Project Goliath - 70+ pounds of H2O goodness!

[starbuck3733t]

Final coat of jbweld on the back plate.


Closeup of the edge of the hole, see diagram legend below image.

The RED arrow is pointing to where the profile of the material meets the top (light gray is the edge of the hole, darker is the top bit). The GREEN is pointing to the JBweld that's been built up. The BLUE is pointing to the metal that's supporting the jbweld (the original plate.)

I hope to sand this down for the last time tommorow night. The next step, obviously, is taking a day off of work to make it to the powdercoater. I'm pretty confident they can powdercoat over the gray 'stuff' that's on the rest of the frame. And they can't, it'll probably come off in the 400*F oven. So keep your fingers crossed... maybe you'll get a few interesting surprises in the 2 weeks that this is going to be at the powdercoater.

[starbuck3733t]

1 black radiator: complete. Used rustoleum protective enamel: good stuff! I didn't have to prime the radiator to use it, it adhered nicely.

Looks like I'll be going to the powdercoater on nov 6 or 7.

[starbuck3733t]

third 120mm Alu frame L1A all polished up.

[starbuck3733t]

Thanks Broots!

I know I've been slow as of late, call me unmotivated or whatever. Things have been getting better, so I've been more in the mood (or is it mod?! ) to work on things.

I polished my dangerden radeon block tonite. Now only if I had a radeon to put it on :P

First up: raw block straight out of the baggie from dangerden, kinda nasty.


After 220 wet-dry, took out the dents that the factoring lapping left.


After 400 wet-dry, gettin there kinda sorta...


After 1000+1500 (eh I was out of 800) pretty smooth, but not pretty yet.


After 8 or 9 passes with Brasso. Mirror, anyone? Excuse the crap on the plexi, I didn't notice it till i offloaded the pics... probably enamored by the shiny bits


That's all. Let me refresh the todo list:
Integrate modders mesh into intake hole for the radiator (~90% complete, needs to be primed)
1 Touch fan-bus (schematics started)
1 touch light-bus (ditto)
power distribution system for mods (scrapped, or falls under above.. dunno)
lighting mods (Radiator lighting done)
custom stainless steel feet? (going to Erie this weekend, might happen)
window designs? (Gigantic DESIGN BLOCK HELP!!!)
Convert pump plug (Done)
Smooth back plate (done)
Polish Blocks (done)
Polish 3rd L1A (done)
Relay system for PSU (machine wont turn on unless pump is active)
Custom front bezel involing
*stealthed slotload
*stealthed CDRW
*see-through to 10K RPM HDDs
*lighting mods for activity lights
*system health
*VFD

A pretty good dent. things should pick up when I actually have a chassis to work with

[starbuck3733t]

Okay dokay, I just got back from dropping the frame at the powder coater. The synopsis is that they're concerned about coating the jbweld on the rear plate, but if they do a negative charge spray on it, it should be fine. Everything else is getting positive charge spray.

I've picked out two colors, one wrinkle coat black (RAL 9005) and one high gloss black (also RAL 9005). RAL is the color standard that the powdercoating industry uses. He also informed me that they have a (VERY EXPENSIVE) glow in the dark powder coat! Pretty cool stuff!

I really wish I had taken my camera with me, it was a very neat operation. At Nittany Powdercoating, Ed Lundy, the man I spoke to was very, very nice and also highly informed of how things worked. He had no problem explaining the details of powdercoating to me.

We went out and did a parts count of all the bits for the project, 12 to get gloss black, 9 to get texture coat. I said that he'd need to plug any threaded hole, with the exception of the large threaded holes in the 4 long rails that run front to back, no problem. Apparently, the plug them with various different sized tapered silicon plugs. The plugs are good to 600 degrees before they'll start to burn.

The process for my parts will be a 400*F burn off oven, and then a solvent tank. Some of the parts will need to have where I marked them in permenant marker sanded off, but no biggie there.

Time table to recieving chassis back: 1 to 2 WEEKS

Yippee!

Here are some pics.

For my reference, how the drive cage area attaches to the rails.


These are all the parts that get high gloss black: 3 drive cages, 3 sets of HDD rails, Expansion card/mobo plate, PSU plate


These are the parts that get the crinkle coat black: MOBO plate, rear plate, front plate, drive cage (L+R)


The whole shabang just before it went in the trunk of my car.


