The Innovatek Build Up

Now that we have the most of the major components converted to water cooling we can install this stuff into our MVKTech test rig. Our test specimen will include the following hardware sponsored by ABIT, NVIDIA, PNY, EVGA, Innovatek, Thermaltake, FrozenCPU and HighSpeedPC. FrozenCPU allocated the products on behalf of Innovatek for our reviewing pleasure and to bring these great products to our audience. Scott from HighSpeedPC is one of the largest Innovatek retailers in North America and he supplied us with some additional fittings we needed to configure the two 6800 Ultra's. Thanks Scott!

• ABIT AN8-SLI Mainboard
• AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester
• 1024MB Corsair XPERT 2-2-2-5
• 1x PNY Technologies GeForce 6800 Ultra
• 1x NVIDIA Eng Sample GeForce 6800 Ultra
• 1x Maxtor Diamond Max 9 120GB SATA HDD
• Thermaltake Armor Aluminum Series Case
• Thermaltake Power Station 520Watt PSU

Now that we acquired all the parts necessary to start the installation, we can start stuffing the hardware into our Armor case and get on with this thing! Let's see what we got going on...

With the HD-O-Matic MICRO II installed on our Maxtor 120GB HDD, we get a pretty good idea of how and what the water circuit is going to look like relative to the motherboard area. The 3.5" HDD cage we see above had to be cut with a Dremel-tool with collets and cutting wheel to remove the side rails that support the HDD. So if you plan to use a similar case, just be advised we had to cut the rails on the HDD cage so the HD-O-Matic MICRO II would have a factory installed appearance.

Now that the HD-O-Matic MICRO II HDD cooler is installed, we stuffed the twin 12cm dual core radiator. The radiator is a perfect fit having the 5.25" bay area of the Thermaltake Armor case to act as a retention mechanism. We press fitted the radiator in the area above following by the GeForce 6800 Ultra's in SLI mode. What helped with this SLI configuration was the fact we had to get some extra 8 x 1 Innovatek "elbow" compression fittings thanks to Scott over at HighSpeedPC, so we can plumb the circuit between the two graphics cards. Next we will change out the OEM AMD CPU HSF for the Innovatek i-Cool Rev4.0 CPU Cooler.

Now is a good time to find a home for the Eheim HPPS 12V pump and reservoir assembly. If you look closely you can see the floor of the Thermaltake Armor case has pre-drilled holes in the bottom of the floor plan. This helped with mounting the pump/res assembly by allowing us to secure the assembly to the bottom of the floor without drilling! Now we will install the Innovatek i-Cool Rev4.0 CPU Cooler and AMD Socket 754/939 CPU retention mechanism. This is pretty much the components in there final configuration. Now its on to installing the water cooling circuit.