Project: FrozenFire (MORE!! Watercooling changes Sep 8 05)

Well I got home from school quite early today so I got some work done on my watercooling. The bulkheads are all mounted and pretty


I mounted 5 bulkheads in a piece of smoked plexi. Same idea as the other piece. Just measured, then used a 5/8" woodboring bit (which worked fairly well, only thing I had in that size) to drill out the holes.


Where it'll go.


Mounted and plumbed. A fair bit neater IMO. I may try and straigten out the downtubes from the Aquatube a bit, but the curved-ness of them is kinda cool.


And on the bottom. I really only used the black tubing because I didn't have enough clear, and probably should have been more consistant about it. If (or when) I go through again and try cleaning things up a bit, I may try and get it changed over to one color. I'm pretty impartial between the two, if I want to highlight anything in the bottom area it'll be the CF work and not the glowy tubing.


The GPU blocks. Nothing too special really. That spring is in there (from an old Aquarius II kit...) because it was a really tight bend and I didn't want to risk killing my card from a kink. I'd like to get rid of it if I can, it's more noticible than I'd like.


L'Aquatube. You can see the mismatched fittings... I really had to use what I could get. The other P&C fittings have the ribbed sides, those straight ones came off one of the used GPU blocks (from Dan@SNT) and I'd rather keep the two GPU blocks the same. I ended up getting shorted a fitting somehow, so that's why I have that 6/8mm compression. Came off an xice GPU block I got some time ago, from Fohkus I believe (sorry, think I butchered the name, but he did a really nice watercooled shuttle)


Closeup of the bulkhead carrier thing. I was kind of hoping the smoked plexi would be a bit darker but I don't really care that much. It's not too noticible there anyways.


Random Cuplex Pro shot. Dunno why I took the pic really... maybe I was just playing around with macro mode at the time, but it's still a nice block.


The Carbon Fibre vinyl looks great behind the fittings and tubing imo. It really stands out nicely in this pic. The bulkheads are really all quite evenly mounted, but unfortunately the tubing bends the plastic bit of them a bit making them look somewhat crooked. Oh well.


The pumpes Wye'd together. That was a REALLY tough bend to make, since I had about 6" to get tubing from the pumps outlets to the Y, then the tubing into a bulkhead from the Y all without kinking. I had to really use very uneven lengths of tubing to get it to angle without kinking. I'm still leaktesting again but it seems fine.


How I mounted the acrylic. Just drilled some holes in the metal plate and the acrylic (7/64" in acrylic, 5/32" in metal), tapped the acrylic with a 6-32 thread and screwed it in. I would have used M3 for a tiny bit more consistance but I can't find an M3 tap locally for the life of me, and 6-32 works fine. Normally I'd have tried to get things a tad more symetrical, but it's a rather annoying area of the case to work in, and this holds it more than well enough. In fact the only reason I did the "front" bolts is because there was a rivet I had to drill out to get the acrylic to fit and didn't want a random hole there.


You can almost see where I spilled dye on my hand. Did I mention my camera really sucks at UV effects? That tubing looks very bloo in the pic, but it's not anywhere near that color in real life.


Just another "night" shot. "night" because I just closed the blinds in my room, but it didn't do a superb job getting it too dark. And again, the color is quite inaccurate.


At the moment, I'm leaktesting (no problems yet), in a little while I'll make sure everything is still alive. I cheated a bit and just drilled carefully with the system still in place, so I'm going to give it all a good canned air dusting before anything gets powered up again, just in case. In case you haven't done it, it's a huge PITA to remove a watercooled setup from your case, especially if you only need it out for ten minutes or so.

 

Excellent! Great minds think alike. I'm doing exactly the same thing but with the wiring (as my rig isn't WC'd yet). I get to install my "bulkhead" this weekend.

 

beautiful, but mighten you want to route water to the last bulkhead fitting?

