I’m almost done putting this rig together, though the process turned out a little more rocky than expected. After much ado, I have finally mounted the motherboard onto the chassis tray. The Coolermaster Aquagate water-cooler was left running for 3 straight days, not a leak in sight. Since the cpu water-block needs to be mounted from the back of the board it was necessary to do the thing in one shot. It took some elbow grease but I managed without damaging anything (I hope). I even used an anti-static wrist-strap just for that extra peace of mind. Pretty much all the parts are in there now, the main stuff at least. A 3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (E8400), the GeForce 8800GTS 512MB, EVGA nForce 780i mainboard, and 4GB of some Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 RAM. Continue reading for some shots of the progress…

There were a couple of hang-ups though. First off, the water-tubing on the Aquagate S1 is a bit cumbersome when used with a 780i board. The mainboard heatsink and the RAM sockets are just real close to the CPU and the tubing got in the way. After some effort I managed to get it mounted on the CPU in a decent alignment. One minor issue is the power wire has to go right in-between the tubes to plug in on the motherboard. Not a big deal though. At this point I finalize the setup by mounting the radiator onto the back of the case. Mind you, I am doing all this just with the slide-out motherboard tray on my case. So I at least have some room to work with. It was a real bitch to get it on right, again due to the huge heatsink on my mainboard. One of the tube outlets is actually touching the fan on the northbridge heatsink. Its not a lot of pressure, but it definitely makes me nervous. I’m willing to take my chances though, it doesn’t seem so bad.

Finally I get to slide the motherboard back in the case and I’m getting excited already. As I’m pushing it in it feels like somethings in the way. It was the clear plastic side door I had just fixed up with 4 120mm blue LED fans. Not a big deal, I could just snap it off while I install the tray and then but it back on.

So I take the door off and proceed to push the tray back in. Then it seems the tray got stuck on something. I was being very careful and sliding it in slowly, but it just wouldn’t budge. Then I notice that the radiator was getting clipped on one side of the case. I got it to fit, but I had to bow the case a bit while I pushed it in. A pain in the ass, yes, but not a show stopper. At least it did fit.

So far, things have been relatively smooth aside from a few small hang-ups. But then it just goes downhill when I attempt to re-attach the side-door fans. They just won’t fit, no way, no how. The radiator on the back of the case (which replaced the exhaust fan) is just too big. It sits dead flush with the inside of the case. Even if I mod the plastic door, there is still no space to mount it on the hinge. What really kills me is that the case, water-cooler and fans are all Coolermaster products from the same line. Hell, the boxes even look like they link up, clearly they were designed together. So how come the cooler doesn’t fully fit in the Stacker 830 SE case when it is obviously supposed to?!?!? Just look at the boxes, come on now!

To be fair, I can still close the case with the cooler installed. There is a seperate mesh door which slides back onto the case and that still works. However the clear side-door fan bracket was one of the main reasons I bought the Stacker 830 in the first place. The Stacker is one of the biggest cases on the market, it should friggin’ fit! At first I was really pissed about this, and was almost ready to just buy an air-cooler so I could use the fan door. Then I looked into it and many of the big air-coolers, like the Thermalright Ultra-120 or the Tuniq Tower don’t completely fit either (but in those cases you can easily mod the door). Plus, I spent so much time getting the mainboard in the case, I really don’t want to take it unless I really have to. Theres already 4 fans in the case (with room for one more) so I think I might be alright.

I’d have to say though, this water-cooler better be good. I’m going to finalize the rig and get Vista Ultimate installed hopefully in the next day. Then I can at least make sure all the parts work and verify if this Aquagate cooler was really worth the hassle. Until then, my friends.

Tags: Hardware, Ramblings //