MODS PLEASE LOCK - MOVED TO NEW FORUM :D!!!

This project reminds me of the Compaq ProLiant 5000 Server I just picked up 150+Lbs. I was thinking of doing something crazy like puting 2-3 computers in the huge case. It looks awsome go with a large window to show of the hardware .

 

Projects lookin awesome, but may i make a sugesstion......ok, i think that you should paint your pump or at least do something with the non matching colors, make it blend in with the rest of the case!!!!!
otherwise it's looking great!!!

 

Nice work

I loove ur work man.. wish i could mod like u..

It would look good with big window and smallish design to show off evrything

 

Thanks for all the compliments again... I have to figure out something with the pump eventually. It will probalby just get wrapped in sound isolation foam, though.

My radeon 9800 pro (sapphire, black PCB OEM version!!!) got here on monday. I just got the waterblock on it tonite. Sweeeet. Here are the details.

Yes, I was so excited that I didn't even shoot a pic before testing it out w\ the fan, uninstalling it, and removing the fan. Diehard!


Now sapphire calls this a thermal paste install? No wonder it got so darn hot! (bad contact)


Ahh, claned up, that's more like it.


Mounting studs. Dangerden shorted me on nylon washers (or maybe I just didn't need htem on both sides of the board. Better safe than sorry, so I used electrical tape on the compoennt side.


Studs on the backside of the card.


Closeup of backside studs, the white thing is a plastic washer.


A few minutes later, some AS3, and some thumb screw tigthening later, she's installed.


Mmmm. blocky.


Cool.


Used the same trick I always use by cutting the tubing to approx. length, and putting it in boiling water. Bends like a wet noodle.


Installed and all is well... almost. Rage3D Tweak (the overclocking util) doesn't play nice with the cat4.1 drivers I'm using. Details Here.

I spoke with Spiv about the 'cover plates' for the back tonite, and cutting them/engraving them isn't a problem. I need to finish the artwork that goes on them, but here's the gist of it (the shapes of the plates). They go over where the powdercoat looks crappy in the back.

Plate for around the power plug


Plate for around the rear 120mm exhaust (it will have designs on it, like the Ars logo!)


CAD done in Qcad.

Requests
What the HELL is the paint code for Toyota's carbon blue metallic. Sherwin-Williams says its 0210 (iirc), toyota's site says 0210, but mnpctech's guy who uses PPG says he's never heard of it

if there are any Germans reading this, could I paypal you a few Euro for a bit of ACFluid from aquacomputer? PLEASE?

The last big ticket items:
The painting
The VFD
The Front bezel cad work

Just got my Qprox ICs this week, need to sit down for a few hours and design a 'sparse mesh' and crap to light them, etc.

 

Looks good, always nice to see a "real" chassi get modded (ie a serverchassi). Wouldn't wanna drop it on my toes though

ot
QCad rules btw
/ot

good luck!

 

<font size=5>OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG</font>

Pug (Infidel) OWNZ! He sent me a present! ACFluid and BlooMotion dye

3 pictures are worth 3000 words:

 

Looks great, but you should really find a way to ditch that 90 degree barb on the inlet of the eheim.

 

I ran a straight barb for a while, but the way its situated to go into the res makes a very tight bend, and even the thick-wall clearflex 60 was collapsing.

However, when I build the HDD waterblocks, I can turn the pump around and feed res->hdd->pump inlet and that may solve the problem.

 

totally sick man, this is one of my fav. projects by far. personally i prefer the nice red ATi PCBs but thats just me the black PCB goes well with your case, and the blue is 100% 1337, starbuck

 

Mmm... black and blue. And all the nice touches. Definatly the little extras that push a mod above and beyond the rest.
/me likes
Oh, and...

If you notice on the pic, you can even see the ATi Logo on the chipset, through the thermal paste. I don't know... it just gave me a bad feeling when I saw that.

 

are you going to hide the pump? (plz tell me you are), or at least paint it black.

 

Thanks for the compliments guys. Re: painting pump. Hadn't really planned on it but I supose its something I could get to now that the weather is starting to warm up again.. Probably just shoot it flat black with the same paint as the heatercore. seems to be fairly durable stuff.

As far as the HDD block goes, it's going slowly. I'm hardly ever home it seems to work on it To be frank, i wish i didn't feel so obligated to be over at the lady friend's house all weekend.

Well, thanks for the bump I'll update when i feel there is something update worthy.

 

Thanks ubergeek. I didn't even notice the thread bump when you did it.

HDD Block
So, here's the situation. The HDD waterblock is a bust. My design is flawed and i don't have the appropriate tools. So I'm replacing it with this:



SilentStar Dual HDD Cooling block + silencing enclosure.