Believe it or not, the Powder Coating place (Nittany Powdercoating) is like 5 minutes from my house. Sorta hard to find (I messed up the first time) but really nice and close. If this comes out like the samples/works in progress i saw (which were really great) I'd definitly recommend him to any of my fellow modders.

[starbuck3733t]

Well, I'd have to say that the results were mixed. Not because of the work done by the powdercoater, but because of not giving proper instructions.

The drive cages, PSU bracket, drive railes, and mobo back plate got gloss black. Everything else got textured flat black.

1.) JBWeld will survive the bake oven, not the burn off oven (800*F, as opposed to 400*F, JBweld only good to 600*F)
2.) They did not burn off my parts
3.) They DID hot acid tank them. removes grease BUT NOT DEBRIS.
4.) The JBweld outgassed (hence it looking like ass in the pictures below) during the powder bake. All the other parts came out VERY nicely.
5.) The dimensions were altered a bit, so a rubber mallet is a good thing to have during reassembly.

Onto the pictures! other than the back plate, which is probably going to get some custom plexi work (decorative, functional) to hide the ugly bits.

They wrapped all my parts up individually in industrial cling wrap when they were done coating them.


Gloss black RAL9005 epoxy. Note the reflection of my workbench in the front of the drive caddy. SWEET.


Back plate. All the unevenness was caused by the outgassing of un-reacted compounds in the jbweld during the baking process :waah: :eeek: :waah:

[starbuck3733t]

But here's the bright side, PURE SEX BLACK and LOTS of it!

[starbuck3733t]

Installed my drives and my cages. This required some bending the two pieces that make up the drive cage recievers. The powdercoat altered the dimensions enough for the already VERY tight cages to become impossible to insert w\o modification. Believe me, I had to use combination of rubber gripped plyers and a small hammer to get my slot load DVD back out . No problem though, as its rated for lots of non-operating shock :duh: :P



Nice reflection of my camera above the dvdrom. The drive rails and cages all got gloss black while the rest of the case got matte black. The gloss shows finger prints, but the flat textured doesn't show them nearly as easily.


PSU plate. Lovely contrast between flat black and gloss.


Check out the reflection in the bottom of the PSU (Painted a few months ago, obviously). The mesh and all the black, all the reflections, its all just melting into one. Look into the black and see nothing /wierdvoice.


Installed my drives. Even with the rubber dampers installed in the case they are still a bit noisy, so somewhere down the line I'd like to make a hard drive waterblock, as well as an enclosure w\ lots of sound insulation to house them.



Comments??? Feedback please

[starbuck3733t]

Since I'm waiting (I hate this fsck()ing waiting game) for my 3.06B P4 chip to arrive, I haven't done a full restuff of the chassis. I did do some wire management (aka fun with zipties) and reinstall the motherboard, though.

Wires ziptied into the back of the mobo tray, and useless lines hidden. I didn't clip it because as long as I've had this PSU... well, its sentimental. Why cripple a perfectly good (and in fact, my first respectable) PSU for future use when I can just hide the cable.


120mm Polished Aluminum L1A installed w\ E-A-R mounts (obtained from mcmaster-carr). These were a piece of cake to install once I sprayed them down with some of my high-viscosity silicon. Its the same stuff I use in my paintball gun, doesn't wear away like oil.


Believe it or not, my NIC is under the SCSI card. Nice and small


As you can see, the SCSI card is green . The nic is a light shade of blue, but you don't see it. I'm not sure if there are enough heat-producing components on the SCSI card (Adaptec 29160) to screw things up if I were to apply some faux carbon-fiber vinyl to the back of it. Or maybe I'll make a plexi shield that sits on top of all the expansion cards. Who knows... more ideas to percolate.

I hope you enjoyed this (tiny) update

[starbuck3733t]

Well, it seems that my last update (albeit a textual one) was eaten due to a database outage on bit-tech. So, instead of retyping the status then, I'll give you the update on status as it stands now.

I am currently overclocked to 3.611GHz (23x157) at 1.625 Vcore. even If I bump it up to a 1.675Vcore I cannot go any higher, and i've changed the CPURAM ratio down to 5:4 so my memory is only going at 126MHz, so I know it is not the culprit as its PC2400. (Well, it is until I get my 2x 256MB mushkin black hi pref II 2-2-2 timings!)

Temps are WONDERFUL. Speed fan keeps the radiator fans and exhaust fan nice and quiet until things get warm. It works so well I think I may do away with the fan control on the touch bus, save for having it flip between AUTO (Speedfan) and FULL (12V). This would make 2 channels: 1 for the exhaust, 1 for the rad fans. The touch bus would still control the lighting in the manner outlined earlier in this thread.

Oh yeah, temps, temps... almost got derailed there. With water up to temp (pump running 24 hours plus, full load torture)
33*C idle
42*C load (prime 95 torture test, max power setting)
17*C ambient (measured by my indoor, outdoor themometer)
22*C water (full load)
18*C water (idle)

I've been fiddling around with cathode placement lately, and it's been very frustrating! I can't quite hide the cathodes and get the illumination i've been wanting. So what I'm doing now is giving the photoshop file to my graphic artist friend for some 'virtual modding'! I wanted to avoid attaching the cathodes to the side panel, but it now seems to be un-avoidable. I just can't hide them in the frame and get good illumination.

I also tried to install both my opticals last night, but my 29160 keeps bitching about improper termination. I have the last drive terminated, the first drive unterminated. However, as soon as I pulled out a spare u160 terminator and put it on the end of the chain and w\ only 1 optical (2 position cable), all was well. I'm blaming it on cheap cables for now. I've ordered a 3 position cable from SVC, just in case i need the third position for the terminator.

Routing the u160 cables is fun too, as I need as much length as possible to stay neet by running down along the bottom inside of the case, under the foam that the pump sits on.

This same foam is also occupying the spot I was going to use for my UV cathode... I SWEAR I'll post pictures tonite of my wiring woes.

I'm too darn anal retentive about appearence.

[starbuck3733t]

OMG! An update!

Thanks to all of you who commented, both those whose replies still stand and those whose replies were lost during the bit-tech outage.

Anyway, I haven't put up an update since I restuffed the case with all the components, and my new 3.06HT chip. So here it is (from my premium uploadit account, even!)

Fully stuffed, a bit messy if you ask me What do you all think?


Back end of the case, note the SCSI cables at the bottom, particularly the rightmost one. It wasn't long enough and generally isn't playing nice. Rather miffed about that.


The front of things. More messy, even though things are all sleeved up. My power wire managment leaves something to be desired :miffed: The white line to the rightof the radiator is the line up to white CCFL #1. I haven't installed the second one yet.



This, on the other hand, looks pretty good. My tubing has gone cloudy again, though . My 120 rear exhaust plugs into the northbridge's connector because I can control that connector (and the CPUFAN connector) with SpeedFan!! Speedfan Rocks! Why are the wires so long? In case I want to stretch them up to the front of the case eventually.


Radiator fans, you can just see to the left where the sleeved wires come out and go back up to the CPUFAN connector on the board.


With the pump out of the way, you can see some of the clutter that the SCSI cables cause, as well as the power connectors being unruly. I need to do something about that.


And the savior, hopefully, of the tubing. Hyperlube supercoolant, which wont leave a mess like waterwetter, and still provides corosion resistance (like antifreeze).


The astute among you may have noted that the system is relatively empty in the hyperlube picture... that's for a good reason. My bloody pump intake fitting, even with plenty of PTFE (teflon) tape leaked a bit overnight. Bummer, but no harm since the machine wasn't running (no RAM!)

I'm going to go play with my lighting again and hopefully figure out some of the wiring issues. I still have to replace the SCSI cable due to the issues mentioned in my last post.

Suggestions on cleaning up the looks of things? Pwease

[starbuck3733t]

Okay, I said I cleaned up some of the wiring, so bear witness! I think it looks much better now. I'm starting to feel good about this project again! Now where's that misplaced $600US for my video card and ram :eyebrow:

Anyway...
Notice the single string of molexes running the drives. Much better. I tied up and hid the spare 3 connectors for the u160 SCSI cable under neath the bottom drive bay. I still haven't put my 2nd optical back in, for the reasons mentioned in the posts above this one


Wow. The blue towel I had under the case was really making things look arse-tackular. With the Akasa paxmate sheets in to accompany the thicker packing foam for the pump, things look much cleaner.


