Project: DIRTY BOMB (cheap and nasty)

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Originally Posted by jiggiwiddit

Ive reversed the PSU fan so that it takes air from the case and blows out the bottom

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I'd keep an eye on that if I were you - there's a chance you could have reduced the cooling substantially. Stock, the fan blows air directly onto the components and it then gets pushed out the vent by pressure. Reversed, there's a chance the air will just flow over (or under as the PSU is going to be mounted to the top of the shell) the components instead of directly onto the parts then out the bottom of the case. Hot air rising and all that, you might end up with a nasty hotspot right on the PSU main board where the air isn't getting....

Instead of the parts being actively cooled by cool direct air pressure from the outside of the case, you may have a stream of warm air passing over the tallest parts only, and barely affecting the parts furthest from the fan

I'll second that - fans create a region of high pressure on one side and low pressure on the other. There is substantially more air movement on the high pressure side than on the low pressure side, not to mention more air molecules, and thus the high pressure side has MUCH better cooling properties. Your setup would work if the airflow rates were the same on both sides of the fan, and logically you'd think that would be the case. The fan on its intake side only speeds up the air right before it goes into the blades; more than a few millimetes away and the flow rate drops off dramatically. I've experimented a LOT with fan placement in my build. :) As slave said, the high pressure air blown onto the PSU parts ensures that all parts have air flowing over them. I've dismantled my PSU too, although I have the boards sitting horizontally, with the fan mounted vertically. It doesn't blow all its air right on the parts, but some of the air flows over them, and heat rises and the higher parts of the fan keep that air moving.

I think what's going to happen with your current setup is the PSU fan will suck away air from the parts before it can really absorb any heat from them, and so the parts will just get hotter and hotter, since they can't give up nearly as much heat to a low pressure zone. Also, the PSU parts will impede clean airflow from the ventholes in the casing, which will worsen the problem (as opposed to the original fan orientation where there is no obstruction on the intake side). You'd be left with a hot PSU and a fan that isn't moving much air.

What I would recommend doing after looking at your pics, is leave the PSU in its current orientation, flip the fan back around to its original direction, but see if you can build a duct to funnel the warm air coming out of the vents to outside the case. Maybe to the side instead of the bottom to minimize the warm air getting sucked back into the fan intake.

Another alternative is cut off the side of the PSU case that the power cord goes into, or cut off part of the side, and mount a fan there blowing air in. You'd need to make sure, for optimal airflow, that it could push about the same amount of air as the main PSU fan, but even if it didn't, it would still be better than nothing.

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Originally Posted by slaveofconvention

I'd keep an eye on that if I were you - there's a chance you could have reduced the cooling substantially.

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Originally Posted by artoodeeto

What I would recommend doing after looking at your pics, is leave the PSU in its current orientation, flip the fan back around to its original direction, but see if you can build a duct to funnel the warm air coming out of the vents to outside the case. Maybe to the side instead of the bottom to minimize the warm air getting sucked back into the fan intake

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Thanks for the info guys. The initial idea was to prevent warm air from the PSU getting blown into the case.

Having taken both your suggestions onboard I'm going to put the fan back to stock and fit extraction fan/fans elsewhere on the case to exhaust the extra warm air from the PSU. I know the PSU is critical as I'm gona run 2 pumps and 2 fans for the watercooling as well as everything else.

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Originally Posted by slaveofconvention

Molex or ATX? I may have a spare or two if it'll help...

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ATX slave, I want to use black sleeving to hide the multi coloured rainbow at the side of my mobo. Do they look like this?

yup - the ones I have are very similar to that, although that looks like a higher quality tool than the ones I have.

I actually had to mod mine to make it work properly - I found the tips of the tool were a little too wide so I used some sandpaper to sharpen them - basically went from something like this...

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to something like this

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Excuse the rough n dirty ASCII art lol - I've been fighting with graphics for the last few hours for a couple websites I have to get done and I'm reluctant to reopen the image editing software :p

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Originally Posted by slaveofconvention

I actually had to mod mine to make it work properly - I found the tips of the tool were a little too wide so I used some sandpaper to sharpen them - basically went from something like this...

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to something like this

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Excuse the rough n dirty ASCII art lol - I've been fighting with graphics for the last few hours for a couple websites I have to get done and I'm reluctant to reopen the image editing software :p

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Thas ok I got the point :redface: ha

Seriously, the one I posted is £7.92 from scan. I'll order one and some sleeving at end o' month. Many thanks for offer tho :up:

Yeah so I can't do it lol - hopefully this will be a little clearer...

