Worklog: Project Thief - Fully Watercooled Dual PC

[stren]

sexy:

fill her up:

Leak testing:

No leaks:

Yummy:

I WANT TO EAT IT

NICKEL PLEXI AND DYE IS SO SCHMEXY

 

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Done with the overnight leak testing and setting up:

Added an LED to the pump top:

Light ports are weak during the day, hopefully I'll get some dark shots later on:

I rotated the tray onto a spare desk and sat the PSU and HDD cage on the desk too. I put the PSU on some bubble wrap because it was having some weird resonance with the desk:

I kinda wish I had a 2nd spotswood tech bench to be honest, but this'll have to do, the "tech bench" feet that CL have for it work well and I can afford the desk space for the rest of it.

 

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So the extension wasn't supposed to have this much bend so the inner wires are pushing through the outer

Stripping down the old R4E, the nickel is stained because I ran pure distilled without a corrosion inhibitant...

I do prefer this to csq though

beautiful condition one mount only

One mint always under water combo

 

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Say farewell to these:

Got the hydrocopper block tested (results on the website)

Got a new lens

Dust:

Mo' Dust:

 

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Replacement NEX1500 PSU came in to replace the dead one:

I wish I had two of these beauties:

Oh wait I do, well temporarily:

 

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Also got a GPU in for the workstation, now I can do three monitors with one card. Can you guess:

This one gives it away a bit:

The nice thing is that the 650 ti boost with the blower cooler like this still is compatible with a 600 block.

 

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So as part of the "getting stuff done" theme, I'd moved thief downstairs to the garage and setup the temporary test bench. The garage was still a mess as I was waiting for new benches and shelving units to come in so I could actually do something.

I also forgot to bring home my liquid tape from work to add in the bazillion new thermal probes I got so titan testing was on hold:

However I could continue some of the sleeving work:

I'd previously done one 24 pin, an 8 pin and a 6 pin. Since then Lutro0 had sent me some shiny tools and I'd started working on another 24 pin extension. I wasn't happy with the length of the inner run though as it wasn't giving me enough curvature, so I removed those wires leaving me only the outer layer:

I used lutro0's 16 AWG wire, which is pretty easy for a relative nub like me. By the end I was wishing for something stiffer though, but combined with the MDPC-X sleeve the resultant extension is pretty stiff. It still needs a good amount of training, so I seperated the two layers with some thin plywood:

and clamped it in position:

 

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The look is just about perfect, and hopefully it'll hold after a bit of time sitting like that:

I'd also seen some staining on my nickel blocks which looked similar to EK's testing of distilled only with no anti-corrosion additive:

The acrylic isn't stained of course, but it's good to check:

Giving the block a good scrub with detergent did nothing.

EK used a metal polish to clean their blocks up and couldn't get it out of every recess, but I'm lazier than that and wanted better results so I did some research. Most people say don't use ketchup because you'll eat through the plating. So I thought I would try it on the underside to see how long it takes:

After one hour:

The dark marks were not there before, the underside was actually clean. Not sure if the dark marks are staining or where the acid etched through the nickel faster. I'm going to continue the experiment to see how long it takes...


So that's it for now, hopefully future updates will be more frequent!

 

[PCTC2]

Super sexy looking rig you've got going there stren!

I also bought a GTX 650 Ti for my work Linux workstation. They're nice little cards.

 

[stren]

Alright time for a massive update - I hadn't been updating this thread in a while, but here's all my updates from the last 6 months because I am done!

A box

That shipped remarkably quickly, it got here last night, and I didn't notice, so it sat there all night long:

Christmas morning. 8 Rads:

Stack those rads, rads love to be stacked:

Now lets add the other ones I already had cause they wanna be stacked too:

MORA wants in, but it needs to be stripped:

Nice and nekkid and clean:

 

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This is what's going in thief:

This is the rest of the hoard excluding 2 560s, 3 360s and a 120 lulz:

Playing around:

That's it for now...

 

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I did buy some more fans and did some other background work This is now my total stash of gentle typhoons (excluding a couple in my benching setup):

9 for the Mora 140x9 (Push only)
16 for the 2 560s
24 for the 4 360s

The two 120 rads will get non GTs because I want something cooler looking for the chamber.

