My Project: The Area-51 AlienMaster (Area-51 Stock Cooler Replacement) UPDATED!

Thanks Cass for the advice :)  I will keep it in mind as I work on getting things put together.

I will post photos and progress once things get moving :)

Thanks again :)

Naturally it'll be a pleasure to see you cross the finish-line on Alien kooler upgrade. Airene informs she had an easier time with the install by removing the top acti-vent assembly, which isn't difficult as you found out. I believe she obtained 38mm / 1.5" screws also, as the h100i was meant to mount with 25mm fans (~ 1" screws), the top cage meant to house a 38mm top fan as I'll note below.

From the CM page >  radiator dimensions: 274 x 119 x 27, so a 27mm-wide rad (similar to the stock rad which was ~25mm). CM says the fans are standard 25mm wide. Note your stock fan is 38mm.

- here a scenario where fans are either on top (leaves ~12mm gap) or bottom (leaves ~38mm gap) -

If you place your rad in the cage with their fans underneath, you will have a 36mm-38mm gap (where a stock fan would normally have resided).

If you place their 25mm fans on top, you'll have a gap of about 11mm-13mm (the difference between the old 38mil & your new 25mil) so you'll want to be keen on what hardware they provide you, namely mounting screws/bolts.

• 38mm = 1.5 inches
• if they provide ~ 1.5" screws & they work (enough of the thread screws into the rad to secure it) then you're good
• if 1.5" screws are too short by 1/8" or so? If you need 1 5/8"?

If the correct size isn't included in your hardware pack try Lowe's, take their screws in with you, they should have a thread gauger in order to find the identical thread type & from there choose the length you need; I believe rad screws/bolts are what are called #6-32 thread, but use a thread gauger for a more accurate I.d. of what they supplied & what you need.

I'm saying this on intuition, based on the similarity in old/new rad-width (25mm vs 27mm) & the difference between the stock fan & new fans (38mm vs 25mm) & how the new rad will orient in the top relative to whatever screws you'll get in your hardware pack meant to secure it to the cage:

• since AlienMaster rad includes 25mm fans, chances are you'll get screws long enough for just 25mm fans & hopefully you'll get 'optional' ~ 1.5" screws in the pack too, if not, shop for them

you'll know more when it gets there; keep us informed, good luck with the swap & with your Mark II.

Update #1:

I was hoping to have everything finished up today, but the new fan connectors needed to complete the pump power harness won't arrive for a few more days.  Here is my progress so far:

First up, the "before" pictures:

Close-up of the original CPU cooler and the extra top intake case fans I added:

The first steps were straightforward; disconnect all of the cables and PCI cards connected to the motherboard, then remove the motherboard, stock cooler and the fan rack from the case.  Even though all of the cables were labeled, I still drew up a connection map so that I could make sure I reconnected everything properly when I was finished.  

Here is the case with the motherboard, cooler and fan tray removed:

Once everything is out, the stock cooler's mounting back plate needed to be removed.  It is a large black plastic plate that is  mounted directly to the case's motherboard tray.  I didn't take a picture while it was still in the case, but this is it:

With the motherboard out of the case, the next step was to mount the new cooler's backplate to the motherboard:

Mounting the cooler retention plate was as simple as it could be.  Using the black plastic retention clips, mount the retention screws for the backplate in the correct notches for the LGA 1366 socket.  Hold the backplate in place on the back of the motherboard and attache the LGA 1366 cooler mounting standoffs onto the backplate screws that are protruding through to the front of the motherboard.

Next up was mounting the radiator and fans to the fan tray.  Originally my plan was to mount the radiator all the way to the front of the tray, and keep one of the intake fans in the top of the case.  This proved to be impossible.  The radiator has coolant reservoirs on both short ends of the radiator.  This mean that mounting it completely to the front or back of the vent tray as I wanted to was impossible.  The stock cooler's reservoir faces to the side of the case, which permits it to be mounted all the way at the back of the tray.  In the end I was only able to secure the radiator using four of the eight mounting points.  Two at the front of the radiator and 2 in the middle of the radiator.  I believe this is the same arrangement that airene used for her [DEAD LINK /owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19611899]Pegasus X99 Mod.  This arrangement still felt to be solidly mounted, but I will have to wait until I complete the wiring harness to test things out for any rattling noises.

