Work in progress - Extreme Mod
 

Here is my work in progress for all of you who have given input over the last few weeks. Let me start with early on:

Another view:

Add some of this:

:
 

Making a couple of these:

And one of these (not a potato gun):

Mixing it all up into this (case goes on later this week, I temporarily hooked it up to test it, though):

And more:

Eye candy closeup:

Some guts:

And some more:

Eventually, I can hook up to four PCs to this cooling loop all in parallel via the manifolds. It is as simple to drain as flipping open the valve at the bottom of the air trap/bazooka res and waiting a few minutes. Then just undo a couple of plugs and hook the new PC into the loop. I should have three machines on it within two months (I'll have pix of the first one on it later this week to early next week, depending). The PCs will be in old school desktop cases, stacked like 4U cases without the rack. Nice, compact, and efficient.

What do you guys think?

What kind of pump is that? Will it be able to produce the kind of pressure needed to move water through four loops?

Also, where do you find an ATX desktop case? All I've seen in the last few years is MicroATX (and really tiny ones, at that.)

FYI... if you have an air leak problem, look at the ball valve.

I ran tests last weekend, and although I can't confirm it yet, the valve might be leaking in air, through the handle. It probably wasn't designed to maintain a seal under negative pressure.

I'll let you know.

[edit] actually, I won't be able to test it for another three weeks, so you'll find out before I do!

Wow... impressive... How many galons of water does that thing take? Im using ABS tubing for my res as well and its amazing. Once cemented together its like one solid piece of plastic... and its soft enough to be very workable.

One thing Im really curious about is how well do you think that Rad will work without fans at all lieing horizontally... I think I might be able to fit one of those beasts externally on my case, but it aint worth it unless I can be fan free.

Also, not sure if you'll like the idea but how about making "rack" out of wood with your heat exchanger/'pump etc in that box being the "base" of the rack... Im talking about a very simply frame. If youve already predetermined the sizes of the pcs youll have in your rack (4u for example) you can setup the tubing going up the side (maybe opposite side of the res) branching to each pc. With disconnects you wouldnt even need to flush your system to add a new machine... just add more fluid to the res after the machine starts...

Since I'm using desktops, I'm just going to slap on little rubber feet and stack them without a rack. I contemplated doing exactly what you suggested with the rack, but I decided against it just to help ease assembly/disassembly for maintenance. As far as capacity, it can contain 4.25 gallons of coolant with 4" of room to spare at the top of the res. It takes a little while for the water temps to change depending on use, and for a multi-PC cooling loop, that is very important to me.

As far as a fanless mount of this radiator, you could probably get away with it, though I would personally want at least a Panaflo M on 5V blowing over it (you can't hear it at all at over a foot ... outside of the range of hearing) just for safety. If you run it fanless you'll be a little warmer than a BIX running with push/pull fans (in my experience with it), as long as you have over 1.5 GPH flow through your system.

Ben: I have no air leaks at all, from watching the coolant loops. I was very careful with that, and these are some extremely tight fitted valves (takes alot of muscle to turn them).

Arcturius: The pump is a Danner Supreme 350 GPH utility pump. As soon as a second PC goes on, I'm upgrading to a 1200 GPH Gen-X Mk4, and it WILL be able to pump 4 loops easily. The case I'm using will be the Enlight 7200, which you can check out on a few dozen Pricewatch sites.

Wait until you get the new pump...

hmm... Im using a ball valve in my setup at the bottom of the case and have no problems yet with air coming in... Actually, the whole setup primes in no time whatsoever....

I think it has to do with the type of valve and the make of it.. these kind of valves tend to work really well :
http://ambient.no-ip.com/exhaust.jpg

Oh, my new avatar is a picture of one of my vicious weasels when it first saw my project. Talk about a kodak moment.

Yeah, I'm sure it's looking forward to its new playpen!

When I first built the box that is exactly what we used it for. They're wierd like that. You should have seen them playing with the PVC (stealing and hiding it, in other words) while I was assembling the infrastructure.

It appears I will definitely be getting my Enlight case tonight (I have to pick it up at the FedEx ramp in Lewiston), so I should have this together with more pics for tomorrow (oh frickin' joy!). It's Dremel time ....

I think just to make it even easier, I'll just do a partial system dump to hook up the new case. I'm too lazy to drain the whole thing again. *sigh* I'm excited to get this phase of the project finished.

Saw this pump at harborfreight the otherday:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...temnumber=1479
It might be nice having 1" of flow through all the pvc, and throttling it dowm once it reaches the tubing branches.

looks like a cool project, i'll be following this thread.

peace.
unloaded

That pump is "cast-iron". I doubt that it's rated for continuous duty, and is probably quite noisy.

It's also probably quite more powerfull than most pump we use in watercooling. A little 1/2hp like that is closer to pool pump than watercooling setup.