Project: LavaStone (UPDATED 19-08-06) - LOOP COMPLETE AND FILLED

Very Nice. Love your progress so far on the rad box.

 

Looking good - keep the updates coming!

 

looking very nice. keep up the good work

 

sorry no update last night, not a real lot to post as all I was doing is painting the radbox, its having its final coats today so I should be able to post some nice pics this evening - also I have some more parts arriving!

 

All painted! w00t!

Well, what a difference a day makes, the radbox is all painted, in the end it got 5 coats of black, and 4 coats of clear, and considering my painting skills arent much to write home about, I dont think it came out TOO bad!



Today in the post I recieved:

120.2 Neoprene Gasket
120.3 Neoprene Gasket
PowerPlant II Pump Relay
90' 1/2" Barb

So on with the gaskets, and on with the fans, I then went ahead and mounted the rad into the box, only placed the pump for the time being, and I hooked all the fans to the modded rheobus and turned it all on to check all the new fans were working fine, which they are


heres a quick sneak peak of whats to come when Im nearer the end, firstly the case on top with no sidepanel, notice I also got round to drilling a nice big hole to take cables behind the motherboard - thankfully the TJ-03 came with XL risers as standard
I also fitted the case feet from the TJ-03 to the bottom of the radbox


and secondly with the black side panel on



not too bad at all I dont think! cant wait to get the rest of the heavy work done so I can mount those tasty grills and put the front bezel back on

Ive ordered the FINAL parts that I need to complete the rig from coolercases today, they are:

Repack Res Black
Alphacool NeXxXoS NB-SLi
5mm Red LED (for res)
25 Red Cable ties
4 x G1/4" to 1/2" Barbs
1/2" Y Splitter
6ft 1/2" ID Tygon
Water Wetter


Might try and get the day off tomorrow and head off to the merchant to get the last load of bits I need from there, that will be:

Some self-tapping screws to mount 120.2 in the case top
3.6m 15mm OD Copper Pipe
20 x 90' Copper Solder Elbows

My good friend is a plumber, so hopefully I can bribe him with a few beers to let me borrow his Blowtorch along with some flux and solder

If everything goes to that plan ( ) I will have time tomorrow to make up a blanking plate for the upper 80mm exhaust so that the CPU_IN feed can come from the back of the case and into the CPU block.

Then over the weekend I can crack on and knock the main amount of pipework out, it will take some time getting it all nice and neat, and a bit of planning, and a few crucial holes to be drilled, then I should be well on my way

Comments, as always are welcome

 

looking good.....!

 

agreed!!

 

looking very good, can't wait to see more progress.. this is actually one of my favorite mods

 

Well yesterday I didnt get very much done on my project, but I did help my friend build his very first PC, a nice little system he picked up for £300 was stripped and tranferred into my old Antec P180...







Back onto the main project, and I did manage to get a bit of pipework done, here you can see 4 elbows that I soldered, those tails are too long at the moment and will be shortened when I go for the main installation, also the two blocks I already have, the NeXxXoS XP and Swiftech MCW60 - the NB Block was in the parcel that I missed collection of



here you can see a shot of the tower and the radbox together, the pump is now firmly secured in the box, and the box and tower and now bolted together - its already damn heavy lol.



this is a shot of the mounted PA120.2 Rad, I changed the side on which the fans were mounted, before they were on the exterior side, but I think I ike this way a bit better

Notice that I drilled a hole in the offside of the 5.25" rack for easier cable management.



Here are pics of a quick but necessary mod I had to make to my Eudemon fan controller; in my previous setup the top two 5.25" bays were rendered useless by the big radiator in the top of the case, however the Eudemon unit would only JUST not fit, so the mod to make it fit was quite easily done.



before that board with the memory battery on was mounted horizontally, so the mod was simple, drill out the standoffs that it was screwed to, then drill 2 new holes and bolt the thing on further towards the front, and with some new bolts - easy

here you can see that it now fits nicely:



it will look much nicer in the top slot, then in the third like it was before, and of course it frees up another 5.25" bay for my new Repack Res

lastly here is a rough working diagram I drew out as my proposed loop; the pink line is the dedicated CPU loop running off the HE120.3/Ehiem1250 and the yellow is the VGA/NB loop running off the PA120.2/DDC-Plexi.



thats it for now, Im gonna start to move the bits from the ATCs 110 back into the TJ-03, fit the blocks and generally get prepared for the final push early next week.

TTFN

 

personally i think it looks a lot better if you don't have tubes running outside the case, some bulkhead fittings should be possible to use ... depending how thick the wood is, and how big a fitting you can get

 

the only tube running outside of the case is the copper pipe behind the case, which you wont see when its in position on my desk, and it can always be painted black.

 

I love the color choices, looking good so far!

 

Quick Update...

Well thankfully the bits that were missing from my order turned up today, so I fitted the barbs and got on with it.

First I installed the motherboard onto the tray, and put the GFX card in place.

Ive decided against running the copper through one of the 80mm fan holes, and I will actually put 2 x 80mm fans there (even if I dont use them) I just think it will help with the whole look of the interior.

anyway Ive cut most of the pipe for the CPU loop, and here it is at about 70% done stage, few more joints to solder, and as you can see a bit of cleaning to do on the pipes

Im still not decided on whether I should paint the pipes - maybe black with the fittings red? or vice versa? or I could even do them UV red and buy some UV cathodes, IM just not sure, anyway on with pics:





^^ notice here that Ive also got the PowerPlant II installed, and all wired up, and most of all, working


^^ theres the lovely repack res, Ive got a super bright 5mm red LED that will illuminate the water in there - I just need to wire it up...it will be connected into the spare port on the Rheobus in the radbox - the wires will be secured to the res outlet and down through that hole in the bottom of the case.