The cooler included hardware for mounting the fans as well as a set of short screws to mount the radiator directly to the case.  I mounted the fans to the bottom of the radiator and mounted the radiator to the vent tray, and put the vent tray with the radiator attached back into the case:

I decided to use the fans as intake fans, drawing cool outside air over the radiator.  Also, having the fans mounted below the radiator made the fans accessible from inside the case, which will help with accessing them to clean them.

Next up, put everything back into the case:

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After everything went back in the case, the next step was mounting the pump and water block to the CPU.  The Nepton 240M kit includes brackets for attaching the pump and water block to both AMD and Intel CPUs.  Before mounting the block to the CPU, the Intel brackets are installed onto the water block.  I cleaned the old thermal paste off of the CPU and applied a small amount of new paste, a little bit less than the size of a pea and mounted the water block to the mounting standoffs, tightening the screws in an "X" pattern.

Next up is attaching the fans to the daughter board header.  I think that one of my main questions about the cooling setup was answered:  How would Command Center react to having two fans connected to the one header on the daughter board?  The Y-cable that connects the fans to the header only carries the tach. signal for one of the fans.  That is to say that one of the connectors has all 4-pins filled (GRND, +12V, Tach, PWM) and the other connector only has 3-pins filled (GRND, +12V, EMPTY, PWM).  So, only one tach. signal will get reported to Command Center.  I routed all the fan cables around the cooler, and attached the fan Y-cable to the daughter board's fan header.  The header that the old fan was connected to is labeled "Sys_Fan2"

So all that is left is to complete the wiring harness and start things up.  I am already 1/2 finished with the harness:

Hopefully you can tell from the photo that I have already switched the positions of the red and white wires and moved the blue wire to the P5 ground.  Contrary to what I originally thought, the pump power cable does use a 4-pin connector that is only using 3-pins.  Fortunately I considered this possibility when I ordered the components for finishing the harness and ordered both 3-pin and 4-pin connectors.  When finished, the daughter board harness will have the black P1 Ground and the Blue P5 Ground Jumper connected together in P1, with the red +12V in P2 and the white Tach. wire in P3.

Once I have finished up the harness, I will post some additional pictures of the harness, as well as post some information on the results once I turn the computer back on.

And the AlienMaster is complete!

I finished up the harness this evening (sorry for the poor quality photo):

The only bit of difficulty here was getting the ground wires to crimp into one fan pin for the jumper.  In the end, I was able to crimp the pin only with the black and blue ground wires oriented so that the sheathing was not under the crimp.  The connector covers the end of the pin, and I aligned everything carefully so that no wire was exposed beyond the pin.

With the harness in place, it was time to turn everything on for the first time:

The pump turns on, the Cooler Master logo lights up, fans turn and everything works as intended.

Command Center shows everything as normal, and reports fan speed and pump operation:

Note my wacky Hard Drive Fan2 speed.  This has been going on for about a year now.  It started after installing the 2.8.11 version of Command Center.  For some reason, sometimes the fan reads in the 10,000RPM+ range, other times it reads normally at around 1000RPM.  If anyone knows what may be causing this, I would love some advice.  I thought it may be a bad fan, but it seems to be in working order.

I don't have a picture of my temps. with the stock cooler, but my temps. were around 42C-46C at idle.

New idle temperatures:

About 8-10C reduction in idle temperatures.

Prime95 testing at stock CPU speeds was around 62-65C with the old cooler.

New Prime95 stress temperatures:

The Nepton 240M gets to between 59-64C max at stock clock speeds, which is pretty close to the stock cooler really, but it is far quieter than the stock cooler.

I am very happy with the upgrade.  I can't wait to get into some overclocking to see how the new cooler handles things, and I will post some results once I get a stable overclock in place.  I also have a sound meter, and will provide some acoustic information as well.

Thanks again to everyone whose past work with the Area-51 MIO board and Command Center enabled me to complete this.  It would have been impossible without your great work!

And thanks for reading :)

And a bonus!

I didn't take any pictures because I kind of just did this as a spur of the moment project, but if you happen, like me, to own an LGA 775 motherboard which happens to be inside of an old school Area-51 7500 case like this:

Then you can use your old stock Area-51 Phobos cooler (which is a re-skinned Corsair H50) as a replacement for the original cooler in the Area 51-7500 case!  It fits fine in the spot the previous cooler occupied, and the cooler backplate and retention ring that comes with the Area-51 Phobos case can also be used for LGA 775 CPUs.  All you would need to do is reverse the positions of the retention screws on the retention ring.  I also created a small wiring harness from some spare parts so that I didn't have to modify the pump cable on the stock Phobos cooler.

