Nice metal skills! Your radiator find is sweet. I have never seen anything like it! those ribbon "pipes" look sweet on it.
Is there "Bit-Tech Quote of the Month" or something? Because if there is, I'm nominating this one! Sounds like you're having fun, and this is a pretty spectacular project - puts those of use in the "LEDs & plexiglass" league in our place! How heavy is the beast likely to be, full of computer parts & water? Are you planning on welding an eyebolt to the top of it for the crane to hold onto?
What a tank! I just love the vault-like security system. Aluminium bowler - that takes some serious metalwork skills. My only query is to the position of the rad. This thing is meant to be a vault right? That would mean nothing external that could be tampered with?
There's just no other way to do it and get the necessary cooling. There are going to be some holes in the door under the rads so that the air that rises up out of the case is forced through them. The only thing someone could do to an external rad is try to soak the system and there are much more fun ways to kill a computer than that.
yo, yo, wait a minute. I too love the vault idea, and am amazed by the amount for metal work you put into this thing.. and the stealth water pipes - very novel idea. Every detail, even down to the practicality of the lever for the lock system and the motherboard tray. Great stuff man However, what is it about airflow that seems to elude us here. Of cause the rads have to be on the outside of the "vault", and of cause they need to sit partly away from the lid, as to ensure that air can flow up under the rads -> through the rads -> and out over the top of the rads. But holes in the lid? Only if there is also holes in the bottom of the vault, otherwise there will be no air intake into the vault to ensure the that any hot air can rise out of the vault. But is there really a need for air to be flowing through the vault? I venture to suggest: No – the water cooling takes care of that. All that is needed is for the rads to be “levitating” a bit from the top of the lid, and cooler air will naturally be sucked in under them, as the hot air from above the rads will want to rise away from the rads. I always thought that the vault idea, and the weight of the metal was a kind of “make it a hassle to even think about stealing the computer”. Not to make it completely tamper or sabotage proof. So am I reading it all wrong here? Or did I actually get it about this great mod?
Actually, you're spot on on all points. The original plan was to have the rads sit on short standoffs so that air could get under them, but I'm getting pretty worried about having adequite airflow over the parts that aren't big enough heat producers to require a heatsink but not small enough to operate under zero airflow without a problem. There are a lot of these kind of parts inside the PSU and also in the mobo power circuitry. I decided to change the cooling plan around a little bit, first drilling exhaust holes in the doors under the rads and adding intake holes through the PSU. I'm not sure how I'm going to secure the intake holes, but the exhaust holes would be completely obscured buy the rads. The rads will still be lifted off the doors by a small amount so that the spaces between holes in the door don't block off any of the radiator and so that the rads don't have to rely completely on air coming out of the case. I'm still not sure about all of this though, I'll have to see how it all works out for real and tune it then.
You could make some sliding door action beneath the PSU for intake, when it's off slide it over and lock it so no one could access that, or get some modder's mesh but heavier duty and weld it there, would restrict air a bit but would secure it
You could make a 'stealthed' air vent for the PSU, where the hole for the air is covered by another piece of steel, leaving only a little space for air between the two plates. I really need a pen and paper...I'm sure you understand. ______ ----- ----- that's really sad, but like so...where the top 'floating' plate would be held by spacers. In other words, the same function that your radiator will serve above the holes it covers. Awesome work tho, mate. I'm a subscriber.
