[airspirit]

Psychosis notwithstanding, I am thinking about doing this in anticipation of building my next machine. I've been thinking about getting a stack of cheap 4U cases and setting them up like this, without the AC unit of course (the air ducting would be uglier than hell). By consolidating all of my waterflow through one pump I could save the space inside of the 4U cases, leaving just the blocks and associated tubing. I'd probably go with a stack of Black Edge waterblocks from Becooling (great price, good performance), and leave the chipsets and GPU on their individual fans (as if they're that loud). The tubing, after the pump would split off into 3/8" ID Tygon (or similar) and would run up the sides of the cases (mounted with hose clips similar to how your spark plug wires in your engine are to keep it neat) and would enter through the left side of the 4U cases. After passing through the blocks, it would go straight out the right side and into a PVC tube (I was serious about the clear tube) that would be a half foot taller than the top rackmount and would stretch to 6" from the floor (it would be bolted to the rack itself). At the very bottom of the PVC tube I would have a butterfly valve spigot for draining (this would be the fill point and the airtrap ... the res the pump is in would be flush full with water ... this would lead to extremely easy filling/draining, which would be essential in a full parallel rackmount like this). The vertical tube would allow the coolant from the various systems to mix and temperature normalize a bit before, 1ft from the bottom it would have three or four exit points leading to a parallel radiator array. The four radiators would bleed into the top of the res that contains the pump (in reality either a NPU1800 (800 or so GPH at 12ft at 3/4") or two NPU500s feeding two 3/8" lines each. Either way I'd have plenty of pumping power ... the system would be setup for strict pushing by the pump ... once the water is forced through the blocks, gravity takes over draining the water through the radiator array. The base would be a 19" cube that would contain the radiators all next to each other and the res. I would probably seal around the rads with a homemade rubber gasket and use 6x120mm fans on a pot. array for tuning ... and I would definitely use a power supply for just the fans and the cathode that I'd have to put down there (since the bottom box would have to be homemade, what is the harm in making it out of acrylic, since a cube with a large hole in the front and back won't be too hard). The res that the pump(s) would reside it would be made out of more of the clear PVC (5" if I can find it) or I would modify a five gallon bucket. Whichever way I'd go, I'd have a drain spigot on the bottom of it as well. One other thing to note is that I will only use PVC pipe in the bottom. I will have no hoses down there. Once it assembled, it will be finished and permanent, since I don't want to worry about hosing troubles in the heart of my unit that could hurt all four computers. To further increase the ease of assembly and disassembly, I would include butterfly valves on each side of each case to seal it off in the off-chance (or certainty) that I would have to remove it from the rack for some OC lovin'.

I am actually planning on doing something like this in the future, depending on how my wife's schooling goes, and my new contract database design business works out (on the side on top of my sysadmin hell). I would use one machine (my slowest) for a general network server (FTP, HTTP, fileserver), one for gaming and database work, one for my wife's schooling and eventually her teaching stuff, and the fourth (the top) would be whatever hobby box I'm screwing with at the moment. Since my wife and I have our desks next to each other, I can string a USB hub to each desk for hot-swapping mouse/keybd, I would just hot-swap my monitor for when I need to switch machines (though I'd probably pick up a switch to make it easier). Naturally, the top shelf of the tower would contain all of my networking gear, and one of the faceplates of one of the machines would have to have an LCD screen ... the problem is that I'd want the temp data for all four machines as well as the water to be displayed, and I haven't found an LCD to do that with. All in all I expect this project to swallow about $1000, but once it is done, I will have a framework that I won't have to screw with for a very long time.

I may post a diagram of this idea if you guys want.