Worklog: Project Thief - Fully Watercooled Dual PC

[OVerLoRDI]

Want that case

[T_Yamamoto]

Originally Posted by OVerLoRDI

Want that case

go buy it

[Rubycon]

Does Caselabs offer a horizontal motherboard tray in HPTX size?

[stren]

Originally Posted by OVerLoRDI

Want that case

It really is the ultimate in possibilties

Originally Posted by T_Yamamoto

go buy it

Indeed - everything so far is stock - the powder coat is custom of course, but the modding hasn't started yet.

Originally Posted by Rubycon

Does Caselabs offer a horizontal motherboard tray in HPTX size?

They will, it's not released yet and I'm not sure how far along the design process it is. My guess is maybe in 2 months. I can ask Jim though,

[stren]

Originally Posted by General Kenobi

That thing makes even HAF X look like a mid case. Death Star quality.

Haha yes it could eat most other high end cases for breakfast and have room for lunch and dinner!

Originally Posted by T_Yamamoto

can it run crysis?

You know crysis is one of the few games that my 480's can't max out at 1600p purely because of vram.

Originally Posted by billyb0b

makes my 800D look puny

It makes any case on the market look tiny!

[stren]

So I got the opportunity to tour this new workshop close to downtown that just opened. It has all the workshop tools you could never afford to buy yourself, and you can buy day passes or month passes depending on how long you need. So this resolves all my issues with manufacturing the waterfall reservoirs myself, as well as opening up possibilities like custom waterblocks...

It was the launch weekend so there was a free bbq (there were plenty more people later on)



Wood shop room, saw stop tablesaw, planer, chop saw etc. bunch of other stuff that isn't shown:



Large CNC Mill for wood:



Sand Blaster:



Vinyl cutter so you can print your own stickers:



Forgot to take a photo of the 3D printer, but here's an 150W laser that cut through some hefty steel plate:



There's two other lasers good enough for acrylic/wood, and a third one is apparently on the way:



Spray paint booth, they have an oven for powder coating, but not all the rest of the powder coating tools yet:



Metal press and folding machines:



Other metal machines, bandsaw, grinders and a lathe:

[stren]

Metal lathe:



Old school mills:



CNC mill - can you say custom waterblocks!



Electronics room - not much here, bunch of soldering irons, power supplies and scopes:



So what do you all think I should do with this opportunity?

I definitely want to:
- make the custom metal backplates for GPUs
- make the waterfall reservoir
- make some custom waterblocks for parts that aren't ultra high performance e.g. raid card, memory blocks etc.

[dajeepster]

Originally Posted by Rubycon

Does Caselabs offer a horizontal motherboard tray in HPTX size?

i think mountain mods do

[stren]

Originally Posted by dajeepster

i think mountain mods do

Yes they do, but this case is at least twice the volume of the biggest MM case, and it is built way stronger than the MM cases which is important when you're talking multiple huge radiators.

[T_Yamamoto]

Stern
1) make custom backplates
2) make custom resovior
3) make custom waterblocks for everything, like HDD cooling!

[stren]

Originally Posted by T_Yamamoto

Stern
1) make custom backplates
2) make custom resovior
3) make custom waterblocks for everything, like HDD cooling!

Sounds good - I may end up doing the HDD cooling just for pratice building blocks

Here's another update:


Alright here's an update. Can you say gentle typhoooooooooooooooooooons?



Don't worry they're not all for me. I only have 14 of those plus the 10 I already own.

My waterblocks also came in, thanks again to DT Waterblocks, here they are next to my spare rasa (both my raystorms are still in systems)



You can see there's plenty of room for fittings. On the back you can see the copper base plate is pretty chunky - this should mean it should distribute heat better laterally through the plate but worse directly through it. Not sure the right trade off, but this copper block is the largest I've seen both in terms of area and thickness.



