Case Mod - In Progress Project: Orange Monster, 26 July 2006; Wire routing blocks 16.3.2014

It's because you updated and all the subscription notices made the server barf.
I'm glad someone translated for me. I forget this is an international community sometimes.
Good call on the wire hider.

 

Your eye for detailing is very inspiring, I can't wait till the next update

 

Man this is what I call devotion

 

Those feet.... dear, oh dear. Those feet!

(and everything else, too... but, those feet!)

 

Howdy folks,

Just a quick update on the situation. I'm actually writing this with my phone from the hospital. Nothing too serious I hope, but it seems my asthma(?) has flared up, which led to breathing problems, so here we are.

I have actually worked on the Monster before coming here, but so far I've only found several ways of how not to fabricate a wire separator

I will resume work after I get back from here, which hopefully will be today.

Mod on bros!

Darkened

 

Wishing you a speedy recovery Darkened!

 

Ease yourself back into it bro. We've waited this long for updates, an extra week or so won't hurt.

 

Hey guys,

First of all some answers:

@Cheapskate

Is there a way to see how many subscribers a thread has or some other statistics? In any case I don't think that was it though

@mnpctech

Thanks for the comments both on the OM and also when I was in the hospital.

It was in fact a short visit, but it did come as a bit of a surprise. I only thought that they would tweak my medication a bit and the next thing I knew I was laying down on a hospital bed while two nurses were shaving my chest for the EKG. Now I have a nice patchwork quilt thing going on...

I'm actually not on any special medication yet, since I was supposed to go to the hospital for tests 23.10 anyway. At this point I've been coughing, whining and gargling phlegm for over 6 months, been to all kinds of tests and still nothing. Hopefully there's going to be some sort of an result in about week and a half so that I could start feeling a tad better than this far

@AlienwareAndy

Devotion, madness or being outright dumb all fall in the same category

@Nutman

I'm more of a butt man myself, but hey, I'm not here to judge

@IanW

There should be an update quite soon. Like I mentioned before, I've been trying to fabricate wire separation blocks and so far I've only got, well nothing really. But there has been progress on some other parts, so that'll probably be next.

This is not much of an update, but I managed to score the grommets for the tubing where it has to go through a shroud and also a few items for the wiring part. I was actually quite surprised that I was able to get my hands on those fan connector innards. I have loads of the connectors themselves, but using them has meant extending the fan wires. This will allow me to have just one wire all the way to the Aquaero.



That's it for now, but I'll try to whip up an update asap.

Darkened

 

Help needed...

Good evening folks,

Just for claritys sake I put the question below in bold.

I've been working a few days at the shop fabricating some wire separation blocks.

After about a dozen prototypes I finally decided how I want to go forward with them. The progress has been quite good so far, but sorry, no real update just yet.

There actually might be enough work done for an update, but I finished working around midnight and didn't have the strength to start photographing the progress at that point

This phase is kind of a vicious circle, since I can't start the wiring process before these wire separation blocks are done and I can't get them finished before I know exactly how many wires are going and to which place.

Below is a fast drawn wiring diagram at the backside of the Aquaero:



At the top row there are the case fans (not 100% sure about the order, but that doesn't matter too much at this point) and the power connection for the Aquaero itself. These are pretty much set in stone at this point, so there shouldn't be any surprises.

Next connector would go to an Aquastream which I don't have and the last one would be for the 5V standby for soft-off feature, which I wouldn't use either.

The bottom row of connectors is where I'm a bit lost at the moment.

First one is a relay (don't know what that could be used for, if someone want's to enlighten me, that'd be great).

The part I'm having issues with are the temp sensors. One is certainly going to be a water temperature sensor between the rad and the reservoir, but what to do with the rest?

Is there a valid reason to put two water temp sensors in different parts of the loop to calculate delta-T or is that just going to be negligible and after a while the temperature is what it is?

Where else should or could a sensor be used in the Monster? I'm not a big fan of wires, but if there's a valid reason and a good spot for the sensors, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

The rest again is quite self explanatory, an UV-led behind the reservoir, flow meter connection and the USB connection to the motherboard are the next three connectors. The last one is for the Aquabus, which again I don't have.

I'd really like to hear what you guys think, so comment away.

Thank you in advance,

Darkened

 

Nice!

 

Water temperature is pretty much going to be the same throughout the loop, so there is no point to putting more than one temperature sensor in. It can go anywhere in the loop.

However it may be interesting to have a temperature sensor on the outside of the case to measure room temperature, so you can establish delta-T.

 

Wouldn't a temp sensor before and after the rad tell you something useful? Granted it's not going to be a huge drop, but it is pretty important. Theoretically, if you integrated a flowmeter you could calculate how many watts of heat you were dumping.

 

I'm with Nexxo. Your ambient temp will give you a better idea of how well the loop is working.

 

Hey guys,

Thanks for the suggestions for the temp sensors. This is of course still up for debate, so chime in if you have more suggestions.

@Nexxo & Cheapskate

The constant temperature throughout the loop is pretty much what I've experienced before with water cooling, so I think one water temp sensor should do the job.

