same business day I e-mail them.

FrozenCPU? Not so much.

Granted there was a minor delay in negotiating the return of the fittings they did send me, plus figuring out whether a replacement with something else was possible. They offered to supply a different brand, which is great given that their system showed inventory not actually in stock. But that’s not where I have a problem.

The several times I’ve had issues with a Performance-PCs order, they’ve corrected it by 2-day Priority Mail. In arranging the fittings to be shipped to me from their supplier – their supplier actually being Koolance – FrozenCPU arranged for UPS Ground instead of UPS 2nd Day Air or 3-Day Select service. The original package was received on October 15. The new fittings shipped out almost a week later on the 21st with an anticipated delivery date of the 27th. Perhaps I should have been a little insistent on the courier service. I know FrozenCPU was merely trying to protect their bottom line in doing this, given they are likely taking a loss on the fittings I did request, but customer service is always considered an investment, regardless of the upfront costs.

I had ordered three additional Koolance fittings from Performance-PCs to be held on the 23rd along with the additional fittings FrozenCPU ordered to send to me. My original Koolance order with the second GTX 680 water block and bottle of coolant were set to be held for pickup on the 22nd.

But then, that’s not the only delay on this build. I also ordered a tubing straightener from KwixUK through their eBay store since they had explicitly listed having 1/2″ OD straightener available. That order when in on the 11th. As of the time I write this, it has yet to ship despite attempt to contact the seller, or if it has shipped, they didn’t update the order status. Coming from the UK, when it does ship, it’ll likely take a week to 10 days to arrive.

When the first Koolance package was held for pickup, I debated on waiting till the next day to pick it up with the Performance-PCs package, but decided against it for one simple reason: the coolant. If the coolant bottle had been compromised, I wanted to know right away so I could get a replacement sent from Koolance. Despite a wet spot on the bottom of the box, thankfully the coolant was fine – Koolance vacuum seals their coolant in plastic before putting it in a box.

So that’s where I’ll leave that for now. The Performance-PCs package arrives on the 23rd with more fittings. I might start tearing apart the machine this weekend and using my laptop or possibly my tablet in the interim. We’ll see.

Beta Orionis – Part VII

Build Log:

So much hardware in so little time… Four packages in one day with another due later in the week. The loner toward the end of the week were two UN Z2 brackets from Sidewinder Computers. One of the packages on Wednesday was the RMA from ThermalTake, which got set aside and wasn’t going to be used in this build.

And unfortunately one of the packages contained incorrect items, and this time it was the one from FrozenCPU. Instead of the Swiftech 90-degree single-rotary fittings I ordered, they sent me the dual-rotary fittings. Via e-mail I managed to negotiate with them to have their supplier send me the Koolance 90-degree single-rotary fittings as a substitute –  FrozenCPU carries the black fittings but not the silver, hence why I asked if their supplier could send them to me. It actually works out doing that, as well, given I’m using Koolance water blocks.

It just seems that no one has the Swiftech fittings in stock, not even Swiftech has them, while Performance-PCs carries the Koolance fittings for about a dollar less than Koolance’s website.

Speaking of Koolance…

Koolance again

Having two graphics cards means needing two water blocks for water cooling. So when I saw that Koolance had dropped its price on the GTX 680 waterblock, I decided to order one immediately rather than wait. They lowered the price on it by $20, which basically tells me it’s approaching end-of-life for that particular block. But still, a GTX 680 water block for only $90 initially, then $70 the second time around. That’s a pretty decent deal, especially since XS-PC’s block still retails for around $100, and the EK blocks are a little higher.

I also added a bottle of coolant to the order since I know I’ll need it. In filling up Absinthe, I touched into the second bottle I originally bought, meaning I know I’m not going to have enough for my loop. Hopefully having shy of two bottles will do the trick. Each bottle is 700mL.

I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do for connecting these two together. I’m thinking about using Bitspower Crystal Link, but I can also just use copper tubing as well with the PrimoChill fittings, provided I have enough. I may also go with Swiftech or Koolance’s SLI fittings.

Actually, I still have some EK 12mm ID acrylic tubing and a pair of 16mm HD fittings back from when I was experimenting before Absinthe started. I’ll order another pair of EK fittings and pick up a hacksaw and jig for cutting the tubing and just use that for SLI. I’ll figure out the lengths I’ll need when the time comes. It does mean the tubing will be going from a 3/8″ ID to 12mm ID, but it shouldn’t create any major flow issues. If it appears to, I can certainly switch over to fittings or copper tubing.

Changing the order

In the previous section, I mentioned that I had a second GTX 770 on order. Installing it introduced a minor complication: the sound card had to be relocated to the first SLI slot, the one located conveniently in front of the northbridge chip, as I didn’t feel comfortable having it between the graphics cards. This basically cut off the back fan mount area from ever being able to have a radiator as the fitting end would be uncomfortably close to the sound card.

So with that in mind, I decided to turn the tanks around on the top 360mm radiator so they are toward the rear I/O side of the case, like they are in Absinthe. It does mean I’m likely going to need more 90-degree fittings than just the five I have on order. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

This also means the order of the loop is changing in that the flow will go from the graphics cards to the top radiator, then the CPU, again like in Absinthe. But differing from Absinthe is that the flow will go from the CPU to the memory water blocks, then back to the reservoir.

The minor concern is that the Koolance 90-degree fittings are 3.5mm shorter than the Swiftech fittings (24.5mm for Koolance, 28mm for the Swiftech) with the center of the thread being a little over 1.5mm lower (18.5mm for Swiftech, 16.8mm for Koolance). This could be a concern with regard to tubing up the radiator to the CPU block in that it may not line up straight enough to avoid a concern.

Placing the reservoir

One of the problems with a purely bottom-fill reservoir like the Phobya Balancer is figuring out where to place it, as you need to get the flow back to the bottom of the reservoir. Since I mentioned that I plan to go from the memory water blocks back to the reservoir, this presents a little bit of a challenge. Looking around for other builds that used the Phobya Balancer reservoir with my case, though, is coming up with a dead end.

There are several ways I can do this. Along with the reservoir, I ordered a set of EK-UNI Holders. One mechanism for mounting it is to use those to hang the reservoir from the 5 1/4″ drive bays, but that puts the reservoir too far toward the window side of the case and too high up. Another option is to mount it to the motherboard tray. The “Gold Rush” build on the Hardware Canucks forum shows the 250 version of the Balancer reservoir in 750D mounted to the motherboard tray. Doing this just requires offsetting the reservoir mounts from the back of the case using nuts or spacers.

Another option that I briefly entertained is mounting the reservoir to the back of the rear 140mm fan outside the case. I also considered mounting it to the rear 140mm fan, but inside the case. The complication there is it could interfere with the fans on the top radiator, which would make it difficult to fill the reservoir for bleeding the system. Plus the initial tubing to get to the pump would cross in front of everything else.

So I’m currently resting on having the reservoir mounted on the motherboard tray. It means I need to plan the loop around that, so we’ll see what happens there.

Flushing radiators

When I initially started a loop in my wife’s computer, I used a technique I saw online with a whole-house water filter to flush the single 360mm radiator that was in my wife’s machine at the time. When I needed to flush the coolant out of that radiator, along with flushing a 240mm radiator that would be added under project Absinthe, I didn’t use a similar technique, initially.

Instead I set things up in a fashion similar to this:

As you can tell, this isn’t a loop. It’s a one-way flow from the reservoir through the pump and through the radiator and into the sink. I used something similar when flushing out the GTX 660 water blocks. So this was the setup I chose to initially flush about a gallon of distilled water through each of the radiators – two through the 360mm radiator. This wasn’t the entirety of the radiator flushing, but only an initial flush. This allowed me to rinse most of the gunk out of the radiators, and the pump was used to push the water through with a pretty good amount of pressure, thus assisting in flushing the radiators out.