Thats about it for now, I will post some pics later on when hopefully the CPU loop will be complete.

 

Good job...! I had a couple of questions, hope is not a bother.

In the picture I see you make the pipe turn to the outside of the case, instead of straight down, why. Can you post a picture of the connection between the pipe ends and the barbs. Are you planing on giving some kind of finish to the pipes. What is the thickness of the pipes?
Sorry about all the Qs, I was planing on doing some cooper plumbing, on my case; but Im not sure yet.
Thanks..

 

Ive now changed the route of that pipe - I did intend to have a draining point on the exterior of the case at the back but I decided to to it another way.

Ive finished the CPU loop now, but Ive a rather huge problem in the fact that my pump doesnt work properly

Ive never used one of these eheim pumps before, but on closer inspection it appears that the impeler doesnt spin quite right in the chamber - it will work for a few seconds, it vibrates like mad and then it stops spinning and just "trembles" in the middle of the chamber, Ive had to drain and disassemble the loop twice, to no avail.

any suggestions as to whats causing that? maybe its just a duff pump, but tbh I did think I'd bought it in working condition

 

I know exactly the problem I bought one just to have at my local pet shop, the impeller is like stuck on the shaft. Take the shaft and impeller out they are more than likely stuck together. Tap the rod out gently by takin gthe impeller assembly and tapping the shaft against a work bench or table. It may look green. Cut a Q-tip so it fits where the shaft goes inside the impeller assembly. clean it well. Then go find a ceramic knife sharpener or cermic airstone from a bet supply store this won't dammage your shaft and gently rub the shaft all 360 degrees up and down the whole length till its clean. Should fix the problem.

I ended up returning it because it had a crack in the rear housing that covers the epoxy filled windings for the motor. But it worked. I figure it was used on something it shouldn't have been. Maybe sal****er and it was never cleaned before the guy returned it. Mine had greenblue more blue than green goop that was seriously glue hard on the shaft and in the impeller assembly.

 

thnks, I took the pump apart, but the shaft wasnt stuck to the impeller, it just seems to wobble around inside the motor housing a bit much, I'll keep trying, maybe it just needs a slight adjustment for it to fit slightly better at the rear end of the pump housing rather than the front end.

 

Take it apart and lay the parts out then post a pic.

 

well I got my loop all set up, Ive changed my plans dramatically BTW - but I will get to that another time...

so I went to fill the loop up, sorted out my Eheim pump problems, fixed the DDCw/Plexi to the base of the case, and proceeded to fill the system.

Let me tell you this was bubble CITY there was loads of air in the system, and after a long slog of tube squeezing to get the air to the res, and topping up I was nearly there - then suddenly my DDC stops!...

omg Im thinking what now? is this project completeley cursed when it comes to pumps? well maybe...

Whats happened is, I was running the DDC from a seperate PSU, using the paper-clip method, and it was running fine, but on filling the res that the DDC feeds off of (in the drive bays) a bit of water spilt onto the top of the pump which sits below (my fault shakey hands) I thought I had mopped most of it up fairly quickly, but it appears I hadnt, and the DDC was sat in a puddle of water for a while! DOH!

Now every time I plug it in to the running PSU it cuts the PSU out dead, and the pump wont start - so my guess is that the water has gotten into the DDC and caused it to short out, because I can use other devices on the PSU (I tried an old CDROM drive).

So Im in a bit of a situation here now - what do you think I should do?

1 - Drain the whole system, remove the pump and let it dry in a warm place?
(if I do this I will have to go buy more water, and order some more Water Wetter, this wont arrive until Monday at the earliest)

2 - just leave the pump in situ - I have unsecured it and mopped the water up now (and its temporarily raised about an inch off the bottom of the case now) and hope that by tomorrow it should be dry enough to carry on the bleeding?

Ive tried to pinch the tubing with a jubilee clip just in front of the inlet and outlet, but to no avail, the clips I have dont shrink down enough

This is a real bummer, and a silly mistake of mine, all I hope is that Ive not mullered the pump, as the flow rate in the loop is barely anything at all without its help. I had also hoped not to be spending any more money on this project - just to add to the mess there is only one of my regular suppliers that have the Water Wetter in stock and thats only a pathetic 12ml bottle

grrr....

 

OK, so I removed the faulty pump without having to fully drain the loop, and for the mean time Ive put a coupler where it was.

TBH the flow isnt as bad as I had thought without it, and I might just leave the DDC out all together and just run the whole loop off the main pump.

I will post an update either late tonight or early tomorrow, like I said before theres been some major changes in the way Im running the system now - lets just say the Copper pipe didnt work out as I had planned, and Ive done away with that idea and just gone with ordinary 1/2" tygon.

I still plan to make a fully Copper-Based loop in the future, just not at the moment; I'm in talks with an engineer I know who I hope will make some fully custom fittings for me that will consist of a 1/4" thread to a compression fitting, thus doing away with the need for small couplers made from the 1/2" rubber tubing.

Thankfully things are now looking a bit more positive, I hope to have this project wrapped by the end of the weekend. The last couple of days have been a real struggle. As Im sure most of you here know when things seem to be constantly running against you it can become a bit much and you feel like jacking the whole thing in, but alas, hopefully persistance has paid off this time

stay tuned for a big update in the VERY near future