Here's some results from Martin's testing:

Temps in comparison to the raystorm:



Restriction:

Performance is about as good as it gets, but there is some refinement in the mounting system needed. Considering this is their first block produced and it’s not only keeping up but lower in restriction than the other blocks says a lot! Overall, I see it as a block with a ton of work and emphasis put into the design and quality of the block itself. That 5Noz is something very special and it’s very refreshing to see a design done very differently from the norm that also performs extremely well.

It should be noted that the mounting mechanism now has thumb screws. Next update I'll show you a pic of it mounted.

Anyway the other big news on this update is the exterior panels. Here's some close up shots of the color, it's a dark metallic grey flake with a smooth finish to the touch:



Even closer:



And as much as I can loosely hang on the case without it being clipped on. You can see one motherboard has also been mounted. The TX10 makes EATX look like a MITX lol.



Working with Smasher and Jim on this has been a delight and I highly recommend them

[T_Yamamoto]

The TX10 makes EATX look like a MITX lol.

you can say that again

and HDD cooling will be cool, hopefully itll make your hdd last longer

[stren]

Originally Posted by T_Yamamoto

you can say that again

and HDD cooling will be cool, hopefully itll make your hdd last longer

Haha, it actually might not - I read somewhere that 45 deg C is optimum for HD's, too hot or too cold and their life expectency goes down. I might be misinformed though.

[Rubycon]

Originally Posted by stren

Haha, it actually might not - I read somewhere that 45 deg C is optimum for HD's, too hot or too cold and their life expectency goes down. I might be misinformed though.

This is generally true. HDD (along with memory cooling) with liquid is for looks.

[T_Yamamoto]

Originally Posted by Rubycon

This is generally true. HDD (along with memory cooling) with liquid is for looks.

if hes cooling his memory with liquid, might as well with his hdd as well

[stren]

Originally Posted by Rubycon

This is generally true. HDD (along with memory cooling) with liquid is for looks.

Originally Posted by T_Yamamoto

if hes cooling his memory with liquid, might as well with his hdd as well

True - but memory will still improve it's overclockability with cooling. Maybe the effect is only 1MHz, but it doesn't hurt it. If lowering the temps on the HDs too much does hurt it, it may actually be bad. Would be cool though. I really like the idea of watercooling a PSU also

[nyker96]

I don't know about water cooling much but your case looks great!

I also love the MakerPlace work shop, they even got a lathe. wonderful!

[Rubycon]

Originally Posted by stren

True - but memory will still improve it's overclockability with cooling. Maybe the effect is only 1MHz, but it doesn't hurt it. If lowering the temps on the HDs too much does hurt it, it may actually be bad. Would be cool though. I really like the idea of watercooling a PSU also

Differences are miniscule. If your memory produces errata at n temp and not at n minus five (Centigrade) then clocks/timings are too close to absolute maximum for error free computation.

Like I said previously it's gingerbread. I've even stripped "performance" memory down to bare PCB so it would fit under a big cooler and its o/c ability was absolutely unchanged. Still not convinced, I scanned it with FLIR and found its operating temperature marginally warmer than with heat spreaders!

Mechanical disks are designed to run with ambient cooling or forced (active) cooling if packed tightly together in a mobile rack. If they are run close to ambient in cooler (sub 20C) conditions they may experience issues. Consequently if they are run in conditions where their surface (average) temperature is frequently higher than 50C it could be detrimental. Since most cooling loops are underpowered and water temps frequently rise ten degrees C over ambient water cooling plates on hard disks provide little threat to running too low of a surface temperature.

Like memory the "benefit" is technical appearance only. The cons are increased circuit backpressure and resultant lower flows for said circuit. It's also another point of failure with fittings, o-rings, faulty coatings, etc.

[T_Yamamoto]

[stren]

Originally Posted by Rubycon

Differences are miniscule. If your memory produces errata at n temp and not at n minus five (Centigrade) then clocks/timings are too close to absolute maximum for error free computation.

Like I said previously it's gingerbread. I've even stripped "performance" memory down to bare PCB so it would fit under a big cooler and its o/c ability was absolutely unchanged. Still not convinced, I scanned it with FLIR and found its operating temperature marginally warmer than with heat spreaders!

