It’s been a long time, hasn’t it.
Well, for your patience you’re about to be rewarded with a very large update!
In the last few months I've been very busy with things related to the project, and other stuff. My apologies for making you wait so long. Hell, I even chose to play far cry (yes, on goliath!) instead of making this update. But its Friday afternoon at work, Internet access is down, and I've got time!
Part I: SilentStar Dual HDD Cooler
This mind numbingly heavy block of copper came over from my very good friend Pug (aka Infidel, or perhaps Infidel Aka Pug) at
Wizard Designs, so we'll take a nice long look at it -- we'd better for almost $200. At that price, I'd expect it to perform pretty well, silence both my 10KRPM Quantum Atlases, and keep them chilly too. On with the show!
Here's how it arrived, covered in bubble wrap. Should have had more packing, but the shipping from US-UK was LEWD! Pug was just saving $ by cutting down on the amount of packaging. The only thing I've removed for this shot is the brown paper wrapper.
The casing was covered in this sticky vinyl paper, presumably to keep the outside from getting nastied up by fingerprint oils. Nice touch, but I was out of rubber gloves for the install.
After peeling off the sticky stuff, this is what I found. DENTS! OMG! NOOO!
I can fault parcelforce for them, I'm sure pug sent me one that was in better shape than this when it left his hands. I've got to file an insurance claim with them for it -- maybe they'll replace it (ooh, 2 SS Duals!) :eyebrow:
The back plate looked to be in very good condition, although it did seemed to have a bit of a bow in it. That may or may not be by design. Inside, its lined with the same 1/4" thick open cell foam as the rest of the case (see 2nd to next pic). I'm not sure why they chose open cell - closed cell is better at blocking noise.
Overall shot of the exterior casing. Note the mounting holes on the top for mounting in a 5.25" drivebay.
The inside of the casing. 1/4" thick lining of open cell foam to knock down vibration and high-pitched noise. The Atlas 10K III is one of the quieter 10K RPM SCSI HDDs, but nonetheless emits a rather obnoxious whine. I shall NOT sacrifice silent for performance, which is why I have so much hope for this product.
Blocks sitting on drive sitting on blocks. The instructions to mount these were in German, but Pug translated them to English (UK). The instructions were good, though I think the US-UK language barrier made them only minutely more difficult to process. I had no problem reading the original German, either
The blocks themselves, with the 2 90* fittings that connect the blocks together inside the outer casing. The fittings come with an o-ring
w\ retention groove -- this is VERY necessary with o-ring fittings. The fittings themselves connect to a piece of vinyl (presumably) tubing that comes slightly longer than what is needed. the instructions instruct you to cut it to length, not a difficult thing, but it makes me wonder why they did it. I suppose the blocks are more versatile that way? but what has mounting holes of a 3.5" Drive and isn't a 3.5" Drive? Beats me. Also, the blocks appear to have been glass bead blasted, making for a nice eye candy treat. The roughness in this finish is also not a big deal, again because of the low W/in^2
I decided to investigate the actual water channel of the block, and found that it actually goes straight in one end and right back out the other without any twists or turns. This is good for flow rate, but is bad (if only slightly ) for the HDD mounted in the bottom of the cooler. My HDDs only put out (IIRC) 18W of heat each, and it is radiated out to HUGE aluminum side bars on the drives. This makes the difference and my concerns of one disk overheating because it’s in the lower spot laughable. 18W across that size of a plate makes for very low W/in^2, nowhere even close to CPU, GPU or Even chipset W/in^2.
Straight in (light source at the other end, above the fitting)
No light on the other end.
The two HDDs that these blocks are going to cool. 18.2GB Quantum Atlas 10K III u160s.
Blocks installed. Can you see what I missed? .... No? .... Is that crystal clear tubing, or no tubing at all
. I obviously did install the tubing, but failed to take a picture before installing it in the housing, and the housing in my case.
Now, restriction in a 1/2" system is a bad thing. The water channels are nowhere near 1/2" ID on this block, probably more like 5/16 or at worst 3/8". The performance loss due to flow rate drop from installing this block was a concern in the first place, but since my homebrew attempt failed, these were the only alternative. Obviously, I don't want have any more restriction than necessary, so when I noticed that the barbs were smaller ID than the blocks water channels, it was time to ream them out to 5/16". Sprayed with WD40 and went very, very, very slow. The barbs that Pug sent were specific to my needs, since most of his stuff uses 3/8"ID or 1/4"ID tubing. They use BSPP 1/4" thread instead of the 1/4" NPT thread that we "yanks" are used to.
Wrench was clamped to the plate of my drill press to keep fitting from spinning.
Ahh, its nickel over brass.
Almost pornographic.
Consider it reamed.
It's not easy running the drill head and photographing stuff at the same time. I guess that's why jfettig on procooling video tapes his construction projects!
Before (left) and after (right)
Now notice something here, the O-ring on these has
NO RETENTION GROOVE in the fitting. Pug's instructions said 'do not over tighten'. Well, how do you know when tight is too tight? When you tighten the fittings too much, the o-ring will 'slip'. when the o-ring slips out (because of the lack of a groove), its radius will get bigger and you'll see it pop out a bit more over the area its compressed on. Why no picture of this you ask???
Because the o-rings leaked like a
Bluddy Farking Siv when I filled the loop! I was so afraid they wet my HDDs I waited 3 days until the new reservoir (I was filling a closed loop which SUCKS!) got here, and even the I stilled disassembled it to make sure the drives were dry.
At that point, I drained the loop and removed the o-rings. I replaced the fittings with a hefty covering of PTFE (Teflon) tape, and tightened them down very well. Probably 1.5 turns after the neck contacted the base.
No more leaks!
One more shot before they go in the case.
Now what the hell did I do with the installed photo? CRAP! I didn't take one
See the overall shots at the end for an install photo.