The one on the left, I sanded a little to create points, the one on the right is as it came from the supplier. I only have two because when I bought the tool, it fell on the floor and I genuinely thought it was missing from the packaging so reported it as such, and the supplier sent another one out free of charge - was the same day it arrived I found the first one under the desk...

Before I sanded the points onto the tool, I was having problems with the tool catching on the metal part of the ATX connector instead of sliding between it and the plastic - this fixed it perfectly...

Ok, took just under hour the change the fan around. glad you guys came in with advice rather than me learning by an expensive mistake :up:

+rep t'ya both

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Originally Posted by jiggiwiddit

Ok, took just under hour the change the fan around. glad you guys came in with advice rather than me learning by an expensive mistake :up:

+rep t'ya both

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Glad we could help! I've had a LOT of learning-by-expensive-mistakes experiences (my first attempt at building a computer back in 1995 was a $450 disaster), so I'm always happy to pass that knowledge on. :)

Ordered some black sleeving and an ATX tool to finish off the cables that are still visible. Also ordered some nice stainless allen screws for the side copper grills and the front panel. The screws on the window are M6 thread. Ive ordered some M3 and M4 of the same type to match them but on a smaller scale.

Ok this is the device with the internal framework and carry handle in place

Now the the graphics card is in, I dont have as much space to play with for all the watercooling bits

Ive not ordered radiators or pumps yet and I may need to rethink one of the custom reservoirs before I order the materials

I think there will be more cutting of the case to fit it all in....

Fire up the jigsaw :rolleyes:

Result!!

Visited a local industrial plastics supplier today and got a bargain off cut...

Cast acrylic tube, 110mmOD 100mmID x 400mm. This enough to do both res's. I have the flat acrylic material for the ends so now only need to order a smaller inner tube for the graphics loop res. It is very slightly marked but I cant complain for only £5.00 :banana:

Interesting; so are you going to be doing the two res' inside each other of something?

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Originally Posted by x88x

Interesting; so are you going to be doing the two res' inside each other of something?

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Kind of. 8)
The CPU res will be a simple cylinder on its side with one of the flat faces sitting flush in the round scope screen opening on the front of the case. I plan to have green uv reactive coolant in this loop.

The other res for the graphics loop will be a bit like this

It will have a hollow void in the middle like this res

But it will stand vertically and be visible through the side window. This res and loop will have red coolant and hopefully a nice lighting effect in the middle that will 'shine' through the red coolant.

Wow! looks promising, can't wait to see how this'll look when it's done!

keep up the good ideas and the good work!

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Originally Posted by silverdemon

Wow! looks promising, can't wait to see how this'll look when it's done! keep up the good ideas and the good work!

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Thanks :)
As this is my first attempt at water cooling and it has got to be leak free, Im going to farm the res work out to my nephew Vinny. He has access to specialist CNC machines that enable the precision fitting that I cant do with hand tools. I may also call on Vinny's skills to do some etching on the aluminum.

Update:

Been shopping :)

The M3 and M4 stainless allen bolts and lock nuts have arrived

So have some of these 1/2" ID 3/4" OD fittings

And 2 metres of this

And also 2 of these

These will enable me to work out the positioning for the radiators and the routing of the hoses :up:. A quick check has shown that I will need some right angle fittings but I have enough for now to work out where the extra cuts will be to fit the rads in.

The graphics res is gona be a tight fit. It will just clear the graphics card and the upright inner support frame

Here Ive marked another cut line so that the res can 'sink' into the bottom of the case. I wont cut this yet until Ive finalized the rad positions.

edit:
As I dont have any 120mm fans yet, I errr..... 'borrowed' this from the family PC to help positioning things. It wasnt this clean when I removed it :rolleyes:

nice! Can't wait to see the water loop setup, especially since I just finished one of my own. I used about 5 feet of tubing in my crawler, and as you probably saw in the pics, the various components were fairly close together. Depending on where you locate everything in your case, you may end up needing more than 2 meters of tubing. nice work on getting the reservoir material, that'll look really nice in there, and definitely run a cathode light down the middle, it'll look awesome.

Yay for new parts! :D

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Originally Posted by artoodeeto

nice! Can't wait to see the water loop setup, especially since I just finished one of my own. nice work on getting the reservoir material, that'll look really nice in there, and definitely run a cathode light down the middle, it'll look awesome.

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Thanks artoo. I want to put more than a cathode in the middle of the res :devious:. The effect Im trying to achieve is something like this


Im hoping that if i modify a couple of these and position the LEDs in the middle of the tube, it'll look pretty cool (and dangerous) 8). They run on 6 volts so shudnt be too difficult to adapt the power supply.