An ambient sensor might be cool (excuse the pun) if the Aquaero could calculate the difference between the ambient and water temperatures automatically. I'm not sure it can though, but I'll look into that.

Other than that I can see a lot of variables which would make the ambient reading inaccurate. The OM will be placed under a table and quite near to a radiator, so I'd expect both of those to raise up the measured temperature (radiator is on at least during the winter). Also if I attached the sensor to the case itself, which is made out of aluminum and acts as a heatsink in itself, that would probably also affect the temperature.

So if the Aquaero doesn't provide a way to automatically get the delta-T between sensors (a convenience thing), wouldn't it be more accurate to calculate it from the water temp & an ambient thermometer (which I already have)?

@Cthippo

This was my initial thought process years ago when I started gathering the gear I'd be putting in the OM at the end.

I think the problem with trying to measure temperatures between two parts of the loop comes down to accuracy. With properly calibrated measuring devices this shouldn't be a problem, but what's the reading accuracy of the Aquaero and are the temperature sensors calibrated to the same spec (if they are calibrated at all).

There is a flowmeter in the case, but calculating the heat dissipation would require dusting off my old physics books which I'm not sure I want to do

Thanks again for the comments and suggestions. Keep them coming still though

Darkened

 

Aquaero wire routing - Part 1...

I was back working on the Monster today and even managed to take a few photos for a small update.

Maybe I should call it a sneak preview of things to come, but it should clarify what I've been up to lately.

After several (and I do mean several) prototypes, plans and thoughts about the wire routing and how I should go about it I found this old aluminum HDD rack from another case.



Since I don't intend to use them anymore, all I saw was a pile of raw material...



First order of business was to scrape out the old thermal conducting tape and drill out the studs from one of the parts.

The other one already had holes for screws, so that was OK already.



This was the result after careful measuring, cutting the parts with a jigsaw and a band saw and finally straightening the edges at the router table.



The grooves are quite deep, so to make them a tad smaller I dug around my scrap acrylic parts again and made these small blocks.

The blocks were shaped with the band saw and the router. This was the prototype batch, so I'll have to make a buttload more of them.



Next I fabricated a top part for this wire routing block.



Since imagining how this part will work just by looking at the parts is probably difficult, I whipped together a small mock-up.

When this part is ready, it will have two layers (lower for temp sensors, reservoir led, flow meter and USB connection and the upper one for fans and the power cable).

I'll also strip the anodizing from the aluminum parts since everything else inside the 5,25" rack is silver (and also because the cut sides don't have the anodizing left anyway).

I left one of the smaller parts in an oven cleaner bath at the shop, so I'll see tomorrow if it's working or not. Well I do know it works since some of the anodizing came off already when I was there, but it's not a fast process (all I could find was a bottle of gel type oven cleaner, so I'll try to find a spray tomorrow).

That's it for now, more to follow hopefully soon...

Darkened

 

FREAKIN AMAZING !!!

 

That's pretty cool.

 

Aquaero wire routing - Part 2...

Here we go again...

@dietje1908

Thanks a lot for commenting, I'll try my very best to amaze you some more in the future

@Cheapskate

Also thanks for commenting. And I'll return the favor soon, but I'm still somewhere around page 40 on your amazing GwassGween build.

I'll definitely let you know when I'm done reading the log, but you are absolutely astonishing with acrylic.

I'm just happy if I can get a hole drilled without a crack or a chip...

On with the update:





Ok, bathing about 24h in oven cleaning gel doesn't work all that well...



...time to bring out the big guns and stop this lollygagging

I went through this exact same process when I was trying to clean the waterblock last year. From ketchup to vinegar to hydrochloric acid.

This time it's from oven cleaner to drain opener (sodium hydroxide), that should do the trick (PH 12.6 ). Hence the rubber gloves...



It certainly did work quite well and the rest I'll just sand away.

Really interesting thing was that the oven cleaner test piece didn't respond too well to this treatment, but all the other parts came out pretty much clean.

I'll either consider it a test piece and throw it away or just sand it down to bare alu.



I did a bit of wet sanding to test how these parts will come out and it seemed fine, so I got on with the fabrication.

First stop, a bit of measuring followed by drilling the four holes, which were threaded to M4.



Marked and drilled the acrylic top piece accordingly and...



...a homage to UK, a double-decker!

Nothing too special here, drilled the four holes to the top and made sure the allen heads fit properly.

Next I sawed off four 21mm spacers from alu tube/pipe, what have you, sanded them down and that was about it.





Finally I did a quick mockup again to demonstrate how this thing will play out once installed in the case.

Next on the list:

- Sand and clean the parts
- Another acrylic top piece
- Make more small acrylic pieces
- Glue them into place (probably)
- Make mounting brackets for the damn thing
- Fabricate all the rest wire routing blocks
- Get on with the rest of the stuff that needs to be done

More to follow...

Darkened

Edit: Added acrylic top piece on the list

 

No acrylic on top of the top level cable guide?

 

@Nutman

Ah, of course there will be. I knew I forgot something off the list

For the ease of assembly it will attach with four M3 screws to the top alu part.

Darkened

Edit: 900 posts in 9 years. I'm thinking I'm not the most active member here on Bit-Tech...