I also just RMA'd my second (and louder) Atlas 10K III 18.2GB u160 scsi drive. It was waaaay louder than its identical brother, probably a bad bearing. Should have the advance replacement in a few days.

Cover Plates for Powdercoating Fowlup
Thanks to Zittware, and This Thread, I have now sourced the transparent gray plexiglass I needed for the 'fowlup plates'. These plates cover the messups in teh powdercoat that went onto the jbwelded areas of the rear of the case. I should have it in my hands on April the 15th.

Here are the designs: (these are combined CAD dimensions with the graphics to be laser eteched on)

Covering the pump plug area:


And around the rear 120mm exhaust:

 

Bump

Well, guess what. I just payed Pug (infidel) for the silentstar! Yippee!!

I've also been working on the touch-sensor board for the bezel. I feel so freaking guilty for using the autoroute feature of Eagle But it did 95% of the work for me! I had to route 2 traces myself, and they weren't even that bad. Why autoroute didn't catch them is beyond me.

What I'm dealing with now on the board is this is the first double-sided board I've ever designed. It also has custom packages (the sensor pads) so I'm trying to make sure that everything comes out on the correct side, and that I dont have any height issues. The side with the sensor pads on it can't be more than 1/8" tall for any of the components or solder points, as it will interfere with the backlight diffusers.

 

Excellent work mate, although i was looking forward to the HDD windows, n/m. Keep up the good work.

EDIT: You not considered a Hydor pump and maybe do something similar to the_resetter except bl00?

 

I'm really quite happy with this pump, other than the fact that it is a bit large. Not enough to make me change it though. If I did, I think a swiftech MCP600 would probably be in my future. small. powerful and quiet.

and If I wanted true crazyness, Iwaki MD30RZ. But that thing is a beast.

 

Since I got my SilentStar Dual HDD block for Goliath from Infidel (aka Pug) at Wizard Designs I've had to do some serious reworkings of goliath, including ditching my home-made reservior to get a bit more breathing room in the case. My eheim 1250 is a bit big. Anyway, I did a drain and complete retube of the system on tuesday, which was a huge pain in the ass without a reservior. So, I ordered a round reservior from DangerDen, and did the 2 day shipping option because it was only like $3 more than the standard ground. I'm also stuck on my P166 laptop until goliath gets put back togetehr. I don't dare fire it up, even with the system bled, because the silentstar's fittings leaked a bit and may have wet my HDDs. I can't take the silent star apart w\o draining the system and disassembling the fittings for it, so i'll wait till the res gets here!

Anyway... to my point (blah blah blah): I payed dangerden w\ paypal. for some reason it didn't do an instant transfer like it always has before, it did a e-check. The e-check said uncleared and wasn't going to clear until the 24th! I needed the part YESTERDAY so I called them up, explained the situation and that they could send the cops after me if it didn't clear, and they said they'd ship it out today.

 

It’s been a long time, hasn’t it.

Well, for your patience you’re about to be rewarded with a very large update!

In the last few months I've been very busy with things related to the project, and other stuff. My apologies for making you wait so long. Hell, I even chose to play far cry (yes, on goliath!) instead of making this update. But its Friday afternoon at work, Internet access is down, and I've got time!

Part I: SilentStar Dual HDD Cooler
This mind numbingly heavy block of copper came over from my very good friend Pug (aka Infidel, or perhaps Infidel Aka Pug) at Wizard Designs, so we'll take a nice long look at it -- we'd better for almost $200. At that price, I'd expect it to perform pretty well, silence both my 10KRPM Quantum Atlases, and keep them chilly too. On with the show!

Here's how it arrived, covered in bubble wrap. Should have had more packing, but the shipping from US-UK was LEWD! Pug was just saving $ by cutting down on the amount of packaging. The only thing I've removed for this shot is the brown paper wrapper.




The casing was covered in this sticky vinyl paper, presumably to keep the outside from getting nastied up by fingerprint oils. Nice touch, but I was out of rubber gloves for the install.


After peeling off the sticky stuff, this is what I found. DENTS! OMG! NOOO! I can fault parcelforce for them, I'm sure pug sent me one that was in better shape than this when it left his hands. I've got to file an insurance claim with them for it -- maybe they'll replace it (ooh, 2 SS Duals!)


The back plate looked to be in very good condition, although it did seemed to have a bit of a bow in it. That may or may not be by design. Inside, its lined with the same 1/4" thick open cell foam as the rest of the case (see 2nd to next pic). I'm not sure why they chose open cell - closed cell is better at blocking noise.


Overall shot of the exterior casing. Note the mounting holes on the top for mounting in a 5.25" drivebay.


