Planning Metaversa 2.0: Even More Messing about with concepts...

I'm going in a somewhat different direction, I'm afraid. #4 is just too expensive to build... I will post the next design when I've firmed it up a bit. All I can say is that it will have a dekatron for harddisk indicator.

 

I'm working on a project right now that might be right up your alley, bro. I'll be posting what's going on soon, but I'll gladly share code and schematics with you if you want it after seeing it.

It would be independent of that dekatron, of course, but it should be something you would be really interested in, and probably didn't know would even work.

 

I love those tubes .... well, I LOVE tubes whatever their form could be. You doamn ruined my purse, I need (I don't really need, but I deadly want) some tubes now

I saw a similar feature using a led array and a registry ****, but I have to admit that it is less sexy. Dekatron for HDD activity and Nixies for temp monitoring .... nom nom nom.

I'm definitly looking forward to it

 

Sounds intriguing. I'm interested!

I know someone used a Magic Eye HDD indicator and I thought of using side-on bar Magic Eye tubes as fan speed indicator, but as it happens my next PC will be passively cooled. No fans, I hope.

@Guille: tubes are awesome. I love tubes. My wife and I would just have those massively big ones on shelves as decorative items if we could find any.

 

What you need are those lovely 300B tubes. I'll try to find something for you. Cannot remember the exact name, but tubes for radio emiters are real huge penthode (the ones with a cap on the top). In fact, they are so huge that I saw a project where someone was using it to place some object (like boat) in them.

I found some on an army surplus

 

Not building #4 isn't an option. Have you thought about finding someone willing to buy one if you made two?

 

Yeah, because in this time of recession and global economic meltdown there are people just queueing up to lay £1000,-- plus worth of freestyle down on a PC case that looks purdy. And that is without the hardware.

Nope. I'll just have to be a bit less ambitious...

 

Or, you could be like some people here and just build your own cnc to make your case....

 

I'm looking at Mountain Mods (and Case labs, and Little Devil, and...) and thinking compared to them, I'd take your design any day.

Do you really want to go and ask me what the materials for Mithril cost me? Silver, gold, spalted white ash, and real and simulated gemstones? You, my friend, would be getting out CHEAP.

We already know you're the man, those of us that watched you put together Metaversa 1. It's time to show a new generation why you're the man.

 

More messing about with designs. The idea of this one is that it would be cheaper and easier to make. A bit more reliance on stock items, and less ambitious shapes for the CNC'd/turned/lasercut aluminium and brass. Moreover the case is now in wood, which I can handle myself. I'm thinking walnut or rosewood.

There are two designs: one with a Laing DDC pump:



And one with a Laing D5 pump:



In case you are wondering, the four weird glass thingies are ogilumen nixie tubes. They toggle between indicating l/min. flow and water temperature. Below is a slot-loading DVD drive with a transparent lid. Under that 4 USB ports, and under that a Dekatron counter which will act as power and HDD acticity indicator. To the right and left are power and reset switches.

The nixie tubes and dekatron will be steered by an Arduino (which means I'll have to learn to program one... Looks like a piece of pish though). In the second design the arduino is visible under a window below pump. That is deliberate --the arduino in question would be an Illuminato Genesis which is on sale now, for not much more than a vanilla Arduino, but looks so much prettier... It also has a set of white LEDs underneath the board which would make a nice light effect, shining down on the transparent lid of the DVD drive below. HDDs incidentally are SSDs, hidden either behind the nixies/under the Arduino, or on the back of the mobo tray.

The tubing is not modelled but running to and from the radiator would be metal-braided flexible hose. From the res to the pump would be a brass tube.

Oh, and the res cover plate has a recessed folding carrying handle.

There may be some more tinkering...

 

Love the D5, but couldnt you mount it in some sort of cradle made from either brass, copper or some wood?

Only other slight bug bear for me personally is the res mount with the handle... I would either remove the handle completely or make more of a statement of it... Something like on the top of a carriage clock..

 

I'd love the pump bracket to be brass, but I'll have to check the cost on that. It would require a fairly big chunk of brass.

I may do something about the handle. I'm still working out how to transfer the weight of the whole case.

 

Fantastic concepts. I do like 4 and see the most possibilty there, however you will need to consider cabling and how that will be routed. It could change some aspects of your design. Maybe use an additional pipe up the outside corner of the video cards, running from the hard drives up to the top of the video cards (or to the top of the motherboard), that has a slot cut out of it for the length of the tube, allowing the cables to route inside. Particularly I'm thinking about the power cables on the video cards and the HDD cables.

Maybe move the slimDVD drive to a different location (above the PSU?), and then create a box above the HDDs to stuff the excess cabling into.

 

4 is not going to happen, I'm afraid. Too expensive.

 

If you could find an old sewing table, you may be able to use the legs from that... maybe something like this:
http://uienifer.blogspot.com/2010/10/old-sewing-machine-new-unique.html

either way, maybe do some trolling of antique shops or estate sales and see what you can pick up, and then modify your design accordingly?

 

Not that simple. The problem is that everything in that design has that particular shape for a reason: to balance this, intersect with that, have several functions at once... You can't just slap different legs on. That design may look pretty, but it is all form-follows-function and referenced to the dimensions of the raw materials.

 

I really like it. It's obviously not as awesome as the previous designs, but hey... You may find a gifted machinist with a lot of free time someday.

The lack of brass on the D5 can be fixed with a few overlays on the delrin top.

Is that going to be enough radiator?

+1 on cable tidy, but in this case you need something for the I/O wires too. -Raised plate on the underside of the top panel?

NO destroying of old antiques!

 

Apparently so. Ten radiator tubes handle an overclocked 4 core Xeon with a 200W HD6950 GPU under PRIME test conditions at 22C ambient alright. Another test ran eight tubes a SLI GTX260 (2x182 TDP) with a i7 940 CPU (130W TDP) during a 40C heatwave in Australia under gaming conditions.

In any case if it does not work it is easy to replace the radiator with a dual 3x120mm fan arrangement.

 

DDC setup looks better. Just saying.

I have a Genesis as well, looks like you imitated me this time... Just means another person to help sort the issues in programming one.

We have some actual Arduino geniuses at TheBestCaseScenario, you might wanna give it a look.

 

You're not making it easier to decide... Originally the top was plexi with a tubing interconnect design and the DDC pump chamber integrated (as in their plexi tops). Not sure that can be machined --I may have to buy a top for reference. In the DDC design the side panels of the wooden case could be glass and reveal the Arduino underneath.

Speaking of which, what was that electronic design that you were alluding to?

I'll have a look at TheBestCaseScenario.