Worklog: Project Thief - Fully Watercooled Dual PC

[stren]

Themistor sensor is plenty accurate the problem is what most people connect them to.

If you need accuracy there's Cole Parmer, Omega, and Agilent instruments with 8 significant digit reporting but that gets expensive.

Just make sure you have real proof of cooling and not just depend on pump RPM sensing to protect your system.

Haha too true you got me there. These won't actually be used for the full running system, only for the cpu block review bench setup!

 

[Rubycon]

All water cooling setups should really have a safeguard in place that prevents damage due to failure to maintain cooling. Most don't and that's alarming.

 

[stren]

All water cooling setups should really have a safeguard in place that prevents damage due to failure to maintain cooling. Most don't and that's alarming.

I think most are lulled into a false sense of security by the chip auto shutting down when it hits the thermal threshold. I've had that happen before when a pump failed and I didn't have such a system in place. Luckily everything was fine.

 

[stren]

I did get a little bit of time to work on the main build:

I decided to simplify my linux disk system. I had bene using a raid card, 4 ssds and 4 HDDs and now that large SSD prices were coming down it seemed like a good time to consolidate.

So I picked up a 512gb SSD to replace my 300 gigs worth made up of 4 drives:

As well as a 3TB drive to replace my 3x1TB drives

With linux drive if you're atuomatically mounting the drives then the order they get plugged in can matter. Going down to only 2 + an occasional backup makes life a lot easier when changing out motherboards.

I normally buy WD drives, but as they hadn't released a 7200rpm 3TB sata drive I went with Seagate

So I took out the side mount HDD system:

And started taking out drives:

The 512gb is actually smaller - 7mm tall while the older 128gb is 9mm:

 

[stren]

Spare drives:

Nearly done:

And done - the right drives will be for the gaming rig - 128gb boot, 2x128gb raid 0 for games, 32gb SLC for swap. The left drives are 512gb for boot/home of linux workstation, 128 temporary ssd that was left hooked up to transfer files, 3TB backup drive and 1TB old file storage.

Now to sell the old stuff:

 

[PCTC2]

I'll take your old stuff off your hands.

Nice purchases. I haven't purchased a "new" hard drive in years. I think the newest drives I have are my WD20EARS that I hate. Then the next newest are my 7200.11's or my Hitachi 7K1000's. Since then it's been all SSDs (really small 64 GB SSDs).

Can't wait for you to finish the baby and fire her up.

 

[stren]

I'll take your old stuff off your hands.

Nice purchases. I haven't purchased a "new" hard drive in years. I think the newest drives I have are my WD20EARS that I hate. Then the next newest are my 7200.11's or my Hitachi 7K1000's. Since then it's been all SSDs (really small 64 GB SSDs).

Can't wait for you to finish the baby and fire her up.

Me too

Coming soon:

Oh and just to prove I'm still working on this project:

Meanwhile I've also been busy working on this:

 

[Rubycon]

I wonder who the OEM is for that PSU.

It looks like Enhance TBH.

 

[Schmide]

From he connector count and layout. My guess would be a

Enermax MaxRevo 1500W

Edit: Further research

From Here

(Aetherone)
The important question is: who actually makes it?

124 Amp +12v rail is nice, especially if its one simple rail and none of this annoying multi-rail fluffing around.

Compare to
Enermax Platimax 1500W: 6x12 = 125A
Enermax MaxRevo 1500W: 6x12 = 125A
Seasonic X-1250: 1x12 = 104A
Corsair AX1200: 1x12 = 100A
Silverstone Strider 1500W 8(WTF?)x12 = 110A
Thermaltake ToughPower 1500W: 4x12 = 110A (wait, what? ROFL )

 

[Smasherbasher]

 

[stren]

I wonder who the OEM is for that PSU.

It looks like Enhance TBH.

From he connector count and layout. My guess would be a

Enermax MaxRevo 1500W

Edit: Further research

From Here

Yeah I was wondering if it was the Lepa 1600-MA with the additional USB interface added on top. Lepa/enermax all use those gritty powder coats that this shares. It has that overclock mode that boosts power to 1650W too which is why I was thinking of the lepa 1600 plus the OC mode is 133A on the 12V which is the same as the lepa 1600-ma. I'm going to go read that thread you linked now.

I hope it's not though cause enermax PSU's are supposedly terrible for sleeving lol

Hey you're over here too

 

[stren]

So when the inlaws came I moved the water cooling test rig off of the floor. The TX10 makes a convenient stand and also protected it from my niece.

The whole thing makes the 30" monitor look small

Now that the august weather is here though I may have to move it to a different room - the extra heat is making it intolerable in here!

 

[Rubycon]

Now that the august weather is here though I may have to move it to a different room - the extra heat is making it intolerable in here!

http://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/en/consumer/product-solutions/product-showcase

 

[stren]

http://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/en/consumer/product-solutions/product-showcase

Yeah it's not worth it for just one month a year haha. This month does suck though. Last year it got up to 98 in here :'(

 

[stren]

Finished up the gtx 560 - here are some pics. Getting ready to start:

Chopping some heatshrink:

2 fans done - ignore the yellow wire - I'm not actually hooking up the tach wire to the 12V, I just reused the yellow wire for the 12V line:

One thing I learned is that you don't have to join the wires all in the same place, in fact it's easier and less bulky if you join the 12V wires at one point, the 0V wires at another point and do the sleeving join at another point. This way you don't get one big lump. So don't do it like this is what I'm saying:

