Scratch Build – In Progress The Free-Case V2

A modern idea with old skool skillz!

 

I did not build very much the last months, as I am not willing to pay the current GPU prices and motivation was low. Last week I was on holidays at home, so took an old R9 280x and enjoyed some PC building.

Meanwhile, I am quite happy with the FreeCase re-design. Installation works fine. Surface finish of the aluminum parts works for me best with the orbital grinder, didn't try spray painting yet.

My main challanges are custom cables of the power supply and hard tube bending, but I see constant improvement.

So here some pictures of a lower end system, Ryzen 1600, R9 280x, 8GB Ram.

 

The shape of the tubing bends is particularly pleasing. Great work again!

 

I agree. You put a lot of work into the tubing runs. The turns from the gpu are very graceful.
The cables are holding you back. They need cable lacing or something. Perhaps a holder on the back of the motherboard tray. Twist ties don't cut it.

 

You are totally right, I need to manage these cables properly! Back to the drawing board

I like your advice very much, thanks a lot

 

I think I missed this one, very nice "open-air" rig great work

 

One big topic was proper cable management, which may be solved right now.
I bought a 3d printer to be able to produce some small parts to fix and route the cables nicely. After some trial runs and more or less complex designs, I realized, that simple cable combs, with dimensions that fit the cable diameter well work fine.

The build is a little dusty by now, time for a clean up

 

I loved your little open-air rig even without routed cables, but I can't deny it imediatly looks nicer with cable combs

 

Thanks a lot!
I will need to re-do cables on the black ones, too.

 

OOH baby! That did the trick. I'm a fan of naked copper too. I'm sorry for picking on you for it, but the twist ties were a glaring cop-out.

 

Be sure that you were the driving force behind the cable management. Thanks for your advice and support. I am really happy with the result

 

Those copper cables look lovely - I actually thought they looked very nice before as well in big flowing manes of copper cables, but certainly looks nice and tidy now. Great build!

 

This weekend I did a watercooling upgrade on my girlfreind's FreeCase and I think it looks totally awesome.
So we have a i9-10900, RX 5700XT, slow 16GB RAM, black cables and acrylic tube non-transparent (what is the english word for this tube colour?)

 

Frosted. Looks awesome

 

I had a side project, lately.
I bought an EVGA 2060 and started messing around with its heatsink untill the heatpipes nearly blew up. Instead of improving cooling performance, I degraded the cooling performance quite a bit.

Instead of stopping there, I continued to do evil things to the GPU. I grabbed a cold plate of an generic water cooler and designed a custom water cooler block for the GPU. I printed the part on a 3D epoxy resin printer.
Preliminary results:
- it fits well
- threads were printed fine as well
- it is air tight
- ...really scared continuing right now, but there is no way around. Once I start, I cannot stop.

Any experience / advice on 3D printed parts in combination with water cooling?

 

It has a lot of potential. The temperature the material can handle would be your limiting factor.
I forgot to plug in a pump once. The water was boiling of the cold plate and I got the plexglas fairly hot, but it kept it's integrity and I used it for years afterward.
If the resin can handle that kind of abuse, you should be good.
You could buy some copper sheet and make full-cover blocks if it handles the heat. The printing lets you make enclosed water channels that milling doesn't.

 

I think for the beginning, I will put some small heat sinks onto the Aluminium plate, that is present already. Also, thought of making a full cover water cooler, but for this purpose I did not choose the right printer. The built plate is quite small, so would not be possible with this one. Actually, I am really impressed how complex the parts can be designed with a 3D printer.

 

Just arrived from work and a small wooden box made me smile. Got some new cnc parts, which are the last missing for the new model, the FreeCase mATX.
I did not intend it this way, but looks like I am designing a whole line up of FreeCases. I there will be some work to be done for the next few weeks on the mATX model.
The final one I have in mind is an ITX sandwich case (open case of cause). This would make a very nice line up, I guess

 

Please help! ...I need some advice on watercooling pumps.

I did not find the right pump for the purpouse, yet. I have the pump screwed down on the right side of the open case on an aluminum plate. I need it quiet silent, when doing office work and there shall be good water flow when the GPU is doing its job. By now I used to set the pump speed as low as possible for office work and at 70% to 80% under GPU load.

1.) The first pump I used was the Bykski DDC Pump CP-PA-X 10W. This one was a disapointment under GPU load (2800rpm, maybe low flow rate) but very well suited for office work (1200rpm, nearly silent).


2.) The second pump I used on one of the builds was an older Swiftec DDC pump. This was the moment I realized how bad the Bykski performed under GPU load. The Swiftec on the other hand was very noisy as the minimum speed was quiet high.

3.) Next try was the Freezemod PUB SZM6, cheap and cheap looking, but actually a good mix of compromizes. A bit louder than the Bykski, min speed is 1200-1400rpm and performance under GPU load is impressive. The drawbacks... not good enough and sold out in china (I ordered one one to test it, first)


4.) As the small Freezmod pump was sold out, I bought the BIG Freezmod pump PU-FS6-J. Just tested it with a water canister. Yes it is quiet but the minimum speed is 1800rpm ...me, disapointed somehow. Did not install it yet.


5.) While the above mentioned pump 4.) was on its way from China, I got an advice to go for the Barrow SPB17 V2 DDC PWM, so I odered this one, too. Yes very powerful, but very loud (rattling noise) and minimum speed is 1800rpm. Again, not what I was searching for.


6.) Tested another older pump fom EK for reference today (Laing DDC inside). I was impressed how silent it was under full load (3500rpm) but this was the only setting available (12V). I will need to hook up the 12V-molex to the fan header to do further testing.


I hope someone has good advice and eperience for my pump problem.
My requirement is low minimum speed (or silent operation) for office work and good performance under GPU load in my open frame case. Most I can fir is a DDC footprint. I think a D5 would not fit.

 

The simplest and easiest thing is going to be to isolate the vibrations from the pump I think - low or medium density foam - the 'shoggy-sandwich' has two density foams in a bonded sandwich to try and remove resonant frequencies from the pump. I suspect the hard pipes will still transmit some vibrations though. I think thick silicone sheet might be better still (they use it for preventing pressure sores in surgery and for 'pillows' for quadriplegics to sit on on wheelchairs for example - I'd be more than happy to send you some to try if you send me a PM! (Though on holiday for the next week!).

Other things would be using temp control for pwm for the pump via either the motherboard or using say the little aquacomputer fan controller where you can set the pump speed to temp curve).

Hope that helps!

Tom