Scratch Build – In Progress The Mineral Oil PC - 3/24/2011 - More leaks :(

Dremels Suck

I'll give it a shot, thanks.

Thanks!

Heh, nope. I am 21. And your wish is granted....

I stayed home from work today because I'm sick. I did what any self respecting modder should do.... work anyway!


I used the table saw to cut another side panel.


Then repeated the same marking, drilling and tapping process. I think I've developed a twitch when I hear the word "tap." I have tapped 154 holes so far. ARGGGGGG.


And then using one of my least favorite tools, the Dremel...


...I cut the hole out for the 2nd radiator on my fresh side panel.


4 cutting wheels, 45 minutes later, and then 15 minutes of filing, the hole was acceptable.






I do not like AC Ryan Rad Grillz either. They are designed to fit on any brand radiator, which means they inevitably fit on no brands of radiators. The holes do not line up for HWLabs radiators nor for XSPC radiators. The amount of time I have to spend fudging around with the damn things is ridiculous. Radiator hole spacing really needs to be standardized so problems like this do not occur.

Grrr.

 

^^ They should all be designed for 15mm spacing fans, but I'm yet to find on that fits.

 

No matter how good the theory is, I'd still be ****ing it covering all those lovely components in oil

 

Coming along very nicely my friend.

 

Seconded

 

Good to know I'm not the only one.

Lol, my parents think I'm crazy.

Thanks

 

Question:

With that rad configuration, are you going with a push/pull air flow, or are you going to vent the front/back to allow airflow into the rad chamber?

Also, do you think that there is going to be enough space between the two rads with the fans attached to allow sufficient airflow?

 

I'm going for a push/pull configuration. There isn't enough space between the two rads to do it any other way. As you can see in my original drawings, my plans called for sucking in air from the front, back, and bottom and venting it out the sides. However, once I replaced the models of the rads withe the actuals rads that I'm using, I realized I didn't have the space to do it that way. The plan now is to have both sets of 3 fans point the same direction. The fans on the hot rad (the first rad the oil goes through) will point outside the case and the fans on the cool rad (the second rad) will point inwards. This way, the cooler radiator gets the cooler air.

There should be about 2 or so inches between the radiator fans with this setup. And since I'm not pulling in air from the front, back or bottom, the gap between is more or less irrelevant. I'm more concerned that I won't be able to fit my hand in there to poke around once I have the system up and running. That's one of the main problems with the first two cases I built; there's no room for my hands to fit anywhere. My hands aren't particularly big either.

And alas, no updates until Friday, I'm out of town for work until then.

 

I was re reading the thread just to know the fans orientation, and now you've explained an other time ;-(
I'm wandering if you're planning to use only 3 fans and a sort of air tunnel to link the fans between the two rad... Bad idea?

 

There will be 6 fans. Only 3 of them are installed at the moment. The other 3 are in my current machine that I use. I'll take them out as late as possible. A wind tunnel (shroud) won't be necessary since the rest of the lower chamber will be sealed. (not airtight, but there won't be any intentional gaps.

 

It's too bad that you don't have low profile fans...with them you might be able to have sufficient space to vent the air out as you originally planned

 

The low profile fans make a decent amount of noise due to the blade design.
He is using Noctua that are, imho, super silent, even because the blade have a sort of notch to cut down the air sound...

 

Nice project..
deserves some stars.. you have my five-star-vote..

 

Filing.

So I'm back in town and back to work.


On my way home, I picked up the 10 gallons of oil that I got from work.


It's fairly colorless. The greenish tint in this pic kind of overstates how it appears in real life.


Remember that USB hub I destroyed? Here it is! Filing these holes took damn near forever.


The 3 ports on the right are outputs. The plug on the left is for power and the mini usb is the input.


Which leaves me 4 ports on the inside. I mounted the PCB by using double sided tape to attach it to a piece of cardboard, which has another piece of double sided tape holding it to the piece of square aluminum stock below it.


My sheets of acrylic. Together, these weight about 15lbs.


Looks like good stuff!


Hmmmmm, I wonder what has been cut recently....


I precisely measured and cut the bottom piece.




And then the 4 sides.


And then chopped them all to the same height. I haven't done any more work on them besides this. I still need to glue them together and drill the holes for the radiator inlet/outlet.


Making sure everything fits. The top most USB port is not usable. Shouldn't be a problem though. I may end up only needing 1 port down here.


Checking the placement of the Crystalfontz LCD.


Then I printed out the template and taped it on the front panel.


I scored all the lines with a razor blade and cut the main window out with the dremel. Then I drilled the pilot holes for the buttons.


After about 3 hours with some intense needle file action...


...Looks like it fits. I'm thinking about putting a piece of copper over top of this to hide the knife marks. I was half asleep when I put the template on the front side of the panel and not the back. We'll see.




I cut and sliced some sound proofing material for the bottom of the case.


Then I drilled 4 holes to mount the SCAB.


And stuck the screws through.


And then bolted the SCAB down.


And then I made sure it still worked.


If you remember this sketch, the two elbows will have temperature sensors in them. One will measure the oil intake temperature and the other will measure the outlet temperature.


I cut most of a barb off a T and stuck a sensor in. Then I sealed it with silicone.


You can see the sensor poking through the silicone goop. Why is this stuff red? Apparently it's high temperature silicone. It came with a wood burning stove for sealing the chimney. When I seal the corners of the tank, I certainly won't use this stuff. I think I have a syringe of clear silicone somewhere....

Until tomorrow....

 

Nice work legoman!!!! It is the best mineral oil project i 've ever seen. I am planing to do something much more easier, but can you tell us what kind of thermal paste are going to use? Because thermal paste is dissoluble in mineral oil.

Also what about mineral oil viscosity? I 've heard that mineral oil is 100 times more difficult to
flow than the water is it true? One pump will be powerfull enough?

 

Thanks!

I plan on using the mineral oil itself as thermal paste. As you said, the oil will dissolve any conventional paste, so mineral oil itself will take its place. It will fill the cracks and imperfections just as well as any other material. This person: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=160324 did the same thing I'm planning and apparently it works fine. (In fact, his project was a lot of inspiration.)

The Eheim 1250 is a fairly powerful pump, so I'm hoping I'll get a reasonable flow rate out of it. OilPC used two tiny 5w pumps to circulate his oil. The Eheim 1250 is a 28w pump so I don't think it will be an issue.

 

Thanks!

Keep on good work!

 

Wow! The LCD button holes look amazing!

 

+1 on the button holes .....the idea with a copper plate to hide the marks around the sounds great and will probably look even better than it sounds.....


Alan

 

+1 for the holes, +1 for the ideas of hold in place the SCAB.
This project is an inspiration for my next mod, tnx a lot for share this with us all!