One side done - you can see the difference between the lumpy connection on the 3rd and 4th fan from the left, and the cleaner one on the 2nd/3rd:

Now we have to move those fans on to the other (push) side of the radiator. So we have to add the 140mm adapters to the other side of the fan, and remove the adapters from the original side:

 

[stren]

All done with that side, now let's go do the same thing again for the pull side:

Attaching the fans for the pull side:

Nearly done - but the last piece of sleeve pulled out of the heatshrink:

Replaced that section and all done:

Installed - as you might be able to see, the section above with the low speed yates/HDDs still needs to be done:

As you can see there's still a ton to do in the bottom compartment:

This side that's open right now will house the ex560 that's currently being used for testing waterblocks, and the gtx 360 that I'm going to go wire up and sleeve right now

I have some ideas for lighting too that I'm going to test out also

 

[stren]

Did a quick edit on the photos from yesterday's competition prize that came in:

More to come later of it going in...

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Great advice on the fan sleeving. I had been doing it all at the same spot and ending up with a lump. Going forward, I'll copy your method. Even though anandtech's C&C forum can be slow, keep the updates coming

 

[PCTC2]

I'm jeals of the new power supply.

 

[stren]

Great advice on the fan sleeving. I had been doing it all at the same spot and ending up with a lump. Going forward, I'll copy your method. Even though anandtech's C&C forum can be slow, keep the updates coming

I'm jeals of the new power supply.

Thanks guys Here's another update:

Some of the pics from the last week's adventures:

Fitted the sniper to the 990x and installed some of the samsung superOC ram. Corsair promised to sponsor me some ram, but it never showed up and after 3 months of my emails being ignored I've officially given up on them

I want to make a custom waterblock for the RAM anyway, but that's still a gleam in my eye right now :thumb: Time to get to leak testing on the motherboard loop:

After leak testing got done, I swapped the painted fan for one that worked and installed the motherboard tray into the *empty* chamber.

I need to swap out the circuit board from the broken GT fan for a good one and then swap back in the painted one. Now it's time to start hooking everything back up:

Plugged in the PSU cables, but the PSU is not yet there:

The sleeving is the stuff that came with the evga psu, that will be replaced with mdpc-x later:

 

[stren]

Finally with a PSU:

Those extra 6 pin headers are annoying but the nice thing is that most of the PSU cables can be flipped so you can hide some of the extra unwarted parts by plugging them in the other way round

Tidying up a bit:

There's still so much to be done, and so much of this is still temporary e.g. fittings/sleeve/loop layout etc etc. But for now I'm just glad to be finally getting this rig up and working after 8 months!

 

[PCTC2]

Your updates are like my crack. Looking good. I consider busting out my old MCP355 w/ XSPC top, ApogeeXT, and Thermochill PA120.3 every time I read this thread. My Corsair H80 just doesn't cut it.

 

[stren]

Your updates are like my crack. Looking good. I consider busting out my old MCP355 w/ XSPC top, ApogeeXT, and Thermochill PA120.3 every time I read this thread. My Corsair H80 just doesn't cut it.

Haha you should!


Another update - big one too!

So this is where we were last time - gaming rig trying to get up and working in a temporary state. Main loop not yet connected:

To finish the main loop we needed to connect the EK400 reservoir with the custom 1" NPT tap to the Iwaki RD-30 pump. First we need to build a T section for the drain port:

These are standard schedule 40 pieces of PVC that I'm gluing together. I took a T junction and two 1/2" NPT reducers as well as a piece of 1" grey electrical conduit for making the 90 degree turn:

This is all based on amuseme's idea except that I'm using 1" pipe instead of 0.75" and I connect to the pump slightly differently. So now we have to connect to the pump:

So we take a 5/8" brass barb from your local hardware store and tape it up with teflon tape:

1/2" tube can be warmed up and stretched over the barb. The idea is that the barb lines up right next to the 5/8" input to the Iwaki giving less restriction to the input feed of the RD30 unlike regular 1/2" tube would. I also added a 2nd barb for the drain tube. This reservoir coupled with the 1" pipe means there is a lot of water that needs draining easily:

 

[stren]

Both barbs in:

Now let's hook up the pump:

Add some worm clamps so that nothing flies free when you turn the pump up to 29V:

Now let's add the drain tube, the tube color is temporary for now:

Add the drain port:

Add a worm clamp and we're done for now:

Now it's time to put it in the case. As the reservoir was temporarily mounted we need to fix it first. There's a convenient metal plate in the case that you can unscrew and drill holes in:

Now let's reinstall that in the case:

And done:

 

[stren]

The reservoir is fed by two drain ports. When feeding a larger amount of water it's useful to have one for water coming in and another for air coming out:

Now here's the Iwaki Plus feed tube situated in the base. The cardboard box will be replaced with anti-vibration gel soon enough:

Here you see the gap between the Iwaki feeding tube and the tapped base of the EK reservoir:

I cut a piece of schedule 40 tube to size to glue in here:

Later I will paint all of the tubes so it doesn't look so bad The cardboard box doesn't quite raise the Iwaki high enough so we'll need to swap that out:

But here it is fully connected:

And here's the whole side of the gaming case in it's temporary state:

Now we can add the 360 radiator back in quickly (30 seconds) due to the Koolance quick disconnect fittings and the CaseLabs side mount design:

I can't fit a 480 in because of the placement of the radiator and the feed tube. I may move it later, but for now this works. So it's time to fill up with water: