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Halk's Worklog

H

Halk

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 27, 2007
Messages
139
Nothing to see here. Move along!

I was just about to start a notepad file to tie everything up together, and an excel sheet, etc, but I've decided to go and make a forum thread.

Warning : This worklog won't be very interesting. It's AquaComputer in a Lian Li case. Been done before. And will have been done better.

---

Ok, here's what I have at the moment.

30 months ago I decided it was time for a new case. I exchanged a few emails with Graeme at KustomPcs and decided to get them to cut the case for me. Specifically for AquaComputer watercooling.

The case had several cuts on it.

On the roof there were 3 circular holes made. 1 for an AquaTube res. 2 for switches. On the floor of the case it was cut to take an Evo 240 radiator. And the side panel had 2 windows installed.

Since then there's been a few hardware upgrades. The latest being an Opteron 185 and a BFG 8800 GTX OC2.

Currently the system spec is as follows.

Opteron 185
Abit Fatal1ty AN8 SLi
2 x 1 GB Mushkin Redline
1 x BFG 8800 OC2 GTX
Corsair HX620W
1 x WD 150GB Raptor
4 x Hitachi 250GB
2 x PATA drives (these are going)
1 x DVD combo drive
1 x PCI network card
1 x PCI-E


The new upgrade will add the following hardware

ASUS A8N32 Deluxe

Using the motherboard means 2 cards change. The PCI network card goes. The motherboard comes with 2 network connectors (I have another PC in the house)

And there is only 1 PCI-E connector (other than the 2 16x ones) on the board, so I'll be using a PCI slot for the extra 2 SATA channels. needed. I realise the board has a built in 2 channel SATA controller, but one of the ports is external and the other is on a really bad position on the board.

But that's not all in the upgrade.

I'll be swapping out the Evo 240 radiator, and putting in a ThermoChill 120.3 radiator.

I'll be moving the drives. And I'll be completely and utterly silencing everything.

As far as socket 939 goes, bar SLi, there isn't really anything else that could be done to go faster. I do realise that Quad core is coming for AMD, and Intels is already screaming fast. But I have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm going to make what I have just now the best I can.

So here's the jobs I have to do.

Finalise a shopping list.
Fit and tube the motherboard.
Rip out the guts of the bottom of the case and fit the new radiator.
Fit the drives elsewhere
Fix the AquaStream panel (or replace it)
Sleeve the cables
Work the tubing out.
Install lighting, including lit switches

So there's 3 main sections, as I see it.

1) Motherboard area
2) Radiator area (bottom of case)
3) 5.25 bays

And I'll need to deal with all of them

I'm also intending to put noise dampening material all around the inside of the case, this will make it look a bit better, and it's certainly not going to do any harm to the silence of the case.

So, some pictures are in order.

Here's a view of the case as it is now. (A mess).

Note that I was removing some spyware for a family member, which is why there's a couple of drives sitting outside the case. They're no longer there.

wl1.jpg
 
The first purchase, surprisingly enough was drive rails.

I've spent the past few nights searching around looking for an effective way to silence hard drives.

Cost is becoming an issue, so solid copper ones for each drive (GBP100 each) was out of the question.

I'd looked at racks, hot swap racks, optional case extras, all sorts of things.

Last night at 3am I came across these.

Nexus Disk Twins

Why did I decide to buy them right away and stop looking?

2 reasons.

1) I was sick looking. With conflicting reviews, and no realistic way to tell the difference between products I was going to have to guess at something eventually.

2) The price. The place I got them from was having a clearance on Nexus stuff, and had them reduced in price. I got them for GBP6 each, including VAT. 30 quid to silence and mount my drives. Sold!
 
That pretty much has section 3 tied up, or nearly so.

Back to section 1 and section 2.

Section 2 first of all (Bottom section, radiator)

I've been speaking to Marci over at ThermoChill, using his shop forums. He's an incredibly helpful guy, and he's come up with some suggestions and advice for me.

He showed me how Over Clock fit PA120.3s into the V2000s they sell. They remove one drive rack completely, and move the other one as far left as you can go, so it's flush against the side of the case. By doing this you can fit a 120.3 in the bottom of the case, and keep one rack of drives.

I was going to go ahead with this, but there were a couple of things that stopped me.

1) The case already has holes in the bottom. If I was to drastically change the placing of the radiator then these holes would be useless, messy and may cause problems.

2) The drive rack is not very quiet. It amplifies seeks and vibrations. In short it has to go. I have spare 5.25s coming out of my ears, so I can use those.