Close-up of the tiding. You can see my spice where I put in the (white ARG!!, wont take dye) 90* molex connector. I also spaced the drives apart to give them slightly better ventilation for the time being. When I get my next set of richco anti-vibration mounts, or built the silencing enclosure for the 10K SCSIs, I'll be installing a 120GB fluid-bearing maxtor in that empty spot.


And for those who would like to try their hand at making me a side window...
A layered photoshop file of goliath (pre-powdercoat)is available (1.86MB). A new one will be made as soon as I figure out how to steady the camera again, can't remember how i did it the first time.

If you want all 20MB of the hi-res, we'll have to figure out a better way of transferring it!

I'm also noticing something,my finepix 3800 seems to distort the images I shoot slightly, a mild fisheye effect. Wierd.

On the subject UV lighting, it looks like I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go to smaller 4" UV CCFLs to fit them inside the case. I just can't position the big 12"s where I need them. Oh well. That and the new SCSI cable will be ordered from SVC as soon as I get paid :judge:.

That's all, please email any mods you make to my photoshop file (once you zip it back up) to starbuck3733t AT adelphia D0T net, mmmk?

I'm looking forward to seeing what my fellow modders can do to that file! Let your imagination run wild.

Comments? Questions? Insults?!?

[starbuck3733t]

I appreciate the work ya'll have put into the window designs, but I think ya'll need to think more organic. Think tatoo designs and flowing shapes. Try to use the front side of the case too, seeing the drives/cages WONT be boring. I'm gonna put something interesting in there... I just dunno what it is yet

I gave the PSD to my graphic artist friend this morning, we'll see what he comes up with when he's got a block.

Reviewing the topic I noticed something! I failed to change the URL on one of my pictures in the last picture-update, so here's the picture (I already uploaded it, just failed to reference it!) and the text that was supposed to go with it but went with the wrong picture!

close-up of the tiding. You can see my spice where I put in the (white ARG!!, wont take dye) 90* molex connector. I also spaced the drives apart to give them slightly better ventilation for the time being. When I get my next set of richco anti-vibration mounts, or built the silencing enclosure for the 10K SCSIs, I'll be installing a 120GB fluid-bearing maxtor in that empty spot.

++ And yes, I'm still looking for a black cap for the res.

[starbuck3733t]

***CARRIER DETECTED***

I'm not dead! Neither is this project.

I've been on christmas vacation, if you could call it that. My GF and daughter have been very sick since the beginning of my christmas time off. Today has been given to me as a day off as GF/daughter have gone to GFs moms house since Starbuck has been playing Mr. Mom for the past week. So I get 2 days of my vacation back, yay me!

On Dec 29 2003, this lil present arrived for me from my faaavvorite store:

Mmmm MUSHKIN! 2x256 PC3200 black hi-pref level II (whatever that means) all I know is that it runs 200MHz at 2-2-2-5! That's some fast ram!

After installing the ram, and before I filled everything back up, I had to clean things out.


I have a bucket I installed a barb into, and I remove the return hose to the res and put it in the bucket. I T-fitting'd the inlet to pull from the res and the bucket, but in hindsight that wasn't really needed.

I ran an entire big bottle of pinesol and 1/2 a bottle of lysol through the loop for 3 hours. Most of the cloudyness on my tubing is gone, once again. Hopefully running the hyperlube supercoolant it will stay that way.

I refilled the loop and there were no leaks, so I fired the system up and to my surprise, the idle temp was at 31*C!! Load temps in prime95 still seem to be 41*C to 38*C or so, so it may just have been that the water wasn't up to idle temperature yet.

Also, the tinnnnny bubbles and foam that the hyperlube created take forever to dissipate. about 5 hours later they're about 1/2 way gone. I suspect they'll be all gone by morning.

The system is now running prime95 torture and 3dmark2001 looping for good measure. I bumped the FSB up another notch and so far the system has made it at lot longer at 23x159 than it has before. Maybe the ram was the ticket.

Crossing my fingers and hoping to be able to run 23x161 for 3.703 GHz... getting to an even 3.7 would just be so sweet. if the ram will let me go higher, that's good too.

