The more pre-built stuff you can work into a project almost always the better off you will be, especailly if it's a drop-in part like the mobo tray or fittings like the these. The bungs are much cheaper to buy than make and they're of better quaily than what I could make.
T minus 2 days: While at the hardware store getting a new tap I got a great idea, instead of making new bungs I should just cut off the old ones and use them over! Genius. When I got home I broke out the bandsaw and started hacking away. I got them all off and rewelded in a good spot this time. The old holes got covered by some patch plates made from extra tubing. Now it's time to pressure test. The case gets pressurized to about 10psi and dunked in the pool to locate all the air leaks. There were six pinhole leaks, four of which were easily repaired and two which needed a lot work to get them to seal because of weld contamination. The main reason for them was that I was too lazy to purge the inside of the tubes with argon when I first welded so that other side of the weld bead wouldn't oxidize. I waited to weld gap filling strip onto the top of the case until it was pressure tested so that I would have access to welds that it covers. The gap cover goes over the top of the side doors where they had to be cut back so that they could hinge up properly without hitting the top frame piece. You may notice that the case lacks a handle. This is because I just didn't have the time or paitence to do it, that's all. Perhaps it will be added at a later time. Now it's time to polish the frame. I don't have anything fancy for the job, I just use 3M Roloc pads of varying "scratchiness" (can't really call it grit since it's a fiber pad) and a wire wheel to clean up the hard to reach spots. The wire wheel does a really great job on the stainless and gives it a lot of shine. One last job, the bar that goes across at the rear end of the locking system got all bent up when the lock jammed one since so much was milled out of the center of rod so it had to be straightened and reinforced. And...Assembly time! The bottom plate gets bolted in: The lock installed and all greased up: The top plate bolted on: Here's the back plate with all the PSU trimmings: I ran into another bit of a hangup with installing the PSU. I readied it all correctly and insulated all the chips from the waterblock properly with pads and the little plastic washers and checked everything out with my multimeter. I test fired it and got a BSOD (Blue Spark of Death). It's 1:30 AM on my last day at home and I have not only a blown PSU, but a blown PSU that would take at least a day to modify into the correct shape for my case and even then I couldn't be sure if that one would blow too. Since that avenue of construction was cut off I had move on to something else. I installed the front panel, motherboard channel and tray assembly and CD-ROM where I was greeted with my next show-stopper. The barbs for the GPU waterblock nearly touch the back end of the CD-ROM. Looks like I can't do anything tonight.
I really like how this case is comming along, To bad about the power supply. Btw is that watch a B.U.M. by enychance?
Haye you tought about making you PSU Heat sink with more Coolant rails? Will thoes be pasive or active Rads?
Like someone said above, the most fun (not) hangups are the ones that wait until you're in a massive hurry to finish up. Looking awesome though...hope you can workaround the PSU problem.
T minus 1 day: I got up early this morning in hopes of maybe having the good fortune of getting this thing working before I leave at 10:30am tomorrow. I went to CompUSA and picked up a new NeoPower, not sure exactly what I was going to do with it, and went to Home Depot to get enough fiitings to make something work with my GPU waterblock. On the way home I got another great idea, what if I didn't modify the NeoPower but instead just removed it from its shell and mounted it intact? My standoffs were long enough for the heatsinks, and I had air holes in the case already. I would have to give up my goal of a fanless case though. If that's what must happen to make it work that that's what had to happen. I got home and installed the GPU fittings. I had all the right stuff to make it all work but DangerDen uses straight threads with an O-ring instead of tapered threads. No problem, the automotive repair industy has a solution. That solution is called Permatex Ultra Gray, an all around stick stuff together and seal it goo. A little bit of that on the fittings and it's good to go. With that done I was able to get busy with the PSU. The case on the new PSU was crushed right out of the box but no matter, that case is going right in the trash anyway. I unscrewed the board, snipped the power plug off it, disconnected the fan, and stuck it right on my back panel. Add four screws and the new PSU is mounted. Since this one isn't water cooled I have to work the fan into it somehow, luckilly I had those nice holes in the back of the case. I passed the fan wires throgh one hole and mounted it to the outside of the case using double sided foam tape. I powered it up and it worked fine. Next up was the hard disk. This got tied up with fishing line as planned which went pretty well. There is only about a millimeter of clearance between the drive and various other parts of the case so even with the fishing line I had to insert some foam to keep it from contacting anything. The back panel got screwed in at this point and the pump was then mounted. The stainless screens were installed into the side doors and the doors were bolted in. The rads got mounted on the doors. Now for easy part I thought, I just have connect everything with tubing. As you will see, that turned out to be no easy task. Eight bungs, four parts to water cool, and two rads in parallel that need extra tubing allowance for the doors to open. I ordered twenty feet of Tygon tubing. Two hours later I had two feet left. None was wasted. That's right, there's eighteen feet of Tygon inside a case that didn't have any room to begin with. Now it's time to fill the system. I have a special rig for filling my systems, it's a funnel with a tube. It took about an hour to fill the system and shake any bubbles out. That's mostly due to the fact that I left spaces inside where air can get trapped which was really stupid of me. The system took one bottle of Zerex racing additive and a gallon of distilled water. I didn't have time to put the case on a scale but it's extremely heavy. It feels to be quite a bit heavier than my 65lb 21" Trinitron. At this point it's 1:00 am, 1 hour past the deadline. I plugged the system and pump in, pressed the power switch...and it POSTed perfectly. It's by far the quietest system I've ever owned. After that I did all the packing I was supposed to do during the day and got to bed by 2:30am. I lost my Windows XP CD sometime over the past few months so I didn't install an OS on the box. I'm going to have to do all that once I get settled in my dorm. Until then I'll be using my Thinkpad.