The bottom section of the case will contain the following only.

PA120.3
Corsair 620W PSU
AquaStream pump

The spacing between screws on the Evo 240 and the PA120.3 is different. Not a lot different. But slightly different. This means that I may need to do a bit of cutting work on the bottom of the case. I have a rotary tool somewhere. That'll need to get broken out and I'll cautiously do it. Thankfully it's the bottom of the case, so the radiator will cover any of my cockups.

I haven't yet decided where to mount the pump. I'm aware of vibration noise that is easily passed to the case. And despite having decoupling mounts I'm wondering if there's anything else I could be doing. I believe I can completely enshroud a pump, since there's water passing through it, then it's got to be watercooled. That's something I'll decide later.

As for section 1, I did some brainstorming yesterday.

I can fit in all the blocks. A picture I later found at MIPS confirms this. Their 0db version of the A8N32 has blocks on both chipsets, mosfets and CPU.

As far as tubing it is concerned.... hopefully I'll be able to tube it out completely before I strip down this box (it's the one I'm using to type this). This will give me lots of time to get the tubing absolutely perfect. And by perfect I mean incredibly neat, as short as possible.

It seems I may be able to use 45 degree bends on fittings, if that's the case then I should be able to route the tubing a lot better.

I need to double check on this. A poster here by the name of Top Nurse (who is doing a far superior project than mine) will hopefully confirm that the items I've found on sale 10 miles from me are the ones I'm after. If that's the case, then I'll likely switch all the fittings (at least the motherboard ones) for these fittings. They're black, although that's about all I can say about them since plumbers merchants don't tend to put massive jpegs up so people can see how they look close up.

Once I receive confirmation of this I can work out as best I can how the tubing will be routed, calculate how many of each fitting I need (add a couple) and get the motherboard, and tubing ordered.
 
Blocks!

I have not yet made the final decision on what blocks to use on the motherboard.

Currently I have -

Cuplex Pro
Twinplex Sli
Twinplex (not installed)
Twinplex (for GFX cards, not installed)
8800 GTX full cover block
2 Abit Mosfet blocks (most useless thing in the world, they do not reduce temps. I believe this is an Abit thing, since they don't appear to be cooling much). These obviously won't be staying.

I'll likely be swapping out the CPU block for a Cuplex XT DI.

This is a very restrictive block. It pushes the water through tight jets, where it then impacts on the waterblock surface, and is forced through a network of copper pins... it's then drawn upwards and forced down a second time.

The restriction is fine.

My thinking is as follows.

I have 1 component in the PC that I want to cool as much as possible. That's the CPU.
The mosfets, GFX and chipsets do not need the absolute best cooling performance. They just need the heat removed.
The PA120.3 can dispose of heat very well, pretty much regardless of the flow.

So the more restrictive the CPU block is, the slower the water will move, but the lower the CPU temperatures will go.

If I fit all this up and find that it isn't performing as well as it could, then I'll have to replace the pump with something stronger. But I have my fingers crossed it'll do the job. I'm also hoping that moving from 4 phase VRM to 8 phase VRM will

I'll need a second chipset block - or I'll need to investigate how to swap the top on my graphics twinplex or the SLi twinplex. Basically once I have the motherboard I'll need to see if I need to buy another chipset block. I'll hold off ordering the CPU block and mosfet blocks until I know, so I can order them all together.

I'm also not tying myself into Aquacomputer mosfet blocks. They're a bit more expensive and they're aluminium. There's several choices out there (mainly G 1/4 fittings), so I have some choices to make. The Aquacomputer ones however do have plexiglass lids, so they will show the water in it's UV glory passing through. There are copper ones though, and copper looks good too.
 
looks like a good project, that lian li of yours looks pretty busy. Id like to se how the rad fit turns out.
 
It won't look busy when I've finished (I hope....)

And Top Nurse was kind enough to confirm the fittings I'm after.

31330810 45 degree angle G1/8 BSPP connector. Which is what AquaComputer watercooling uses.

Looks like I'll be replacing all the fittings with these so everything matches.
 
As I said in the first post. This is mainly for my use. So please excuse how rough this diagram is.

This is me trying to work out the tubing for section 1.

a8n32-plan.jpg


Trying to decide how many fittings I'll need. The difficult thing will be working out how many right angle hose to hose connectors I need. But that should be all the fittings I need.

Also on there in blue are all the wires that will be on the motherboard. I'm reasonably pleased that most of them are at the edges, and none of them pass across the top of the motherboard.