The inside of the casing. 1/4" thick lining of open cell foam to knock down vibration and high-pitched noise. The Atlas 10K III is one of the quieter 10K RPM SCSI HDDs, but nonetheless emits a rather obnoxious whine. I shall NOT sacrifice silent for performance, which is why I have so much hope for this product.


Blocks sitting on drive sitting on blocks. The instructions to mount these were in German, but Pug translated them to English (UK). The instructions were good, though I think the US-UK language barrier made them only minutely more difficult to process. I had no problem reading the original German, either


The blocks themselves, with the 2 90* fittings that connect the blocks together inside the outer casing. The fittings come with an o-ring w\ retention groove -- this is VERY necessary with o-ring fittings. The fittings themselves connect to a piece of vinyl (presumably) tubing that comes slightly longer than what is needed. the instructions instruct you to cut it to length, not a difficult thing, but it makes me wonder why they did it. I suppose the blocks are more versatile that way? but what has mounting holes of a 3.5" Drive and isn't a 3.5" Drive? Beats me. Also, the blocks appear to have been glass bead blasted, making for a nice eye candy treat. The roughness in this finish is also not a big deal, again because of the low W/in^2


I decided to investigate the actual water channel of the block, and found that it actually goes straight in one end and right back out the other without any twists or turns. This is good for flow rate, but is bad (if only slightly ) for the HDD mounted in the bottom of the cooler. My HDDs only put out (IIRC) 18W of heat each, and it is radiated out to HUGE aluminum side bars on the drives. This makes the difference and my concerns of one disk overheating because it’s in the lower spot laughable. 18W across that size of a plate makes for very low W/in^2, nowhere even close to CPU, GPU or Even chipset W/in^2.

Straight in (light source at the other end, above the fitting)


No light on the other end.


The two HDDs that these blocks are going to cool. 18.2GB Quantum Atlas 10K III u160s.


Blocks installed. Can you see what I missed? .... No? .... Is that crystal clear tubing, or no tubing at all :doh:. I obviously did install the tubing, but failed to take a picture before installing it in the housing, and the housing in my case.


Now, restriction in a 1/2" system is a bad thing. The water channels are nowhere near 1/2" ID on this block, probably more like 5/16 or at worst 3/8". The performance loss due to flow rate drop from installing this block was a concern in the first place, but since my homebrew attempt failed, these were the only alternative. Obviously, I don't want have any more restriction than necessary, so when I noticed that the barbs were smaller ID than the blocks water channels, it was time to ream them out to 5/16". Sprayed with WD40 and went very, very, very slow. The barbs that Pug sent were specific to my needs, since most of his stuff uses 3/8"ID or 1/4"ID tubing. They use BSPP 1/4" thread instead of the 1/4" NPT thread that we "yanks" are used to.

Wrench was clamped to the plate of my drill press to keep fitting from spinning.


Ahh, its nickel over brass.


Almost pornographic.


Consider it reamed.


It's not easy running the drill head and photographing stuff at the same time. I guess that's why jfettig on procooling video tapes his construction projects!


Before (left) and after (right)




Now notice something here, the O-ring on these has NO RETENTION GROOVE in the fitting. Pug's instructions said 'do not over tighten'. Well, how do you know when tight is too tight? When you tighten the fittings too much, the o-ring will 'slip'. when the o-ring slips out (because of the lack of a groove), its radius will get bigger and you'll see it pop out a bit more over the area its compressed on. Why no picture of this you ask???
Because the o-rings leaked like a Bluddy Farking Siv when I filled the loop! I was so afraid they wet my HDDs I waited 3 days until the new reservoir (I was filling a closed loop which SUCKS!) got here, and even the I stilled disassembled it to make sure the drives were dry.

At that point, I drained the loop and removed the o-rings. I replaced the fittings with a hefty covering of PTFE (Teflon) tape, and tightened them down very well. Probably 1.5 turns after the neck contacted the base. No more leaks!

One more shot before they go in the case.


Now what the hell did I do with the installed photo? CRAP! I didn't take one See the overall shots at the end for an install photo.

 

Part II: Long Live the New Res!

This is pretty ordinary actually, it's the bone-standard Danger Den Round Reservoir. I couldn't see spending the money on an aquatube if no one was ever going to see it. I didn't want a 5.25" bay res because I've heard they're a pain to bleed, and my homemade round res served me very very well. I ditched the homebrew res because it was taking up too much room in the case and I never completely trusted it, as it was held together with GOOP and nylon screws. It was also the first thing I made for goliath, so it was sort of a sad moment.

