 🎵 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 gonna cost over $6,000 US, 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 ASUS. 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 we'll 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. Next up is graphics cards. We've gone with two ASUS GeForce GTX Titans with Coolant's 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 GPU boost 2.0, and the reason we've gone with Titans as opposed to GTX 690s or Radeon 7999s 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 6GB 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 240GB SSDs for a total of almost 500GB of OS fast RAID 0, so accelerated SSD goodness for our applications. Then we've gone with two Western Digital Red Series 3TB 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 Zonar Feebus sound card. It's very similar to the Zonar Zents 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 3.5mm 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, which is kind of neat. We're using PrimoChill PrimoFlex LRT Advanced tubing, my personal favorite type of tubing, it's awesome. We're using Coolant's 3 1⁄8 inch ID 5 1⁄8 inch OD compression fittings. What I like about these is the fact that they can be wrenched tight or hand-tightened, and they look outstanding. We are also using a Phobia gold-plated reservoir, which looks pretty bling-bling, as well as a Coolant's 380i CPU block, which is one of the best performing CPU blocks on the market. The last couple water cooling components are a Swiftek MCP655 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 G710 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 Deathadder 2013, although a Logitech G700S would be another great pairing for that particular keyboard. The thing people like about the Deathadder 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 Beyerdynamic, and we recommend checking out the Mod Mic, 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 900D, 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 ModMat Extreme. 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 Phillips head will work for most basic builds, but with this one, things got a little bit crazy, and 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, 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 NGFF 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 ASUS' 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 5.25-inch bay 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 IC diamond over other thermal compounds, but just for lulls, I pulled out an ancient tube of OCZ Ultra 5 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 backplate's 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 secure, 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 onto 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. RAM installation, not too complicated, guys. Now do note that this particular board, the Maximus 6 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-less release in the back, we can take off the windowed side panel of the 900D. 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 anywhere in the world. The hardware that you need to install pretty much anything you could possibly want to in the Corsair 900D. 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 MPCIe Combo 2 card acts as both a wireless module, this is wireless AC, as well as an NGFF 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 size 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 900D 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 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 3, front USB 2, 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 quick start guide that 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 we're 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 900D. 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 supply's 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 than 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 their 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 rad 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 900D 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 case 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 pole 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 900D 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 oopsie. We had to take our power supply out and the reason for this is with it in, we realized we couldn't access the fittings 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, get a pen ready, write this down. The order of your loop does not matter. You go CPU block, GPU block, radiator, reservoir, 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 Phobia 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. Phobia 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 MCP655 from Swift Tech. Unfortunately, it has half inch barbs 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's 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, remember, 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 whenever 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 SwiftX 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. We'll 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. All right, so we jammed that power supply back in there. It was 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, ten connectors on the back of the power supply and ten cables and you can unplug or plug in as many as you want, Corsair 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 to 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 six-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 of things and we don't have to run extra wires. We ran our 24-pin in 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 8-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 8-pin CPU connector even though it has another spot for an additional 4-pin. That additional 4-pin is optional and it is my personal belief that on an LG 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 8-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 900D and still have room for two hard drive cages, giving you a total of four 3.5-inch drives or 2.5-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 onto 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, it was good enough. But if we could get some other more different custom brackets, we could probably actually affix 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 in the top, the one at the back, and the three in our motherboard tray radiator to the motherboard itself. So the ones in the bottom are all going to be static according to how we installed them. And the ones in the top will be able to be controlled using AI Suite. Just as a reminder, guys, we're running two Intel 520 series SSDs in RAID 0. And we're running two WD 3 terabyte RED drives. So these are NAS 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 four 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 till 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. They're 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 four port harnesses for 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 four 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 four 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, then 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 else 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 kind of fantastic. Now there are a few things. Needed that. A 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 900D 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. Whoa, it's heavy. There we go. Whoa, that was 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. All right. 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 things? 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 mild 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 fester coolant that I use to put distilled water and you can get it 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 pin 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 any time 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. And 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 SATA 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, we're 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 too. 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 two 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 900D 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 test for about 15 minutes now, and the GPU is running at 40 degrees Celsius. Un-freaking-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 five radiators in a 900D. We put dual titans in a 900D. We put a 4770K in there. We loaded it up with 32 gigs of 2400 megahertz memory. 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 you can install 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 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. Anytime 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, oh, okay, it supports five radiators. Didn't really think about it that much. I, 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 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 900D to the point where it doesn't look empty in there, which is what most of the 900D 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 is I'd use all six of those front bays for hard drives, and then I move 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 copper water blocks, and it has over two liters 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 to Online As Tech Tips. Don't forget to subscribe because there will be more of these build guides.