Old Case new Hardware - Dangerden Build

[thesecond]

Dangerden Tower 21 Build

Hi pals, in attempts to defeat my executive dysfunction, I am starting a log. I purchased MOST of these parts in the middle of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and have been running this computer on air since, despite having water blocks and radiators laying around my house the entire time. The goal of this build is to fit a modern watercooled gaming system inside of a "mid size" Dangerden Tower 21. I have "mid size" in quotes, because modern mid size cases are not this small.

Admittedly, I started writing the content for this work log almost a month ago, so many of these photos and posts are not exactly current.


Parts:
5900x with XSPC Raystorm Edge
6900xt with EK Classic 6800/6900xt waterblock in nickel
Patriot DDR4 b-die ram
Asus B550-F
Fractal Design Ion platinum 850w
Western Digital Blue 2 tb NVME
western digital blue 4 tb SSD
Intel x25-m 160gb SSD (lol vintage)
Inte SSD 730 480gb (lol vintage)
Noctual a12x25 fans
EK XE360 Radiator
Monsoon Series Two D5 Dual Bay Reservoir
Phanteks, Barrow fittings
Tygon A-60-G tubing
Phobya 360mm radiator grille
Demciflex filter
XSPC temperature stop plug

 

[thesecond]

Background

I purchased this tower off Ebay in 2014 in an move to downsize from an original Thermaltake Level 10. At the time I wanted to build in memory to Dangerden so I kept as many as my parts on theme as possible, and I wanted an inverted setup. So I mounted a DD Monsoon D5 Reservoir upside down in the bottom of the case, and hooked everything up with Masterkleer 7/16" ID tube stretched over 1/2" DD fatboy barbs with no clamps, with Monsoon lightport angled fittings. I had a monsoon silver plug for biocide, and used distilled, and did zero maintenance work for the entire life of the PC (6 years). I had a xeon e5649 running at 3.8ghz for many years in this setup with an R9 290. Come 2018 my overclock constantly failed as the xeon started telling me that I had cooked it for too long, so it was put to its pitiful stock 2.55ghz.

Old pics from the 2015 build. Hand soldering and sleeving LED's to haveshortened lengths, sleeved masterkleer, the works.

 

[thesecond]

Fast forward to summer 2021.

During the pandemic, I had become tired of my very slow computer as bluescreens started to become more regular, so it was time to upgrade. And it was a great time to cut open all of my water bits and take pictures to show everyone what 6 years of no maintenance looks like.
Tubing had browned, the monsoon reservoir which was mounted upside down had sprung a leak, leaching rust into the loop, the plasticizer of the masterkleer was all over the place, all my fittings were visibly dirty, my copper blocks were black and green, and my silver plug had gone matte. I didnt want to risk contaminating a new loop, or spend any time cleaning my fittings and replacing O rings, so everything has been thrown out into the recycling.

Sadly, at this time, my phone died so I don't have all of the pictures I took. But the gist of it was that the light ports in the monsoon res were caulked into place, and over time leaked very slowly into the LED controller. It didn't even drip into the case, but when i opened it the PCB was almost mush from corrosion - all the traces were gone, and it was loaded with rust and green copper corrosion.

But what I do have is pictures of the tube and the water block. Zoom in on those fittings to see all the white stuff around the threading. Funnily enough, I did not notice any performance issues.

 

[thesecond]

Build Considerations, Case Quirks, Objective, and Design Rules.

When I was shopping in 2021, I noticed that unplated copper blocks were no longer available from anybody, and it was a struggle to get anything due to shortages. On top of that, only a handful of folks offered blocks for the 6900xt, and only one single block was short enough to fit in my case, which was the EK classic. All other blocks were too long to fit with a 60mm rad + 25mm fan in the case. Now with nickel plated blocks, silver is out of the question, and I needed to plan around using a coolant with corrosion inhibitors.

Furthermore, this case is.... challenging. It has a number of quirks to outline which affect all build considerations moving forward.

a. No hidden cable management space whatsoever. This case predates that (I think mine is from 2006?).
b. 6-32 threaded screws and nuts for the case assembly.
c. Case is made of ~8.9mm acrylic throughout., except the side panels which are ~5mm. This means all screws for mounting need +9mm, or 0.35 inches, more than standard case screws.
d. Power switch hole is mounted directly above the 5.25 bays. Standard length 19/22mm vandal switch does not fit. Low profile vandal switch BARELY fits.
e. Case is small - internal space is 14-5/8" or 371mm from front to back, and 6-3/4" or 171mm wide. Exterior is 17-3/8" long, 7-3/4 wide, 21" tall. I'm guessing this is where Tower 21 comes from.
f. There are only 2 available spots for harddrives, and theyre both 3.5". The mounting is very sleek and minimalist, and works by screwing in the drives on one side.

With this and our previous debacle in mind, I can define my build OBJECTIVE:
Get the water system into the case, get the bay-reservoir upright so we don't have another leak situation, and now plan for a system with acrylic+nickel blocks where I'll be able to see everything going wrong and be unable to ignore it.

Design Rules:

1. Everything fits inside of the Tower 21.
This is one of the OLDEST versions of the 21, as evidenced by the box which has almost no markings, and the odd design. The power button is on the top lid (newer ones they'd be on front or back), there is no front panel control system, the "hard drive" mounts are single sided into one wall with no rack, and the 5.25 bay mounts are hangers screwed to the top lid instead of being mounted to the sides. I have modified this tower myself to flip the internals upside down, which I did for two reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, because it looks cool . Secondly the PSU had no support underneath it, only screws to the back wall, so I wanted it to sit on the bottom for my own paranoia, and to lower the centre of gravity of the case.

2. Black hardware throughout. This means screws and nuts. This case came shipped with stainless screws and nuts. Finding black oxide ones proved to be more difficult than I thought.

3. Water cooled GPU + CPU, single loop, bay reservoir, single 360mm rad.
Due to the lack of space within the case, and availability of a double 5.25 bay, I am using a Monsoon D5 Bay reservoir. My previous build used a danger den branded Monsoon res, and I like keeping it on theme . For the radiator, I have an EK XE360, as it dissipates the most heat measured in watts for push-only fans, according to the xtreme rigs radiator roundup. For waterblocks, I have an XSPC raystorm edge (purchased 2021) and an EK 6800 classic because its small. Most 6800/6900 water blocks are too large for my size constraints. The EK Classic 6900 measures in at 297mm long which fits in my case with about 4 mm to spare.

4. Cable management.
All power cables internally will be hand assembled by myself, custom to the case. I have limited space, so many cables will have to be shortened. The exception to this is sata cables, RGB cabling, and my fan radiator riser from Dewire. I have no desire to mess with sata and rgb, and the radiator riser is deliciously convenient.

5. Low Maintenance
Filling, draining, and cleaning this loop has been intended to have the lowest maintenance as possible. Since I have copper and nickel blocks, silver and distilled are out of the question. For this reason I'm using Tygon a-60g norprene tubing, and Aquacomputer DP ultra coolant.

6. Min/max cooling and noise level.
With a lot of heat in a system, and very little space, I need to squeeze every watt of cooling out of this system. I have 93mm clearance between the front wall of the case and the graphics card. The MOST I can fit in that space is a 60mm thick radiator with 25mm fans in push, and with the water block on the card I'll have about 4mm of clearance left. So to maximize cooling, that means noctua a12x25's on an EK xe360 radiator.

Note in my masterful painting below that I say the case thickness is 10mm. This was a mistake because I used a ruler and not a caliper - which will become a problem later in this worklog.

Thats all for today. I'll be back later this week with another post