Mechanical disks are designed to run with ambient cooling or forced (active) cooling if packed tightly together in a mobile rack. If they are run close to ambient in cooler (sub 20C) conditions they may experience issues. Consequently if they are run in conditions where their surface (average) temperature is frequently higher than 50C it could be detrimental. Since most cooling loops are underpowered and water temps frequently rise ten degrees C over ambient water cooling plates on hard disks provide little threat to running too low of a surface temperature.

Like memory the "benefit" is technical appearance only. The cons are increased circuit backpressure and resultant lower flows for said circuit. It's also another point of failure with fittings, o-rings, faulty coatings, etc.

Yeah I hear you - increased risk is always a problem. For flow though it's not a big deal - I've separated my loops out into performance loops (3930K only, 990x + 480's only) and fun loops (motherboard only and motherboard/8800gt/ram). Anything on a fun loop I'm not concerned about performance on so I can add a block or two and not worry

Thanks for the info though - you're a wealth of good knowledge.

BTW I checked with Jim the TX10-H is still in the design process. If there's support for something in particular you want, then I'd say email him and let him know. Hey may be able to make it happen.

[OVerLoRDI]

That is an insane amount of typhoons. If you ONLY need 14 out of that box, what are you doing with the rest?

[stren]

Originally Posted by OVerLoRDI

That is an insane amount of typhoons. If you ONLY need 14 out of that box, what are you doing with the rest?

Holding them til SD people pick them up. I effectively became a mini distribution center of overclock.net's group buy

[stren]

So while I was waiting for the screws, I decided to mount a reservoir to the motherboard tray. As the motherboard tray is HPTX there is a lot of spare space. Initially I wanted to also fit an RX360 on there, so that the motherboard/gpu/ram loop was self contained on the tray so that I could just pull it out and swap CPUs without disturbing that loop. Now I have another plan for the radiator instead. Here I am drilling the tray:



With the res mounted (it's a 250 EK multires if anyone cares and there's just enough room for a D5 underneath):



From the back with the reservoir mounted. You can see the two nuts holding it on:



Now with the motherboard tray back stiffening and tiding plate added:



Here's another shot of the front also showing the new cpu block. BTW any barbs are just place holders.



A quick test inside the case:



I also did a test run with the gtx560 radiator and the fan adapters with my new shiny 2150 rpm gentle typhoons!



That was it for the night, then the next morning I found an extra fitting and connected the res to the ram block. Almost a straight line lol.



No one had photographed the new thumbscrews on the cpu block - so I took a couple of that also:



Again ignore the barbs, I haven't quite decided how to route the tube out of there yet.

[Grooveriding]

Been enjoying this thread. Per your CPU block choices and wanting full metal; XSPC has a fully metal version of the Ray Storm.

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2012/03/...ystorm-copper/

It's arguably one of the best CPU blocks out there (I have one ) I got about 2-4C temp improvements over an EK Supreme HF I had before this one. Had to return the EK for a refund due to nickel plating coming off.

Just putting it out there if you are set on an all metal block.

[stren]

Originally Posted by Grooveriding

Been enjoying this thread. Per your CPU block choices and wanting full metal; XSPC has a fully metal version of the Ray Storm.

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2012/03/...ystorm-copper/

It's arguably one of the best CPU blocks out there (I have one ) I got about 2-4C temp improvements over an EK Supreme HF I had before this one. Had to return the EK for a refund due to nickel plating coming off.

Just putting it out there if you are set on an all metal block.

Thanks dude - yeah I've seen that, I think I may end up making a custom mounting block

Here's another update:


Here's a pic of the iwaki next to a D5



Then I put the dvd drives in. These will eventually be hidden



Then I starting putting in the new ssds into the hdd side mount:



I have another 3 ssds and 5 hard drives to put in later on, when I really transplant everything over:





And now a tease of the case with the panels:



More to come soon