Scratch Build – In Progress Hotmods.net - The Scratchbench - FINISHED 01-01-2016

Small update this time.

Unfortunately, the painter I've trusted with painting the bench isn't as reliable as one could've hoped for.... I called him today, asking if the parts I sent back to him for re-spraying were ready (he left some small spots unpainted here and there - see previous update) and he said "Yes" and told me he would put them in a designated spot for late pick-ups (after the paint shop had closed). Sadly, when I got there, it wasn't my parts that he had put there - so I have to call him tomorrow and probably make another trip to the shop to pick them up...

But, there are still quite some things I CAN do without these parts.

One of them is to sleeve the pump's power wires.

I wanted the sleeving to cover the wires all the way into the pump house - for that to become possible, I had to enlargen the wires's entry hole, as it's so snug that there's no way I would be able to fit the sleeving all the way in there, too.

So, to accomplish that, I had to open the pump house. Easy-peasy - just gently run along this slot with a flat head screwdriver and the bottom will soon enough pop out:



I needed to un-solder the wires in order to pull it out of the hole - I also wanted to make the wires much, much shorter, so it had to be altered anyway:



Un-soldered the wires:



Masked off the exposed guts of the pump, so no debris would get in there when erlargening the wire hole:



I took a router bit on my Dremel to the hole and soon enough the task was complete:



Soldered the shortened and sleeved wires back into place:



Pump power wires sleeving job well done (also changed the translucent MOLEX plug for a black one):



Remember the failed hard drive rack anti-vibration rubber "thingies" in the previous update?

Well, here's the solution I had come up with - rounded M3 nuts and small MDPC washers on the backside:



Those rounded nuts are holding these anti-vibration rubber things in place:



Put the hard disk rack losely on top to give you an idea of how it'll be mounted (will have to make 4 small M3-to-6/32UNC thread adapters to mount the rack to those anti-vibration things...):





Internal layout as seen from the top down:



Next update tomorrow - if the painter is keeping his part of the deal this time....

 

Ok, the parts were ready and I DID collect them yesterday - and DID do some modding (making thread adapters, oh joy...), but was too knackered to bother posting anything after that.

MAYBE new post tonight.

 

As mentioned, the painter kept his part of the deal this time - but I have no new pictures of the case to show you. I'm waiting for the final 4 shipments before I can finish this project - buuuut I CAN show you some small things I've been up to since last time.

I made some thread adapters in order to be able to mount the hard drive rack to the vibration dampers - the thread in the bottom of 3.5" hard drives is 6-32 UNC, while the thread in the vibration dampers is M3.

So, I put some 6-32 UNC threaded bolts in my electric drill and filed away at the thread:





When I reached around 2,8 mm., I stopped:



Then I cut off a large part, in order to have a rather big portion I could clamp down quite good in the vice for when cutting the M3 thread:







Cut the excess away, filed the edges and - done:



I'll take 4 of those, please!



Screwed them into the bottom hard drive:



And we're done (with that very, very small part of the project...sigh):





Then I produced the power cable for the hard drives:





And moved on to producing the Y-splitter cables for attaching the fans in pairs to the Aquaero - one fan on each pair has an RPM wire, while the other doesn't...



Finallly mounted the water blocks with thermal paste 'n all:



And then I had a quite big head-scratcher:

I started playing with the Aquaero - specifically the temperature probes.

And for quite a while I was under the impression that the "Temp" connectors on the pump and the pump top were actually OUTPUTS for built-in temperature probes. Which is why these temperatures confused the batshit out of me:



... until I read the f*****g manual and realized that those were imputs for additional temperature probes.

At that point I was slightly pissed at Aqua Computer and thought "Why would I need extra connectors for temperature probes, when there are already a whopping 8 (EIGHT!) on the Aquaero???".

But, then I thought that they might did it to allow for less cable clutter in people's build's. You could run very short temperature probe wires from e.g. the pump outlet, or from the radiator inlet into either the pump top or the pump itself - and then only have one Aquabus cable run from those devices to the Aquaero itself, saving you from running 66% more cable than you would actually need.

Nice feature - I'll see if I can use it for something!

 

RTFM? Usually works

 

It's been a while, but I haven't been able to get much work done on the testbench.
The reason is that I got sick on christmas eve and I've been more or less under the weather ever since.
I'm still not fully recovered - I'm still coughing quite a bit, but at least the fever's gone and I HAVE been able to do a bit of work the last couple of weeks when I wasn't too sick.

The mobo stand offs are quite tall, so I had to make some "spacers" to raise the PCI back-panel to the same level.

I didn't have a piece of 5 mm. white acrylic, so I ended up making 2 identical spacers from 3 mm. white acrylic, which I filed and sanded until they fit:





Then, I looked at the Aquaero 5 XT waterblock and decided that it didn't fit the project as long as it wasn't painted, so I masked off all areas I didn't want paint to stick to and went about spraying a couple of layers of matte black paint onto it. It came out nice, I think:







Muuuuch better than copper:









Next up was these 2 shipments from Caseking:





I am going to shorten those nice AKASA SATA cables to the exact lengths I need - bought a few extras, in case I'd **** it up!