The original cooler in the 7500 has a VERY loud pump, and the original Phobos cooler is much quieter.

So, all in all a nice way to reuse the cooler from the Area-51 Phobos!

read / saw your success lastnight. jumping two wires onto one pin's an adventure isn't it.

great job brother, all around.

Thanks Cass :)

Getting the 2 wires into the single pin for the 4-pin connector was probably the hardest part.  The first one I crimped I snapped one of the wires off.  The only way to get them to both stay under the crimp was to not put any of the jacket under the crimp.  But like you mentioned in your "Mark II" instructions, the fan connector end covers the ends of the crimps so it all works out.

Also, being able to use the original cooler to replace the loud original cooler in my older Area-51 7500 was a great bonus.

Seems kind of appropriate, huh?

CASS-OLÉ, thanks again for your work with the Area-51.  I would never have tried this without the great information you and other Alienware Club members have provided on this forum.

heh heh. now u need one of these:

- Area 51 ALX motherboard and cooler. HELP!! -

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/p/19622083/20739264#20739264

send a friend reqwest if u want one

Thanks for the offer Cass, but I already replaced the 5-pin connector on the original pump with a regular 3-pin female fan connector :)  Once I knew everything worked with the quickie harness I made, I decided just to put a regular fan connector on the pump.

The AlienMaster returns...

I remember that there were a number of people who have taken their Area-51 cases and upgraded them with modern motherboards, CPUs and other components while keeping the MIMO/Command Center functionality (lighting, fan control etc.).  I decided to do the opposite...

About a year ago, I moved the main components of my Area-51 system to a new case and since then I have upgraded several (most) components, and updated the operating system to Windows 10.

If you will remember where we last left off:

The original AlienMaster was stock except for the CPU cooler (CoolerMaster Nepton 240M), GPU (ASUS R9 290X), RAM (G.Skill 12gb (3x 4gb) DDR3 1600), SSD (1TB Samsung 840EVO) and a couple of added case fans.

Today:

The only components left from the Area-51 as it was purchased are the motherboard, CPU (Intel Core i7-970) and Blu-Ray drive.

All of the upgrades:

Case: CoolerMaster MasterCase Pro 5 (w/ Tempered Glass Side Panel and blue LED lighting)

CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Pro 280 with 2x Noctua 140MM NF-A14PWM fans

Case Fans: 3x Noctua 140MM NF-A14FLX

Chipset Fan: Noctua NF-A4x10FLX

Ram: G.Skill 12gb (3x 4gb) DDR3 1600

GPU: Asus GTX 980TI

Sound Card: SoundBlaster Z

USB 3.0: Anker 2-Port USB 3.0 card w/ font panel connector

SSD1: 1TB Samsung 840EVO (Operating System and Programs)

SSD2: 2TB Samsung 850EVO (Games)

PSU: EVGA 1050W GS 80+ Gold

For anyone considering reusing their original Alienware motherboard like I have, the motherboard runs perfectly fine without the MIMO hardware and Command Center software.  The CPU fan is controlled by the CPUFan header above and left of the ram slots.  If using liquid cooling the pump can be attached to the SYSFAN5 header (top fan header left of the SATA ports.  DO NOT use the bottom SYSFAN2 header, as it does not provide 12volts).  Case fans can be attached to SYSFAN3 (bottom right side of the motherboard, right of the on-board power and reset buttons) or to molex power.

The CPU has been overclocked to 4.02Ghz full-time for 2 years since the original cooler upgrade.  With ambient temp. of 25C, the hottest CPU core under Prime95 hits max of 72C with the new case, cooler and fans.

And the system crushes games.  The i7-970 is still a fairly powerful CPU, with 6-cores and 12-threads, and with the overclock and the 980TI GPU, I can max out basically any game and get 60FPS on my 1920x1200 Dell U2412M monitor, and suspect I have enough performance to spare that I could probably upgrade to a 2560x1440 monitor and still be happy with my frames per second.  The SSDs aren't being fully utilized since the X58 chipset only supports SATA2, but the performance is still vastly improved against standard spinning 7200RPM HDDs.

I chose all of the upgrades with the goal of being able to transfer most of the hardware to my next PC.  But honestly, I can see this PC lasting me at least another year, possibly even longer.