Project Pre-Shodan [Designing HD cooling] *56k=Suicide* First I would like to thank Kirk for hosting these images!!! Well I’ve put of starting up this project log for long enough. The next chunk of text is more of a background of where the project came from This particular project started off when I got into water cooling and then grew tired of my old radiator mounting. (You will see what I mean in a moment) I had grown to like the idea of the cube case design. The size and compartmentalization of the cube cases is what appealed to me but did not care to pay upwards of $150 to get a steal behemoth. So I began toying with the idea of not just modding a prebuilt case but building a case in my mind. I doodled in class during lecture… (Thinking back on it that might not have been such a good idea to do that) and eventually came out with a rough sketch or two that I was satisfied would be a good case for all my requirements. Not to my surprise it ended up being close to a cube case. The final design of the case with out supports measures 476mm x 460mm x 315mm (WxDxH). I drew it up in auto cad since I have about 6 years of experience working with the program for a civil engineering firm. There while it was in digital form I worked out much of the specifics and added many of the more “nifty” features to it. I went home over the winter break from college and left all my sketches there... so I might go back and add them another day. But for now use your imagination and pretend they are here. Any way, enough rambling here is some of what went into the base of the case: Aluminum sheets 2.032mm thick Right angle aluminum Aluminum rods Aluminum rivets Hex screws This case is much like the cube cases of the past where it is compartmentalized into a mother board section, a radiator intake, a radiator exhaust section, a Reservoir/Pump/PSU, and a DVD/cable section. The case sports an 180deg rotated motherboard, much like in the Lian Li V1000. Why? Simple I like to be able to see the nice looking side of my graphics card. That and it will not be affecting the cooling of sensitive components. Enough rambling from me all you guys want is the pictures any way. .... Well I can't seem to post it all at once so I am going to post a few teasers and I will have the whole thing up here at this LINK. The pictures are kinda big and in mass quantity but check it out if you like what you see here… Or are just confused to death. I'm pretty damn happy with the progress so far. The first physical steps of the project. I began measuring and marking on tape. The aluminum sheets all taped and marked up. Polishing the aluminum with some aluminum polish compound I picked up at a local auto parts store, AutoZone to be specific. All riveted together Any way you get the idea… if you want more pictures of what I have completed so far check it out HERE. Things Still to do: Plexi sides Polish the top Stealth that DVD drive Get more UV lighting (smaller than 12” to fit my case better and still be “hidden”) Hard drive rack for the two Raptor drives inside the case SILENCE that chipset fan with out taking out the ability to do SLI Mound matrix orbital flat up to the motherboard side plexi Tidy/stealth all the cables Mount fan filter for the fan in the motherboard compartment Build a new reservoir (The one I have right now feeds into the pump with a tube that starts at the reservoir lower than it goes into the pump Just makes it harder to fill than I like, but it still works) Much to do but I just transferred into Electrical Engineering so I am play catch up and have a hell of a lot of courses to tackle before I can have “free time” to build any more… That and I need a dermal here on campus. Specs incase you were wondering… Or didn’t care to look in-between the pictures: AMD A64 3500+ 90nm 1GB CORSAIR XMS Xtreme, Xtra-Low Latency CAS 2-2-2-5 ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe BGF 6800 GT OC PCIe 2x 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM Hard drives in RAID0 Highpoint 1540 Rocket RAID controller 4x 40GB Western Digital Hard drives in RAID5 Sony 8x DVD burner 600w <14 dBA Pro iXtrema PSU from SilenX, Cooling: ThermoChill HE120.3 Reservoir 3x 120mm Panaflo Medium fans Danger Den Round Reservoir Eheim 1250 with rubber mounts, 120mm <14 dBA fan from SilenX ½” Tygon tubing Danger Den TDX Danger Den NV-6800 brass pass through drain The only reason I am using Highpoint device for RAID5 instead of the on board is that the hard drives are regular IDE drives with converters to make them SATA and I could not get the on board to recognize the Rocket Raid converters. O nearly forgot…I do have a small theme planned; it’s more of an after thought so I am thinking of etching some plexi for it… Basically I plan on making this case pay a little homage to one of my favorite games of all time, System Shock 2. So I am calling this case Pre-Shodan, the time before she/the case goes insane. I would love to get some suggestions for this and any other areas of the case from all of you! Peace, Tanaban AKA. JE Off topic but someone should remake System Shock 2 in the Doom3 engine. It would be glorious. Ok one last shot:
Looking forwards to seeing the finished product, big fan of cube cases but dont have enough: money/time/skills/tools etc. to make my own (money being the major prob, just bought a new fone so i am somewhat skint till i sell some stuff grr lol) *Subscribed*
Very nice piece of work! I like the way you think... What tool did you use to polish that massive expanse of aluminium?
