Worklog: Project Thief - Fully Watercooled Dual PC

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Suddenly a wild nateman_doo block:

Dem VRMs:

Fitted:

Then I taped up the serial numbers and bar codes on the memory:

Then taped over the evga text on the south bridge that would be upside down:

Test fit with the r4e panel:

Test fit with the real panel:

I then realized that I had forgotten to take into account the blank plates to cover the pci slots:

 

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The bottom side fit perfectly though - on the CPU 8 pin cables I'll have to remove the clips though:

After trimming a bit more off:

Cutting the veneer - this time I want the grain to go vertically. I'm hoping to be lazy and not cover the end of the panel that will be hidden by radiators so as to not do a veneer joint:

The other question that had been on my mind was whether to use the bridge I had bought or not. I didn't like that one of the outputs had to be on the lower end of the block - I wanted both outputs to be at the top and run straight vertically up:

I could instead use crystal links to link the regular terminals and run all in parallel:

Obviously I would use the right size tube, and I'd change the fittings to black low profile ones. The downside is needing to buy about $70 more fittings, the advantage would be being able to see coolant, the disadvantage would be losing the robustness and support that the bridges bring

I'm leaning towards keeping the bridge. The next thing is to figure out where to bring the CPU connections out to in the lower chamber. The PSU mounts in the lower chamber and so blocks off a lot of space meaning the chamber pass throughs (panel mount QDCs) will need to be offset and the tubing route will be ugly

So this is the approximate plan:

I only just realized that my two EK 400mm reservoirs are different lengths Kinda mad about that. They were supposed to be the same version. Not sure how that happened.

I don't think the glue was completely dry when I removed the veneer tape so the gap between veneers widened a bit:

 

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Let's hope it looks ok after filling. The best kind of filler is home made with dust from the same wood that you've sanded. That way any finish will make it blend. However making your own filler is a right pain as you have to sand enough to collect the dust, then mix it into a putty with glue, then squeeze it into the gaps and its hard to get a ratio that has enough dust in it but is still sticky. I chose to be quick about it and used store bought stuff that should match well enough:

Filled:

We won't really know til it's sanded and finished. First up was sanding the back - this way I'd get used to the veneer thickness and if I burned through the veneer it wouldn't matter:

That rip is almost impossible to find now:

Last stage - cleaning the dust off before applying polyurethane:

That's it for now. The second panel is gluing up, and hopefully I'll get time this weekend to finish the R4E panel!

 

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Did more work on the R4E panel - last time I was finishing the back side. Here it is after it dried with the first coat:

You can see it definitely needs a 2nd coat, not that it matters because it's the hidden side of the board, but still, I don't like patchy. Before that though it was time to see if my plan for individual holes for the sleeving would work with the wood. First I had to mark out where the existing cable routing holes were on to the wood panel. You can see that there are 2 per side of the motherboard. I could make more by pulling the panel to the right of the motherboard.

So I decided to do a 5mm spacing on the wires - large enough to avoid them blurring together and hopefully large enough to suffer large burnout on the veneer on either side:

On a test piece of MDF I marked out the holes and did the start of the holes by hand. The front side worked well

The back of course had more tear out:

Because it worked well I decided to go ahead with the real board. The drill was running out of batteries so a couple of them wobbled off course:

 

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Hopefully it won't be noticeable.

The tearout on the back side wasn't bad:

This was the worst for burn out:

Overall though it was fine:

And ready for that 2nd coat of varnish. That's it for today:

 

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More sanding and finishing:

Testing the combs:

When I did this I realized that trying to use the existing holes in the panel was a mistake because it's almost impossible to get the panel in and out then. I should have sucked it up and made the holes where the sleeving would look best i.e. pure horizontal or vertical runs. I was also super annoyed by the joining of two of the holes for the pwr/reset switch connectors. Hopefully it won't be noticable after I'm done.

Time to pull the other panel:

Test fitting:

 

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So many holes to be made - I think this panel had over 110 or something stupid. All were started by hand.

Test fitting again:

After the first coat of finish - it'll need three before it's done:

At this point I decided the grey on the sleeve was too light. I also figured it would be hard to connect short extensions, and really I need to run the extensions all the way down to the lower chamber. So I think I'm going to swap the light grey in the pattern out for black sleeve, the dark grey will remain however. I'm going to need a ton of wire to build these extensions!

