Project: OMG there's water in your thingy!?

[Dillusion]

So I tried watercooling once....it didnt turn out very well for the most part. I got water all over my wood floores, fried a mobo, and algae ate my video card. With that said, I'm gonna try not to ever do that again

And if you're wondering about the title, when I last attempted to do watercooling, my now ex-girlfriend said 'Oh my god! Theres water in your thingy?!'...and to which I replied 'What thingy, the computer? Yeah, its called watercooling...' And she says 'I dont speak greek what are you talking about?' And that was the end of that conversation...

So instead of trying to cheap out and build a WCing kit from 150$...I'm gonna go the profesh route and buy new things that work properly Starting with the goods:

ORDERED: August 2nd, 2005

www.voyeurmods.com-
Red UV 3 1/2" Floppy Bay Resevoir 3/8"ID Fittings
PolarFLO TT Series Copper CPU Block 3/8" for LGA775
PolarFLO TT Series Copper VGA Block 3/8" for ATI Series Graphics Cards
8' of PrimoFLEX RED UV Tubing

www.dangerden.com-
Black Ice Pro Radioator 120MM BLACK 3/8" Fittings
DangerDen (Swiftech) MCP350 3/8ID Low-Profile Pump
FREE- MCT-5 Non-Conductive Solution (Dont know what this stuff is but it was free!)

So I got my WCing kit pretty set up that should get here by Friday Aug. 5th.

Now I need to get my hardware together, heres what I have now:

Pentium 4 570J 'Engineering Sample' 3.8GHZ 1MBL2
Lian-Li Pc-7B Plus (Dual 120MM + 1 80MM Exhaust)
Enermax Coolergiant 480w PSU ATX2.0
2x120GB WD SATA's
2x512MB GEIL DDR2-533 PC2-4300 Ram

This needs to be ordered on Monday, August 8th, 2005 when I have more money in my PP account:
ASUS AX800XL 256MB Video Card
ABiT AL8-V i945P Chipset Motherboard with uGURU

Now with the case modding, I need to take a stop to Home Depot this weekend. Need to get some rubber washers to silence the fans and window edging molding to cover up the ring of the 120MM fan holes to make it look neat.

I'm thinking of mounting the Pump with two screws and Rubber washers to help with vibrations, under the 3.5" rack upside-down. OR if its low-profile enough, I will mount it inside the rack under the 3.5" bayres.

Work on this should start next monday, just gathering ideas...

 

[Dillusion]

So heres the current setup just sitting out...

The LL Ready for some cutting and drilling..

Making of the front LED's..

Nice uneven hole i made to hide the PSU wires out the back (Going to use rubber edging to hide the roughness)...

Red LED's installed...

Pump Installed upside-down under the 3.5" tray

Radiator in box with about 12 or so rubber washers

Lian Li decided to make the rear 120mm fan space very slim, so i needed to make custom mounts out of spare screws i had in my tray o' screws. Found two chrome motherboard mounts, dremeled them down so the thread on the mounts was only about 4mm long and i use some mini screw end-caps i had from an old thermaltake video card cooler and that held them in tight...

And theres the rad installed with the 120mm fan pulling..

A backside shot

MCT-5 Fluid (was free with 100$ order, so i beat)

Shot of the inside front, 120mm fan with rubber washers installed, and the pump installed with the HD cage..

and a front shot from the uh...front.

Thats it for now, im waiting on polarflo to send me my damn blocks, and my overnight package from newegg with my P5LD2 and my ASUS X800XL, more pics when they arrive!

 

[DarkenReaper57]

Nice work! Keep it up!

 

[Dillusion]

Small Update:

PolarFLO STILL hasn't shipped my blocks out Waiting on those to arrive...

Just placed an order at zipzoomfly.com for an ASUS P5LD2 and an MSI RX800XL. Meanwhile everything is just sitting here on my desk, I'm so eager to get this done! Down with wait times....

 

[zoidberg3001]

i like the idea of using board mounts for ya rad. keep it up man!

 

[Majin]

That is looking nice, keep it up!