That and the heavy mesh were the two possibilies I though of too, both would work fine, but the space inside the case where the intake would go is getting tight which means I'll probably have to go with the mesh. The floating plate would either have to take up room needed for the PSU or hang off the back of the case which I'd rather not do. Since that looks like the best option I just ordered it from McMaster while typing this post. Here are the details: Type 304 Stainless Steel Woven Wire Cloth 30 X 30 Mesh, .013" Wire Diameter, 12" X 24" Sheet That's 30x30 wires per inch, so the only thing that an "attacker" could get through it is a very thin piece of wire. It should also be very unplesant for someone to pierce or cut. I'll probably use it under the radiators too to avoid having to drill a ton of small holes. It's a lot easier to make a few big holes with the plasma cutter and bolt in some mesh. I also ordered the parts I need to get started on the HDD waterblocks: Alloy 110 Copper Rectangle 1/4" Thick, 3/4" Width, 6' Length Metric 18-8 SS Low Head Socket Cap Screw M3 Size, 10 mm Length, .5 mm Pitch, Pack of 25 My plan is to have three hard disks bolted to a single waterblock in a straight line from the front to the back of the case suspended at the very top by something like fishing line to isolate the vibration. The waterblock will be two seperate copper bars (one for each side of the hard disks in line) with a copper pipe welded along the top of each. This will hopefully allow much better flow with less material wasted than a milled passage. Large diameter copper pipe should keep flow restriction at a minimum over such a long length. I finished up the first door today and started work on the second but ran out of oxygen (which is what makes the flame hot enough to be useful) so I had to stop. Hopefully I'll get out to the welding store tomorrow and exchange the tank.
I got a some more of the second side panel done today after going to the welding store to get oxygen and some plasma cutting torch parts. The final bend go finished but doing it in two separate operation put a nasty divot into the bend that I'm going to have to fix with a hammer later on: In other news, the original power supply waterblock simply isn't going to work out. The clearances inside the Neopower are too tight to reinstall the screws and be sure that everything is properly electrically isolated, so I'm going to go with the traditional method of moving all the hot parts off the PSU to an external waterblock. That means a little wire has to be soldered onto every pin, I think I counted over thirty when estimating how long it would take. Here is my progress so far: One intersting note is my wire stripper, it's a weird automatic thing made by Snap-On. The year 1952 is stamped into it, my dad must have picked it up at a swap meet sometime. It really makes short work of stripping all those wires: Oh, also caught in the picture is my IPod, at that time playing the album Moving Pictures by Rush. That's all for tonight, I'm sure tomorrow's installment of Project:Lockdown will be riveting as well. :littlesarcasticsmileyguy:
Riveting :groan: Tough luck on the PSU waterblock. I have a similar pair of wirestrippers - best investment I ever made as far as I'm concerned. Propper (automatic) wire strippers are one tool that EVERY modder should have. Go 1 handed, no effort wire stripping. What are you now planning to do with the PSU? I wouln't have thought you'd planned to leave that spaghetti hanging out the side of the PSU attached to a waterblock.
damn man, thats sweet! i want some of those wire strippers now! my ones mysteriously vanished this is going to be sweet!
The wires will all be tidied up in due time, cable ties and slleving can make almost anything look good.
There's a tool like that knocking around my dads warehouse too, it sort of clamps down first and then pulls apart Very handy tool, I love the way it does any wire (within reason) and the spring determines the right force to cut the sheath only. Very cool kit, never seen them for sale though Excellent mod, I'm loving the locking mechanism, I bet it gives a great satisfying CLUNK as it's locked/unlocked. I agree with you that Vaults are pretty slick, I like the part in Blade when Frost wants to lock down the penthouse and metal sliders come down the windows and lock down at the bottom... I've always said, If I ever have more money than sense I want one of them.... just for the hell of it
LOL! That wire stripper looks like somekind of f'ed up dental tool. Like a tooth puller or something. I love properly made old tools like that. Since i'm a complete moron, dismiss my question if you consider it thread-jacking. What are those little things you had to pull outta the PSU? Those little bits are the major heat contributor? Again, qualify this question by considering I'm an electrical idiot.
That's not thread-jacking at all, questions like that are very much welcome. The little bits I'm pulling out of the PSU are a number of different things, most of them are MOSFETs, there's a bridge rectifier, and I'm not sure about some of the others. It's not really a concern of mine since I'm just cooling them. There is one concern of mine that any EEs reading this would be able to help out with. By extending the wires for these parts is there a chance that I could be setting the power supply up as a nasty RFI producer? Would sleeving the cables with a grounded metal jacket fix this? Edit: New thread created for this question over in the electronics forum