 

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Sleeve update:

This side is done now, though I might need more combs to keep it under control:

Lutro0's store has had so many orders they need to close for a week to catch up on shipping. Sadly I've also run out of wire too, so that's a bummer. Hopefully the store reopens with combs and wire available soon

I'm not planning on sleeving the Corsair supplies - I worked out how much wire it would be to sleeve all four and it was pretty pricey and a ton of work. I'm also thinking of going back to running two PSUs. Initially I planned to us my NEX1500 on the gaming rig and an AX1200 on the workstation. Then I ended up with 2 more AX850s so thought it would be cool to utilize all four PSU mounts and run 2xAX850 on the workstation (nice because the fan turns off when using little power) and the 2xAX1200 on the gaming side. However I want to bring tube into the lower chamber where the 3/4th PSUs would be so I'd have to make the tube routing less pretty and buy more fittings to jog around where the PSUs would be. So for now I'm thinking just keep it simple. Seeing as the NEX has hugely long cables and is 1 to 1, I may end up creating custom length wires for that.

For the dark side - I did 3/4 of the GPU extensions before I ran out of 16AWG. I do have 100ft of 18AWG which I could continue with, but 18 doesn't hold the shape as well, and it's more resistive, something that matters when you're really pulling a load of current. When mining with 4x290s on the NEX1500, the power wires to the GPUs would get warm.

That's it for now. Next up will be more sleeve, res mounting and finishing tubing in the motherboard chambers. I've calculated the remaining fittings I need, so I need to get them ordered and EK have agreed to send more goodies to finish up in style

 

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Making progress - also last EK package finally shipped!

Finally got the front panels back on - this time with all the radiators in and with longer screws so they are held in place better.

The thing that is bugging me on the "light" side is that the panel is warped because of the disceprencies in the front/back veneers I used. So you might be able to notice the wood warping away at the back of the case. I may have to do something about that.

Dark side extensions were finished and tested, just waiting on new reservoirs

While I wait for the final few parts I just need to finish changing out the white 3 pin headers to black ones which annoyingly seems to mean soldering fatter wires and then recrimping, because my black fan headers don't like the crimps from my white ones for some reason. Then hook up of the fan controllers and I'm really really close.

 

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More sponsored parts finally arrived from EK - so much product placement today:

Even my rug is CSQ

Got some replacement x3 style reservoirs as my two X2 res's were different heights:

I already had one white D5 top, but now I had two more:

triplets:

 

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Also since I put the 7990s in EK released the clear terminals - so of course I had to swap those:

Also took the time to correct the orientation of the EK badges (again). I really want to get some ER badges made instead, but I imagine that would be $$$

Also dug out the io plate and installed that finally too!

Mmmmm all the plexi:

My pump collection (D5's only):

The black topped varios are for the dark side (2 for gpu loop, 1 for cpu loop), while the white ones are for the light side. Time to also update the dark side:

Yes you filthy animals had told that air cooled south bridges were for canadians. Or something. So of course I had to comply with your demands:

 

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natemandoo in the house. Time to strip her down:

nekkid:

dat port clearance:

I do wish it was bigger like the original:

I didn't have a black supremacy, so of course EK couldn't let me use a filthy Bitspower block:

Goofy style:

Got me some ram blocks too:

Because 1.5V ram needs cooling:

 

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Blocks fitted and badges rotated:

Tempted to plastidip the thumbscrews - I really think EK should sell black versions of these [@]derickwm[/@]

Sleeved the pumps, though I got incredibly pissed off at the black three pin fan headers I had (I think from lutro0), the crimps just won't easily go in. In the end I gave up and decided to buy new ones and reused the original beige ones:

D5 POWAH:

Time to put the motherboard back in the case and hook up the tube:

Found some problems - the tube is not straight from the GPUs and is driving me nuts, and the tube from the ram blocks to the top chamber would kink because I didn't have enough space. More on that later. Time to make more hardlines:

Ready for install:

Can you believe just how much product placement we have today? I should be getting a cut of evo sales right now: Oh and let's not forget the other sponsors e.g. Corsair:

And monsoon

 

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And evga sorta:

And EK again jeez:

Dem bends:

This is the so called infinite loop - no pump required it just keeps both VRM and CPU cool. No radiator required either. Just don't turn it on:

4 fingers - 2 in the cpu, 2 in the south bridge

Lovely jubbley:

dat clearance again:

The NMD block was a bit of a pain to install, no instructions, no opinion on whether to use TIM or thermal pads, and the base of the block got very close to some caps on the board. In addition there were no standoffs, instead, two washers were used. This is a nightmare, because even one washer wouldn't stay still as you put the block on the board, let alone two. It took a lot of wrangling to install. If a manufacturer had released a block like that I would have torn them a new one.