 

[Dillusion]

In the meantime of waiting for the blocks and card/mobo to arrive, I had a series of genius strokes...

I decided to take the enermax 80MM adjustable speed fan from the blowhole and integrate its speed controller into the front panel of my case. This worked out very well and was a fun little project. I found a button/knob from an old vantec nexus fan controller, and some of the washers I was using to silence the fans...

I had to create a custom bracket because the housing would move with the knob if left free-hanging, so I custom built an 'L' shaped bracket out of extra aluminum strips and screws I had laying on the work table..

Onto the pics-

Worktable view, soldering the wires together...

Note the extra white wire and the orange wire, hooked from the speed knob to the fan

Speed controller wires getting elongated...

Pic of the speed controller, knob, and internal knoby thingy

The hole where we will put it

Shot of my expert engineering of "L" brackets

Installed with both screws

Outside shot with knob, washers, and bracket installed...

Well thats it for now, i think im pretty much done until the new parts get here, hurry up fedex!

 

[Dillusion]

Ok so I had this idea last night, not sure if it was good or not- but it was cool! I decided to make a custom CCFL box for two CCFL inverters out of plexiglass. Use two switches, one Molex line, and hardwire a 40mm fan in there to cool them down. All was good....Until the fan's ground wire made contact with the 12V red wire. OH NOES!!!!11 And i blew a NPN Transistor, gotta resolder one in today

And the UPS man came! I ran to my front door and grab the waterblocks from the doorstep....Only to see that polarflo fucked up again! I swear they take the short bus to work every day. Thanks to Brian at voyeurmods.com for straightening polarFLO out and shipping me a new LGA775 block next day air! Amazing service.

Onto pics...

Home depot = Xmas #2!

Cutting plexi the hood way...

40MM Fan Panel w/ fan installed

CCFL inverters mounted

40MM Fan hardwired (And my demise)

See the little mosfet looking transistor on the lower inverter, the top on? Yep, thats the asshole that blew.

And my blocks! (One of which has the wrong top on it

 

[FadedSpark]

[edit] sorry i was being stupid, its not got the LGA775 mounting screen

and temm me how the TT VGA block works when its up and running, i may be getting one

 

[Hard911]

single 120mm Radiator for both CPU and GPU cooling?? you should consider adding another rad or else your temps will be worser than high-end aircooling

 

[Dillusion]

lol you people are obsessed with rad's....You dont need more than one 120MM rad for CPu AND GPU. My GPU is an X800XL which is an 11 micron chip which puts out less heat than a hard drive. So ill be fine for the time being...im not trying to reach like 25c, maybe 35 max.

 

[FadedSpark]

lol you people are obsessed with rad's....You dont need more than one 120MM rad for CPu AND GPU. My GPU is an X800XL which is an 11 micron chip which puts out less heat than a hard drive. So ill be fine for the time being...im not trying to reach like 25c, maybe 35 max.

im obsessed with rads what? im gonna be using a dual heatercore in my setup when i get it... and most likely the same blocks as you (i think same pump too! rofl)

 

[Dillusion]

Finally Done! Heres the pics:

XL and 945 Came in....

The mobo

XL installed w/ Air cooling

Xl block on, w00t!

TDX block on, nice...

Side shot

Frontal

Abstract

Personally, Im not really digging the red tubing anymore. It was supposed to be red UV tubing but low and behold, i was tricked. Thinking of going clear tubing with red UV liquid, we'll see.

 

[Dudeyourlame]

i think it looks pretty good

 

[zapperfish]

go with read uv liqud and the red tubing i think that should look alright, if it works with green and green then red and red should work fine

 

[MrSlacker]

looks very clean! good job man!

 

[AACDIRECT]

Finally Done! Heres the pics:

Personally, Im not really digging the red tubing anymore. It was supposed to be red UV tubing but low and behold, i was tricked. Thinking of going clear tubing with red UV liquid, we'll see.

You might want to look into the red UV dye. Every kind I have tried does not look red. More like a nice shade of pink or orange.