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Originally Posted by x88x

Yay for new parts! :D

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:D
Yeahhh... I still get the 'kid at xmas' feeling when new stuff arrives

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Originally Posted by jiggiwiddit

Thanks artoo. I want to put more than a cathode in the middle of the res :devious:. The effect Im trying to achieve is something like this

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duuuude.....that sh*t's SWEET. Hope you can pull it off! although...the LED you linked looks kinda big? I'm assuming you'd pull it out of that housing, so maybe it'd fit just fine. What would be over-the-top awesome would be to wire it so the strobe flashes more frequently when the computer is accessing the hard drive and/or DVD drive. :D

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Originally Posted by artoodeeto

duuuude.....that sh*t's SWEET. Hope you can pull it off! although...the LED you linked looks kinda big? I'm assuming you'd pull it out of that housing, so maybe it'd fit just fine. :D

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Yep I'll definitely get rid of the casing and probably extend the led wires to get the leds on some kind of rod that can be positioned in the tube.

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Originally Posted by artoodeeto

What would be over-the-top awesome would be to wire it so the strobe flashes more frequently when the computer is accessing the hard drive and/or DVD drive. :D

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Might not get that complicated. Was thinking of rigging the strobe freq controls to vr pots on the front panel so they can be manually controlled.

Thanks for the input :up:

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Originally Posted by jiggiwiddit

Might not get that complicated. Was thinking of rigging the strobe freq controls to vr pots on the front panel so they can be manually controlled.

Thanks for the input :up:

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hehehe I'm always ready to share my opinion :) I like the idea of manual controls too - while wiring to the hard drive would be awesome, I have no idea how to go about it. But the manual control version will be a lot easier to do and just as cool. I shall await the video clip of it strobing away... :D

Small update

Another 'sighs' stripdown and the new cutlines are ready. The cut at the front is for the graphics radiator and fan. The curved cutline is for the graphics res.

Here is the cutline on the front panel for the radiator fan. I'll lose two of the screws that fix the front to the chassis (the lower two holes within the circle) but four should be sufficient as the completed project will be much lighter than the original scope when it was complete.

This shows where the rad will be positioned on the inside of the front panel

The radiator and fan will be secured to the front panel with stainless screws and the coolant pipes will (probably) route along the floor of the case to GPU block and res.

Looks great.

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Originally Posted by x88x

Looks great.

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Thank you.

I've given some of the project parts to my nephew Vinny for some engineering treatment :up:

The old front panels
http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/j...g?t=1201531175

Will be replaced with new taller aluminum ones that will cover the row of eight holes at the bottom. More to follow on this.

These large stainless handles will be modified so that the 'finger space' is the same as the small handle

All of the parts for the CPU res are also away for machining and fabrication. I'll drill and tap the holes for the fittings myself. The GPU res will follow when I've got the remaining materials that I need. I'm also getting some nice custom feet made for the case, more to follow.

Some new tools :banana:

M3 and M4 taps and wrench

1/4" BSP tap and wrench with 11.5mm drill for res' etc

And last, but not least

A nice set of professional drill bits- very handy :up:

Small update:

Got the fans I'm using for the rads. They shift nearly 70CFM on 12V and are supposedly quiet with good static pressure.

M3 Allen screws to hold the fan to the rad. The threads were a bit long so Ive used some washers to space them out a bit

Cpu rad ready for fixing to the front panel when I get it back

Case carry handle stripped, cleaned, painted and reassembled

Update:
Some of the parts I gave to Vinny are ready (cheers mate)

CPU res parts all finished except for some tapped mounting holes on the edges of the square piece

And loosely assembled. The round end should look great in the round hole on the front of the case :up:

The stainless handles are also ready after modification

Nice. I'll be interested to see how that res turns out.

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Originally Posted by x88x

Nice. I'll be interested to see how that res turns out.

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Thanks. This is my first venture into watercooling. Think I only need a couple of compressions and a pump to complete the CPU loop. :)

Looking pretty Awesome so far any more Updates!

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Originally Posted by Jolly-Swagman

Looking pretty Awesome so far any more Updates!

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Thank you Swagman :)

I havnt updated for a while due to the arrival of my new grandson :D

Meet Thomas

and my daughter's and neice's weddings :D. Been really busy (and out of cash for modding)

More updates soon...

Congrats on that masterpiece!!

awww.
I guess that's a good reason for no updates, so you're off the hook. for now :D