The only thing I had to do was keep up with the pump, which is a lot easier than it sounds. There wasn’t a lid on the reservoir so I was pouring directly into it.

After the initial flushing, I gave each radiator about a 15-20 minute run connected through the filter to get the last of whatever is inside them.

I had the line running back to the bottom of the reservoir mainly because trying to push through this filter and through the Bitspower tube was sometimes difficult, and if a large air bubble got in the way, it could completely stop the flow. But this is what could happen if in your loop you went from 1/2″ ID tubing down to 1/4″ ID tubing – the latter is necessary for the water filter, though with some extra plumbing fixtures I might have been able to make it so the run through the 1/4″ tubing wasn’t nearly as long. This is why all the tubing between components should be the same if possible – now if you’re tubing up multiple motherboard blocks, then this may not be possible, but you don’t want to go from 1/2″ to 1/4″ ID, but only a slight deviation, say 1/2″ to 3/8″.

Installing radiators

Once the radiators were flushed, it was time to get the fans and fittings and install them into the case, after testing the new 140mm fans (spoiler: they work fine).

Here’s something about the ST30 radiators that I also learned in the process: if you are using fans like the Spectre Pro, which are 120mm square all around, you will need to use extension fittings to clear the fans in order to use the PrimoChill fittings if you have the fans on the same side as the inlet and outlet. In my case, that is how I have them mounted: push on the top, pull on the bottom. For the front radiator, no extension fittings are necessary as the fans are mounted to the case on the opposite side.

Those are 40mm Bitspower extension fittings. I’m going to swap them for 30mm fittings. On the lower radiator, 40mm fittings are going to be required to clear the fan plus the UN Z2 bracket holding the pump. I have 00 rubber washers not only holding the pump to the bracket, but the bracket to the fan and radiator.

There’s only 1x40mm extension fitting on this radiator because I only had three altogether. The other two are, currently, on the top radiator. This picture also shows the bottom of the reservoir in relation to the pump. The reservoir is going to feed via a 90-degree fitting into the T-fitting on the front of the pump. The T-fitting is going to have the drain valve on it once I get another male-to-male rotary fitting. The outlet on the pump will feed to the bottom radiator to the 40mm fitting currently on it. Then the front-most outlet will feed up to the graphics cards.

The front radiator will feed back to the reservoir.

Next order and next steps

With recent discoveries with the radiator and pump installation, I brought up Performance-PCs and FrozenCPU to compare prices for things I would need. So far the list includes:

  • Male-to-male rotary fitting
  • 2xEK-HD 12/16mm adapter
  • 2xBitspower Shining Silver 30mm extension fittings
  • 3xKoolance 90-degree single-rotary fittings

I don’t anticipate needing anything else at this point, and I hope I won’t need much else. Later this week I’ll likely start taking apart everything from the Zalman case. I need to get the mainboard back into the 750D along with the graphics cards so I can see how it’ll all relate to the reservoir and radiators. It means I’m without my primary system while that is going on, but I do have my laptop along with a tablet.

The order from Koolance containing the second GTX 680 water block plus the coolant will be arriving on Wednesday. The new order of the above fittings will likely arrive on Thursday, making the latter part of the week a fun one to anticipate.

The argument from history doesn’t jive with history

It seems when arguing about our legal system, two things will hold true: a person arguing against capital punishment will bring up the cost associated with it, and a person arguing against the private ownership of firearms will bring up the historical interpretation of the Second Amendment. The former I’ve already tackled, twice, and the second is today’s topic.

The most recent example I’ve seen is Saul Cornell’s article on the Daily Beast called "Gun-rights advocates should fear history of Second Amendment".

