Fittings
Ah fittings. Yes, we ordered a lot of fittings.
This build is going to happen in stages. And we want to be prepared for the later phases when we are using a lot of equipment that all needs to be connected. Ordering all your fittings at once takes a bit of guesswork. It’s always possible and almost likely that you will not have ordered everything that you will need. The best thing to do is to look at your diagram and guess where you might need for instance, a 90° angle fitting to make a turn without kinking your tubing.
We mostly went with compression for our angled fittings, but also order a couple of threaded 45° fittings as they tend to be useful. Kind of a utility player if you will.
We also chose to go with compression fittings for our straight fittings since at the end of the day they tend to be the most secure and easiest to work with. All of our fittings are Phobya matte black G1/4 ½ by ¾. They are machined really well and the color will go great with our case’s interior. This is the standard size for high flow and low kink risk.
Planning to put in a drain line we ordered a Phobya three way plastic splitter. The machining on this is actually really good without excessive plastic hanging in the channel.
Tubing
The whole build becomes pretty useless unless you have some tubing to connect everything. We went with a product from Thermaltake’s new water cooling line. And of course chose ½ ID by ¾ OD V-Tubler 4T clear. This should do really well for flow and look good when we add some dye to the loop once we’re complete.
Pump
The critical job of keeping the water flowing even with all the restriction we are going to place in the loop goes to a Phobya DC12-400 12v pump. This pump claims an 800L per hour (+/-10%) flow rate at a low 24.5dB of noise. The small size will be beneficial while we are installing it and the low current draw is nice for a low electrical impact on the PSU. The brushless motor design means good power and a long life.
It comes packaged completely in foam which means it should be in perfect condition when it arrives at your door regardless of how careless the package handlers were.
With the pump you get a set of mounting brackets as well as a foam pad to reduce vibrations. It’s powered by a three pin plug. We don’t really recommend powering it by the motherboard, but it would work in a pinch.
Reservoir
Feeding directly into the pump is one of the most elegant tube reservoirs I’ve used, a 150mm Phobya Balancer finished in black nickel. The solid metal base and top combined with thick clear plexi are wonderfully finished and really something special to see in person. The luxurious black nickel finish goes quite well with the exterior of the case. This res comes wrapped in plenty of foam to keep it from arriving cracked.
It comes with enough plugs to fill the extra ports and clamps for installation.
The machining on the ports is clean and the Anti-Cyclone plate is a nice feature.