That's all for now. I'm saving my $$$ for a radeon 9800 pro now, now that the ram is taken care of. I'll revisit the top mesh intergration when my patience level returns to normal.

[starbuck3733t]

I'd always made provision for this mod, which I've now actually completed. Here is what the extra (non-fan) hole I made in the backplate was for.

I ripped the male power connector out of a dead/dying PSU and modified my eheim 1250 to use it instead of standard plug. This way I just plug a standard power cable into the plug and my pump is active. This was really easy, just my soldering iron and wire clippers.

I took so long to do it because I was originally going to use a 120V relay (normally open) to open or close the green wire on the ATX power connector. With the pump not plugged in, the green wire would have been an 'open' and the machine would not have been able to power up. Keeps you from powering up w\ out coolant flow. I couldn't find any 120V relays (well, 120V coil relays) locally so I've postponed it for now. I may or may not revisit it... Ideally I'd like to get a flow switch but they're shockingly expensive!

Okay, pics.

[starbuck3733t]

Thanks for all the compliments again... I have to figure out something with the pump eventually. It will probalby just get wrapped in sound isolation foam, though.

My radeon 9800 pro (sapphire, black PCB OEM version!!!) got here on monday. I just got the waterblock on it tonite. Sweeeet. Here are the details.

Yes, I was so excited that I didn't even shoot a pic before testing it out w\ the fan, uninstalling it, and removing the fan. Diehard!


Now sapphire calls this a thermal paste install? No wonder it got so darn hot! (bad contact)


Ahh, claned up, that's more like it.


Mounting studs. Dangerden shorted me on nylon washers (or maybe I just didn't need htem on both sides of the board. Better safe than sorry, so I used electrical tape on the compoennt side.


Studs on the backside of the card.


Closeup of backside studs, the white thing is a plastic washer.


A few minutes later, some AS3, and some thumb screw tigthening later, she's installed.

[starbuck3733t]

Mmmm. blocky.


Cool.


Used the same trick I always use by cutting the tubing to approx. length, and putting it in boiling water. Bends like a wet noodle.


Installed and all is well... almost. Rage3D Tweak (the overclocking util) doesn't play nice with the cat4.1 drivers I'm using. Details Here.

I spoke with Spiv about the 'cover plates' for the back tonite, and cutting them/engraving them isn't a problem. I need to finish the artwork that goes on them, but here's the gist of it (the shapes of the plates). They go over where the powdercoat looks crappy in the back.

Plate for around the power plug


Plate for around the rear 120mm exhaust (it will have designs on it, like the Ars logo!)


CAD done in Qcad.

Requests
What the HELL is the paint code for Toyota's carbon blue metallic. Sherwin-Williams says its 0210 (iirc), toyota's site says 0210, but mnpctech's guy who uses PPG says he's never heard of it

if there are any Germans reading this, could I paypal you a few Euro for a bit of ACFluid from aquacomputer? PLEASE?

The last big ticket items:
The painting
The VFD
The Front bezel cad work

Just got my Qprox ICs this week, need to sit down for a few hours and design a 'sparse mesh' and crap to light them, etc.

[starbuck3733t]

<font size=5>OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG</font>

Pug (Infidel) OWNZ! He sent me a present! ACFluid and BlooMotion dye

3 pictures are worth 3000 words:

[starbuck3733t]

HDD Block
So, here's the situation. The HDD waterblock is a bust. My design is flawed and i don't have the appropriate tools. So I'm replacing it with this:



SilentStar Dual HDD Cooling block + silencing enclosure.

I also just RMA'd my second (and louder) Atlas 10K III 18.2GB u160 scsi drive. It was waaaay louder than its identical brother, probably a bad bearing. Should have the advance replacement in a few days.

Cover Plates for Powdercoating Fowlup
Thanks to Zittware, and This Thread, I have now sourced the transparent gray plexiglass I needed for the 'fowlup plates'. These plates cover the messups in teh powdercoat that went onto the jbwelded areas of the rear of the case. I should have it in my hands on April the 15th.