So thief will get 49 of these, I have 60 because I wanted 8 for the 2x240s for the S3 and then a few spare in case of deaths. Of course maybe I'll change my mind and run P/P on the mora or add in another 360 just because a total of 60 fans in the build is pretty lulztastic.

Bought some wood for it, got a 1" piece and had the guys resaw it in two and finish it down to about the right size. With finish and a bit of UV aging it will get a good bit darker too. The colors should be beautiful...

--

Well only one terabyte of ssd would have been too little:

No more loneliness, two of everything!

 

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So for a while there I was going to run the impact and a 290 on one side as a gaming rig. Just for trollsies. Would have been pretty funny to have 4x360s for one 290 and and 2x560s for one 4770K. Also that huge motherboard chamber with mitx would have been a bit of a giggle. But I got a bit more real and bought some other stuff. The Impact is currently running on the testbench testing blocks. 4770K block testing is done and it's now onto the 290 block round up version 2. In the mean while I did stuff on thief - some of you might remember me posting something about wood and then buying a panel that was then cut down the middle:

So it was time to mock up some designs on card:

This one I liked, but I wasn't sure which parts to do in wood and which parts to do cut out and then how to join the floating bits. So I tried something more minimalist:

Then mocked them up with PS:

minimal:

nightingale + dragon:

I was worried that this was too detailed and that the dragons were cheesey. I also considered adding the skyrim dragon logo on to the minimalist version:

I also considered writing project thief in dragon letters:

In the end I settled on the original minimal design:

 

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First job was sanding the surface smooth as it had already been planed flat:

And then cutting to size:

The idea was to recess behind the front panel, as I dont' have a router I needed to make sure I could do it with my table saw by making multiple cuts. Here's one:

and many:

side profile:

The test fit perfectly:

Next up the whole panel:

 

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and the second panel:

I then cut out the card to use as a stencil:

And started marking out:

Drilled holes to start the jigsaw cuts:

More holes:

And the first jigsaw cut:

Cleaned it up with some chisel work:

Oh and the recessed cuts needed cleaning up too:

Did some more cuts and decided to bevel the edges:

 

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After two had gone well I was ready to start the rest, I thickened up the marking to the edge of the cut - originally the line to cut was done in pencil with an additional sharpie line close by to let me know approx where I should be, but it was hard to see the pencil with the dust:

Progress:

More progress:

Test fit:

After some finishing sanding and clean up:

I also started to recess the sections that connected the "floating" parts of the symbols:

Time for dat second panel:

Oh that was fast:

Normally I like to use natural shellac finishes for this kind of wood, but given the heat variation I wanted something that might seal the wood a little better so I decided to try a clear polyurethane:

 

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Sadly the wood is so oily that the poly doesn't really dry, and I had to scrub the wood down with rags and mineral spirits to clean the oil off and let the finish dry. It was a real PITA and I wouldn't do it again lol. They came out well though:

So now that that was done it was time to get the hardware sorted. Monsoon sent a care package of stop plugs to replace the ugly alphacool copper ones:

Not sure if I showed this before or not, but if so then tough cookies:

I'd also been busy prepping and sleeving fans for the rads:

Product placement:

The problem with the alphacool rads (or the rad mounts) is that the stop fittings stick up and hit the rad mount. You need to use some kind of spacer. This is the phobya 7mm version:

Progress:

 

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It was also time to upgrade/replace hardware - that 3930K died so I RMA'd and while I waited bought a 4930K:

I then sold the RMA part and shortly after decided to buy a 4820K:

Of course I needed a board to run the 4820K in, having bad experiences with Asus's RMA program and tech support snarky snarks I decided to give the new evga board a try as it was alleged to be a bazillion times better than their older x79 boards:

Dat sexy:

Now I know some of you are like me and were like "but you can't get blocks" well natemandoo solved that as we'll see later. My original plan was to use a 120 rad mounted to the tray to do a motherboard/ram only loop:

