Case Mod - In Progress Feeding Frenzy: November-11-2009 video card fan installed

Did you tell them you wanted the poster? You might be able to talk them out of the one they got hanging in their front office.

 

Nah, but I hadn't seen it (read: AC hadn't redone their shop/catalog) before my last correspondance. Seeing as I just found a couple coupon codes to make the $699 2005FPW Dell 20" flat panels under $400 shipped, I may have to wait on a $6 poster that serves absolutely no purpose right now and that I don't have the wallspace for at the moment.

 

hmm... sorry lads for being a downer on this party... but an AC poster?!?!

It's ok to be a geek now-a-days.. it's acceptable that some like to spend $$$ on water cooling and making their computers look nice..

but to have a poster of the computer water cooling components on your wall???

That somehow baffles me

 

Being a geek is quite baffling to the rest of the world. Maybe AC should put a good looking guy (or gal) on the poster so they can compete with Snap-On?

 

I'm starting to get the impression Aqua Comptuer is a way of life

 

You've got the right impression, Leeum. But then again one could argue that putting up a poster of a movie you like on your wall denotes obsession with the movie. Of course me tacking up my free Newegg beach towel is another story. Even just a cool screenshot from a game you like as your desktop. It's really just saying "I like this and I don't care who knows, it's eye candy for me". And it's not as if the thing is expensive, it's 4E, some $5US or so. A decent movie poster will probably run you at least $20 if you're getting it new.

 

Ahhh....it is.

Ever hang around any BMW owners? They act the same way.

 

Your cable management IS AWSOME WOW..... I am loving it gave me some ideas! WOOT.. Keep on amooding man!

 

Thanks for the nice words on my wiring and I am glad it gave you some ideas as well. But as they say you haven't seen anything yet. Picking up some stuff at McMaster-Carr Saturday morning to install the lower case pumps. After that is done then the wiring fun begins.

 

Never thought "wiring" and "fun" went together too well myself. Once you make it dissapear though, it's all good. I'm still not happy with my drive powering method; yours is far better. I've gotta see what you have in mind now!

 

Well I am a little shy of posting some more FF pics today so I thought I would share some of my other modding activities. WTF has this to do with computers? I use a lot of computers in my amateur astronomy as well.

Before I started watercooling my computer I was watercooling my telescope camera. And you thought watercooling your computer was hightech, huh? The cooler you can keep a CCD chip the more "performance" you can get out of it. What a concept, huh? I will have to look around for some pics of my old SBIG CCD camera. In the meantime I am working on modifying my Celestron C-11. The C-11 is a Schmidt-Cassegrain design telescope and as the name implies it is 11" in diameter so it can image galaxies a long time ago in a far away place. I am installing some fans and associated electrical stuff to keep my mirror cooled down.






In case you are wondering the fan holes weren't there when it left the factory and you void the warranty as soon as you pop the telsescope open.




And here it is on an CI-700 mount which is now on a Losmandy Gemini G-11.







Well enough fun as I have to get to bed so I can get my stuff at McMaster-Carr in the morning so I can keep on modding Feeding Frenzy.

 

I can see you don't feel at home with a soldering pencil. Nothing like the smell of rosin solder in the morning air. Soldering, sheathing, and heat shrinking are fun things to do if you just take pride in the design and implementation phase.

 

nah soldering doesn't bother me (not that my wiring needs it, just crimping mostly); I just don't really enjoy doing it. I do get a good satisfaction out of a job well done though.

 

I cringe when I have to crimp anything. When I do my PSU connectors I will crimp, solder, heatshrink, and then sheath it. Machine crimped stuff works pretty good, but with the tools we have to crimp it is debatable IMHO that you will get a good connection 100% of the time. Thus the trusty soldering tools come out and play.

 

Just noticed that my case is starting to sink into the carpet from the weight.







Also was up at McMaster-Carr this afternoon picking up some more computer toyz.







As you probably recall a ways back I have been somewhat unhappy with the way the Aquastream pump mounts onto various parts of FF. The stock pump mounts have those way too long studs coming out of it like seen here.







That always just bugged me so I went to the trouble of cutting off the extra material on the Aquabay side of the mount with a Dremel cut-off saw.











While all this looked better it still kind of left me with a sour taste in my mouth and I felt I was going to have to do some serious grinding and polishing to make it look half way decent. But after getting what I needed from McMaster-Carr today I took off those chinsy isolation mounts and replaced them with the "right stuff." These rubber isolation mounts are threaded for 4mm x 0.7mm screws on both sides. This opens up some new possibilities.








