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Project WaterRig

P

playafly187

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 29, 2000
Messages
356
In preparation for a DangerDen watercooling kit I will be receiving soon, I found myself in need of a new case. My current Praetorian would be a great choice, but the dual 120mm radiator simply will not fit in the case without looking cluttered. I thought about using a Silverstone TJ05, but the water kit will have a dual bay res, and the TJ05 has a door.

A buddy of mine had a Centurion 530 he wasnt using. After checking it out, I decided to go with it for the project.

There will be plenty of room to mount the radiator in the base of the case. But, not without some serious modifications. First up, we have a shot of the case fresh out of the shipping box.

pic13.jpg


My goal is to mount the radiator on the floor of the case, near the front. This of course means that the hard drive cage must go. Simple enough, just remove four screws.

p1.jpg


The radiator with fans mounted will be around 2 1/2" inches tall, so there will be a minimal amount of clearance between the fans and the floppy / hdd rack. So, I removed that as well. This was easy too, just drill out some rivets. I plan to mount my hard drive in one of the 5 1/2" optical bays anyway, so losing this rack was not a problem.

p5.jpg


I also went ahead and broke out the remaining two optical drive covers and the floppy cover as well.

Next up, the front intake grill. Im not too fond of these built in stamped grills, and I dont see why case manufacturers still use them. Just leave a wide open hole and let us put in our own fan grills!

p3.jpg


and after..

p4.jpg


Yes, I know my dremel skills suck, but hey, this is like my second time using one for a big project...
 
The next thing to go is the rear 120mm fan grill.

p8.jpg


While planning out this entire case mod, I kept falling back to the same question: How am I going to raise the case up enough to give proper ventilation to the radiator? While digging though one of my spare parts drawers, I found my answer... caster wheels! I had a set of these wheels that came with the 3-drawer set but I never installed them. This would be the perfect addition to the Centurion, but how would I install the wheels?

p9.jpg


This is what the two rear feet on the Centurion look like. Here is a full shot of the bottom.

pic25.jpg


As you can see, only two feet are included, but there are holes for two more. The front bezel acts as the front supports so these feet are not needed.

After some thought, I finally came up with an idea. Push out the support pin in the rear feet, bore out the hole a little bigger, and insert the wheel.

p11.jpg


Genius! I borrowed two feet from an old Lian Li case to put in the front. The wheels fit in the bored out holes very tightly, which is a good thing. So, will this even really help?

p13.jpg


Id say. Plenty of clearance now...
 
of course, nothing can go right for me... i have THE WORSE LUCK ever! im in the middle of some more cutting and POP, the dremel dies. i look over at it (using the snake cable), and see a puff of smoke. what makes it worse is that it is the top-of-the-line expensive dremel. what makes it just horrible is that it isnt even mine! i was borrowing it from a friend. now i get to drop off $80 to replace it! :mad:
 
the watercooling kit arrived today, a day earlier than scheduled.

Not having a real dremel to work with today (I have a cheapo cordless but it can't really do any serious cutting), I did the photo shoot and decided where I was going to place everything.

plan.jpg


Thoughts?
 
Rad looks sweet there, is there going to be a window that makes the rad visible? Never been a big fan of most rads that you can see.
 
As for the pump, I test fitted it under the bay res but the way it is built, I would have to put a serious bend on the hoses to make it work. Plus, I kinda want the pump to be not-so-visible. Asides from just watercooling, my other goal is to make it as clean as possible. If everything goes right, the only wires you will see are... well, none, just the tubing.

As for a window, im still not sure. I'll have to see how it all turns out before I decide on that.

BTW, I picked up a new dremel today and have since started cutting again. More pics to come soon! :)
 
p17.jpg


cut out a nice area behind the mobo. this will give me plenty of room to run wires and make the case nice and tidy.

more to come...
 
p18.jpg


cut a small notch here so i can route the psu wires directly behind the board

btw, the scratches are from sanding, not the dremel
 
p19.jpg


got the two holes cut out for the fans. cutting circles is pretty tough with a dremel lol

also, moved the rad back a bit more than initially planned. think im gonna mount the water pump in the base also.
 
success...

p20.jpg


p21.jpg


p23.jpg


running leak tests now. had a small leak when i first turn it on; i had overtightened one of the fittings on the radiator and the rubber seal was pushed out. fixed that and its running like a champ now...
 
Put some rubber padding underneath the rad fans (with holes for air) as well as for the pump. That way, you can keep the noise down. I insulate my case with edead car sound insulation and acoustipack deluxe along with padding for the pump. That way, you get great temp from water cooling and near silent (except for noise of air moving by the fan) system. More work but worth it. At 1 foot away, I can not hear my system, can see all the uv lights and water through the windows, case temp at 2C above ambient temp, cpu temp at 44C during load (case temp 30C) with prescott core overclocked from 3.2Ghz to 3.9Ghz (1.45V)

Nice job so far though.
 