 

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Rebuilding:

Block is not quite level, user error I suppose, but I was too nervous to tighten it down on the sata side of the board because it looked like it would touch something.

All four in:

I will have to wait to reinstall the 4 way ek bridge, because I'm missing one 90 degree fitting that I have to install first.

4 way or no way:

Put back in the case along with the new reservoirs and the bulkhead QDCs:

Pumps are hardlined to the bulkhead fittings. I didn't want to mount them at all so as to minimize vibrations. Hardline of course will still transmit some vibration, soft tube would be better but always looks ugly.

Dat chamber - big thanks to alphacool for the rads too!

FILTER#1

Also put the mora with the gt's plus adpaters back in - really need to get some ER stickers made for the fans:

 

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Light side - the third pump uses soft tube to hang rather than hardline - this will be fixed as soon as I get two more fittings!

Here you can also see how I rerouted the tube from the motherboard to the top chamber so it wouldn't kink. It does mean that there is an unused hole in the top of the chamber. I may have to plug it with a bulkhead and a stop fitting.

That's it for now! Today's thief update brought to you by the letters E and K, CaseLabs, Corsair, Alphacool, Monsoon etc etc

:thumb:

 

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It was time to do something about the bottom pedestal. So I went and got some more wood.

Ended up with this chunk which was much larger than I needed - it had pretty grain though and I'll use it eventually:

The back of it has some sap wood which give a nice contrast, but you can never trust sapwood.

It's super heavy though, I mean 2-3x as dense as most hardwoods, and a ton more than pine.

First up let's choose which face to use:

The last one is the prettiest if we can avoid the sapwood. Time to prep an edge:

 

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Sapwood is really quite thin, might be able to remove it by shaving a quarter inch of thickness off while maintaining the grain. After a bunch of work with the table saw:

I had to offset the piece in order to center the grain and so I had to build cantilever style support into the end that would no longer get screwed. Test fitting:

Required considerable fine tuning to get it just right to balance the height of the dress panel:

Then fedex came and more parts were here:

Including temperature probes with lcd screens. Aquaeros are for wimps. Time to fit them:

 

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Jigsawed then tidying up with chisel

Fitted:

Sleeved (I should have ordered more black molexes):

Much fancy:

Many smooth:

Also much fittings - more on these in next update:

 

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Alright here we go - last update I had got some more fittings and tube. The fittings were mainly so I could run straighter tube lines, or stop tube lines from hitting each other. 4 Loops gets messy real fast with tube routing.

The top and bottom of the front mounted rads for example needed to be joined up, and a curved loop while it would have been less restrictive got majorly in the way of the fill port lines

Sadly PPCS's updated their website and I ended up getting black nickel rather than nickel for the 90 degree rotaries. but it's hard to tell. I also reused some of my BP rotary snakes that I had previously used on the motherboard before I hardlined it.

The extra ports on the alphacool rads came in handy, because I couldn't actually screw in the monsoon rotaries into the "main" ports without removing the fans.

I also needed to get rid of some of the nickel fittings on the dark side:

The QDC here went to a black QD4, and those stop fittings turned black too. Sadly I didn't take a picture yet of the after, but it's looking much cleaner. Then the last thing was to mount the fan controllers to the base of the case and wire them up:

Dem ascendacy's. I should mod an "n" in there. One for each rig.

Notice that they are rotated - this is so the tube routes easily from the nearby radiators without kinking or extra fittings:

Once mounted I had to flip the case to apply the panel which was *much* fun. Here it is in the bottom of the case finally:

 

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At this point I was short 2 ft of tube. So I had to order more:

Ignore the koolance stuff that's just review samples, not for this build. Meanwhile I tested all the loops for leaking with distilled and used some old tube for the 2 ft that I was missing. After fixing the leaks I was ready for dye. But before that I had to wire up the ascendacys which meant custom cables:

These wires were fat enough I had to use two layers of sleeve to hide them too:

I needed two 1 to 2 splitters, two 1 to 4 splitters and a 1 to 3 splitter, some of them being extremely long. I color coded each one with different sleeve so it's easy to tell which is which as this rig gets very confusing. These were a real PITA to make, I think daisy chaining might be easier for future.