The only wires not showing there are the two 6 pin PCI-E ones. They unfortunately seem to have to pass right across the face of the board. I think I'll just have to use the bar between the windows to sellotape or otherwise hold them so they are neat and flat. A slight silver lining in that cloud is that they will pass over the top of the 24 pin and 4 pin power connections to the motherboard, so they may not look that bad.
 
Well, it's time to get things moving.

First things to buy will be the blocks, motherboard and fittings.

Having looked more at the fittings it seems the 45 degree ones are fully plastic (where the water touches them). The other fittings that are sold are nickel plated brass, and look rather different. Given that these are pneumatic fittings, for air, I see no real gain by moving away from the standard AquaComputer fittings since they aren't going to match the 45 degree fittings no matter what I do.

One option is to key the 45 degree plastic and paint it. It's questionable if I'l get a finish even similar to the normal fittings.

I needed 7 of the 45 degree ones, adding an extra for safety and it turns out cheaper to buy 10 (because of the bulk discount).

So this gives me some spare 45 degree fittings. I guess I can take one of these and try to get it painted to a similar colour as the rest of the fittings. If it all goes pear shaped, I'll throw it in the bin.

So the job for this afternoon, while I'm slightly hungover, is to get a shopping list prepared for not just section 1, but section 2 and 3. A full shopping list as far as I'm aware of everything I need. Reason being there's no point buying half of it and running out of cash. I need to find out if this is affordable.

Edit : Holy crap. Buying direct from AquaComputer is CHEAP :)

Buying just the XT DI and paying delivery costs works out cheaper than buying from the UK. In addition they sell a lot of the other stuff I'll be needing. So they'll get the whole order.
 
Well, I have all the stuff I need answered answered... almost. The only thing I'm waiting on is a response from AquaComputer about the 3.5 inch bay mount and replacement AquaStream.

The replacement means I can "overclock" the pump, and it also means I can mount the face plate properly, since the old bay is a bit damaged.

So far this worklog has consisted of me just buying stuff off the shelf. That'll change when the stuff comes in. At that point it's about how anal I can be about being neat and tidy with everything. And also about the little enhancements I make.

One of them I think is going to be in decoupling the pump.

I have decoupling screws. It's essentially two screws in a piece of rubber, head to head. But they haven't worked as well as I had hoped.

So an idea hit me. Why do I have to stick with just one set of decoupling screws?

So I'll be buying another set of them, and attaching the pump to an intermediary piece of metal/wood/and attaching that to the case. So it'll have two decoupling sections to go through rather than one.
 
Everything (that I currently think I need) is ordered, with the exception of distilled water, and the metal I'm going to use to double decouple the pump.

The metal I will scavenge from somewhere, and the water I'll get in a garage or halfords or something.

I now have less money than sense!

Deliveries should start arriving tomorrow, with the drive mounts, on wednesday the motherboard, radiator, and the 45 degree Legris fittings, and probably by the end of the week for the AquaComputer order if it's all in stock.
 
Adidas4275 said:
AC stuff is soooo $$$$

but it looks great
Click to expand...

Well, a great deal of the cost is not related to watercooling. And for the watercooling I'm replacing about 2/3 of what I have, so the high price is unavoidable.

It _should_ be worth it I think, when I get it finished. It really will be silent, and by silent I don't mean quiet, I mean really properly silent.

As far as stuff arriving... the motherboard and the radiator have arrived. The AquaComputer order is still processing, so fingers crossed I'll have that in a weeks time. Unfortunately everything hinges on everything else, and it'll be my main PC, so it'll need to be done all at once.

This weekend wasn't a good one to do it in anyway, I've a stag night (not mine!) coming up and a list of things I need to get done. I work mon-thurs, with little time in the evenings. So all going well I can start this tomorrow, and I'll have friday, saturday, sunday to get everything done. Best I'll be able to do is when the AquaComputer stuff arrives is get the motherboard blocks installed.

The camera will be coming back out when all the stuff has arrived :)
 
Thought I'd best say this project isn't dead.

I'm still waiting on the AquaComputrer order - they haven't even bothered to email or phone to explain why it's delayed.

Having said that it really isn't the case that I've been patiently waiting. I did have one weekend set aside for the upgrade, but that's long passed. Since then every weekend has been already booked in advance.

The next free weekend is the August bank holiday, and we're trying to find a nice hotel in the Lake Distritct, so to be honest this upgrade will be done at a random time.

Hopefully AC will send it next week, but I'm almost at the point of phoning and shouting at them.
 
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