Here are the designs: (these are combined CAD dimensions with the graphics to be laser eteched on)

Covering the pump plug area:


And around the rear 120mm exhaust:

[starbuck3733t]

Since I got my SilentStar Dual HDD block for Goliath from Infidel (aka Pug) at Wizard Designs I've had to do some serious reworkings of goliath, including ditching my home-made reservior to get a bit more breathing room in the case. My eheim 1250 is a bit big. Anyway, I did a drain and complete retube of the system on tuesday, which was a huge pain in the ass without a reservior. So, I ordered a round reservior from DangerDen, and did the 2 day shipping option because it was only like $3 more than the standard ground. I'm also stuck on my P166 laptop until goliath gets put back togetehr. I don't dare fire it up, even with the system bled, because the silentstar's fittings leaked a bit and may have wet my HDDs. I can't take the silent star apart w\o draining the system and disassembling the fittings for it, so i'll wait till the res gets here!

Anyway... to my point (blah blah blah): I payed dangerden w\ paypal. for some reason it didn't do an instant transfer like it always has before, it did a e-check. The e-check said uncleared and wasn't going to clear until the 24th! I needed the part YESTERDAY so I called them up, explained the situation and that they could send the cops after me if it didn't clear, and they said they'd ship it out today.

now that's customer service! (No offense to pug, at all). He's still better than them since I'm talking with the OWNER of the biz, not a rep. He says it'll happen, and it does! Since I'm in the US the dangerden route was faster to take than getting an aquatube, and cheaper since I'm slightly strapped for now... I just want to get back to playing far cry!

[starbuck3733t]

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.

[starbuck3733t]

Part II: Long Live the New Res!

This is pretty ordinary actually, it's the bone-standard Danger Den Round Reservoir. I couldn't see spending the money on an aquatube if no one was ever going to see it. I didn't want a 5.25" bay res because I've heard they're a pain to bleed, and my homemade round res served me very very well. I ditched the homebrew res because it was taking up too much room in the case and I never completely trusted it, as it was held together with GOOP and nylon screws. It was also the first thing I made for goliath, so it was sort of a sad moment.

I made the decision to mount it in the 'useless' top 3 5.25" bays. I call them useless because they're too shallow (blocked by radiator/fan/shroud) for any drives. I intend to use the rest of this area for the custom front panel electronics (VFD/touch bus/indicators), so I wanted a 'clear solution'. Enter scrap Plexiglas from work. we make all sorts of crap out of acrylic for displaying books, in addition to other stuff, so we have plenty of scrap. I cut this piece to sit on top of the ears for the drive rails, and used a 2" diameter hole saw to drill a hole for the filler cap to fit through. I also drilled holes for the mounting bolts. In this configuration, the top of reservoir cap is just shy of hitting the sheet metal of the top of the case (when its on). This makes filling the loop super easy! I just take the top off, unscrew the cap, put my funnel in and pour away! No mess at all.

From the top. you can just barely make out the line of the edge of the plexi (which I still need to polish up at some point) at the left.


Shot from the front. The rat’s nest in the rear is my VFD/rad lighting that hasn't been connected to anything yet, and is just floating free. the observant among you notice an evil thing in water cooling: a 90* elbow (on the left side of the picture). I had to use it to get the tubing to route properly . There's also a 90* on the inlet of the pump to make things work properly. If I ever kill my eheim 1250, I’ll get a hydor L30 II, which is half the size but has more head and the same flow as the 1250. I should be able to use it w\o having to use the 90s. 90s on the inlet side of a 1250 are bad, as most procooling testers have observed.


And one more modification to the res, the installation of a thermal probe (which is just a TO-92 packaged 2N3904 w\ the base connected to the collector) for measuring water temp w\ my MAX1668 Thermal Sensor Board. I may still make another mod for UV lighting if I ever find blue glow dye that doesn't come out of solution and cover my tubes in white crap


Part III.a: Installation of the MAX1668 Thermal Sensor Board on ATi Radeon 9800 Pro
Since I'm (trying) to overclock the SNOT out of my sapphire OEM ati Radeon 9800 pro 128 meg (uber rare black PCB edition), I wanted to keep track of how hot the little sucker was getting during gaming. Extended runs of far cry put the GPU at 40*C, and idle in windows puts it at 33*C, all w\ 26*C to 27*C coolant (~72*F environment) How do I know those temperatures??? Lets see:

A bit of Plumbers GOOP on the backside of the GPU. The GOOP is non conductive. My meter registered infinite resistance even at the highest resistance range (20 Mega Ohms) The goop will hold the sensor in place.