A few comments: 1st: Yep, that's an awesome project coming to an end. 2nd: Ouch! Kinda crowded in there, ain't it? Is there any heat being held in the case or can the only fan handle this? 3rd: Give us a video of how your system looks and sounds when turned on and running. 4th and last: Grats to a very nice piece of craftmanship over there dude. Couldn't say anything else than: R-e-s-p-e-c-t!
The paintjob in concert with the polished steel looks awesome, man. Congrats on finally getting it all running. I thought that the exposed optical drive might be a little of a mismatch, but with the big black rad's on there it looks at home. Great job.
I'm not sure I like the paint job (a little too bright to feel right...), but everything else looks great. Too bad about the deadline, but only 1 hour isn't so awful, now is it? Good luck at MIT.
But Wait, There's More! So I've gotten pretty settled in here at MIT and I got the new computer up and running about a month ago. One problem, the system would freeze every few days and the hard disk would get corrupted! On some close inspection I found that the northbridge loop was being starved of water which I though could hvae been causing the problems. That was a little more than two and a half weeks ago. At that point I decided I needed a beefier pump to keep this ridiculously restrictive system working correctly so I ordered an Iwaki MD20 and the required trimmings. It came, but the impeller housing was cracked so I had to get it replaced. The store (Aquadirect) was really great about the whole process, they even agreed to cross-ship so I could be up and running more quickly. They suggested that I go with a BlueLine pump that's supposed to be comparable if not better than the Iwaki they say. So now it's today and I have everything up and running again. The actual pump is branded PanWorld and seems to work extremely well. It's very strong and very quiet. How is that you replace a pump that's below the waterline in a filled WC system that's also populated by hardware? Very carefully. The new pump and tubing: Getting the old pump out is the tricky part. The new pump doesn't fit inside the case so it's being tied into the system using some couplers and extra tubing. The old pump gets unscrewed and then pushed as far fown into a plasic bag as possible. The lines also get pinched by vise grips so as not to lose too much fluid. It is through this bag that the clamps must be loosened and the pump removed. With that done the two extension tubes can be attached followed by the pump. As with all things there was one major hang-up. I plugged the pump in and everything seemed to work fine but the water didn't seem to be flowing correctly. It turned out that I installed the pump backward, while not fatal it was still quite a setback. So that's all so far in the story of the case. For anyone that is interested in knowing what it's like to live at MIT, it's absolutely amazing. A few examples: People in my dorm get Slashdotted regularly My building has an entire class B subnet (~35Mb symmetric connection too. Yee-haw!) People build weird stuff for fun all the time We have a water cooled media center box in the lounge (thanks to me!) People think my case is really awesome (they must be very smart) The "R" in RSA encryption, he is my friend's advisor Here's a pic of the important part of my room: One more interesting thing happened this week. One of the guys that lives upstairs brought down a pre-frosh he was hosting for the night. It turns out that he's a modder who reads Bit-Tech and wanted to see my case! So yeah, that's all for now.
hahaha that Pre frosh would be me. Hey man you asked about seeing some of my cases while i was there but i forgot to show here. Here is a link to a bunch of pictures of some random stuff i've done and check out my signature for links to proejcts logs...i think they still work. and dude...this project is amazing, you guy's have no idea how cool it is until you see it in person... Computer Mods