Now I have some nice looking mounts and they are attached with more buttonheads. We won't talk about the lousy material Eheim uses for their pump mounts. Got to go looking for some of those parts now.

















I know a lot of you have been wondering how the heck I was going to put three Aquastream pumps into a case where most people have difficulty trying to figure out where just one will go. The GPU circuit obviously mounts to the Aquabay as seen above. The HD and CPU/Chipset circuit has had a few people scratching their heads. I kind of new where I was going to put them, but after doing some mockup's I decided to make a few changes. I want it all to look very clean and give me room to manuver my wirilg looms in an equally clean manner. So I have decided to let you in on the plans.

This pic is a mockup of the HD circuit pump. The holes and isolation mounts will be put in tomorrow, but it basically will look like this.







Here a few pics of my CPU/Chipset circuit that I mocked up today and will drill the holes over the next few days. This one shows what you normally will not see as it is on the side opposite from the window panel (more on that down the line).







And here is the side that you would normally see from the window side of the case.







After I get the holes drilled and countersunk I will shoot the real pictures of it all installed as they are some neat stuff being done to make it all work correctly.

 

Good work with the voiding

Been looking at this recently, and wow. Simply amazing.

 

Well even I am amazed about how popular Feeding Frenzy seems to be. I just looked at my Photobucket stats for the last 30 days and I have definitely been getting my money's worth on having a paid account.

Monthly bandwidth used: 33.485 Gb

Monthly hits: 360,975

Wow...just wow!

Thanks for the nice words on FF, but was does "voiding" mean?

 

I meant warrenty voiding.

we all do it.

Especially to new stuff.

I'm still amazed at all that watercooling of doom.

 

Oh that kind of "voiding" I was thinking of the kind of "voiding" we discuss in nursing circles. Thought you were suggesting I was pissing away my watercooling gear or something like that.

 

Okay for today I am trying to get the HD pump circuit pump going in the right direction. After giving it considerable thought I have decided to use the Aqua Computer FMJ pump cover. Just don't entirely feel comfortable about putting a big magnet right next to my HD's no matter what anyone says. Call it just erring on the side of caution.

So the problem in mounting the pump to the HD rack is two fold. First is the necessity to mount the pump to the FMJ and secondly to mount the FMJ to the HD rack. I think I have come up with a novel solution.

Here are the basic parts to start with. There are four holes in the bottom plate for mounting the pump and there are 6 holes that are used to mount the pump cover to the base.











The first think is to make sure you have the proper tools handy. Here is my 4mm x 0.7mm hand tap, a multi-flute countersinking tool, and a set of swiss needle files.












Since I live in an apartment I don't have a place to do machining of stuff as I don't want to be trying to vaccum up small metal particles all week. So this is my portable machining containment system. When you get done machining you just throw away the box.







Here is the first go around on getting the pump mounted using my mounts I got from McMaster-Carr. Looks nice with the buttonheads, but it's a problem because now it won't lay flat against the HD rack.








So the solution appears to be that I need to use flathead screws so the pump screws mount flush. Fortunately I anticipated needing this for the CPU/NB pump mount and picked up a box of 4mm x 6mm stainless flathead socket cap screws. This is where the countersinking tool comes into play. Since this is all hand done with a drill you have to do frequent checks to make sure you don't go to far. Here you can see three holes done and one still needing to be countersunk for comparison purposes.







Here is them all countersunk ready for the flathead screws.







However, one fix often introduces another problem. To get the flathead flush with the bottom of the FMJ causes the tapered part of the screw to stick out the other side. This is a problem because now the mount doesn't screw all the way into the mount. As you can see I have already tapped the cover plate mounting holes. The stock hole is slightly oversize, but the 4mm x 0.7mm tap leaves enough thread for what is needed.







One slight problem with the tapping is that the cover plate is a little undersize for a 4mm screw. So I found it easier to tap the holes with the cover plate on.







So the fix is to countersink the mount with the same tool so that it will slip past the part sticking out. Here is the stock and modified mounts for comparison. This is also hand done so it is best to do a little at a time and check for fit.







The countersinking tool kicked up a burr so the swiss needle files made short work of this problem.








Here we are with all four mounts countersunk and installed in the base plate.







Here is a view of the screws in from the other side.







Here are some pics showing the Aquastream pump mounted with buttonheads.












Here is the cover on and secured with more buttonheads.







And last but not least the completed mod in the following pics.


















Next up is mounting to the HD rack. Luckily I have an extra HD rack (from the one I removed) to experiment on.