Project: GEARED UP. More tinkering! 10/3.

i just read through the whole thread nice stuff i want it

 

Okey dokey. I finally (I think) got all the stuff I need to put together the WC portion of this mod.



This is pretty much everything.^^^^



First up. AC's Aquatube with installed Aquajet mounted to an Aquabay.
When I first got his I just sat and looked at it for about an hour.
The craftsmanship of this stuff is incredible. The sucky thing about it
is that when I ordered the Aquabay it didn't have an option for
faceplate color choice so I had to order the black faceplate
seperately. It was kind of a pain to mount the faceplate too as the
screws are so small. Lot's of harsh language during the install.



I ordered this 12v Innovatek version of the 1048 not realizing
it was going to be a bit too big to fit on the Aquabay. I mean
it will fit BUT just barely. I'll be mounting this to the floor of the
case instead.



Not the Innovatek rad I thought I ordered. When I placed the order
FrozenCPU was out of stock and substituted this Dangerden one. The
only reason I know that is because I received a voice mail on my cell
about it the day AFTER I actually got it. The voice mail was obviously
left by the guys at FCPU when they got my order but my cell service
sucks and I got it late. The compression fittings are the same size as
the Innovatek one and the message, and what I've read, states it has
the same specs.



Ordered this for the 6800 ultra that I don't own (yet). Got it from
HighspeedPC as a bargain bin item that was lightly used. When I got it
I swear that it looked brand new to me. Plus I got it at a huge discount.
I was going to get the AC unit but I couldn't pass up the so-low price
tag this one had on it. I don't know whay no one snatched it up before
I saw it.



Now THIS caused my jaw to almost hit the
floor when I opened the box. It is NIIIIICE. You see here that I've
refitted it with 8x1mm compression fittings to keep the theme. I've held
this thing in my hands for 2 days just staring at it. It is a substantial piece
of work. NOW I undertand what the fuss is all about for this
Aquacomputer stuff. Even my wife was impressed.



Side by side are the Innovatek and Aquacomputer 8x1mm fittings.
Looks like there will be some restriction after all. Maybe later I'll have
the AC ones bored out to match the Innovatek ones.



Here are the homeless victims of the AC invasion. I ordered these just
days before I learned that Sharka restocked the A64 mounts for my
new Cuplex XT block. These are the chromed 3/8" versions of Polarflo's
blocks. I was hoping to use the compression fittings on them but I removed
th barbs and they seem to be some "custom" fittings almost 1/2" wide.
Maybe Modsquad can confirm this as I believe he was going to use that
block on BN once upon a time.

I plan on assembling and leak tsting the system tonight. After which I have
to tear my rig apart and mount them. The Crystalfontz LCD goes bye-bye. Hello
Aquabay.

Anyone know where I can lay my hands on an Aquadrive in the states?
Later.

 

nice wc gear.

 

great work here ,you have me hooked ..i love the AC waterblock class workmanship .i might send my old swiftech block to the big aqua park in the sky and get myself one of those babys ...great work cant wait to see that luminglass in it ..i was going for this one here for a mod im doing with my u2-ufo at the moment but after seeing the price you got it for i think ill pass on this one "is it the same as what your using in your mod

ill be watching this space ..

 

Thanks. That Luminglas looks like an 8" or 12" model. The one I'm (going to be) using is just 6".

 

Well I'd like to report a sucessful leak test! During the week I'll rip the
rig down and install this and the rest of the mods I have been putting off.


Here is it just after I disconnected it from my BIGREDMONSTER mod I also have going.

Here's the BIGREDMONSTER.

It's the case I was using before I bought this slick Lian Li I have
now. It's going to be my wife's video editing machine but I'll be
using it as my backup rig once I teardown Geared Up.



I must say that the HPPS pump is extremely quiet. I had to keep touching it to make sure
it was still running. Even then I had to stare into the Aquatube to make sure
water was still flowing. Have a lot of bulkhead holes I have to plan out
and drill.

Now let's back up to this.

I couldn't get get the sleeved wires through the tubing so I'll have to
dye the wires black instead. Hopefully this portion of the mod will
be completed by next week after I remove the PSU divider plate and
the last drive cage.

 

Looking good man!

 

Nice gear there and case ...

Just wish I would have that kind of money to afford that equipment

 

36 hours of heavy rearranging of components and installing of the WC gear.

Here is what I have.



Aside from the Aquabay it doesn't look too different does it? Let's have a look at the innards.



This is the new bulkhead floor. I have almost all the wiring and all the tubing routed through here. That's black mirrored acrylic installed there.





