Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Multilane SATA enclosure, 5 July, 2008.

I would love a render farm, but i stopped working with 3DS max just over a year ago, as it wasn't suitable for my type of work.

i suggest solidworks for anything needed for the real world. design and manufacturing you cant get better than solidworks.

 

Looks amazing on your 'multiple' designs. How much storage will there be?

 

we need photos here!!!

You have a really good design in there. I am curious about the internal arrange of the hardware and cooling.

mod on!!

 

Wow. This monstrosity will be able to do double duty as your central heater in the winter

As was said, if this goes as stated, it's going to be amazing.

 

Why don't you just set each cluster node up to boot on lan?

 

Hey, the boot-on-LAN thing is a good idea. I'll probably set it up for both options, vandal switch in front and NIC-controlled startup.

My current computer sits right in front of an AC duct in the summer, while in the winter, I put it in the corner of the room where air circulates less.

It's going to be a couple weeks before I get anything else done. My house is currently being rearranged a bit, most of my projects in moth balls as my son is visiting until the 27th.

 

I meant for the purpose of eliminating hard drives which serve little purpose. You're thinking of wake on lan.

 

Hmm. We do netboot all the time using Mac systems. I'd have to do some looking to see how that sort of thing works with Windows systems, but you're right. For those that act as render nodes, their own hard drive serves little real purpose.

 

The house is empty again, and I've resumed work on my computer case. On my existing computer, I had some serious issues. The water-cooling rig needed cleaned as it had been almost a year since it was last disassembled and I was starting to build up gunk. The problem was that I didn't have enough coolant sitting around to refill it, so I took it apart, cleaned everything and refilled with distilled water and about 20% Cooler Master fluid. (Don't ever do that). After about six weeks, the water started turning green and at two of the fittings, there was this brown gunk at the lower side that looked like sediment. I shut everything down and started cleaning it, first by running white vinegar through it, which did remove a lot of the nasty from the tubing, but didn't do anything for the fittings. I then cycled hydrogen peroxide through it, which immediately turned the water and the tubing brown. I ran four cycles, alternating hydrogen peroxide and distilled water, then disassembled everything and used a cleaning cloth for cleaning gun barrels. Nasty, nasty crap. I used q-tips on the nickel-plated fittings and pulled lots of dark brown goo out of them. The Koolance block for my D5 looked fine, aside from some of the sludge and the Koolance waterblock on the processor was absolutely spotless. The nickel-plated fittings and the radiator, I can't say so much for. The only thing I can figure is that the distilled water was leaching ions out of the radiator and screwing it over.

During reassembly, I replaced the Aqua Computers copper radiator with a pair of Danger Den Black Ice Pro II 240s and filled 100% with clear Fluid XP. I'm hoping I don't see any similar issues.

I registered battletech-live.net and have been working pretty heavily on that. Most of what I have done is sitting in Flex Builder until I get it to a production level, but the site is up and running and describes the purpose and what I have done: http://www.battletech-live.net/

 

Battle tech is a great idea, i love the abiltity to create mech of all sorts!


As for the your water cooling problems, oh man did you have it bad! When i was on water when using my old Opty 165 the CPU block became full of iron oxide as i cut down some steel airline fittings and trying to seal the surface with enamal paint, well water found its way in and cause rust to form in the loop.

The CPU block was a right off, i had previously used epoxy glue to seal up some cracks in the plastic top, and well it bounded good even around the bolts. at the time i didn't care much as i needed the system up and running quick. the block was packed with rust, nothing i tried would shift it, flow though the block must have been reduced by 80%,

When i found out this problem started was because the thermal shut down kicked in during rendering 6 hours into a render (3Dmax) and she falls over from heat issues. Gutted!

Been on air for about 1 year now, and have been planning going back on water with AC gear for the last 6 months.