Over the past week I've been thinking through a concept for a casemod. Having worked on the A3 PC (see sig) and finding out just how hard it is to build a perspex case from scratch, I decided it would just be easier to use an existing case and screw some perspex panels on the side. At first I planned something in black - goes with anything - but got some inspiration from thinking just how many cars there are around at the moment that look good in white - the Golf GTI, for one. The basic concept is for a watercooled setup, housed in two combined cases to create extra room, with white perspex exterior panels, for shininess. The panels will be bolted directly onto the side, though on the front and top they'll be raised by standoffs to give more room for the fans, shroud and mesh. The top panel is by far my favourite aspect. I still haven't come up with a design I'm happy with for the front. Internally, I'll use two cases, probably Lian-Li PC-60's (any variant) as they are nice a blocky to work with, and pop up on used ebay quite often. The upper for the MB and watercooling setup. The second case I'll cut the top of, turn upside down, and bolt onto the bottom of the case, to hold the PSU, HDDs and a slim slot-load DVD. Basically this will make something like a P190, Lian Li V2000, TJ07, although I've never really found any of these cases attractive and the price doesn't seem worth it for something I'm going to cut lots of holes in! The turbo button will be a latching vandal switch - it'll switch the supply for the fans from 5V to 12V, handy for overclocking. I haven't watercooled so wanted to get some opinions. I was thinking of a DTek Fusion V2 for the CPU, some full coverage waterblock for the GPU (currently have an 8800GT but don't think that's worth watercooling), a deep triple in the roof, narrower dual in the front, Liang D5 Vario, and EK Multioption 150 res, with fillport in the roof. The dimensions in the model are as good as I could get and it seems to all be able to fit together. The loop is quite odd, but avoids any tight turns for the tubing, which I'm planing on 1/2"for a beefier look. I also may add a drain port. Obviously I'll need to build some support structure for the Res, etc. So, where I need input: Spot anything immediately wrong with the water loop? Any styling tips or inspiration? In particular I don't like the front panel. Seen/got a Lian-Li PC-60 on sale cheap? Get in touch! Pistol.
umm, about the loop, I may be wrong here, but it looks to me that your first block is the GPU? If that's the case, you want it to be CPU first, CPU should always be the first block cooled on a single loop. . . And are free hanging the Res, or going to bolt it on the rad somehow? I'd ditch the fillaport and move the res next to the mobo and go for shorter tube runs.
Most watercooling setups i see have the waterblocks in series, not parallel. A tight turn in the tubing or a 90 elbow is not as restrictive as a waterblock, so who cares about those things? In setups with 90 elbows i notice people mentioning how restrictive the 90 elbows are, but no problem with having waterblocks in series Having the tightest restrictions, which are the waterblocks, run in parallel can double the flow rate which is good for cooling. The two waterblocks in parallel are still the tightest restrictions in the system, so both will still have the same flow rate running through each block, as if they were the only block in the system. As for how to do the front, take inspiration from whatever you like, such as a car, or a plane, or a bike, or a game, an animal, whatever.
For someone new to watercooling, you should stick with a series setup. If you were to run your blocks in parallel, you would have to consider balancing the thermal loads and flow rates between the two paths. For example, your gpu block is probably going to have less resistance than your cpu block, which means it's going to have higher flow rates, so it's getting more cooling than your cpu is; however, you cpu gives off more heat and therefore needs the cooling more, so you would have to add extra restriction to the gpu path in order to influence the water towards the cpu.
Here's a better explanation of the waterloop, it's not very easy to see. It'll run in series, not parallel. Will the EK Multioption Res work like that? Ie, with that setup of input and output?
Just a question, sorry about going off the topic, but what program are you using to draw the models? Is it the google sketcher?
Nope, it's called Rhino 3D. I haven't used Google Sketchup so can't really comment on it. I've been using Rhino for years and it's very powerful, but you need to build everything from scratch, whereas there is a library of computer parts for sketchup.
When the pump is too weak to pressurize the parallel loop, but with a strong enough pump, both blocks will flow like they are the only block in the loop. Who cares if the gpu block has a higher flowrate? The cpu block isn't getting a lower flowrate than what it would in the series setup, as long as the pump is decent.
I'll put the pump just after the reservoir instead before the radiator. Just to prevent it from get warm.
I'm still thinking about this mod, and today I had a go at improving the cooling loop layout. I'm not sure about the pump getting warm issue, and ignored it at first, surely the water wouldn't be hot, and the pump would rarely operate at full speed for noise reasons... but the more I though about it the more it felt like the watercooling feng-shu thing to do, otherwise it'd have bad vibes. So I changed it. I also flipped the 360 rad, so it's now between the CPU and GPU. This saves some clutter towards the front of the case, and makes things a bit easier. It should also take out the heat of the CPU before the water runs to the GPU (although I understand the difference will be limited once the system reaches equilibrium). Finally, I chose to use a slightly smaller res, which fits better in the top. The pump now rests on a platform, to reduce the cable length where I can. The loop now runs RES -> CPU -> 360 Rad -> GPU -> 240 Rad -> Pump -> Res. Any comments? Does the res need to be the highest thing in the loop? Or is it just that the fill-port needs to be higher, so air doesnt gather in the top rad? Thanks
