Aikouka
Lifer
- Nov 27, 2001
- 30,383
- 912
- 126
I mounted my pump at the bottom of the case directly below my tube res without sacrificing anything. I also have a 360mm UT60 rad at the bottom. I can think of many different locations for mounting the pump without putting it in the bays. Like I said before, the case is amazing for fitting a TON of watercooling parts in it and if you visualize it correctly you don't need to sacrifice anything. Build quality for the most part is good but I guess it could be better.
Your pump is in the same location as where I put mine in my second build, and just like in my setup, you are sacrificing something. If you put a pump on the bottom, you're effectively taking up the room where the second radiator mount is. In my original design, I built a shelf that sat in front of where the upper drive cages are, and my pump sat on that. The problem is that it made it somewhat difficult to get at the 240mm radiator that I had directly below it. I decided to simplify things and remove that radiator. It also doesn't help that I used dual D5 pumps, which take up quite a lot of room. The only thing that bothered me about its water cooling capabilities was that I had to make that shelf myself. The separator between the motherboard and PSU areas in the 800D was a common pump mounting spot, which was effectively removed in the 900D.
The only way that I can think of where you could mount a pump without sacrificing any other capability of the case (other than a bay reservoir) would probably be to mount it to the side. That isn't too hard with a single pump (especially a smaller DDC variant), but good luck when you start going with a D5 or especially with a Dual D5. I did use a rather handy "clamp" method to hold the reservoir on. I found it far more effective than drilling into my case.