The exposed leads, solder joints, and exposed copper wire on the probe were also coated in plumbers goop previously, so nothing will short out. I used my 17 ring/box wrench to hold the probe down while the goop set up (gave it about 45 minutes while I went and watched Law & Order)


And bam, she's installed. Me forget to sleeve something? Oh hell no! (except maybe for the reservoir ) I've got to cut its probe length down a bit and sleeve it yet.



Part III.b: Installation of the MAX1668 Thermal Sensor Board in the case.

I had previously meant to use double sided tape, but I opted for a less permanent solution and used Velcro. The hook side is stuck to the case, and the loop side is stuck to the board. Whatever isn't covered by Velcro on the bottom of the PCB is covered in electrical tape. Also, the powder coat is non-conductive, so there's not much to worry about (keep a keen eye out for an easter egg** in these last few pics.

A view from the top down. I forget why I had the reservoir uncapped.


And a view from the front.


Part IV: EZ-Drain

I had long since been looking for an easy way to drain the system that didn't involve pulling barbs off or pulling plugs, but couldn't ever think of a valve small enough to do so. One day I was outside in the smoker's shack at work, and this rusty old valve was sitting on the table. it reminded me of the tap that you use to install an ice maker on a refrigerator. My friend Ryan and I had just done this a few months ago for my girlfriend, and I remembered that it had a valve: the EZ-Drain was born!



It's a simple little doohickey, one 1/2"ID mending barb from Lowes (be sure to get the kind with a bit of smooth surface in the middle, I think its part A-38something). One icemaker needle valve, also from lowes, a few feet of 1/4" OD (yes, OD) tubing, and the associated compression fittings for the valve. I drilled a hole in the hose mender for the valve, and tapped the hole, as the valve had 1/4" NPT threads on it, and I found the appropriate tap by eye. What I did discover later was that I tapped for the wrong end of the valve! My buddy Ryan had an adapter to make it the right size (that's the bit closest to the mender), so I attached that after adding Teflon tape, and all was well. I threaded the adapter & valve in, and sealed the whole thing up with goop. it passed the pressure test (one thumb over the end, valve closed, blow like hell in the other end).



Part V: Let the JPEGs do the talking

A few new overall shots.





Damn dents.


Cheers/Regards until next time!

[RedPhoenix]

Wow thats a very good case. Great job

[starbuck3733t]

Thanks RedPhoenix!


A whats-going-on-now bumpdate! (yes, I just nomenclated!)

1.) Front panel -
- Design nearly final (still debating on touch sensor integration method (and backlight)
- touch sensor PCB will be seperate from keys. Had to do this for space contstraint reasons
- just dropped $160 on a noritake 128x64 VFD (GU128x64-800A)
- need to correct design for noritake's screen being non-centerline aligned on the PCB (its off to the right by 3mm, no big problem)
- Plastic cannot be cut until Spiv finishes moving (Around aug 6)
- Bottom part of custom front panel will be done in aluminum
- Bottom part of custom front panel will be cut in plastic by Spiv as a prototype
- Bottom part of custom front panel will be cut in 1/8" aluminum plate by mnpctech's waterjet guy

2.) Outer Chassis
- Mnpctech to use PPG paint
- color: Toyota carbon blue metallic
- code: oh shit I've lost the code. Hopefully I posted it in the thread somewhere! (ARGHHH!!!)
- simplistic small rectangular window to be cut by waterjet
- plexi to be lasercut by spiv to match the waterjet cut exactly for flush mount
- CAD drawings still need to be executed for both of these, but should be simple.

3.) Other supporting modifications
- Drives will be modified for external eject (uC control)
- Might do that tonite if I decide to NOT clean my shop and house instead

4.) Touch control bus
- No progress, haven't had time to delve into the coding and hardware of it.
- Need to purchase PIC uC develpment board (from sparkfun!)

[Sysadmin]

Completely mad project mate! I take my hat off to you! The time, the workmanship, and effort.. stunning.

I sincerly look forward to reading the next installment.

Cheers,

SyS


*Sways back and forth - saying: "Come on, Come on! When's the next installment?"*