 

Agreed, your cable work is getting much better, i think it'll also look better if the tubes to the bulkheads were 'tighter', perhaps taking a little bit of length off might do it Keep it up

 

so sexy .....me wants

 

i like it good work I know your proud of what you did

 

nice Wc rig

 

Lookin good man. Dan from SNT systems informed me yesterday that he was "cleaned out" of plug 'n cool bulkheads. Now I know why...

 

I only got six. By the pic I saw he got at least twenty...

Tulatin... whaddya mean? There's water going to all the fittings. If you mean the far left one, that black tube goes to the inlet of the second pump, it just gets routed thru the HDD cage.

I probably won't worry too much about wiring till all the WC is set up how I like it (which may take a while). Now that I have that smaller hole free again, I'll probably run the PCIE wires through there, maybe the EATX again as well. I do think that I'll end up shortening those bits of tubing by about an inch and straighten them out more. The only reason I didn't in the first place is that I would have been utterly fooked if I snipped too much.

I'm posting this response from the FF machine, so it went fairly well (the update was from my laptop). Thanks to the Aquajet, the system bled itself in about a minute (if that), and the P&C fittings are much more reliable IMO than barbs+clamps (which although reliable, has a bit more guesswork and chances for human error than plug and cool).

Still need to apply CF vinyl to the 5.25" bay... it's really sticking out to me now. The LED in the aquatube is getting a bit more irritating too - it's just too purple. I'm thinking I'll end up getting a white one since the water color looks cool under non-UV too.

I'm now thinking I may put a piece of plexi mounted vertically "behind" the HDDs (between them and the rad) to hide all that cabling. It's not in a hugely noticible area, but still sticks out. I may take out the front USB/Firewire stuff altogether, since I've got two free ports in the back and I'll be damned if I ever need to use those two plus front ones. Less cabling = happier Firehed

 

How do you like those cps750 pumps? Like the bulkhead, adds a lot to the finish.

 

Small, inexpensive, and quiet. The new MAGs are supposed to be better (apparently mine have been sent finally) but I'm quite happy with them. I've found that I won't even need a fan readout to see if one had failed (neither has, but they have an RPM signal) - since each one has its own inlet tube from the Aquatube, I get an odd bubbling-type effect if one isn't sucking water down. Just one is plenty to keep the system flowing but it would make it very easy to recognize.

Assuming the new MAGs are just as good or better as they should be (they're only selling mags now, no more 750-II's), I'd highly recommend them. I should find out probably next week I'm guessing.

From what I've heard, most of the ones that failed did so very quickly (like, first day), and mine have been going for a couple weeks (I had them going a while before starting this) and no issues.

 

Yeah I bought one too when they first came out. Mines still in the box though, I think I just bought it on impulse lol. Ever do that?
I will probably find a use for it sooner or later. If I do use it I will buy another to increase flow.

 

lol no, i'm way too cheap to buy on impulse. Although the A8N-SLI and 6800GTs were borderline impulse. But I know the feeling.

 

Looking really good , think i'm gonna have to suscribe to this one

 

Looking good. Those bulkheads look "right at home" in the location you picked. The blue on them does not look bad either, it goes with your blue UV tubing. It seems bulkheads are "all the the rage". More and more people using them in there loops.

 

The tubes aren't nearly that blue in real life, but it's true that it does blend nicely. I was worried that they'd really stick out, but luckily that's not the case. I'd say under the right lighting, it's closer to an aquamarine (best guess for web color code)

 

Firehead, great project Voted you five stars

I know you mentioned it somewhere before, but I'll ask again...... which dye have you used?

I tried AC Blue Motion - my bottle didn't glow and it's hardly blue

Cheers

 

looks good see out for next updates

 

My fluid is distilled water with a small amount of AC Fluid (for corrosion prevention) and Dtek Custom's "visible blue" dye (which is definately greenish under UV light). I only used a few drops of dye for the whole loop... not even a milliliter. The AC fluid was best-guess but is recommended to be around 2%.

 

nice