Project: Tower Prime

Should I build it?

  • Total voters
    47
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formula409

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
311
Total case redesign...these pics minus the hard drive detail is gone with the wind. Scroll down for the new pics. All aluminum 2 to 4mm thick mega tower designed to handle all water cooling needs. These are the sketches to work from. Some things will be changed as it is built.

Oh yeah, Both sides would have windows to see into the case. The side with the Hard drives will have venting.

This shows how the hard drives will go in and the proper fan direction not shown in the other shots. i did not turn the fans in the front around but they will be in the final case.










 
That looks amazing! I do have a few suggestions, though:

1. Add support for a 2nd PSU somewhere, unless you already have. Yeah, it isn't absolutely necessary, but it will be nice if/when video cards demand their dedicated supplies. Then again, PSU's are getting pretty beefy now, so that might not be an issue.

2. The acrylic res above the motherboard and where all of the components sit somewhat worries me. I've used acrylic bay res's before, and it seems like they decide to crack and leak at random times. I've had this happen to me on several occasions. Leaking can be especially bad along the edges of these things as the acrylic glue breaks down over time. If you use one, you may want to consider applying extra sealant around the edges inside, or making an escape path for coolant - maybe an elegant "drip pan"?

Personally, I think a custom aluminum or stainless steel reservoir in place of the acrylic one (and maybe add a window for viewing pleasure) would be awesome. Just be careful about mixing aluminum and copper (as you probably already know). I don’t know if anything would happen if you mix stainless steel and copper.

Other than those two things, I think you should go for it. The design is unique and looks very efficient. Good luck!
 
Yeah, I dont trust acylic much...I was thinking of making it out of glass. I also plan to use all copper tube for the water except where it would join to water blocks and such. Blocks and rads are copper. I thought of a dual PSU setup, but decided to go with one beefy one. With 1200W and soon 1500 watters starting to show from makers...it would keep things a bit cleaner.
 
what size are the fans front/back? Trying to figure out how big this will be. If the rads are in the front won't you be blowing hot air in to the case all the time? Won't matter too much anyway since everything is cooled by water.
 
Shmuckety said:
what size are the fans front/back? Trying to figure out how big this will be. If the rads are in the front won't you be blowing hot air in to the case all the time? Won't matter too much anyway since everything is cooled by water.
Click to expand...

It isn't as much that hot air will be blown into the case, rather a certain heat quantity is being perpetually dumped into the case by the radiators, then pumped out the back of the case into the ambient air. That is, the air temperature flowing in one and and out the other of a radiator won't substantially change, assuming there is good airflow through the fins.

That said, having the radiators placed inside the case will affect overall coolant, CPU, and case temperatures. Pumping the heat to an external exchanger of some sort is almost always more efficient. We can see that formula409's case will have plenty of case fans, though, so I'm thinking that as long as there is ample airflow through the case itself, internally mounted radiators won't affect performance too terribly .

I would even consider running air in reverse direction, pulling cool air in from the back and exhausting warm in the front. Thicker radiators and especially heater cores perform better when the air is "pulled" rather than "pushed" through them by the fan, last I checked (make sure though!). It would also amount to less heat energy dumped across your components overall, since it would only need to travel out through the front. In addition, cooler air has less distance to travel before reaching the critical CPU/GPU region. It is a bit more efficient, imho.

I'm not trying to dock your design btw; I love it. I'm just giving a bit of input though, as you undoubtedly have already spent a lot of time on this and I'm sure you want it to perform the best it can :).
 
Ok..the fans are 120mm. They will be blowing out the front. The rear fans will be sucking in. My current case is a CM Wavemaster which is also sucking in from the back and pulling air out the front and through a top 120MM blow hole and rad. I know that from the picture, the fans are in the wrong direction. I will correct that so that people are less confused. being my own design, I know the direction I want the air to move and didnt translate that in the model.
 
That is very good, love the design. This is gonna be a very big case. Can't wait to see it in progress.
 
Thanks for the input. Sometimes I think I would like to have a smaller case, but the CM Wavemaster is the smallest case Iv ever had. I want this case to make a statement. Im thinking of making the inside look like carbon fiber, use SMD LED's to light the interior from hiden areas, and paint the outside a deep metalic black or dark colbalt blue metalic.
 
Make SURE to get fans that'll spin at 4v! That many fans, even at 5v, will BOUND to be loud.
 
Arcygenical said:
Make SURE to get fans that'll spin at 4v! That many fans, even at 5v, will BOUND to be loud.
Click to expand...

I think 7V or 5V yate loons will do just fine, assuming he is using one of those radiators that perform well with low pressure differential fans :).
 
Iv been completely redesigning the case. I will post the new revision on Sunday afternoon.

The rads being used are optimised for low fan speed. They will be Thermochill PA120.3's. The fans will be sucking the air through to reduce noise and every fan, rad, hard drive, pump, and DVD-RW will be mounted with silicone gromets. Im still up in the air on which fans to use. Iv read to many conflicting reviews on so called quiet 120mm fans. I run my current ADDA's at 7 volts and they are pretty quiet.
 
im assuming your gonna have everything watercooled but the hdd's

in that case, having the airflow reversed could work out well since you could make a mini duct for the fans in the back to dirrect that airflow onto the motherboard and drives were needed (out of plexi me thinks) that way things that need the cooling and dont normally get it like ram get cooling without those annoying little fans everywhere!


i say build it
 
Here is the updat a few days late. I think this is the design I will go with. The hard drives will still insert like the one pic shows.

What do you guys think?






 
The front fans are connected to Themochill PA120.3's and exhaust outward. Air is sucked in from the back. Directing the fans towards themselves would not allow room for the rads unless the case was much wider and exhausting the air into each others stream of air would be inefficient. Thanks for the input though....
 
are you going to be reversing the psu fan? also with all the suction from 6 120mm fans, are you sure you are going to need more in the back, instead of just some well planned vents/openings
 
The front fans will be running at around 7 volts or less if i can and will be low RPM to start. The rear fans will have a higher CFM but the vents should do the trick. The power supply will be fliped and and pull air in from the bottom of the case and exhaust in normal fashion out the back. I do not want to reverse the fan on the PSU which will be in the 1200 watt range and expell alot of heat into the case, and then into the rads. The sides of the case are not shown but will also have some vents placed in the right spots to keep as equal pressure in the case as possible.
 
I really like your innovative fan design. Go for it!

Something else to take into consideration is the front (exhaust) will have more restriction due to the radiators. Even though you have more fans at the exhaust than the intake, it might balance out due to this restriction.
 
Thanks for the input and positive comments. I chose to use Thermochills PA120.3's because they do work great with lower cfm. I figgured with that much surface area, I would get pretty good cooling. I may even make my own water blocks for the CPU, and chipset. Il leave the video card cooling to the pros. Iv always been a fan of nvidia based cards and having using them for years, but Im gonna hold off to see what ATI comes out with next beyond the 2900XT. So far image quality in most games seems to be muddy at best when it comes to shadows and such. the 8000 series from nvidia just look so much better. Performance is just not there like it should be. So it will be what ever 2nd gen DX 10 card is best that ATI or nvida has to offer before I make the jump into DX10. I t wil take me till near Christmas to complete this case, perhaps much sooner. I do have one more design Im working on and then I have a battle royal beween the two in a poll.
 
so who is going to build the solid steal desk and floor to hold it??

lol

looks very good but I am sure it would be easier just to mod a closet?
 
I like that one.....solid steel desk and floor. I dont mind big...it will be about the same depth and hight as a Lian Li V2000 but it will be greater in width. The new design Im about to put up is shorter but is pretty wide.
 
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