Power to the ascendacy's is through a 6 pin:

Bottom chamber wiring getting messy:

Gonna need excessive zip ties to tame that. However before that I needed to fill the loop with coolant because for bleeding I was going to use an external psu to power pumps so that I don't have to unplug the ones that are in there. Dark side you saw already in progress of bleeding:

 

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And dat light side which looks super sexy in color. But I'm still teasing y'all. I've let it bleed overnight, though I suspect there is a ton of air still in the loops, but it's not exactly a case you can pick up and shake. Hopefully tonight I'll tidy the wiring and do a final photo shoot, this time, in color, and maybe make a gif of the loop filling on the plexi side.

That's all I have before the final photos come in.

 

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Alright LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, TROLLS, HATERS AND PEASANTS!

Project Thief is COMPLETE. Cue Drums..... Cue trumpet fanfare....

Project thief is based around the enormous, nay monstrous, CaseLabs TX10-D case, and if that wasn't enough, there's a pedestal to make it even bigger.

The build features two full size gaming computers in one case along with custom wood panelling and powder coating. The name thief comes from the this build stealing an awful lot of my disposable income. The Thief symbology is integrated through the use of Skyrim Thief's guild symbols as well as two different themes representing the duality of the thief's life. The "light" side of the case represents the Thief's role by day as an ordinary hard working member of society and features my workstation. The "dark" side of the case represent's the Thief's role by night and features my gaming rig. The ability to fit so many radiators and fans means that the fans can be turned down to be almost silent while still being able to perform at the top of their game.

The idea was really to build a no hold's barred setup with the best of the best that was not only hardcore but easy to maintain. One computer would be my linux based workstation that I use for my day to day work. The other would be my windows based entertainment/gaming battlestation.

Light side:
- Rampage IV Extreme + 4930K + 32GB Corsair Dominator GT 2133 + 2x 7990s + 1TB SSD
- Fully watercooled with 2 loops: cpu, memory, motherboard, gpus

Dark side:
- EVGA X79 Dark + 4820K + 16GB Corsair Dominator GT 2133 + 4xR9-290s + 1TB SSD
- Fully watercooled with 2 loops: cpu, memory, motherboard, gpus

The thief thrives by moonlight:

Suddenly a wild thief:

The size of a fridge:

The top hides a Mora 1260 radiator:

A door opens to reveal the "light" side:

Custom wood panels out of super hard "Cocobolo" wood:

 

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The other side' door opens to reveal the "dark" side:

The TX10 features panels that can be removed in seconds to get access to the hardware underneath:

Behind the wood panels are four Alphacool UT60 radiators each with 6 fans:

The TX10-D can fit two HPTX sized motherboards, we only used EATX however. It can also mount server rack mount gear - at the top of the rear you can see 4x1u covers. 4 power supplies are supported by default, though more can be added. We found a 1500W and a 1200W PSU to be sufficient

The "Light" side features the Rampage IV Extreme with a 4930K CPU clocked at 4.75GHz and kept very cool by a polished CSQ EK Supremacy block. The motherboard VRM and south bridge is fully water cooled also by EK water blocks in Nickel/Plexi CSQ polished by hand to a glass like finish. The RAM is Corsair Dominator GT 2133 CL9 - 8x4GB of DDR3 again fully watercooled by EK Monarch Blocks:

The tubing is Monsoon hardline acrylic tube coupled with Monsoon's Premium hardling fittings. These fittings grip the tube so securely they can hold up a 30lb dumbbell:

The motherboard chamber also features two EK X3 reservoirs in 400mm size. Large reservoirs make loop filling easier and putting them in an easily viewable window makes leaks obvious. The motherboard is easily removable as it sits on a removable tray. However the cooling is also quick to remove as each feed uses a Koolance Quick Disconnect. The motherboard can be removed for maintenance or changeing parts within a minute.

The dual 7990's also feature custom chrome plated backplates:

As well as MDPC-X sleeving and Lutro0 Custom's cable combs:

 

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EK's clear terminals were used to keep the consistent style:

EK's Ekoolant in blood red was used to make the most of the plexi blocks:

Tubes were bent using Monsoon's pro bending kit which gave me professional results even though this was my first hardlined build:

I like to think that these chromed backplates are what caused EK to start making backplates in other colors than black

The rear fan is a bitfenix sceptre in white with red leds. The motherboard chamber is also lit with RGB LED strips at top and bottom that are remote controlled:

The dark side of course is reverse atx:

The EVGA X79 dark motherboard is well matched to the EVGA SuperNova NEX1500 power supply and the EK X3 400mm reservoirs flow directly down in to the D5 pumps with EK tops: