Phobya water-cooled case design thread - Stage 2

I started looking at how components will be installed in my design and I discovered you would have to disassemble a lot of components to add/remove a HDD.

So here is the start of my solution, a removable drive bay. The bay is cooled with a 120mm fan and can be pulled out of the back of the case. I had to reduce the number of drives from 5 to 4 but its a small price to pay for ease of use. Its not 100% finished (and not as elegant as SnowyOwl's drive bay) but its simple and effective.





Edit: I could use some feedback on power/reset button placement? I have 2x 16mm buttons located on the side of the top "bulge".

 

Hello,

I had a chance on lunch today to read through the thread so far and I am impressed by what I see. Here are a few things I noted:

Roboduck and guille - I really like the idea of the bays allowing you to trade disks for cooling. My only concern would be how easy would it actually be to access the cage/bay and reconfigure the wiring/tubing etc.?

guille - For Motherboard access, does the front window open like a door, or is the board on a tray that slides out the top?

Razer - I love the sleek way you added the dvd-rom, very cool, now what about those filters?

subtec - There is a subtle style to your case that is hard to describe, but it is very cool - like something you would see in batman, my concern would be whether or not the air intakes are enough to supply the number and size of fans that could be installed, and also whether or not the downward facing rad/fan assembly would actually allow hot air back in through the intakes? Is the bottom one large mesh/vent? or is the window actually mesh?

zuko - please forgive me, but it appears that the front covers the external drive bays? is the front meant to be a door? I think you could do more with the v8 (v6?) engine theme of your rad/fan assemblies, maybe individual stylized intakes for each fan on the sides? kind of like the chrome rings that are available? and maybe a window to view the reservoirs?

No criticism intended, just questions that came to mind.

 

@ Roboduck
HAF 942 Cheesecake!!!

I would place the buttons below the slim DVD drive. Between that and the mesh.

My drive bay can take 7 drives!!! na na na na

Ahem... sorry.

I also suggest you bring back the cool foot.

@ Ixmatal

That design is very different than I thought. Good use of space.

I will work on the gills as soon as I get enough time

 

I feel it would be very easy to reconfigure the wiring for the drive bay. Take out the 4 screws holding the drive bay to back panel and the whole bay comes out. You wouldn't even need to take the side panel off if you didn't want to. The drives themselves are held in place with screws with rubber grommets (not shown) for vibration and noise reduction. I have yet to come across a "tool-less" drive bay that does as good a job of noise reduction.

I think I will bring back the foot (Phobya can decide if they want to make it with or without it) . Who needs 7 drives anyways .... JK

I want to stay away from putting the buttons there as front bay is removable and I want to keep the buttons on the main chassis. Thanks for the suggestion though!

 

LOL. No prob.

I gotta work on my filters

 

Roboduck - I just missed your post with the renders of the drive cage, nicely done! I agree about the whole "tool-less" thing when it comes to vibration and noise, the only thing that comes close is the lanboy "air" but I am not sure I want to suspend 1 Terabyte of data from a few rubber bands LOL

I wouldn't worry too much about the number of drives either, because even though I could originally stuff 15 drives or 30 ssd into my design, It looks like I will need to leave the third cage out of the design in order to redesign my doors, so I am down to 10drives/20ssd .

Snowy - didn't mean to leave you out before, everyone keeps comparing your case to a well known fruit based MFR, but I have never seen one in person, could you post up a pic comparing them to a tj07 so that we can get a better idea of overall size? Also, your hd cage is very nice!

 

I just noticed something,

This second stage and thread doesn't seem to have anywhere near the number of non-competitors contributing feedback as the first stage did.

I mostly see just the finalists trying to help each other out.

For that matter mick64 and labrego don' seem to have responded at all? Has anyone dropped them an email to let them know they are onto the second stage?

Or are people just losing interest?

 

they got a PM that says that they are ins stage 2. Mick64 did the same with stage 1. But they said that credit or something will be given to those who contribute to the thread/comp. they're just losing out..

 

Thanks for the comments. I guess the few images I've posted in this thread don't show it clearly, but yes, the entire bottom is ventilated, as seen in this pic:




And the airflow concept:




It has an air intake area similar to the Silverstone FT-02 and Raven series, so I don't imagine it being a problem. My goal with the design was to minimize the total number of fans needed (and therefore noise) while still providing total system cooling for high-end components.

The bottom rad is an optional secondary rad location and if you look carefully the fans are oriented to draw air in through the bottom rather than blow downward. Of course, it's ultimately up to the user's discretion how he wants to set it up.

 

I made doors on the bottom to acces disk and slide them out, but you can also slide the whole bay by removing a single thumb screm. A 140mm fans is attached to each disk bay and connects to the bay backplane. Sata cable are long enough to not disconnect them from the bay if you choose to slide the bay out, but since both bottom front and front bay window are removable, the wiring is easily accessible.

The best way, to my mind, is to connect all sata cable to the backplane from the very begining, event if you don't use all of the 8 hdds. It won't change anything if you don't have an HDD conected to the backplane, but if you want to add one, just screw the slider and slide the disk inside, no need to connect the cable, it'll be already there .

Both, the motherboard is attached to a tray that slides out the top ... and the front is also removable.

I made a tray that slide out to the back to hold up to 2 420 rad, 2 res (eg EK multioption) and two pumps. A small PCB attached to this tray will help to connect all rad fans, pumps and res leds. Just connect the PSU to this PCB (molex connector) while the tray is full and inside the case. 2 fill-ports are also attached above the res to help filling. Once the tray in place, they will align with a small opening on the case's top.

Pass-Through fitting will connect tubing between the front motherboard zone and the back cooling zone.

New screenshot are incoming, just working on them.

 

Here it goes my Stage 1 entry and a list of ideas to improve my design :


Photos :

Overview

Front

Side

Side (open)

Specifications :

• Radiators : 2 (1x 560mm and 1x 420mm)
• ATX Support : Up to Extended ATX & SR-2
• PSU Support : Up to Extended ATX
• Reservoirs : 2x 150mm
• HDDs : 10x
• Drives : 4x with 10 HDDs | 9x without HDDs
• Toolbox : Yes
• Buttons : 2x (Power & Reset)
• Up to 12 connections (USB, Firewire, eSata, ...)
• Colors : <undefined>

What to improve :

• Probably reduce the size of the case making it with a 420mm rad on the top and a 280mm rad on the bottom ;
• With the previous reduce idea , put the reservoirs on the back of the drives ;
• Build a genius device to HDDs
• Improve the tubes & wire connections up to 2 loops ;

What to do you think ? Should I do this all this changes or make some others I've think of ? Thanks in advance , I'm seeing so many good designs that I'm a little shy

 

Looking pretty solid to me.

I'd start looking at how people will be using your case. (This would apply to everyone)
-How easy/difficult is it to add/remove hardware?
-How difficult will it be to work in the case with the hardware installed?
-How much room is there for cable/wire management?

I think your on the right track, now just get cracking on the details!

 

Time to grin and bear it tonight, will do a fair bit of work on my design after work. Midnight mission? Bah If I'm not still going at 2am I will be disappointed in myself!

(I'm modelling on a dual core Pentium Mobile 1.73ghz, with no GPU help. Gah!)

 

I'm thinking on that now , but maybe I should have done it @ Stage 1
I'll make the case shorter , look at this : link

 

Can't wait to see what you come up with! Some of my best ideas have come at 2 AM! (shame I can't remember most of them )

Ouch thats go to be painful. Laptop I'm guessing?

Stage 1 was for concepts your doing fine. That is one tall case you have there, but I wouldn't feel bad about that. This case is probably the same size as yours : iBuyPower Erebus

 

Yep , that's about the same height , but mine's longer right now , I'm editing a copy and make it with a 3x140mm (max) on the top just to compare sizes

 

Nope, ITX build, see think_micro in the worklog threads

 

This is the case side bye side with a TJ07 & a G5 (Ok it did inspire me but that's about all it as in common) So basicaly it's the same size as the Tj07 and a lot bigger than the G5.

Better Render will be comming as soon as i'm done with doing the water loop





@Roboduck can you tell me wich scene/lights do you use...

 

Thats just a crappy render I tried to do quickly for the stage 1 entry - if you look closely at the second pic, you can see the hole for the drive bays Yeah I was thinking that a 'V8' edition would be SR2 compatible if I get round to it I may scale it up and see what you guys think. The window/s for the res's was supposed to be there in stage 1 but I ran out of time. doh!

BRING BACK THE FOOT!!! for the power, reset and lights just split the wires and have connectors in the main compartment ?? dry breaks for the tubing.....

get to work on those filters!!! lol

That pic really shows how good your case is! nice one

 

forgot to say, (and thought my previous post was to long to edit)

Definitely alot quieter in here, Roboduck and Razer straight in there though!!!

@ixmatal glad to see some internal shots, what about size comparison of the outer shell? tbh I thought it would of been quite small.... other than that I cant wait to see more of your design

@confusis plexi plex plexi lets see more!

back to my design - lol

Im struggling at the minute to make the front and top of my case easily manufacturable - multiple bends in short succession and then attaching it to the main body is like a 30degree bend to make a lip to screw into. Im not sure such an acute bend is possible and welding/ braising tabs on, may not be an option for Phobya.

any suggestions ???

also thinking of changing the res's ? same position and windowed but smaller so I dont lose any structural integrity making large cuts (zern res) same as Razers I think.

while doing this I keep seeing my limited knowledge in sketchup and its so frustrating lol

when I get anywhere Ill post up some pics

Edit: @ ixmatal thanks for the idea of 'intakes' will look into it cheers