Which also brings up a third notion that always holds true whenever someone argues about the Constitution: they blatantly ignore the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments when they prove inconvenient. Quoting Cornell’s article:

Up until the 1980s, there was no “individual-rights” theory of the Second Amendment. Many states had adopted provisions protecting an individual right to own guns, but this tradition was distinct from the Amendment.

Now the history argument regarding the Second Amendment is quite easy to break down. To say that a modern interpretation of an Amendment is incorrect because it is substantially different from previous interpretations, and that we should prefer the historical interpretation merely because it’s the historical interpretation, regardless of the justifications behind the historical interpretation, is an easy notion to demonstrate as fallacious with just one Supreme Court decision.

In the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896), the Supreme Court upheld state-prescribed segregation under the fallacious doctrine of "separate but equal". For the history argument to stand, the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment as permitting segregation must be allowed, yet no one today would support such an idea unless they happen to enjoy being labeled a racist. Under Earl Warren, in the also infamous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, 347 US 483 (1954), the "separate but equal" doctrine was struck down, unanimously.

What really opened the floodgates for the expansions of liberty was the "incorporation doctrine". And the Earl Warren and Warren Burger courts saw massive expansions in individual freedoms and protection of individuals from the government.

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966), also under Earl Warren, saw the introduction of the requirement, citing the Fifth Amendment and the incorporation doctrine, that an individual be informed of their Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination before being interrogated by law enforcement. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 US 335 (1963), again under Earl Warren, introduced the requirement, citing the Sixth Amendment, that the government must provide an attorney to someone who cannot afford one, something of which virtually every jurisdiction will also inform persons to be interrogated.

There are numerous instances of the Bill of Rights being applied in ways they previously were not, and, again, the most striking example of it, in my opinion, being the Plessy and Brown decisions. One could argue that those who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause would never have dreamed of it actually allowing segregation, yet that is how the Court interpreted it.

Christian conservatives love to use the history argument as well, and also with regard to the Equal Protection Clause. They will say things along the lines that those who drafted the Clause would never have dreamed of it allowing abortion, gay or interracial marriage, homosexual sexual activity, or even birth control. Basically they will assert that today’s interpretations of the Bill of Rights are not correct and that past interpretations or some unspoken intention regarding how the Amendments should be interpreted must actually be correct.

And the history of birth control is also a very striking example of how the Constitution has been interpreted by the Courts as protecting individual liberty. The landmark Supreme Court case on that mark is Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479 (1965), again under Earl Warren. In a 7-2 decision the Court struck down a Connecticut law that criminalized birth control. It was one of the first cases, if not the first, that introduced the right to privacy. In that case it was marital privacy, but it was one hell of a jump in individual liberty jurisprudence. Never before had the idea of a right of privacy been considered at the highest Court in the land.

All of those cases rest on a concept called "substantive due process", an interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments in which Courts will declare a right to be fundamental if it is specifically enumerated in the Constitution or seen to be related or stemming from an enumerated right. From substantive due process we get the test of strict scrutiny, which, if applied, requires the government to justify the law according to a three-pronged test.

Most laws challenged under substantive due process and strict scrutiny fail the test.

Yet these ideas didn’t exist in case law until the 1930s. And they are the foundation for the massive expansions in individual liberties and protections against the government that are still happening even today.

And yet, with regard to the Second Amendment, completely ignoring the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments and the jurisprudence that has stemmed from them, liberals are wanting to "reverse the clock" on the Second Amendment. True that the Supreme Court was largely silent on the Second Amendment until District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 US 570 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 US 742 (2010). The former declared there to be a fundamental right to own a firearm unconnected to any service in the military or a militia. The latter applied the Supreme Court’s reasoning to the city of Chicago, Illinois, through the incorporation doctrine.

But the Court only in recent years recognizing the individual right to own firearms does not mean such a right never existed. Indeed if one were to interpret the Ninth Amendment as it written, such a right has always existed and has only recently been recognized and protected by the Court against infringement by the government. I said this in a YouTube comment back in April regarding Justice Stevens’ desires for amendment the Constitution with regard to the Second Amendment:

Repealing or modifying the Second Amendment would not eliminate the right to keep and bear arms as the Ninth Amendment clearly says that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are not to be construed to be the only rights a person has. Modifying the Second Amendment in the way Justice Stevens desires would just mean that he’s declaring that a person has a right to keep and bear arms while serving in a militia. But the Ninth Amendment means that just because the Constitution would then be silent on the right of a private citizen to keep firearms does not mean the private citizen does not have a right to keep firearms. And the Fourteenth Amendment would then mean that I cannot be denied the right to have firearms without there have been some kind of preceding legal process — a felony conviction being the most common example.

As such, taking away the Second Amendment, completely nullifying it, does not mean no one can own firearms because the Ninth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment would still control. As such the only way a ban on firearms can go through is if we have an Eighteenth Amendment equivalent with regard to firearms — and imagine how well that would go over.

This is the one thing that few seem to take into consideration: the Ninth Amendment still controls in all debates with regard to rights. And the Ninth Amendment says that just because a right has not been enumerated does not mean it does not exist. The fact that the right is only recently being recognized does not mean it did not exist until that point. To say otherwise is to say that a particular species of crab didn’t exist until it was discovered. No the species of crab had to exist in order to be discovered, just as rights have to exist to be protected by the Court.

And so it is the same with the individual right to bear arms. And under strict scrutiny and substantive due process, you have to have one hell of a reason to restrict that right in order for it to fly under the Constitution.

Beta Orionis – Part VI

Build Log:

Two RMAs going out the door and one coming in is how things started after posting the last section. Corsair sent back a full retail packaged CX750M, which is good as it virtually guarantees a working unit. And the RMAs to ThermalTake and Performance-PCs went out through USPS the following Saturday and were delivered the next Monday – one of the things I love about USPS Priority 2-day.

The next order from Performance-PCs was put on hold pending the RMA as I wanted to use the store credit toward the next purchase, which was looking to be an expensive one. In the mean time, I ordered the water blocks directly from Koolance: the CPU-380A, VIDNX680 and 2xRAM-33 (refurbished), plus a U-fitting.

Speaking of the fittings, I ultimately decided to go with the PrimoChill fittings. They are more expensive than the AlphaCool fittings, about 50 cents more per fitting when buying a 10-pack of the PrimoChill fittings. But they are easier to work with, as that internal O-ring on the AlphaCool fittings is just going to hinder things when trying to do test fits on the copper tubing – the need to constantly push the tubing in and pull it back out while getting the lengths just right is probably going to ruin the internal O-rings. As the PrimoChill fittings don’t have an internal O-ring, test fits while sizing will also be easier.

The AlphaCool fittings are certainly intriguing, but I think those are more suited for acrylic tube, specifically their 13mm tubing, than for copper. And the EK and Bitspower fittings I also would not recommend for copper tubing. Use acrylic or PETG only for those. Use only the PrimoChill fittings for copper.

Parts start rolling in

There were several orders placed in close proximity to each other. The Koolance order arrived on the same day I placed an order from Performance-PCs (paying the rush order fee as well), FrozenCPU and TigerDirect (more on that in a little bit). The Performance-PCs order included:

  • Bitspower mini-valve
  • Bitspower anti-twist adapter – essentially a male-to-female rotary extension adapter
  • AlphaCool ST30 240mm radiator
  • AlphaCool HF D5 top
  • Phobya Balancer 150 Silver Nickel
  • EK UNI Holder 50/70
  • PrimoChill Revolver fittings – Anodized Silver – 2×10 packs

The in-store credit from the RMA made a little dent in that order, as did the coupon code. Together they knocked over $50 off what would have been the total. From FrozenCPU, I ordered:

  • 5xSwiftech 90-degree single-rotary fittings
  • 2xBitspower Spectre Pro 140mm

The fans I originally intended to order from Performance-PCs, then forgot about it as they weren’t on the wishlist. Both of these orders should be arriving about mid-week, the Performance-PCs order via FedEx, FrozenCPU via UPS.

