Fitting a CM Seidon 240M into CM Storm Enforcer

Fitting in a Frankenstein.

CM Storm Enforcer isn't exactly fully compatible with CM Seidon 240M. From http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/ban-leong-ecustomer-service-center-169/cooler-master-seidon-series-compatibility-list-4163312.html, it is suggested that the radiator can fit within the casing, while the fan are supposed to be mounted out of the case. The poster is as reputable as it gets, the distributor of cooler master products in Singapore. However, being tempted by the small price bump compared to 120XL for almost twice the surface area, I decided to try my luck.

And I've never been so wrong. During the assembly of my new rig, I spend disproportionate amount of time trying to fit this behemoth into the case. I installed the fans to the radiator before trying to screw it on the casing. To my horror, the top VRM heat sink on the motherboard and the 2x 4 pin power header are blocking it. I decided to install as the post suggested, with fans above the chassis. It looks terrible and furthermore a safety hazard as the fan blades are exposed. As a temporary solution, no fan are installed on the radiator and the back chassis fan is installed to push air INTO the casing.

This is an less than optimal solution as no fans are actively pulling hot air out of the chassis, so I tried my luck with slim fans. I had an faulty Scythe 12mm fan and I finds that it fins perfectly. Knowing for its low quality and lack of distribution in my country, I decided to get a more widely available CM XtraFlow 15mm instead.

Bad move, the 3 extra mm results with the edge being blocked by similar components again. As the blockage is a mere 3mm I tried to cut of 1 side of the fan mouting and it worked perfectly. The fan's mounting support is cut out using a small saw, then sliced slowly to the intended size using a pen knife. However, the screw is too long and damaged the fins. Fortunately, it did not result in leakage, but as a precaution, I used washers to lift the screw up to prevent it damaging more of the fins. The result can be seen below.




The temps seems similar to the passive setup leveraging chassis fan to push air in. With a fan mounted, I have since remount the chassis fan to pull air out of the chassis instead. Due to the fin design, the sound of air being pushed is rather apparent even with the fan set to low RPM. While purchasing an AIO watercooling, I had a cool and quiet thermal solution in mind, instead, its performance is rather similar to a well designed tower cooler while producing more noise.

At 4Ghz 1.125V, OCCT linpack with AVX tops out at 80C. It could inherently the nature of Haswell thermal behavior, but I can't say I m not disappointed with my first experience with AIO water cooling. Granted, my radiator is handicapped in multiple ways, one fan and a half profile one at that.

Below are the mounting holes I used to secure the radiator. You can use another 4 in the middle but it will result in wrapping of the metal and wholly unnecessary.