Project: Gemstone (42" tall, Quad watercooled CPUs)

yay!

its about time someone mods a real computer(s)... its kind of funny looking at all these great mods with crappy systems inside.

 

Yikes, now this will be pretty intresting.

Lets see what happens.

 

Alright, on to some of the fun stuff.....

The custom resevoir was constructed from 6 pieces of 1/2" acrylic and assembled using an industril acrylic cement. Warning, this stuff is real nasty, only use it in a well ventilated area. It's also extremely flamable, so be carefull...

Here is a pic of the res partially assembled:

The acryllic cement is extremely unforgiving. Once it touches the surface it immediately begins meltin the accrylic anywhere it touches, so if you screw up you can't wipe it off as this will cause the whole area you wiped to look screwed up.


These are the back and top pieces with the holes cut for the bulkheads. First, I marked off where the holes would be located, then drilled a pilot hole, and finally drilled the 1" hole out using a hole saw.

Here is a shot of the res with all the panels assembled and the bulkhead fittings in place....

The fittings are standard aquarium bulkhead fittings with 1/2" barbs. The one on the very top will be attached to a fill tube. The two top fittings on the back panel will be the inlets from both radiators, and the two bottom fittings will serve as outlets to the MCP650 Pumps to feed each cooling loop.

Here are some shots during initial leak testing:


Ahh, water tight!

The res fills up 5 drive bays in the front of a YY cube server case, because of the cases design (there is one big drive cage with rails for each drive) I decided to do two more things. First, since the sides of the res would only have a nice view of the cage, I decided to cover the sides using some chome self-adhesive vinyl (this stuff is really cool, you can find it at your local vinyl sign shop).

The chrome vinyl gives it a mirror like finish on the sides and bottom. The vinyl was applied to a manilla file folder to give it some strength then each piece was cut to size and simply taped togeather. The panel on the left side of the res was covered on both sides, since part of this will be visible through the case window through the drive cage (didn't want the file folder showing)


To hold the resevoir in place in the case, I'm using the standard YY rails that came with the case and attaching them to the res. This is why I went with 1/2" thick acrillic.... The 1/2" allows me to drill holes to accept the mounting screws halfway through the sides. I created a template for the screw hole locations using a piece of paper and an extra CD-ROM drive that was sitting around. Then layed the template over the sides of the res and drilled out some 3/32" holes halfway through the acrylic, two on top and two on the bottom of each side.

You can see one of the rails in the pic above, as well as the mirror effect that the chrome vinyl gives the res. This should look great with a blue CCFL inside the case filled with water dyed blue.......



Well, thats enough for today I think.... but I'll leave you guys with one more pic of things to come......

$140.00 worth of hoses, clamps and fittings to water cool this beast!!

Bill

 

Like the res

By any chance, could you size down your images a bit? Even in IE at 1024 full screen, there was a scroll bar

Thanks!

 

No prob, I didn't realize how big they were.... I'll take care of it

Bill

--Edit: done... resized to 800x600

 

geezus! what are you trying to do? crunch Pi? j/k, great hardware man. good luck w/ the project.

 

amazing looking project, can you give us a diagram or something?

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yeah, but have to spell centimetres wrong.
edit: well, okay not true - but it still changes it.

 

Crunch Pi, hmmm never thought of that...... might have to add some more horsepower. j/k

 

Oh.......my........god


That is so freakin' cool.

Subscribed!

 

Why on EARTH did you have so many servers!? Is this a business area that this is being done for, or do you have a computer hobby that is way out of hand?

 

Same Question

 

This is basically what happens when I'm bored. They started out has just a single server, then I got the bright idea to build a beowolf cluster which was fun for a while, but then I got bored again and needed something else to do, so I started converting them back to regular servers. And I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well do it right, so one server acts as a domain controller, another as a file server, two are primary and secondary dns, one is a pop3/smtp server, another is a web server, and the last is an asterisk voip server. But alas, I'm pretty much done with the servers, so now I'm going to strip them down keep some parts for myself (either for this project, or as spares) and the rest is getting sold.

Bill

 

This project just seems to get better and better, and you've only just started it!!

You mentioned you were going to sell some of your server components, just out of interest could i ask what you're going to sell as i think i may no someone who would be interested in buying it?

 

if those servers are going cheap i might be interested...

 

how much did all those servers cost you? do you have a website where we can see your mods? is there any profitable purpose for your servers other than your own enjoyment? i know im prodding, but a server wall that beautiful has to have a motive

 

Well, like I said the server wall actually started out as a cluster. Basically, I built each one out of components. As far what is getting sold, I'm still working on deciding what I'm going to keep. Most of the motherboards, CPUs are already sold/promised to some of my close friends/family, but most of the cases are up for grabs, along with two of the 1000baseT switches. Once I get a definate list of whats staying and whats going I will let you guys know.

Bill


P.S. - Unfortunately I no lognger have the web server running. When I built all the servers I only focused on how much it would cost for the actual hardware. Once they were all up and running, my electric bill went up like $600 per month, so I had to shut most of them down. Once, this build is finished I am going to redo my website and have it hosted somewhere else, most likely network solutions, since my domain is registered with them.

 

Yeah... isn't she beautiful?...

Now that is what I call a real benchmark.

 

yeah, thats the real stuff man! i like the server racks, is that at home? i'd love to have something similar i'll subscribe to this

 

whooo chunkey, looks good so far

 

DUUD wanna switch lives?
i really dig your 19inch setup