Then there’s the order from TigerDirect. Let’s just say that when you see a good deal, you take it.

Plus TigerDirect had a Columbus Day special going on where you could get $15 off any order of $100 or more. So I was able to get this graphics card for $260 plus shipping. I’d been keeping an eye on prices through PCPartPicker, and when I noticed this I just had to jump on it. It was too good a deal to pass up, especially when everyone else still has this card for over $300 – typical price I’ve seen is over $350 as of the time I write this. And with the $30 rebate, it’ll come out to $230 plus shipping in the end.

Certainly one hell of a deal.

It does mean I now need a second Koolance GTX 680 waterblock, but I still come out pretty well ahead on that. I still need to order coolant, so I’ll likely get both direct from Koolance. And for the SLI I’ll probably use the Swiftech SLI fitting, running it in parallel.

I was originally planning on waiting to do SLI in my build, waiting for the price to come down to, actually, about what I paid. I wasn’t expecting it to happen this quickly after the GTX 900 series was introduced, though. I expected the prices to remain higher for at least another month or two, and in most venues they still are. As of the time I write this, Amazon lists it for $370, and Microcenter for $350 (plus about another $30 for sales tax for me). NewEgg is the only other place I’ve seen that is listing it for $300, but they’ve only just recently got it back into stock. Even PNY’s online store lists it for $395 right now – which is odd since they list the OC2 version of the card for $320, though it’s out of stock. And there are other retailers listing the card for over $400.

So again I definitely got lucky on my timing in finding a good deal.

For now, though, it’s all about playing the waiting game. Here’s the components of the loop thus far.

Protesting in a Courthouse

Hands up if you believe you have your free speech rights in a Courthouse. Those of you who rose your hands, you’re not correct.

Courthouses have routinely restricted the speech rights of spectators who arrive to watch court proceedings. So it is quite incredulous for a constitutional law attorney named James Whitehead to say this:

The right to protest is under attack. The government is attempting to squelch expression even in such public places as the plaza fronting the U.S. Supreme Court.

This quote is from an article describing how an 83 year-old woman was removed from a courthouse for wearing a t-shirt that says "Shut down Guantanamo".

Here’s the down and dirty: the Court has every right to restrict the activities of others within the courthouse, including manner of dress and manner of expression. All courthouses I’ve been to have done this, and there are several reasons for it, the most obvious of which is to maintain order and limit the potential for outside influence on any juror or witness to a trial.

Courthouses are about hearing controversies and cases. The right of the parties involved to have their side heard trumps your right to free speech. This means the Court has the right and, indeed, the responsibility to restrict the manner of dress of all persons who may enter a courthouse, and to direct the bailiffs and deputies to enforce that dress code, including removing persons who are found to have violated the dress code or, in the case of the 83 year-old woman, ignored the order of an officer to remain covered with a jacket.

And this has been upheld by appellate Courts and has been the rule for decades. Quoting an article on the matter written by Michael Crowell, UNC Chapel Hill School of Government:

Given the court’s inherent authority to maintain order and protect the fairness, dignity and integrity of the judicial process, it was held reasonable for the judge to bar a defendant from wearing a T-shirt with a political message. People v. Aleem, 149 P3d 765 (Colo 2007). The ban served to protect the right to a fair trial.

Rules of this nature are about protecting the rights of those who have business before the Court. Your rights take a back seat to that business when you are in the courthouse when that business is taking place and, as such, your rights can and will be legitimately restricted within that venue. This is not to say free speech is under attack, or whatever you want to say about it. It is, again, about respecting the rights of those who have business before the Court, who have cases and controversies to be heard, and the right to have those cases and controversies heard without undue influence on the trier of fact, including by people who will be sitting in the gallery.