Scratch Build – In Progress Project Monolith

Thought I'd add something I came across when I was thinking about doing something similar to your mod. It's supposed to turn the solder to a nice copper color so it looks nice, here's the link to it on amazon (link).

 

Oh this is just silly

 

It is... But it is the good kind of silly.

 

Cool! Thanks for the tips! Looking forward to further updates. And I thought you weren't going to have an internal optical drive... did you change your mind?

 

Temps and whatnot.
Cpu temp from a minute of left4dead


CPU temp from a small run of OOCT for 1 minute, (4 cores full load)

You can see how it takes the watercooling system about 45 seconds to recover from the heat
load of the cpu. At 5 volts, the fans arent fast enough for when the machine is FULLY loaded.
I will implement an automatic temp control for the fans to increase their speed when the coolant is a certain temperature above ambient. However unless the ambient is above 35 degrees C (which happens atm here in queensland) the fans at 5 volt keep the machine stable for any games.
Also, ATM, the thermal goo on the cpu is standard white crap. My artic silver has dried out. So once i get proper goo, i imagine those temps will drop.


GPU stats from the l4d run.



Just goes to show you dont need much to cool an overvolted (1.329) and overclocked 3870X2 video card hehe.

I am having some strange problems with the 3870 and my bios mods, it wont take a core of over 900mhz and ram of over 1000mhz on gpu0, but gpu1 is fine. Its like the bios doesnt even write properly. Will look into it later. Gpu1 however runs for at 951mhz core and 1051mhz memory. If i can get Gpu0 to follow, i will be set. The stock for the 3870x2 dell version i have is 825core, and 900mhz ram.
825 to 951 is a nice nice jump

As for the optical drive, yea changed my mind. I had the room there, thought i would use it.
At the top there hidden under aluminium doors will be the card reader, dvd drive, power leds, standby leds, pump active leds, power and reset switches, plus usb ports and what not.

I am still chasing down some good sides for this, perspex is a bit expensive, and prone to break, and HEAVY, so i am looking for something a bit thinner and stronger. I will also have to put handles on this thing, once the sides are on, there is nothing to grab, and its bloody heavy.

Totalentropy, i was actually going to electro late all the blocks using copper sulfate, but it involves intricate cleaning of all joints to work properly, which also includes removing any flux left from the soldering, and i also cant get copper sulfate.

 

There was also a watercooled PSU that didnt make the cut. Due to a short in the circuit, i killed it good.


I cant get another model of that psu, so the watercooled psu is on hold until i can find one that will easily allow me to watercool it.


Also watercooled hard drives!!! However this turned out to be a missplan, because they wouldnt have fitted in the case, and because the drives are behind the radiator, they get air flow anyway, and the watercooling would have actually restricted air flow.




As you can see they stack together nicely, but actually block all air going through the stack, unless i space them much further apart. its still a possibility like the wc psu, but considering they are cooled perfectly well now, probably not in this case anyway. However i am keeping the plates for anything else that might crop up.

So the todo list contains the following.

IO. Leds, power switches, usb etc on the top front of the case.
Temperature controlled fans that stay at 5 volts (really quiet) until it gets warm.
Case sides.
Handles.
Mesh back and front.
Pump failure warning system.
Cable Management. The cables are all kinda just floating around at the moment, so i am going to sort them out. Since this PSU may end up being removed and replaced with a watercooling one, i dont want to go randomly cutting of all the cables. SO im going to fold them and cable tie them out of the way for the moment. But there are other cables and coolant lines to be taken care of and routed properly.
POSSIBLE watercooled psu, however judging by the heatload and how the machine handles the warm weather, this might not happen. The current psu (delta) has a wonderfully awesome temperature controlled fan, which is as quiet as the 120s at at 5volts, yet its only 80mm.

i have considered watercooling the delta (its actually a server PSU) but its actually TWO seperate boards inside, and lots of heatsinks. Over 6 seperate heatsinks, and only half of them earthed, which makes watercooling them an extremely dangerous proposition.
So what i may do is hang out for a replacement for the one i blew up (and took out the house), watercool and test it good long and hard outside of the case before i add it into the loop.
i will also have to encase it with clear plastic because of the dangerous voltages.
The last thing to do is put the 2d clocks of the 3870x2 back to stock, No need to overclock the cores at 2d, considering one of them isnt even being used, and the other is just doing 2d rendering. NO need to create excess heat.