Shots of the underside of the bulkhead floor (would that make it the ceiling then?).
I decided not to dye the wires all black at the last minute. No particular reason.
All the wiring through the new acrylic floor was made from scratch. I hate crimping molex pins. I alwats think that I'm going to wire them up backwards.





Here's everything mounted up in their current locations. Just trying out the rad where it is now. It may get mounted in one of the fan locations up top. I had to mount the Aquabat where it is instead of just putting it where the LCD used to be. There are some tabs in the drive bays that prevent the Aquabay from occupying that particular location. I could of just dremeled it but not any time soon. There were springs that came with the Cuplex XT block but damned if I could get them on. The pressure required just was a deterrent for me although I have seen others mount them with no problem. I don't see why their needed anyhow as I seated it just fine without them.

 

This is how the hard drives are mounted. 2 thumbscrews on the inside of the drive cage are all that's holding them in place.

Here's how the wiring stands now.





It's really tight where the backend of the pump sits and I hadn't counted on that. I can hear people shouting out right now "Sleeve the wires!". Nah! This won't be the final PSU for this project so it doesn't matter right now. I was going to use some heatshrink on the ends of the tube wiring but something said not to. As it turned out I needed that little extra flexibilty to manuever the wiring around in there.




I had to ditch the neon bars on the front of the case. Not that I didn't like them but because they caused a wiring nightmare inside the case that I couldn't overcome due to the switch unit that came with each of them. They took up too much space. I relocated the Noise Isolator because of the same reason. I don't like the blank plate at the top but I'm looking to get a black faceplate from Aquacomputer to match the Aquabay. No neon in the Aquabay yet. I ditched the Lian Li CD bezel since I won't be needing it. A custom acrylic bezel I have planned will be mounted to cover ALL the drive bays, the switches and part of the front of the case where the case badge is. I also removed the front connectors as I found that I was only using one USB connector on sporadic occasions. I have to figure out what to do with the empty spaces up front and I think I JUST came up with something.



So there it is currently.

Mind you this is my first foray into watercooling. I haven't seen ANY real change in temps over my XP90 aside from a few degrees celcius but I'm guessing I need to reapply the arctic silver as I didn't even think about it earlier.



A parting shot of the workspace I demolished putting this beast back together.

 

Wicked!!

 

What are the temps on your side HDD? I would expect them to get very high.

 

I have 2 "side" drives actually. A Maxtor and a Western Digital. The Maxtor runs hot at about 41 degrees celcius and the WD at 35 degrees celcius. The Maxtor is getting moved out of the case into an external enclosure sometime in the near future. The main drive is currently being cooled by an Ultimate Hard drive Cooler and maintains it's temps around 30 degrees celcius. The UHDC will be replaced by one of these.



Ordered it from the Shark last week. It would've been here yesterday but I missed the UPS man. I originally ordered one of the Innovatek units from FrozenCPU but even though they say (still) they have them in stock on their website they in fact do not. I had to wait 3 days for them to contact me and refund my money. It would've gone in with the tear down and build up last weekend so now I have to add it to the loop=hassle. I notice that with any "exotic" type of order they seem to be doing that. I ordered an Innovatek rad from them and they substituted a different (but same) type of rad.

Ordered some more plexi/acrylic.

Debating whether or not to go ahead and have those rings chromed or go through the hassle of polishing up each and every one by hand.

 

very cool. just thought i'd point out [someone may have, but that's 7 pages i'd have to go through!] just thought i'd bring up that you could get something like this http://www.systemcooling.com/xconnect-03.html [modular PSU] to bring your power wires in plain sight but only have those which you need and make them decent looking.

-a

 

Actually I'm on the lookout for one of those new Hiper PSU's.



As soon as they're available in the states I'm snatching one up.

 

I wish i had got one of those PSU's rather than just the normal type-r. Although the normal one is very nice.

 

I really like the gear; I wasn't sure when I saw the original CAD designs in the first post, but seeing it fully implemented, it looks awesome.

Good luck

 

Yeah. The cad drawings threw a lot of people off because they were color coded. People thought I was going to mod a rainbow bright case. Actually the CAD drawings were color coded because it was the only way to show Chris exactly how the geared rings would look as a finished product. It was hard for anyone to picture what I was going for just from the CAD drawings but I knew how it would turn out. Now if I had deeper pockets they would alreadu be chromed by now..

 

Im not sure that i like the multicoloured wiring in the tubes - would have been way better if you had dyed them black . Otherwise looks great

 

always a good sign!

the gear looks great, AC just has a way of being amazing

IIRC the thread on the Polarflo blocks is 9/16-24 or something. Hardly a more standard G1/4 or 1/4NPT.

I considered doing a similar thing for wiring with a bulkhead, but the 6/8 tubing I'm using (vs your 8/10) makes it a lot harder!