Soo. An idea has been kicking around in my head for quite some time about a case I wanted to make. Copper tubing is fairly cheap, and tempered versions exist. Soldering a few fittings should be easy too. This is an mATX build so I am aiming to make it as small as possible, the frame itself will become the reservoir which is why I opted for 12 and 15mm tubing. The case exterior is made of 15mm copper tubing with 12mm connections to the hardware. I could have gone for larger tubing but then the fittings would be very expensive. I noted the number of fitting and there are: 15mm Tee 11 pcs 12mm Tee 2 pcs 15mm 90 Elbow 5 pcs 15mm 45 Elbow 10 pcs 12mm 90 Elbow 8 pcs 15-15-12mm Tee 14 pcs 15-12-12mm Tee 8 pcs As is there are around 50 fittings to solder plus the hard tubing fittings that attaches the pumps to the copper tubes, blocks and radiators. A bit of tubing For now I have a few renders without the correct motherboard nor have I laid the cables. And a question. Skin it or not? I have the option of skinning with aluminium plates and make an actual motherboard tray. Or keep it bare with Lexan/acrylic sides. Both options will require a lot of thinking or more fittings and in either case I can't hide the wiring. I have a plan for that scenario too.. Right side Left side Back Pumps
Well, I hope that the flushing procedure won't be that hard, I still have to add a filling plug and the handle part will be the air trap. For now it is only copper fittings, I was hoping to keep away from brass due to the color difference. A mix of vinegar and water should do the trick for flushing.
Interesting idea, Is that top piece going to be the carry handle? not I would want to trust that with the wieght
I actually called a friend of mine who is a plumber, he told me the tensile strentgh of the pipes was more than adequate for holding 30 kilos plus if properly soldered. Most copper tube soldered will have rated working pressures upwards of 750 psi/51 Bar, that is just for the annealed tubing, fittings and drawn tubing can take 1940 psi/133 bar. Burst pressures can be as high as 9000 plus psi. I'm willing to take the chance that hard drawn tubing wont crack nor bend at the loads I am subjecting it to.
L3p is making a case almost like that. Maybe you can head over to his log for some inspiration? I think it's an interresting idea, and I'd like to see it made real http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=279855&highlight=l3pipe EDIT: Also to answer your question in my thread in here, I'm stationed in Odense
Update time: I just ordered the main hardware for the build: Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 CPU: Intel Socket 1150 Core I7-4790K 4 GHz RAM: Kingston 2x8192 MB DDR3 2400 MHz CL11 GPU: Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 4GB (GV-R929OC-4GD) PSU: FSP AURUM PRO 1000W 80+ Platinum HOTAS: Saitek X55 I already have the drives and the misc parts. Will probably go with a wierd powerswitch once i find it. Brass switches are hard to find.. Ordered all the fittings today too. I have made a small/big decision. I'll make a custom motherboard tray out of 2mm alu the same size as the board and skin the whole case in either 3 or 5 mm perspex. This means that I can make custom IO plates and all that, although there is only two places where I really need to cut. I'll put up some more renders.
I'll agree with the others here on flushing. I've never been able to get a complex soldered line truly cleaned. I'd keep the frame separate from the actual loop. Adding larger pipe/fittings may be expensive, but small doses of them would look interesting. A sanded out splice fitting with no solder=hinge. I'll let you figure out how to mount stuff to it.
That is what I am planning to use some of the Tee fittings for Cheapskate. Just sand the inside to use it as a pass through for the pipe. Then solder it so it stays in position after. Only 1/ 3 of the case itself will hold fluids. Edit, seems that no matter what I do, I can't find a good way to sand out the fittings as there is so much copper in the Tee fittings. I'll keep the case and loop separated, Though this means that I have to order more watercooling parts to do so.. But hey, the case itself is soldering easily, I'm ½ a day ahead of getting this moved to logs.. Expect pictures, lots of pictures.
Log of progress Soo, about time I went ahead with the build log itself. This post is part catch-up, part log. I work Nightshift with a 7-7 rotation which means that every second week I don't get to do any work on this. With 11 hour work nights there isn't much time for anything else than work and sleep. But let me recap. 20.04.2015 Hardware is here.. Let's assemble it a bit shall we. CPU RAM Board in the sun. Standard Cooler installed And the monster of a R9 290X on the board And a bunch of parts arrived too: Starting some work on the 22.04.2015 Cleaning of parts with a scouring pad First order of the day was to cut and solder a bunch of fittings.. First piece is done. Cleaning off the excess flux after connecting parts and before soldering. The 2 metre piece of copper tube was too short in one end, so I begged the local plumber for a small piece of tube. Mobo tray: Snipping with tin snips. 2mm alu is very tough to cut.. Lots of holes with provisions for 1 3.5" HDD and 2xSSD GFX Backplate cutout. GFX backplate: Done with tin snips, a set of needle files and a cordless drill. Oh, and an IKEA template for the holes. Intermediate stage, runs Win 10 and after tweaking 4.4 HGZ, DDR3 @2400 without breaking a sweat. Surprised at how silent it really is. Now I have to get some watercooling parts and maybe play a few games. 11.05.2015: The Easter bunny left a package to pick up. EKWB blocks, pump and an extra top for the old Laing DCC-1T iI had kicking around from the P4 days. 1 rad was missing from the shipment and I had ordered the wrong size reservoirs. The Alphacool Coolplex 10 LT is TINY!! So called the support and arranged for an RMA for the coolplex and the shipping of 2 Coolplex 25 LT instead. That arrived a day later, but it was in my rotation of work so no time to play with anything. A few days ago I received another package with a scroll saw. The case as it is at present. Fast forward to last night. My girlfriend woke me up at 2 in the morning and I could not fall asleep again, so I started modding. Since I can't do noisy work in the middle of the night I started plumbing the reservoirs I had fastened to the front Rad. I could not resist polishing it and put it in it's place. Not much room to muck around Installed the motherboard, I made some muck ups on the tray measuring wise, so I will have to go get a new piece of 2mm plate to make yet another tray. The first one was too small in the vertical dimension, the second one is made from a very old piece I had laying around, so it has so many scratches and dents + I got the mounting holes messed up. (Third time is the charm right?) At least it sits in the right position and the motherboard fits (ish) correctly, so I can make the next set of plates. I'll post some pictures of what I have later, time for sleep. Been up almost 23 hours now.
Hiccups Yesterday went South already from the moment I got out of bed. Sometime during the night I, at the age of 33, suffered from a blood clot in my brain, much so that I was unable to have much use of my right arm, I had a loss of control over the right side of my face. Woke up my girlfriend and she called the doctor. Got picked up by an ambulance and I'm currently in the hospital for observation. CT scan didn't show anything abnormal, but the symptoms are all there. Right side of face feels like I have had local anesthesia applied much akin to going to the dentist. 3 fingers are asleep, but I can walk and get about just fine. Currently I'm getting better at speaking, was biting my tongue at first so I sounded like a drunk. Or a mentally challenged. Or both. Not dizzing either. I'll be released sometime this day I hope. A lot of things are yet to be done on the case, and my fingers are itching to work. Watch this space.
Update time 02-06-2015 After spending a few days resting I got the itch again. So here goes. New motherboard tray, I bought a Brother printer that does A3 format, so I could make templates: Filing.. again. Installed: Plumbing the EK- Supremacy: Soldered Everything soldered and polished for the first time. Filled with coolant. Leak testing was done with a ghetto rigging of a 12 volt wall wart and I let it run for 12 hours. First time sleeving so go easy on me. I'm using a mix of red and wine red for the primary and secondary units (Motherboard and GFX), Carbon Grey for all auxiliary units. (SSD and cooling) I chose to group all my cables in 4-6 cables per sleeve, so that gave me 6 sleeved groups to the ATX24 pin. 2 for EPS, 2 for GFX. The sleeving itself is very nice to work with, ordered it from sleeve-modding.com, but getting it to stay where I want it to after stretching is impossible And last but not least how it looks like right this instant. A downright mess, but I have a lot of things to do yet. The reason I'm not done sleeving yet is simple. I looked at the Bitfenix fans I am using, and it turns out that there is an unused solder point on it which to my understanding could be for PWM signal which means I have the possibility to do full PWM @25Khz. Plus I have this little guy that should take over the control of pumps and fans.. I fired her up.. Lo and behold, PSU shutdown. I feared that I had fried something, so removed everything but the Motherboard from power, and the PSU still worked, went through all my wires. Turns out I inadvertently had crossed one of the SSD power cables, so 12V and 3.3V were crossed in one of the cables. Remember to double and triple check your wires.. Next post will hopefully be posted from the machine itself.
Just to get you guys know that the project is neither dead or abandoned. Sometimes life gets in the way. And a healthy dose of DCS world. Long story short, I am single again, just finished a rather grueling work week and disassembled the machine last night. Not much to show, various stages of polishing is done.
