Good news everybody (as Dr. Farnsworth would say), I finished up the PSU and gave it a quick test with an old hard disk. It didn't blow up and the hard disk powered up so I at least know that the entire thing isn't buggered. Now I have to test each of the lines to make sure everything is working. The UPS man brought my order from McMaster today so I can get started on the HDD waterblocks. I also ordered the wrong size screws, does anyone know what size hard disk screws are so that I can order the correct ones? The stainless steel mesh looks and feels better than I could have hoped. It is very tough and heavy.
Actually they are not 6-32, I had to tap mine (bigger) to get 6-32's to work. Not sure what they are..
ah, non-believers, guess I'll have to throw down some proof. here Hard drive screws are 6-32, thats wire size 6, 32 threads per inch. measure one and you'll see.
Nice wiring! good thing it works. Maybe i have been around too many old tools but I thought those wire strippers were the ones everyone uses. My dad has a pair of them.
Your mod is looking really awesome so far. Have you decided on the internals yet (sorry if I missed it somewhere in the thread)? OT - I forgot to say it before, but congratulations on getting into MIT (I recently did college applications myself, and I've heard how difficult their admissions are); all my friends there love it. Do you have any idea what you want to major in?
Thanks for the info on the HDD screws drknow, who would have thought that something like a modern computer would still use wire gauge sizes? Phaeton, I haven't decided on the system internals yet but there are a few things about them that I have been decided: -I only have room for two hard disks -I only have room for one DVD drive -No overclocking -A dual core P4 looks very appealing to me since my computing style fits that best. The Athlon X2s are just ridiculously priced. -Mid to high end graphics card -However much RAM I can afford -I don't really care about SLI I really have to get this all sorted out soon so I can start fitting parts with the actual dimensions I'll be using instead of the mockups. I also have to figure out something with my monitor, I'm not sure how well my beloved 21" trinitron (weighing in at over 60lb) will do in a dorm. For all I know it might fit right it, or not. College majors...I'm pretty set on MechE, or course 2 as they call it at MIT. I truly have no idea how I got in, I just did the application to say that I didn't give up before I started. I must have said something really good in the essay because my numbers weren't all that great by MIT standards. Now I'm just along for the ride, taking it all as it comes.
Along with some more work trying to get the side doors to fit right I started on the HDD cooler. It's the same design as the failed PSU cooler. I think the straight tube design is perfect for hard disks since they produce a small amount of heat. The straight tube keeps resistance as low as possible while still allowing the hard disks a enough cooling. The waterblock so far is just copper strips with a 45 degree angle cut across one edge. The pipe is welded into the 45 so that one side of the block is flat while the other has the protruding tube. That's all for tonight. The doors are taking a lot of work but none of it is worth taking pictures off, it's mainly junk like trying to take the warp out of them and getting them flush with the frame.
When you said you were going to line the hard drives up together, I orignally envisioned them sitting next to each other with the long sides touching, and one plate of copper over the top to cool them attached to your water pipe. This is interesting. I haven't done any water cooling, but how well will those copper strips cool the drive being on the sides instead of the top? Are you going to join the pieces togther to make one piece with a strap across the drive? Your design couples the hard drive cage and water cooling into one device...pretty swanky! Keep up the good work.
7/24/05-11:34pm EST-Project Update Hits bit-tech.net News hit the bit-tech.net forums today that, indeed, there has been an update to Project:Lockdown. Widely anticipated by many illustrious members of the computing community the new update contains news of the hard disk waterblocks and the first peek at the redesigned power supply waterblock. The original post, reprinted with permission of the author: Numerous figureheads of the computing industry voiced their opinions on the new update. Jeff Bezos said "Look at that fine work, such a ridiculously simple idea like that really should be...patented." Bill Gates of Microsoft fame also went on the record with our reporters saying "That waterblock is like, teh secks. Er, I mean 'buy him out boys', we might want to enter that market someday and the even the possibility of competition isn't very appealing. Oh wait, you're still the reporter. Janice, get the local mob boys on the other line, I think I have a job for them. Oh, you're still the reporter? Riiight." Following this project update we expect that the modder himself may be answering questions in the usual fashion in his project log thread, perhaps followed by another update tomorrow, most likely much less elaborate than this one. Computer science professors worldwide are currently in shock at the recursive nature of this post. When pressed for information on the subject one scientist yelled "Stack Overflow!" and fell to the ground. We will be following this story closely.
For reference Optical drives use M3 (Machine screw) Pass-through: 1/8-inch Tap: 3/32" Hard Drives use #6 gauge 32 thread count (UNC #6-32 Common case screw) Pass-through: 9/64-inch for closest tolerance or 5/32-inch Tap: 7/64-inch
LOL. Nice work there. The metalwork's good too. No more teasers.... get to the good stuff. Dammit! My Cheesy-poofs! Sorry. Got carried away there.
I'm either extremely blind or extremely search stupid... I was wondering if you tested the rads you recieved on a working system yet. btw: extremely nice mod! Good job with the lock mechanism and metalwork.
I haven't tested the rads yet and don't plan on it. I'm not sure why, but whenever I do a project like this (and I've done quite a few of them between computers and cars) I don't do much testing beforehand and it always comes out well. A pretty bad reason I know, but until I know I'm doing with quantative anaylisis of cooling systems I figure there isn't much I can do anyway. I don't think any amount of testing and math would help much anyway with the nuber of different factors involved with a system as complex as this. In other news, I got an e-mail from Photobucket about my bandwidth. Thanks for all the pageviews everyone, my entire 108 image album is only 4.55MB but I've currently transferred over 1.5GiB this month! Looks like I'll have to welcome my new Photobucket overlords and buy a premium account. Edit: Bought a premium account for a year with an old gift card I had laying around. The floodgates have been opened, unlimited transfers for all!
Long, long, overdue update time: I'm sad to say that the lack of updates over the past few days reflects the lack of work on the case. This last weekend was the busiest I've had in along time. Friday was a muzzleloading firearms craftsman fair out near Krumsville PA (my dad builds replica flintlocks from the 1700-1800s), friday night was my LAN party, Saturday I slept off the LAN party and prepared for Sunday. Sunday was the Old Time Drags at Englishtown and I had to prep the car (changing blower pulleys, getting the slicks ready, putting the open pipes on, and draining the gas tank to be filled with 112 octane instead of 93) and put it on the trailer. On Sunday we ran .5sec slow which was pretty bad. As I said, not much has happened with the case. All the time I did get to spend working was spent trying to design a set of hinges for the doors which turned out to be really simple afer doing it wrong several times. Here are the pics of the hinges: I'm getting a litte worried about getting this all finished on time, I really wanted it done by mid-August so I would have some buffer time before preparing to ship off to school but that looks unlikely. There is at very least a week of fabrication left and then everything has to be finished, polished, and painted. That and I'm headed off to the Nevada salt flats for Bonneville Speed Week for a few days on the 12th. Looks like I'm going to have to step it up many notches in order to get this done.
Keep on keepin' on! This project is too awesome to be left unfinished! I can sympathize though...it's getting harder and harder these days to find time to mod. It seems something comes up every weekend that soaks up all of my time. From the sound if it, your life isn't too much different.
