Worklog: External Watercooling Enclosure

Scope: To created an external enclosure for my watercooling parts.

Design: A square base made of aluminum angles, with an aluminum plate for the floor.
Use clear acrylic for the walls and Lid (fasten lif with hinges).

Parts: Voyeurmods quad 120mm heatercore
Swiftech MCP-655 Pump (liang brand)
Typhoon 120mm Reservoir in UV blue
Fortron Mini PSU 200watt (to power fans lights and pump)
Sleeving in UV blue
Hydrx UV green coolant
Misc Hardware from MCMaster-carr (edge molding, Rubber foam padding, clamps etc...)
4x Evercool Aluminum 120mmx25mm Fans 79CFM, 12V @ 31dB.

On to the pics:

Heres my fortron PSU:


The fan Controller that will power 4 fans and the UV lamps:


Sleeving some wires in the kitchen:


Quick Mockup:


Mockup with the UV lamps going ,tad blurry...:


To the garage! Space heater to keep em warm in the 20 degrees, right next to my 2004 Lightning:


Get another mockup going after I get my aluminum plate cut:


Drilling the Angles in prep for secureing the base together:


Got the base completed with the first bolts holding it together:


Radiator and shroud out! the thing is huge! but lighter than I thought. Voyuermods.com had sucked packaging, they

didn't even tape off the barbs on the pump and rad!


Got the shroud and fans mounted with some of that rubber foam to provide more of a height to the shroud and air

insulation:


Got the parts in the base in another mockup of their placement:


Starting to drill and cutout the damned 1/8" plate with a drill and jigsaw. Let me tell you it is a pain i nthe ass

with a hand held jigsaw cutting through 1/8" alunum plate, go 1/16" if you want to acomplish the same thing:


Thats all for now. I'll be getting my acrylic in on monday (todays sat). Sunday I'll finnish cutting the base plate and drilling the holes necessary for the pump mounting and psu mounting! Maybe think of how I'll make some feet on this thing.
I'm not sure how I'll make vents for the air to come in/out through the inside/top of the enclosure yet... but the fans wil lbe sucking air in through the bottom.

Questions, comments? log into my forums and ask away, no email authorization registration required: http://forums.unoid.net/

good luck! subscribed

So far, this is sex.

I like the quad fan heatercore. I want to see your results with this thing =O

b0h!

Couple additions, Couldn't sleep, so I decided to waste 1.5ft of tubing and some 70% isopropyl alcohol and distilled water to flush the rad and pump out and test the res for leaks.

Here ya go:




Those fans sure do pull some nice air through the bottom of the radiator.

They're also kinda loud at 12V. but near silent when the fan contorller pus them all the way to low, 5-7V.

Aye the fans are a little on the loud side, I have my 2 running at around 5V and it's the happy medium

Keep up the great work, I like where this is going!

Yeah, good man - It's looking good!

Looking very nice. Be sure to post some temperatures when you are done...I am curious as to how well the quad core works in comparison to a dual 120 heatercore in most cases.

I pretty much got the entire base and mounting done for my project. All that really is left is working with the

acrylic and mounting the reservoir and fan contorller and power switch.
I should get the acrylic work done by tuesday or wednesday.

On to the pics!

I got the plate cutout done and mounted the rad up to check bolt alignment:


I used a steel wire attachment on my dremel to get a brushed aluminum look:


A finished brushed look with some SVt logo for fun


Got the whole base bolted together and brushed the visible sides of the angle aluminum:


I had to come up wit some way to mount the psu so the fan can have a vent hole in the acrylic and a hole for the

power cable:


Now I have everything mounted!


Heres a quick mockup with proper fan controller and res placement:


Another but with dark shot to show the UV fun!


I'll post again in a couple days when I get to working with my acrylic!

Whole enclosure body needs work to be done, but the gist of it's progressing nicely. I guess the final temp results will be the tell-all as compared to the more widely-avail dual 120's...

Interesting build, I'll be watching this one for sure...........

man that's a huge rad! good idea, hopefully it works out for ya.
Are you gonna use QCs to hook it up? I don't think I'd ever want an external box without them, too much hassle to move them or take it apart...

I wasn't plnning on QC's but I've thought about them, they seem like trobule connecting and disconnecting... Either leaking some coolant, or getting air into hte loop when you connect/disconnect.

I've used QC's for the past year and a half or so and have yet to have a problem with them..................

I got to working with the acrylic. I cut the acrylic with a skillsaw with a

plastic/metal blade with many many teeth. My cuts were perfect however... I

should ahve gone to lowes and paid them to laser cut everything for me.
If you are gonna work with acrylic make sure to have it laser cut, it'll

save you time and it'll look better!

