Zalman LQ1000 case... WHICH watercooled GPU will fit?

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Polar Bear
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Zalman LQ1000 case... WHICH watercooled GPU will fit?

Post by Polar Bear » Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:47 pm

Hi.

Recently I bought a high end PC from Alienware, and it was the noisiest PC ever. I had to send it back for a refund. It was a terrific disappointment.

Since then I have set out to build a powerful, but extremely quiet PC.

I had quite a lot of money to play with in my Alienware refund, so I went for the Zalman LQ1000 case. It seemed to be noob-friendly, and this was my first watercooled PC.

For a Video Card, I decided to go for one with a prefitted waterblock, meaning that I would not have to void any warranty by doing major surgery and replacing a stock cooler with a water block.

The card I wanted to go for was the NVidia GTX280. There are three manufacturers making this card with a prefitted waterblock.

There's:

EVGA
MSI
BFG

And now we have the problem....

The LQ1000 comes with a reservoir in the door and a large 220mm fan mounted on top of it. This impinges on the space in the case, and means that at least two out of the three watercooled GPU's above do not fit.

The first one I bought was the MSI GTX280 Hydrogen. I tried it for fit in the case, and I couldn't close the door without the edge of the waterblock pushing against the fan housing.

Second, I looked online and found that someone had needed to send back the EVGA card also, because it's too big.

So, this leaves me with the BFG, which seems to have a slightly smaller waterblock (from looking at the pictures). I am not sure whether I dare order one of these, and whether I can handle the disappointment if it also doesn't fit. Why on Earth are manufacturers making watercooled CPU's that don't fit this case?? (I think the case came first).

Which leads me to my main questions:

1) Has anyone built a system using the Zalman LQ1000 case? If so, what card did you use? Watercooled, passive, silent?

2) Has anyone built a system using an LQ1000 and the BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 H2OC 1GB? Does it fit OK?

3) Does anyone have a BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 H2OC 1GB that they would be prepared to measure for me, please? The width, from the edge of the PCI connector to the water block would need, I think, to be under 128mm for this to fit.

ANY help or advice on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

scooby092477
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Joined: Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:59 pm
Location: michigan

same concern

Post by scooby092477 » Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:03 pm

i am eagerly looking at this case and was planningon building a new i7 X58 system using all EVGA products as I have now. Good to see youve tried these. I seen a different LQ1000 case picture and it showed passive cooling on the side of the case in the door instead of using a big 220mm fan and water resorvoir. it has pipes and the water tubes hooked up to that and the whole door was one pice instead of the 2 it has now.

anyway it would be curious to know if the gtx 260 water cooled card would work....

btw, how do you like the case???

Polar Bear
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:22 pm
Location: London

Post by Polar Bear » Sun Jan 11, 2009 4:54 am

I completed building this machine - finally - yesterday and am using it now.

The case is a good one.... pretty quiet although not 'silent'. I think you'd have to go for 100% passive for genuine silent.

Some things I have learned that may save others pain/inconvenience/disappointment.

1) The LQ1000 case has proprietary hose that is 12/8mm and does not fit 10/8 or 11/8 compression fittings. Don't waste money on those; you need to use barbs to start/finish your loop.

2) The BFG H2OC is the only GTX280 with factory-fitted block that fits into this machine and it *just* does it....with 1mm of clearance with the door fan.

3) I built the system using a 2.5" Solid State Drive (250GB) which I installed in the FDD bay using a caddy I bought from Startech.com. As I have no HDD's I was able to remove the huge HDD rack from this case which gavce me a lot more room for manouver. This requires unscrewing the pump first then replacing it. If I hadn't removed this bay I'd have found installing the side plate with the BFG in place to be very difficult if not impossible as the GTX280 is a very long card.

4) SSD isn't quite 'silent' as I thought... it makes a high pitched noise some times when accessing - although this is still quieter than HDD.

5) One last thing - the BFG card comes with a good range of fittings and connectors - don't buy anything else with the intention of screwing it in as the waterblock holes are so close to the card that you can't rotate the nut without damaging the card. Overall, use the fittings that come with it.


In general, this system has cost me a lot and forced me into a lot of learning and starting again - however the end result is a quiet and very powerful machine.

Intel i7 920 CPU
Gigabyte X-58 Extreme Motherboard
Zalman Dual Silent Pipe 850W PSU
6GB Corsair X3 Ram
BFG 1GB GTX280 H20C
OCZ 250GB SSD
LG DVDRom/Blu Ray

XSPC CPU waterblock for Socket 1336 CPU's
Vista 64-bit

HammerSandwich
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Post by HammerSandwich » Thu Jan 15, 2009 7:38 pm

Polar Bear wrote:4) SSD isn't quite 'silent' as I thought... it makes a high pitched noise some times when accessing - although this is still quieter than HDD.
Are you sure the noise comes from the SSD and not, e.g., the motherboard?

Polar Bear
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Location: London

Post by Polar Bear » Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:53 am

You're absoutely right. On further investigation the buzzing is coming from the Motherboard. It's seperate to the occasional squeak coming from the SSD.

With this motherboard buzzing; I really don't know what I can do. I wonder whether anyone else has had this problem.

I am using a Gigabyte X-58 Extreme motherboard and a Zalman 850W dual silent pipe PSU.

warriorpoet
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Post by warriorpoet » Sat Feb 07, 2009 9:31 am

Polar Bear wrote:You're absoutely right. On further investigation the buzzing is coming from the Motherboard. It's seperate to the occasional squeak coming from the SSD.

With this motherboard buzzing; I really don't know what I can do. I wonder whether anyone else has had this problem.

I am using a Gigabyte X-58 Extreme motherboard and a Zalman 850W dual silent pipe PSU.
That GPU/ PSU combo has a known squealing issue (as doa few other PSUs when paired with the GTX 280, and the GTX 280 itself). I've heard clear nail polish on the offending coils helps, but I'm not sure as I haven't tried it myself.

Polar Bear
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Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:22 pm
Location: London

Post by Polar Bear » Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:17 am

That's very interesting information; could you supply any links?

How do you define a 'squealing' issue please?

Incidentally, the problem was the same when I replaced the PSU with a Nesteq 700W one. It does sound like the sound is coming from the motherboard - having said this, it may well be GPU specific in that it's how that GPU requests power.

I'd love to read about which are the offending coils etc.

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