Name this animal !!!
 

Ambigious Puzuma???...never seen one...sorry for poor scan's...

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I like the flow sensor. What rad (heater core) are you using?

thats a pretty wicked looking setup is that yours or did you stumble across it online some place?

thanx!!!

This is my first setup... the rad is heater core from Lancia prisma...it was a blind pick :)

flow sensor is made of a case of wery cheap alarm clock and a broken 5 cm fan... although, I don't know what it does to the flow (didn't try the setup without it)...

the picture is poor, but there should be 4 smd blue led's ilumminating it from behind...

the rig:

amd athlon xp 1800+ @ 1666Mhz (11.5 x 145), radeon 8500le, 256 mb 2100 DDR, ibm 60 Gb... room temp 28 C, idle 32 C, full load 38 C with simple home made wblock... all fans @ 7 V...

build it...

test it...

install it...

try it...

enjoy it!!!

It looks like you have room to pop another fan on that radiator for a bit more cooling power, unless you don't want the noise.

Otherwise, nice case.

This was the initial idea...
But even with separate chambers (I separated fans in the center) and running on 7V there was soo much noise...

Maybe with some quieter fans...

Was the noise fan noise, or was it air noise? Can reduce the air noise a bit by shrouding & moving the fans farther away from the rad.

Just a thought.

I too will be fighting rad fan noise pretty soon myself.

Can you tell us more about the flow sensor? How'd you put it together?

Unfortunately, its 90 % fan noise. I cant find another fan except Sunon here in Croatia.

The black rubber thingy between the plexy/fan and the rad is about 10 mm thick "shroud" made of rubber and silicone.

flow sensor
 

The flow sensor is made of transparent plastic case of one cheap analog alarm clock.
When I removed the clock mechanism, I got a box, circa 2.5" x 2.5" x 1.5", all I needed
was a back plate. The walls of the case are 4 mm thick so there are no fear of cracks and leaks
(hitting it with hammer excluded...:)). Backplate is simple, piece of plexy cutted to fit
tight on the back of the clock case. I disassembled one broken 5cm fan, took EVERYTHING out,
leaving only plastic holding a sleeve bearing, also took out magnet strip from fan propeller.
You must rip out everything to make it lighter and easyer to spin, and to prevent bubbles of air get stuck inside.
The ripped fan is then epoxied to the backplate, and backplate epoxied to the back of the clock case.
The barbs are also epoxied (NO goop of any kind to buy here, grrrrr), the only thig one must
be careful is when drilling the holes for barbs not to scratch the front plate with drill bit
(been there, done that...twice...:)). Test it, and that's it!
The idea is to make a optical counter (like in mouse) to watch the flow and trigger the alarm
if necessary. I just couldnt find the way to use magnet and Hall efect (I think...) device
already in the fan (plastic walls being thick, long distance between magnet and sensor),
so I went to make it optical.
Still looking for a good (and simple) schematics.

Im aware that this flow sensor is unnecessary and adds 2 more 90 deg. turns to the flow,
but I couldnt help it...:)

Geee, this sounds a bit like a doctorate, but sorry guys, I'm not native english speaker.

No time toulouse.....Monty Python...:)

I don't see 2 90 degree bends! The water is flowing straight through, as far as I can tell.

It's clear to me that what you've built is a flow sensor, and I think you've done exceptionally well with it.

I really like the idea of optically sensing the flow. I'll dig around for some schematics for you. In short, the circuit would look for a frequency, and if it falls below a certain range, then an alarm triggers. An infrared LED and sensor would do, unless you want to visually see the light.

It would be nice if the alarm could be fed to MBM, so that the computer could automatically shut down. Maybe if the frequency was fed to a Maxim chip, as a fan monitor type thing...

Thanx bb2K!

The IRled and receiver is something I had in mind, and I was wandering could the signal be fed to one of the fan sensor pins on the motherboard...That would be the simpliest thing to bring it to the MBM, but I don't know what's the lowest freq of the signal that mb would read.
As for visible light, just crossed my mind that I have a laser pointer somewhere, maybe to rip out diode and use it for emitter...hmmm, strong directional coherent light...maybe.

And the two 90 deg. turns I was babl...talking about, here they are... after instalation of flow sensor into the case:
upper

and the lower...

When you look at the sesor from the back, you can see that the backplate is not transparent, that's a piece of semi transparent tracing paper for dispersion of light from 4 smd blue led's (not shown, burned 'em with 5 V, needed 3 volts :) ). It gives smooth, even blue light over the whole backplate.

That's all right, we might be able to use the blue LEDs' light, as a source.