Hey all, I am going to do a case mod for i37, and the general gist of it so far is I'm going to get a large case, open it all up, take out all the CD drives and hard disk drive bays, sand it down and spray it (two tone, one colour on the inside, very bright, and another colour on the outside much darker), then put the motherboard in. Then, what I'm thinking is to have the side panel completely 100% acrylic top to bottom rather than just a window, insert some lights, and then for the feature where the hard disks etc. did previously go would be a vertical tube filled with some fluid. At the bottom will be a heatsink of sorts that will be connected to a watercooling loop that will transfer heat from the system to this tube. At the top there will be another heatsink, with two 120mm fans (one in the acrylic, one in the other side panel). I will probably attach the hard disks to the top or side of the case and have them cooled passively (using the case a heatsink). SSDs would be better but I'm not that rich . So the main issues are: 1. This 'lava lamp' effect. I am guessing, it won't get hot enough for the typical wax mixture to melt properly, so possibly something like coloured oil and water? As the oil will sink, heat up, and hopefully rise in 'gloops'. 2. Fabricating the top and bottom heatsinks and the tube. for the bottom I could just have a brass coil I guess. For the top it's basically a double ended heatsink which I'm sure I can find something to fit. Can use a simple acrylic tube, some o-rings and something to compress the top and bottom to keep it watertight. 3. Whether this will be thermally efficient enough to get rid of the heat from my c2d and possibly the 9800 (I might not bother with that though, GPU cooling blocks are so expensive..). I did do a search for lava lamp and what I found was more people were just trying to fit a generic lava lamp inside their case which obviously puts out a lot of heat. (I about 65*C for a typical lava lamp?)
Spray the case silver and gold and do a glitter mix, it will be much easier to achieve. Sainburys are currently selling glitter lamps if you want to see one along side traditional lava lamps./ .
I was thinking yellow and magenta, yellow on the inside and magenta on the back panel. I think a glitter mix thing would work, but then it doesn't seem very adventurous...
This is a horribly inefficient way of transferring heat from the cooling loop to the surrounding air. Even with a proper copper heat exchanger I wouldn't recommend joiing two loops like that. No, lipids [oils/fats] (non-polar, temporary induced dipole dipole intermolecular forces) will not mix with water (hydrogen bonding IMFs) like that. You might get small bubbles/micelles forming, if you have something to agitate the mixture. Maybe 1mm from the bulb!
Lava lamps require a lot of heat. I did an attempt at a glitter res in Hypnotoad. because the res was horizontal, I only got the glitter chips to move when the pump first starts. I would go with a vertical res with 5mm acrylic balls/beads in it. A jet of water from below a grate in the base aimed upward would give a good effect. I'd test it first, unlike what I did.
This could work, but then wouldn't the acrylic balls get into the pump or the loop or something? (I'm a newbie to watercooling , I was just inspired by the Antec 300 mod and felt creative!)
That's why you add a grate. Put the intake below the intake jet. -both behind the grate. Use slots in the grate instead of just holes because the balls can't completely block slots.
Or a small bore mesh like a kitchen strainer or like in the antique flour sifters. Bigger holes than a window screen. Does anybody sift flour anymore when baking? Hmmm. Old memory. john
If it's just the lava light effect you are looking for check out this link to my steampunk friens: http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6357.0 40 watt lightbulb pearlized hand washing liquid and kind of the same effect without the heat of the melting wax stuff. john