I knew this was silly, but it was only when I was looking at my pumps and knew that although I had 5 D5's for this build that I'd still need 2 more that I realized, maybe I should just not do that lol. There was a time where I wanted to have everything at max performance, but at some point if you really want the best temps you may as well just go sub ambient. So let's pretend that 120 will go away. Meanwhile I added RAM:

 

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Added the CPU:

Closed the top:

Later found out these were the RAM slots, but in the meantime auditioned some CPU blocks to see what looked best. The Sniper was a bit too small to cover the metal of the socket:

The MIPS is a great block but didn't really suit the theme:

The 5Noz covered more than the sniper, but not enough:

The DD M6 provided a nice contrast with it's nickel, but this helped cement that I actually wanted something large and black:

Which led to the surprise winner:

I setup a temporary loop in order to have something while I debugged the GPUs on air:

 

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So speaking of GPUs - oh yes I bought some of those:

A couple of 290s, then a couple of 7970s:

Then a couple more 290s:

Then a pair of 7990s:

Yes things were getting out of control:

It was clearly time to make sure they worked - starting with a 290:

Then adding more:

And more:

 

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Dat evga:

Not to be left out the R4E also got to play:

So now that stuff was verified, it was time to order the remaining parts and start prepping things for the final build. The Mora was moving to AP15s:

Which needed some sleeving:

Before mounting:

Dat TX10 could eat the world:

I also ordered and received the missing parts I needed for the TX10 - replacement wheels, new clear windows and the 4x360 rad mounts to go behind the grills:

CL also sent the S8 and SMA8 for review:

So that's the end of the update for today - where are we at now and what's the plan?

 

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So there's a bunch of parts coming in:
- Care package from Monsoon
- Package from PPCS
- A bunch of EK parts

The final build will be
- R4E + 4930K + 2x7990 + AX1200 + 1TB 840 EVO + 8*4GB 2133 Dominator CL9
- X79 Dark + 4820K + 4xR9-290 + NEX1500 + 1TB 840 EVO + 4*4GB 2133 Dominator CL9

All GPUs, CPUs and Motherboards will be watercooled, the 8 way dominators will be water cooled also.

The 4x290s will be cooled by 4x UT60 360 rads
The 2x7990s will be cooled by Mora 9x140
The 4930K will be cooled by a Monsta 560
The 4820K will be cooled by a XT45 560

All radiator fans will be AP15s/AP16s. There was a plan for a while to mount 3 Aquaeros in the pedestal to control the fans, but as this will be mining there's not much point right now. We'll see if I ever want to rebuild down the road and add them lol.

The only remaining thing I need now is the mandrel kit from Monsoon which is OOS everywhere. So I'm finally ready to build. There's a ton of extensions to be made and a ton of building and bending to be done, but the good news is that after 2 years things are finally moving and the end is in sight :thumb:

--

Another care package from the lovely Monsoon team via PPCs

Oh yeah you know what we're up to:

Dat chrome:

The monsoon hardline fittings actually have you glue a sleeve to the tube. The lock ring then presses this collar up to an o-ring for an ultra secure seal :thumb:

More boxes:

All the new toys:

It's not all hardline:

Hardlining only the main chamber, the rest gets tube because the case is just too big.

 

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Dem blocks:

More blocks:

Backplates (I already had another two):

Res tubes:

More QDCs because I have to have spent more on QDCs than CPUs or else this build would be normal.

Dem accessories:

Dem fittings again:

Let's open things up:

 

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Wait for it

Oh yeahhhhhhh

Well one of the 290 blocks was gently used, can you tell?

Now we have all this stuff then it might be time to do something then:

Pumps - check!

Reservoirs - damnit forgot to order a replacement top... Ok so let's fit a block instead on a 7990 as this is the only card not being used right now:

Taking off dat backplate:

Dirty and naked:

 

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Dual GPUs should always be single slot:

Much better:

Derick keeps telling me I can't run 7x7990s on one board, but one day I will achieve that dream!

Fresh from a bath:

Block ready to go:

Testing:

Sadly EK don't give you replacement pads for the stock backplate VRAM. Luckily I got some spares to replace those.

Oh it's going to be sexy when that dye hits.