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thinking about a DIY external rad box

F

FatboyHK

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 14, 2006
Messages
268
finally I realized that cramping everything inside a not-so-big case will not do any good... so I am thinking about putting almost everything in an external box. It will have the following component:

1. Swiftech pump
2. Alphacool 25 res
3. BI GTX 480 rad
4. 4x 120mm fans
5. Flow indicator

and I am thinking about these options too:

1. May be I should go for AC pump....How should I compare a Ehiem with Swiftech? I have run out of PCI slot so a PCI relay card is out of consideration....is there exist something similar with an USB interface?

2. Off-the-shelf externel rad typically come with snap-in tube connector, so if I need to move my rig around, i can disconnect the rad box easily. I would like to use this in my DIY box also, where can I buy them? will it affect water flow seriously ? is it secure?

3. Fan controller. I want to have knot on the box which I control the fan speed. What component I need to do this?
 
I was running an external rad box. I had a dual 120mm rad with shroud on one side and 2 sides and a base made of 1/2" MDF. I mounted the 120VAC pump and fill line to the base. My LianLi case had perforations on the back of the case for 3 of those little fans (40mm maybe), so I took a dremel and cut out about half of one of those fan spots to put my hoses through (1/2" tygon tubing). One benefit was I left the hoses just long enough that I had a little room to move the rad box around, in the summers, I would set the box right by the A/C vent in the floor by my desk, helped drop temps a few extra degrees.

Then my pump developed a leak so I temporarily went back to air cooling, then I built a new machine and that computer is my backup Vista/Linux fileserver stuffed with 830GB of HD space. My rad box is still sitting around waiting for me to get around to getting a new pump, been busy with other side projects lately.

I have a relay kit that takes a 12VDC line from the computer power supply to enable the 120V going to the pump, but I was too lazy to hook that up (needed to cut and rewire/solder the power cord going to the pump) so I went ahead and bought one of these USB controlled 120VAC relay. Works great, takes literally 4.756453435 seconds to set up.
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Minder-Mini/dp/B000BSN1CA
Looks to be sold out at amazon but cablestogo sells it here.
http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=1004&sku=34006
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
the fan controller powers the fans. no need for powering off the psu as well.
Thermaltake do a cheap remote controlled fan controller for 4 fans.
 
any one has experience to share?

any idea for the design of the box will be very helpful
 
DeeFrag said:
I was running an external rad box. I had a dual 120mm rad with shroud on one side and 2 sides and a base made of 1/2" MDF. I mounted the 120VAC pump and fill line to the base. My LianLi case had perforations on the back of the case for 3 of those little fans (40mm maybe), so I took a dremel and cut out about half of one of those fan spots to put my hoses through (1/2" tygon tubing). One benefit was I left the hoses just long enough that I had a little room to move the rad box around, in the summers, I would set the box right by the A/C vent in the floor by my desk, helped drop temps a few extra degrees.
Click to expand...

I thought that's what I wrote here. :confused:
 
The "snap-in tube connector thingies" (PS: lol) are called Quick Disconnects.

They're hard to find, but Mcmaster Carr has them online. Expect to pay around 40$ for a pair with shipping :eek:
 
Arcygenical said:
The "snap-in tube connector thingies" (PS: lol) are called Quick Disconnects.

They're hard to find, but Mcmaster Carr has them online. Expect to pay around 40$ for a pair with shipping :eek:
Click to expand...

thanks for the pointer, really had no clue where I could find them.....

may I ask, are they safe? and do they have impact of the flow?
 
DSCN2523.JPG


dscn2524ut9.jpg


I used a old Gateway full tower case literally sawed in half. It was a long time ago, but the lessons learned are still useful.

Buying oversized drip free quick disconnects are your best investment. Preforming any work on my PC was a chore with that ugly umbilical cord.

Without disconnects your killing any, and all, LAN party mobility, then your worse off than having a full tower case.

Also, with all that extra tubing I was refilling it very often.
 
im going to try this idea when i have the money. but i need to find those line breaks in the UK.
 
FatboyHK said:
thanks for the pointer, really had no clue where I could find them.....

may I ask, are they safe? and do they have impact of the flow?
Click to expand...

They're pretty safe, yeah... They're DESIGNED to be at least. You lose 1-2 drops of fluid, but that's it.

As for flow-rate... There's a few styles out there, some are horrible to the flow and others (there's a company that starts with a "C", but I can't remember the full name) that don't hurt it at all.
 
wow, they are insanely expensive, or may I say, welcome to the world of exotic computing!!! yes, exotic things like watercooling is never cheap....

I wanna buy 4 pair of connectors, for the in/out of the rad box and the in/out of the pc.... in this way the tubes will be very tidy and very managable..... or is it an overkill?

I also thought about adding a QC between CPU and the GPUs, so if for some reason i need to remove the GPUs from the loop I can do it really easy....

But price basically killed this idea...

and I think, with this 4-pair setup I can drain the loop really fast, I can disconnect the rad box and just drain the half loop inside the PC.... after that I can change whatever I want...

to make this work even better I will use QCs with valve on PC and the rad box only, the QCs on the tubes that connect the rad box and PC will not have valve. Then this tubes can be used as the draining tube also.... I think it is a very smart idea!!!!!
 