And to answer someone in the thread, leaks are possible. One of the reasons im not too bothered by lack of case sides at the moment. The pump runs 24/7 even if the machine is in standby, and i have a torch on hand to check it during long gaming runs. I also check and mark the coolant level indicator on the res.

Leaks have happened before too, which is the reason i went from the black poly tubing, to the translucent silicone stuff. The black tubing also had a smaller inside diameter and restricted flow. The leak happened from the video card, onto the sound card. It was only a few drops though, no massive flood. The anti corrosion compound is fantastic.

 

Damn you thought of everything didn't you lol. Water cooled HDDs and a water cooled PSU.

 

Very cool mod! I cant recall ever seeing anything like it, especially the amount of homemade solders are impressive!

Keep it up!

 

More News.
Got coming in some nice OCZ 1066 low latency DDR-2 with heatpipes for the phenom, and it should be easy to mod to run inside the watercooling loop.
Also got some handles today so its easier to pickup. Also bought a new Habu mouse (love it)

And the most important news is that after upgrading my video card drivers, my 3870x2 bios is now allowing me to flash it properly.




yes, from a stock of 825/900 to 891/1050mhz!!!

Anything above 891 causes crashes, so i dont know if its a lack of voltage problem or temperature problem. Still good though.
Now to wait for my ram!

 

Is the case now finished?I mean are you going to make some panels to close it or will it just be open?

 

Have you done a few hour stress of the cores and vidcard yet?

 

Spyrious, it will have case sides, already chasing down the stuff i require.

Totalentropy, yea. few hours of L4D, which pushes the video card to 100 percent on both gpus, and about 70 percent on each of the cores.
However the video overclock didnt stick
Crashed to desktop. I have had to drop it back to 900/1000 dammit.

 

Excellent job! It looks like you spilled ramen on the motherboard.
I'd pass on the watercooled psu. There's a lot of other stuff inside that needs a fan, especially if you live in a toaster region.

 

Well my 3.2 overclock wasnt stable, so in what has so far amazed me, i overclocked it some more and its now rock solid at 3.3, including an hour of OCCT.



The cores of the 3870 are still at 891/1000 for 3d, and 825/900 for 2d mode.

 

This is so cool m8. All those tubes is looking impressive. Good job on soldering all the custom blocks and such. Funny how the pump actually manage to create a flow in all those tubes, I would imagine that this system is a bit restrictive.

 

wow!
very impressive dude!
your work with the copper is an art!
can you write the temp of your parts there?

 

Truely insane build, 5 stars and "year's craziest watercooled system"-award!

 

Well, had to drop it back to 3.2 gig, but with the higher voltage. I will need to get some better interface material for my cpu, its only the white goo at the moment, and the cpu isnt even lapped yet, so its not making fantastic contact.

CPU sits at 50 degrees C when fully loaded with OCCT, ambient temp at the moment is 30.7 deg, with coolant temp 34.7 degrees.

Being christmas and all, not much work happening to the machine. However there are still things in the pipeline, and more pics to show.

The hard drive rack is actually swing out to enable easy changing of the drives, and i will get some pics of that too.

I just dropped the cpu volt from 1.55 to 1.50, and it instantly dropped my temps down 2-3 degrees. I have had to boost the fans to 7 volts as well.
The automatic fan controller is literally the NEXT thing im doing, because this machine needs it to be safe and stable in the tropical weather.

Also i would like to thank ASUS you dicks.
Every voltage i set in the bios and/or AMD overdrive is actually boosted by 0.05 volts before being applied.
Makes things a bit difficult thats for sure.

Ok, OCCT running for half an hour.
Fans on 7 volt, ambient is 30.6 deg, coolant at 34.4, cpu at 1.488 volts, and cpu temp is 47. Stable so far at 3.2 gig. wooot!

 

nice job, thanks for the update...

BTW, bit-tech lets you say dicks? Cover your eyes and run for it!

 

Incredible working, kudos for the use of a evaporator like a rad for your little big monster!