Case Mod - In Progress Project: Cold lava~A custom WC'ing project -1st Oct- The cursed log part 2

LoL I dunno maybe both

 

Both. But start with the broken bone! Then we can be grossed out and then get happy by watching you being married

 

There's a honeymoon joke in there somewhere... No SEVERAL honeymoon jokes in there:

The obvious one about getting a broken bone on your honeymoon.
Who carried who over the threshold?
It's usually the wife that yells, "OW!" during the first night...etc.


-Anyway, Heal up man, and congratulations!

 

damn should have seen that coming....well it was to be expected I guess. Thanks everyone

 

Hi everyone, after having rested, but still being in my cast, I was ready to do some light modding..And to try and get this

project further along.

I started with :LEDS

The first thing I did was to replace all the Leds in my psu and my side fan.
It was reasonably easy, nothing much to dwell on here.

Next step was:

Harvesting distilled water

Now you may not beleive this, but it is virtually impossible to get distilled water in mauritius.
I tried the pharmacies, pharmacists, lab equipment sellers....the lot.
I just couldn't find any.

But luckily I found a solution. My Dad modified his fridge some time back. It is a fridge with a small freezer compartement in the top.
Well seeing as we already have a freezer, he was getting a bit annoyed at the sheer amount of frost/ice accumulating in the upper compartement.

So he modded it and added a fan that would prevent the compartement from freezing up.



The result of this mod is that all the condensation in the air is gathered up and leaks out of the freezer without freezing. Namely distilled water.
So all I had to do was harvest this water that leaks out.

A bottle and some filter paper later and I was all set to collect it.




Next up did was to prepare one of the video cards. This card did not have any heatsinks on anything besides the stock fan



I didn't like that too much, so I prepped a little heatsink to stick to the power circuitry.



Which I attached with arctic silver epoxy.





And here you can see me and my plaster sticking the epoxy on...(who took this pic I can't say...probably the wife..)



There...Done.

-------------------------------------------

Time lapse to a couple of weeks later (about four to be precise) and I had enough water to start.
My cast was also off by this time (Although I still have the plate and screws to deal with for a couple of years).

Waterblocks

Starting with the graphic cards:

First waterblock:




(sweet ain't it?)



As you can see I used the same technique of using springs and bolts to keep the pressure even...

Following this the Cpu got the same treatment:





then I installed the rest:

Pumps, rad, reservoir and all the connectors. (I got carried away and forgot to take pics).





As you can see Its a bit messy, It was a first attempt (and routing stuff and tubes ain't easy with a damaged, weak and atrophied hand)

I filled her up, discovering how difficult it is to bleed a system like this.

I had planned for the bubbles to accumulate in the reservoir, but I was wrong and it took ages to get the air out.

Anxious to try it out. I booted her up....

And it worked! I got into windows with the pumps running. there was still some air in the system, But it seemed to work.

I opened up speedfan and absolute shock!

Gpu 1 :51c
Gpu 2 :52C
Cpu : 55C

What? Thats worse than the stock cooler on idle!

Tried another program and same temps...
I tried loading up the cpu and hit 80C in seconds.

This was really weird.
I tried moving the blocks...nothing
Removing all the air completely from the loop....nothing.

Try as I might I just could not get it to cool. The radiator pipes were slightly warm but thats it.

Thinking that the problem might be that there is not enough contact between the blocks, I dismantled the whole thing:







Real good contact between the Gpu plates and the cpu plate has a larger contact surface than the stock cooler (although it could be better).
Even so, the heat transfer just wasn't happening. The cpu did not manage to dump its heat into the system fast enough. As soon as it hit a load, the temp imediately jumped up to 80C.

I just don't know what happened or what to do...

I think that the pumps should be submerged. They were designed that way and maybe they don't appreciate being out

of the water. The water out of the pumps was hotter than the water into the pumps.

It might also be because the pump is pulling water from the radiator through a small pipe, before it goes to a big pipe which goes to the pump inlet.

The problem is, that if i have to submerge the pumps, I do not have enough space inside my actual case (which is crappy anyway). Also if these pumps don't have enough head pressure, I don't have any spare cash at the moment to buy better pumps.

So unless I'm completely wrong, I need a new case and new pumps (That I can't afford right now).

So thats it folks, I'm kind of stuck right now on cold lava.

That said I might stop here for now and give it a reboot next year...

Any suggestions or ideas are welcome.

 

This is a real puzzle man! I cant figure out where is the problem but my main suspicion is the water blocks themselves. Maybe the water flow in them is not good enough (passing through the right spots so they can absorve the heat) or the rads somehow not doing their job. Wish you good luck man, you will find the answer I am sure! Nice to see you back!

 

Good to be bad, but I would have liked to come back with an exploit and not a big fail.

Ah well....If its the waterblocks, then that would be an epic fail for project cold lava....

Not counting the expense of buying the bloody things

 

Are the pumps pumping? i.e. have you checked you have a significant volume of water being pumped through the system?

If so; Check the temps of the pipes either side of the waterblock, one side should be hotter than the other. If not, the water running through the block isn't absorbing enough heat.

If so; Check the temps of the pipes either side of the rad.

Hope you manage to fix whatever the issue is!

 

Great project so far, after reading most of the project log i was well impressed.

Unlucky about the temps hope you get it sorted very soon as a lot of work went into this

 

I cant tell for sure, but from the picture the CPU block doesnt look like it's getting good even contact with the CPU.

 

It's probably a surface area issue. When i7 came out, most of the blocks on the market couldn't handle the heat pouring off of them. A basic block with a few holes drilled in it isn't going to cope.
The heat dump on your pumps will still get into the loop submerged.

 

Dude, what happened to Cold Lava?

 

What happened to cold lava is an excellent question.

To really make it live again, I have to invest in some good tubing, good pumps, a case , some bits here and there and buy some copper to remake the blocks...etc.

The thing is: I just got married, I just moved out. I really have no extra funds/time for cold lava

So I am stopping here with a failure, but having learnt a lot.

I will do a cold lava mark 2 in the future.
But for now I just can't afford it.
Sorry guys

 

Sad to hear... But congratz on the marriage there!

Looking forward to see Cold Lava - Mark 2 in the future! ^^

 

+1 Good to see you're going to come back for another go.