If those fans are pulling, I forsee dust being a problem.

If they are pushing, then, ummm, good temps I presume seeing as heat rises and cold air falls. ?

I'm almost tempted to say that it was probably a bad idea to cut such a large hole in your motherboard area. Mainly because the motherboard could use the support and all.

But it does have its advantages, if the CPU waterblock comes loose, you can just take off the back panel and tighten the screws from behind.
 
yeah dust is gonna be a problem i bet, unless your pushing air down onto the floor, which will be pulling the already warm air into the ram defeating the purpose of watercooling. I'll be checking this often to see how this turns out.
 
Great progress so far, is this your first loop? That Centurion looks like a great canvas for some interesting mods, keep up the good work. You are going to use a real shroud, right? The cm or 2 of clearance the rad gives between the fan and rad fins is better than nothing, but you will see significantly better temps with a shroud giving the fans an inch or so to lose their cooling deadspots :).
 
lets see, where to begin...

yes, i am aware that the rad will block the bottom pci slots, but im not worried about it, as i have onboard nic, sound, etc. and have not used a pci card in years. most people mount their rads up top, but this case doesnt have proper room for it, plus i wanted the entire cooling unit inside of the case.

the fans are positioned to pull the hot air from the rads and blow it out the bottom of the case.

the hole in the mobo tray actually worked out very well. leaves all kinds of room to run wires, etc.

yes, this is my first big watercooling project. actually, i hadnt thought about a shroud and really dont have the room now heh

the system is up and running now, so far so good. ill post some pics here in a few. have a little more wire management to do. :)
 
once i had everything up and running, i noticed the hose from the block to the res was too short and there was a small bend in it. i drained the system, put in a longer hose, only to find out it is too long! for now, i just slid the res out of the drive bay a few inches cause im tired of fooling with it today lol

at first i wasnt all that impressed with the cooling performance. but, ive always thought this board / bios was kinda off, so i flashed to 1.8 bios (k8n neo2 platinum) and that made all the difference in the world. excellent temps and im even able to push the processor much higher than before. still havent hit the wall yet with the overclock.

for now, here are a few pics...

c1.jpg


c2.jpg


thoughts, comments? :D
 
Why didn't you just mount the rad at the top of the case? What was the advantage?
 
well i wanted to keep the cooling system inside the case. plus, the centurion 530 has the control panel mounted above the top drive bay, so there wasnt room. and if there was, it would take up at least 3 drive bays and with the res, hdd and optical drive.... just wouldnt fit. plus, i like it, its different :cool:
 
Looks nice for such a small case. Maybe paint the chasis black? Would be a pain in the ass to remove everything though :p
 
Hmmm, it looks really akward... You sure you can't find another way to place those tubes?
 
playafly187 said:
of course, nothing can go right for me... i have THE WORSE LUCK ever! im in the middle of some more cutting and POP, the dremel dies. i look over at it (using the snake cable), and see a puff of smoke. what makes it worse is that it is the top-of-the-line expensive dremel. what makes it just horrible is that it isnt even mine! i was borrowing it from a friend. now i get to drop off $80 to replace it! :mad:
Click to expand...
That sucks. No, that REALLY sucks! While you're at it drop another $60 and get yourself one too. You don't need the best one out there, just a variable speed one. Go slow with the cutting and you won't kill them anymore. "Let the Dremel be your guide."
;)
BTW, I just spent around $40 just on bits yesterday.... UGH. With materials, yesterday's tally was $150 for modding stuff like acrylic, bits, blades, gloves, PVC, and clay.
 
misys.jpg


been running the radiator without fans for the past week or so. works pretty well and of course is very quiet...
 
if you wanted to, you could get bigger wheels and have the fans under the case so you could add 2 more on the top of the rad. just a thought
 
playafly187 said:
misys.jpg


been running the radiator without fans for the past week or so. works pretty well and of course is very quiet...
Click to expand...
do you have enough ground clearance to put the fans on the OUTSIDE of the case? that seems imo the ideal setup, like this:

------------------RAD---------------------
--------Bottom of Case---------------
------------------FANS-------------------
 
Morphes said:
if you wanted to, you could get bigger wheels and have the fans under the case so you could add 2 more on the top of the rad. just a thought
Click to expand...

i really suck at reading posts
 
yeah, i actually had to remove the wheels that i initially put on the case, and they weren't able to withstand the weight of the system very well. ill try to get some better feet soon...
 
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