i bet that peice of metal will get just a tiny bit hot if the battery isnt dead. Bunch of kids used to do that in school with lockers. just take a 9v. bat. and hook it to your combination lock on your locker and in 5 or 6 seconds you cant touch it with out kicking it off
Ehh the monitors you saw in the working pics are an old Dell 21" CRT which my dad had until he upgraded to an LCD, so free. And the monitor you see in the last one is my main monitor I brought to college. It is an HP 2335, a 23" widescreen LCD that runs natively at 1920x1200. That thing retails around $1800 last I saw, and I ebayed it for $1400. I love it and hope I never have to down size. Again I don't think I took a picture of it but basically a corded power drill, a Velcro disk attachment (thank you 3M for your car polishing equipment! ) and an old ragged wash cloth. Basically a poor mans el cheapo buffer. I took some wire and threaded it through the cloth to hold it on to the Velcro drill attachment. From there it’s just like any other polishing job, polish till you are happy with it. Like I said before I just used some aluminum polishing cream from a local auto store and I used maybe two thirds of the little tub. I did not polish the top because of time constraints but I still have work to do on it... *shrug* O btw this stuff I had was originally for hand polishing but I had too much area for me to contemplate hand polishing. So you could do smaller parts by hand. I polished the right angle pieces by hand and it was fairly easy. PS-Your project f-ing ROCKS, been watching it for a long time. It's already in there. I got the graphics card off of chumbo.com for $399 so that was a great deal considering what others are charging. It cost me less than two grand to get it all in there... But then again I had the radiator, the pump, the hard drives, and some other small parts from a while back. Haha I was wondering how many people would bring that up
Double post but it might be worth it... I added some non-UV blue coloring to the system and am fairly happy with it so far. Before After Random Heat sink action... It is so horribly dusty in this room and we are not even running the AC/Heater. (lol our computers seem to keep the room at a livable temperature vs. the near freezing weather out side)
[QUOTE Random Heat sink action... It is so horribly dusty in this room and we are not even running the AC/Heater. (lol our computers seem to keep the room at a livable temperature vs. the near freezing weather out side)[/QUOTE] never knew there was nv68 rev 1.1. what the diffrence from original one if you know?
I have no clue. That is just what came in the box and I didn't question them on it. Might have something to do with a few complaints about poor GPU contact. I hadn't heard of any such complaints till a friend brought it up. If I had to make a guess that is what I would think they would address... *shrug*
Not at all lol I just read that fuller log - reallly nice work... love that hardware. I'm really tempted to order two of those BFG cards from Chumbo myself (what was included with them?) Not a huge fan of the big-bore american tubing even though I'm quite american myself but you made it come out really well. It must be the coloring of that dye I think a little sleeving could go a long way for you Not that your cable management is bad but it could use a bit of work. Still I think having that whole "I made my case from scatch" outdoes that Just a warning if you try and watercool that chipset... there's a capacitor REALLY close to one of the northbridge holes on that board. I managed to sit the mounting plate for my NB block right on top of it (I thought it was just sitting over it not hitting it) and had some lovely partial contact with the chipset. And as of now my mobo is headed back to newegg since something got fried (dammit!). In any case, just watch out for it. If you do a DD block you could just file down the acrylic a bit if it's an issue but my block (aquacomputer twinplex) had a 1mm thick steel mounting screen that just wouldn't fit. Luckily the ATI version fits at a slight angle
It is the standard white box from BFG. Besides the card it comes with the power cable a driver CD and a Demo CD (neither of which I have touched), really nice padding in the box... other than that and some quick reference things I can not remember. Not much in the way of extra crap but its got more than yah need. I'm very happy with chumbo and would buy from there again. Haha thanks. I’m not sure if I will keep it blue. The light on the mother board and on the graphics card are green and the case theme is Shodan so I will more than likely shift over to green when I re-work some things. I have cable management? haha I just ran out of time before I had to pack up and head off to college. I have plenty of heat shrink back home and didn't get to it in time. I mean the little lcd is sitting out on my desk and all the fan wires run to it... haha I'm almost ashamed of the wires every where. I really need a proper power switch. I like the look of those tamper resistant switches but I just don't care to jump on the bandwagon till I find something "perfect". Yeah I was looking at pictures of the motherboard before I bought it and noticed that ahead of time and decided to not buy a chipset cooler before I got it in my hands.... and let others try it out first sorry you had to go and do that for me. That little bridge's fan is the loudest thing in my computer... not that it matters my roommate’s CPU fan is from the Tornado series. None the less I do want to replace it. Also a bit concerned about it and the second SLI card getting in the way of each other. *shrug* I just need to look into it some more before purchase something. Thanks for the complements.
Starting to think about adding a water cooled hard drive cage to my system. My main reason for this is the noise level and second the density I am thinking of achieving in this case. I don't think I feel like mixing my hard drives in with my CPU and GPU heat so I am planning on making a second loop. Any way, I'm going to keep this short; it is Friday night. If my doodles don’t explain themselves I will add in as questions arise.
Nice work, will be watching this one. You know what you need to do now don't you, buy another BGF 6800 GT and NV-68 of course