I don't know how to start this one. It's been few years since I modded anything and posted it to this forum. Well, I guess it's story time. At the beginning of 2017. I decided that it was time to buy myself a new (used) PC. I was mesmerized by HP Z series workstations and I bought Z600. Decent rig, but it had it's problems - it was noisy or hot, depending of fan speed. I decided it had to be transplanted to normal ATX case and properly watercooled. So, I bought Cooler Master Cosmos case and additional Z600 motherboard. Few holes here, few standoffs there and weird MBO found it's place inside Cosmos.
After that, my attention was directed towards MBO. I had to remove proprietary fan connectors and solder regular ones and also cut, grind and drill stock socket backplates so CPU waterblocks could be fitted.
Next thing on my list was installation of radiator. 360mm rad was mounted using CM 5,25'' to 3,5'' with few additional holes. Rest of watercooling components quickly found their spot. Weird shape of MBO allowed for cool mounting spot of waterpump.
There is huge gap in pics-unfortunatelly, I did not take any pics of fully dissasembled case. Few mounting spots for 240mm radiator in top were added, all interior bits were painted and case was reassembled. Color scheme is my version of 25th anniversary Cosmos II paint.
Not sure about the 3 fans stacked on each other but I guess it looks pretty darn good considering the age of the hardware
Actually, it's one fan inside case, than outside one fan frame (middle was cutted out), fan and another fan frame.
Neat! I've not long bought a Z600 myself, so this thread is relevant to my interests Which CPUs do you have, and do you know what the boot block date is? (This is in BIOS...) If it's a date after 2010 then it means you have the "revision 2" Z600 which can support hex-core CPUs. If you short out two pins - I don't remember which - on the proprietary CPU fan connectors it will also allow you to use 130W TDP CPUs. HP sold a set of "performance" heatsinks which are now quite rare, but they had specific pins shorted and without this wiring configuration the board will refuse to boot with 130W CPUs. Do you find memory cooling a problem? I have fully heatsinked DIMMs and without the plastic shroud and fan I find they get quite toasty... Interested to hear more about what you had to do to the backplates to mount a "regular" CPU cooler . Nice work!