I made the decision to mount it in the 'useless' top 3 5.25" bays. I call them useless because they're too shallow (blocked by radiator/fan/shroud) for any drives. I intend to use the rest of this area for the custom front panel electronics (VFD/touch bus/indicators), so I wanted a 'clear solution'. Enter scrap Plexiglas from work. we make all sorts of crap out of acrylic for displaying books, in addition to other stuff, so we have plenty of scrap. I cut this piece to sit on top of the ears for the drive rails, and used a 2" diameter hole saw to drill a hole for the filler cap to fit through. I also drilled holes for the mounting bolts. In this configuration, the top of reservoir cap is just shy of hitting the sheet metal of the top of the case (when its on). This makes filling the loop super easy! I just take the top off, unscrew the cap, put my funnel in and pour away! No mess at all.

From the top. you can just barely make out the line of the edge of the plexi (which I still need to polish up at some point) at the left.


Shot from the front. The rat’s nest in the rear is my VFD/rad lighting that hasn't been connected to anything yet, and is just floating free. the observant among you notice an evil thing in water cooling: a 90* elbow (on the left side of the picture). I had to use it to get the tubing to route properly . There's also a 90* on the inlet of the pump :doh: to make things work properly. If I ever kill my eheim 1250, I’ll get a hydor L30 II, which is half the size but has more head and the same flow as the 1250. I should be able to use it w\o having to use the 90s. 90s on the inlet side of a 1250 are bad, as most procooling testers have observed.


And one more modification to the res, the installation of a thermal probe (which is just a TO-92 packaged 2N3904 w\ the base connected to the collector) for measuring water temp w\ my MAX1668 Thermal Sensor Board. I may still make another mod for UV lighting if I ever find blue glow dye that doesn't come out of solution and cover my tubes in white crap


Part III.a: Installation of the MAX1668 Thermal Sensor Board on ATi Radeon 9800 Pro
Since I'm (trying) to overclock the SNOT out of my sapphire OEM ati Radeon 9800 pro 128 meg (uber rare black PCB edition), I wanted to keep track of how hot the little sucker was getting during gaming. Extended runs of far cry put the GPU at 40*C, and idle in windows puts it at 33*C, all w\ 26*C to 27*C coolant (~72*F environment) How do I know those temperatures??? Lets see:

A bit of Plumbers GOOP on the backside of the GPU. The GOOP is non conductive. My meter registered infinite resistance even at the highest resistance range (20 Mega Ohms) The goop will hold the sensor in place.


The exposed leads, solder joints, and exposed copper wire on the probe were also coated in plumbers goop previously, so nothing will short out. I used my 17 ring/box wrench to hold the probe down while the goop set up (gave it about 45 minutes while I went and watched Law & Order)


And bam, she's installed. Me forget to sleeve something? Oh hell no! (except maybe for the reservoir ) I've got to cut its probe length down a bit and sleeve it yet.



Part III.b: Installation of the MAX1668 Thermal Sensor Board in the case.

I had previously meant to use double sided tape, but I opted for a less permanent solution and used Velcro. The hook side is stuck to the case, and the loop side is stuck to the board. Whatever isn't covered by Velcro on the bottom of the PCB is covered in electrical tape. Also, the powder coat is non-conductive, so there's not much to worry about (keep a keen eye out for an easter egg** in these last few pics.

A view from the top down. I forget why I had the reservoir uncapped.


And a view from the front.


Part IV: EZ-Drain

I had long since been looking for an easy way to drain the system that didn't involve pulling barbs off or pulling plugs, but couldn't ever think of a valve small enough to do so. One day I was outside in the smoker's shack at work, and this rusty old valve was sitting on the table. it reminded me of the tap that you use to install an ice maker on a refrigerator. My friend Ryan and I had just done this a few months ago for my girlfriend, and I remembered that it had a valve: the EZ-Drain was born!



It's a simple little doohickey, one 1/2"ID mending barb from Lowes (be sure to get the kind with a bit of smooth surface in the middle, I think its part A-38something). One icemaker needle valve, also from lowes, a few feet of 1/4" OD (yes, OD) tubing, and the associated compression fittings for the valve. I drilled a hole in the hose mender for the valve, and tapped the hole, as the valve had 1/4" NPT threads on it, and I found the appropriate tap by eye. What I did discover later was that I tapped for the wrong end of the valve! My buddy Ryan had an adapter to make it the right size (that's the bit closest to the mender), so I attached that after adding Teflon tape, and all was well. I threaded the adapter & valve in, and sealed the whole thing up with goop. it passed the pressure test (one thumb over the end, valve closed, blow like hell in the other end).



Part V: Let the JPEGs do the talking

A few new overall shots.





Damn dents.


Cheers/Regards until next time!

 

Talk about updates!
I really like the way you did that drainage valve; good work!