OK, I can't post a link for the external box I built a few years ago, the site has been shut down some time ago, but you can go to my photo gallery and take a look at the pics, they might give you a few ideas.
http://members.lycos.co.uk/sbrehm72255/
The quick disconnects most people (including myself were using are from Colder, McMaster as well a US Plastics (I lost the link) sells them. You will lose a little flow, but when I testes them on my system with and without them installed, there was no performance differance, so go use them............:cool:

DSC00858.JPG


DSC00859.JPG


DSC00860.JPG
 
excellent sharing, thx alot! that QC (which can be fixed on a surface) is exactly what I am going for

did you use one with value or without valve? I am thinking about having a female with valve and a male without valve.
 
for some nice cheap quick disconnects go to home depot (or other hardware store) in the garden section, get some nice brass disconnects for garden hose. they are sturdy, only let about 5 drops of water out, at 3/4" there is no flow restriction, and at $5 a piece they are cheaper then anything you will buy online. only problem is they are made to screw onto a garden hose end. soloution: buy a small (5 foot) garden hose and cut it in half (you will need one hose for input and one for output side of the loop). you can even use this 5 foot section as the link between boxes, or cut just the ends off and use whatever tube you like. buy four hose adapters (garden hose <-> 1/2" tubing) and thats all you need to build the link.
 
ok now seem I am settled with the tubing. then I need to think about the power....

I see some people using a dedicated PSU for powering the rad box but I won't go for this...

I am thinking about an idea... can I use a USB port to power the rad box? but afaik USB is 5v only and I need 12v.... is it really impossible? Of course I can always use a USB relay switch and a ac-dc transformer but it is quite stupid, why don't just extent a 12v cable from the pc to the rad box?

and then using the same concept for handling tubes, I would like to use some kind of quick-disconnect for the power cable.... any suggesting for me?
 
FatboyHK said:
ok now seem I am settled with the tubing. then I need to think about the power....

I see some people using a dedicated PSU for powering the rad box but I won't go for this...

I am thinking about an idea... can I use a USB port to power the rad box? but afaik USB is 5v only and I need 12v.... is it really impossible? Of course I can always use a USB relay switch and a ac-dc transformer but it will add two more components into the system for me to care about....
Click to expand...

You could up-convert to 12v, but you'd only have a few ma to work with...

A DC relay would be best... or just get a nice power connector, sleeve it and everything, It'll look balls.
 
FatboyHK said:
ok now seem I am settled with the tubing. then I need to think about the power....

I see some people using a dedicated PSU for powering the rad box but I won't go for this...

I am thinking about an idea... can I use a USB port to power the rad box? but afaik USB is 5v only and I need 12v.... is it really impossible? Of course I can always use a USB relay switch and a ac-dc transformer but it is quite stupid, why don't just extent a 12v cable from the pc to the rad box?

and then using the same concept for handling tubes, I would like to use some kind of quick-disconnect for the power cable.... any suggesting for me?
Click to expand...

All you need to do is get your self one of the PCI back plates like you already said and make yourself a extension cord using only the 12v and a single ground, that will work out just fine,that's how I powered the one I built. In the pics of mine, the PSU back plate and power cord that you see, is just that, a back plate and the power cord has a molex on the other end and is connected to 12n only from the main computer.
 
thx for the idea for power cord.... I know what to look for now....

Just one more question about tube connectors..... what is the difference between Qucik-Disconnect and Quick-fit? From what I see, Quick Disconnect works in pair, one male and one female, and Quick fit has one, hmm, female you may say, you just push the tube itself into teh connector.... what is the pro and con between these two kind of connectors?
 
I built an external box out of 1/4" plexi, turned out well, It still needs some tweeking though. I ran into a problem with it being sealed as it was causing some negative pressure building and slowing airflow, when I get a chance I'm going to add a vent in the center to help equalize the pressure. Here are some pics.

Building the RAD/Fan mounts (two pieces of 1/4 glued together)
DSCF0328.jpg


Basic construction complete
DSCF0329.jpg


Plumbed and wired.
DSCF0333.jpg


With lid (which will have a vent shortly)
DSCF0334.jpg


The whole thing will have a new coat of paint here soon, to match my new case build I'm working on. It works well and with under-volted (9V) Panaflo's it is very quiet. My temps stay at around 30c idle and hit around 37-38 under load (I get about 3c lower when the AC's on). I also built some screened end caps that did not make it into the pics.
 
Thank you very much, I'll post some pics next week, once I finish it.... Its only taken 3 months.... Damned RL and all.
 
yeah, im thinkin of a rad box, but gna use a stripped out mini-atx case with acrylic panels instead.
 
one thing I notice is that all of your guys rad boxes are really big......

but I am thinking about a small one..... a small one which has everything, without any compromise on performance, but just barely bigger than a BI480......
 
cool, although im using a small case and housin everything i can in there, then ill just have my blocks in my pc.
 
The next step is to think about monitoring and control

I want to have a way to monitor to water temp and then regulate fan speed. also, I want to monitor coolant flow rate and if flow stop there will be some kind of alarm, or turn off the PC automatically.

Ideally, the monitoring and control device should have a display and a control panel, which I can mount on my rad box, while at the same time I can also configure it on PC via software (with a USB port may be?)

first I come across Innovatek fan-o-matic.

fomrev151_517.jpg


It has everything I need :) however, seem the flow meter is quite small..... as I will go for 1/2" tubes this flow meter may be a bottleneck...

flowmeter2_200.gif


also, its software isn't very user friendly, as some review mentioned..... One good thing is that software isn't required to run fan-o-matic, it is a completely stand-alone device.

Then I come across Aqua Computer's Aquaero...

53031.jpg


seem very similar to fan-o-matic, but better, especially the software, but I am not sure if it can run by itself, or the software is required.

from what I see it in the photo it is quite small, also, it is a U-Turn type instead of a pass-thru type..... may be very bad for flow...

wa043_m.jpg


btw, when I browse thur Aqua's site I come across this, aquaduct 360 XT:

11202.jpg


This is quite similar with my prelim design I am drawing on some scrap papers......
 
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