Pics:

Got the acrylic panels mocked up on the box


Getting ready to cut out the power supply hole for cable + fan exhaust:


Here I'm mounting and cutting out the holes for my res:


Dremel cutting (wasn't fun at all!)


Drill bit to cut the hole which will house the on and off power sitch

(green and ground from motherboard 20pin connector:


ANother mockup:


Lid design for air exhaust: I was at a loss on how to do an exhaust for

this bad boy, thought about it for a good 30 minutes... So I said F-it and

did some crap design:


Cutting out the design: As you can tell I got rid of the top and bottom

holes because when I was drilling with my wood bits(should bought acrylic

bits) I ended up making small cracks in the acrylic.. so quick fix, change

design:


Finnished the lame ass design:


Started acrylic cementing, but I screwed up plus the cement wasn't holding

good enough 3/16" acrylic is a tad thick to cement at its edges:


Soo! I went to lowes and picked up some hardware for the feet (fat hexbolts

and capped nuts which will rest the base 1.5" off the ground. and I decided

I'd just bolts the acrylic walls together with angle pieces:


One corner finnished:


all 4 finnished: Doens't look as bad as I thought. I kinda like the bolty

look:


Mocking the lid up top:


so...

Now I'm cementing the 4 joints again while its all bolted up to make the

edges look a bit smoother and add more strength...

Next up I need to use my acrlic hinges and cemeent them to the lid and well

then add the feet and do some finnish sanding and I'll be done!

stay tuned...

Looking good. Do you plan on getting any appliques (sp?) or something of the like to spice up the plexi?

I would imagine that diffusing blue LED light through the sides would look good too.

Just a few suggestions

BTW, what power supply are you using? It looks like the type that I need for my external system (although something even smaller would be good).

PSU:
http://www.directron.com/fsp20050pla2.html

Everyones been asking about it.

Its a pretty good psu except it has 11.76V for the 12V line even w/o the pump running.

I don't wanna have to look for vsense lines on it to mod it with a resistor...

I'm in the process of cementing the hinges to the acrylic lid and body!
The hinges are hideous white, I asked for clear yet got white ones so I'm not happy. I'll prolly spraypaint or brushpaint them black.

Also I'm opting for real watercooling, none of that 1/4" or 3/8" ID tubing or any 90degree angles killing flow like most of these people who like to watercool with that european stuff :P

I looked on mc master carr and their double valve dquick disconnectes were like 35$ for a for a single set (I would need 2)
Thats in barbed for 1/2"ID tubing on both. 70$ for disconnects? hell naw.

Anyone got any links to double valve disconnects for 1/2" ID tubing lemme know. I'll check lowes as well.

Originally Posted by Unoid

Also I'm opting for real watercooling, none of that 1/4" or 3/8" ID tubing or any 90degree angles killing flow like most of these people who like to watercool with that european stuff :P

I looked on mc master carr and their double valve dquick disconnectes were like 35$ for a for a single set (I would need 2)
Thats in barbed for 1/2"ID tubing on both. 70$ for disconnects? hell naw.

Anyone got any links to double valve disconnects for 1/2" ID tubing lemme know. I'll check lowes as well.

I forget the link but you definetly need to check out the "colder" high flow quick disconects. I will never go back. They are a bit pricey, though, as it will cost around $45 for a pair. They are, however, worth it.

They can be found at McMasterCarr and USplatics IIRC.

High flow Qd can be found at:

http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/pro...ookie%5Ftest=1

http://www.omega.com/pdf/tubing/coup...fc12series.asp

Or

http://www.mcmaster.com/

Page 148.

I've also got a few sets not doing anything right now...............

thanks for the links, usplastics dind't have 1/2" ID colder QD's

DOn't you think that QD's will kill flow a little bit? like equiv to having it go through a cpu block? they're obviously not just striaght through 1/2" ID couplings..

http://www.omega.com/pdf/tubing/coup...fc12series.asp

those 1/2" double shutoff's look like, 14$ for a the coupling and plug.
35$ shipped isn't to bad.

Ill hav eot consider doing that , but I doubt I'll ever often have to disconenct or reconnect my waterbox, because the only times i will is to flush the coolant and do a cleaning then refill the system once a year... and having QD's dones't aid in flushing the entire loop...

I looked and they're all 3/8" flow through, so essentially I'm turning my 1/2"ID system bottlenecked to 3/8" ID throug hteh couplings.. I wonder how bad that'll hurt flow, obviously going to waterblocks they restrict flow quick well too..