More on that in an upcoming post...

Also got a few extra Bitspower fittings that I was missing.

OH! And got a nice few bits from Nate over at E22.biz:





I'll use the LutroO cable combs, the ATX pins and the Molex connector bits for this build. The Teleios sleeving samples and hardline acrylics stuff are for testing/future builds/ideas.

I fitted the cable combs as good as I could:













I made a custom Aquabus cable, in order to not having to run 2 seperate cables up to a very short Y-splitter sitting in the Aquaero. Optimization, biatch!



Also made a very short speaker/connector combo for the mobo sounds:



Then I installed the pump/reservoir combo:



See how it's leaning slightly out from the mounting bracket there?



Well, that's what I originally made these 2 holes for in the top of the mounting bracket:



I took a couple of zip ties:



Cut off the ends from both and used the cut off ends to make this arrangement:



Tightened to 90 degrees and snapped off any excess zip tie material:



Tadaaaa!

Ok, I admit, it's not SUPER-super pretty, but it certainly gets the job done - and it doesn't transfer any vibrations to the testbench:



Catch you in the next update! Hopefully, it won't be too long....

 

Written teaser:

I filled the loop last night. No leaks after 6 hours. HAPPY!

 

Just having a quick look and a catch up on this one. I see that you are water cooling your water cooling controller.. That is both insane and brilliant.. This is one seriously good project. Looking really good.. Top modding dude

 

Thanks!

It's more insane than it's brilliant, TBH.

I'm adressing that very issue in my upcoming update - in a more or less crazier way, depending on how you look at it. Stay tuned.

 

Nice details, looking forward to seeing the final pics, Mads

 

Thanks, Bill.

Project is VERY close to being done. Only need to finish up a couple of SATA cables, and I'm ready for the final shots. Stay tuned.

 

looks sweet have been underway for a while

any change to the hardware ?

 

The build has been finished for quite some time now and is still running strong - I just never got around to making the "Final shots". One of these days...

Hardware is still the same - as long as it runs BF4, I'm happy.

Spending most of my money on my motorcycle these days.

 

SHOOT!!!!! let us see the final result

i have just brought the Phantek Evolv ITX, so i gonna figure some new plans
meanwhile i'll just wait for you hahha

 

Getting there.

Once again, it's taken me a loooooong while to update this log, but this is ALMOST it!
Second-to-last post with pictures from me, so stay tuned for the final one!

The rig has been finished and running fine for quite some time, but I DO want to complete this log and let you know about every thought and effort that went into this one, so let's start with taking a look at some pictures I made while filling the loop:















Noticed the missing Aquaero 5 XT in the 5.25" slot?

Yeah, I finally gave up trying to fix those "false signals" that the touch interface of the Aquaero 5 XT kept sending - the grounding wire I made didn't 100% fix that issue, so I caved aaaaand.....





Yup, that's a brand-spanking new Aquaero 6 PRO! Didn't really need a fancy touch interface, since I'll be configuring everything in Aquasuite and NOT on the device itself.

The Aquaero 6 is MUCH better than version 5. I asked Aqua Computer if I needed to purchase the waterblock for the Aquaero 6 in order to be able to control 6 fans and the D5 pump, and they told me that it would be overkill to change ANYTHING on the stock Aquaero 6 to run those peripherals!

But I went and purchased the red backplate anyway, simply because I think it looks nice.

Oh, and I've COMPLETELY forgotten to mention the AWESOME customer support I got from Blacknoise for this project!

As you hopefully have noticed, I'm using Noiseblocker Multiframe M12-S2 fans for this project - they move an adequate amount of air and they SILENT AS **** while doing so!

But, I purchased a few of them from third parties and was therefor missing a few on the silicone frames that reduce vibrations transferred from the fans to the chassis - so I asked Blacknoise if they sold those seperately, but Niels Polenz from Blacknoise wrote to me and said he would be shipping them free of charge!

Thanks, Niels!

Ok, back to the Aquaero - let's take a look at the contents of the box:









Now, I'm not a fan of the steel faceplate for THIS project, so I ordered a black one instead, aswell as a small piece of thin acrylic that makes the display appear as if it's sittinf flush with the faceplate - here's a few pics of the surgery that went into making the Aquaero 6 XT look better:











Initial test:

 

FINISHED!!

(Yes, yes - it's been finished a while, but here are the last few pictures)





























































If we compare that final picture with the render that Editor22 (Hi, Nate!) did for me when I started the project, I don't think there's THAT much of a difference - not to the MAIN design, anyway:



Happy about that!

If you want the final pictures in larger resolution, then get this archive:

FINAL PICS - HI-RES

Next project is't quite planned out yet, but it WILL be adhering to these rules:

1. Wall-mountable as well as being able to stand on its own
2. Everything MUST be easy to reach!
3. Mounted inside some sort of case in order to keep dust out.
4. Flat!
5. Very custom wires - not sleeved as you normally see, but something quite different and fresh.
6. No more flexible water tubing - hard tubing! (Acrylic or copper - haven't decided yet)

Yup..... see you when I start this one.