Overclocked Orange

Neat and Tidy

Having built a few water-cooled PCs before, my first priority was to achieve a clean, uncluttered look. I decided to use PrimoChill PrimoFlex PRO LRT tubing, since you can bend it a lot without it kinking and therefore avoid killing the flow rate. To match the colour theme of the case, I decided on black hosing with UV orange anti-kink coil springs.

I also wanted to set up two separate water-cooling loops, each with its own triple 120mm radiator. I decided to use 1/2in internal diameter hose for the loop that cooled the CPU, and 3/8in internal diameter hose for the GPU loop to differentiate between the two loops.

I initially wanted to use completely new hardware for Overclocked Orange, but I already had three GeForce GTX 280s in my existing rig and various other components that I decided to put to good use combined with some new Aqua Computer full cover water blocks. I decided to order some Bitzpower 90 degree fittings from Sidewinder Computers in the US which would look great when all three graphics cards are connected together.


When I first started the project, I knew that the launch of Core i7 processors was imminent, so I waited for a while and bought an Asus Rampage II Extreme motherboard, Core i7-940 chip and 6GB of 1,600MHz Corsair DDR3 memory. I wanted to water-cool the motherboard too, even though the X58 chipset runs fairly cool due to the memory controller now being integrated into the CPU. I decided to wait for the water-cooling hardware manufacturer Bitspower to release its greatly anticipated chipset block which arrived recently. It was worth the wait!


I was a little disappointed with the finish on the main block so decided to modify it slightly. After a bit of polishing, it looked much better! When I bought the case, I had it modified to make the build easier. I asked WCUK to cut a hole in the motherboard tray so that I could remove the backplate from the CPU water block without also having to remove the motherboard.