Dude, this is turning out amazing. Great Job. +rep
Printable View
Dude, this is turning out amazing. Great Job. +rep
Personally I think the clear tubing looks out of place. The installation is coming together really well though, looks good.
I love the cable management. I like how everything looks so sleek. I have to agree the clear section looks a bit out of place, but would probably look better when the coolant is in there.
Thanks guys.
Rico from Watercool told me today that my PrometheusCU edition Heatkiller rev3.0 was shipped and is on it's way to me.
I also had Rico send me some pics of his shop...
First up, here's the link to the watercool website:
*click for link*
the Watercool workshop - Rico's left the captions up to me because he says his English isn't very good.
Outside the shop:
What looks to be a couple of 5-axis CNC mills - some very impressive equipment for the machinist among us. You can see a bunch of what look to be GTX280 waterblocks in the bins:
This looks like some delrin Heatkiller 3.0 tops.
A bigass bending break, a piece of equipment that I REALLY REALLY want.
A hydraulic drop saw, cutting what looks to be delrin slabs for waterblock tops:
A CNC lathe... another bit I'd kill to own:
A MASSIVE CNC metal stamping punch making waterblock details, and mounts:
To be recycled scrap metal and shavings:
Some of you asked for some interior shots of the Heatkiller 3.0 CoolingMasters.com did a quickie review of the block and took pics of the inside:
I 'finished' the GFX power lines.
I added the quotes, along with some slack in the lines, because I'm going to solder the wires to the cards... to clean it up a bit.
The heatshrink is also temporary
The tools I used:
Here's my 'needle nose crimp job':
Add solder:
Result:
Here are the wires in place, the heatshrink needs to be finalized, but I cut all the wires on an angle so they feed in the correct direction out of the PSU without straining.
I'm also going to relocate the little black cable clips on the motherboard tray - to be neater.
Thanks for reading. Tune in soon - NEXT I tackle the soldered ATX and 12v lines! =)
Good luck on the soldering job. +rep
A very impressive workshop he has there. I too would kill for that sort of equipment at my disposal lol ;).
Cabling is looking fantastic, you have put a lot of thought into how you are doing it. It is really paying off.
looks awesome :up:
Looking great man!
Guess what's coming next?
Looks like you are going to have some fun with the mobo power connectors, makes for a neater system ;).
sweet :up:
I'm out of desoldering braid, so I'll have to run out and get some more in a bit here.
I've made the necessary cuts to the motherboard tray.
Perhaps some of you will remember this illustration:
The cuts correspond with this plan.
I love my Weller WES51 iron, It's a great unit but it's not getting hot enough. In fact none of my irons are working for me... even the massively overpowered 260WATT Weller D550, and the 40WATT Weller SP40LK.
Do motherboards use some kind of super high temp solder or something?
None of my irons get hot enough to make it properly workable, it just refuses to melt like one would expect it to.
Pumps, and braid have very little effect.
I've removed about %90 of the solder material from each joint but that last %10 wont budge, it wont even melt.
Any advice before I break out my little torch?
and I'm not buying a $600 hot air desoldering station - yet.
This is the first time I've ever had this much trouble desoldering - figures this happens to me on the first thing that I'd genuinely prefer not to destroy. haha
Factory solder really is tough. Unless you can get yourself an ultra powered soldering iron lol you would have to make do with your Weller.
I have several irons, and one is a massive over powered 260WATT gun - even when cranked to above 900deg nothing happens.
I tried my small 40watt iron (SP40LK), my weller station (WES51), my 260WATT gun (D550), and my SMT station (WD2000M)... none had any effect (and yes I do have a boner for weller products).
I've even tried using my solder to heat the factory solder... no dice.
This is the first time I've ever had this much trouble desoldering - figures this happens to me on the first thing that I'd genuinely prefer not to destroy. haha
Methinks I'll have to use a torch, but first I'm going to see if any of my contacts have any heat flow gear I could borrow.
I seem to recall a buddy of mine having a full blown turbine desoldering station.
I assumed it was wave soldered but I didn't think that they used kryptonite to do it.
I just plugged in my clothes iron and my IR thermometer says it's considerably colder than any of my soldering irons... so there goes that idea.
I think the only way I'm going to get this thing off is to use a soldering torch or a concentrated flow from my heatgun. I'm pretty sure both of these methods are quite likely to destroy the board though. If that's the case then when I get a replacement mobo I'll leave the connectors in place and just solder the wires to the bottom of the pins.
I'm going to wait and see if anyone has any suggestions for me, I've posted this dilemma on about a 12 forums... I guess this will have to wait until tomorrow to see what my fellow geeks have to say.
Pain in the ass.
um... ive soldered things offa my motherboards fine... and thats with a crappy "the Source" - Radio Shack $15 iron... 30 watt
So have I.. but this one is stubborn.
From the responses I've gotten on other forums, this seems to be a fairly common issue for wave soldered products.
With the new Rohs compliant products this is an issue. The leadless solder takes more heat to melt. and it's hard to get the heat into the vias in these seven layer boards. Might try a soldering iron that is labeled for leadless solder.
Good luck!
Great work so far!
That's exactly what I've been saying... so today I went out and got a new torch/butane iron.
I'm pretty sure I'll cook my board.
If I have to do it again, I'll leave the plugs in place - that would have saved me all this grief.
I went to Lee Valley Tools today.
Among other things I got this.
A 10LB BOX OF SAND PAPER FOR $15.00CAD!
Everything from 20gritt to 2000gritt.
Quite the amazing deal.
The soldering torch set I got today is much like this one.
That is a crap load of sand paper, great bargain.
That's a butt load of sand paper.
And if you do cook your board and leave the plugs on the next one you're gonna get alot of, "Hey man your powers not plugged in." Then you can be like "It works on magic man." lol
That's exactly the plan Grammaton - I'm just going to get a new board, there's no chance that I'll get these plugs off without hurting the board.
Damn you ASUS and your stack cool lol.
Lookey what came in the mail today:
The rest of my 64GB G.Skill SSDs
Damn man, I thought you would have waited to get the Intel E(xtreme) series. They are only 32GB, $800US but they are the fastest drive to date lol.
Either way any SSD is a winner.
I got all these drives for about $800 - they aren't anywhere near as quick as the Intel drives but they'll be in RAID0 on a dedicated RAID card with processor and battery backup... so I bet they'll FLY.
Langer,
The reason you can't desolder very easily is most likely due to the fact that most of the pins dump directly into a ground or power plane. You are heating up a large portion of the board when you try to remove the last bit o solder. This is also an issue when you resolder the wires back in. Takes some kahones to hack up a brand new MB. I did design for 8 years before doing a 180 ans joining the Air Force. Without the air station, I always had problems desoldering from very large planes. Also the oz of copper on the plane can also make a difference, 0.5 oz to 2 oz copper, the more copper there, the harder to solder.
You work so far is first rate!
Cheers,
James
I determined the very same thing. ASUS has a tech called "Stack Cool" which is an extra layer of copper sheet to dissipate heat from the board - among other things that's the problem.
Another delivery.
Switches:
Could you give me a link for one of the switches? I think I had it, but I must have lost the link.
Google - Bulgin Vandal Resistant Switches
I don't know where you're located but I got mine from Performance-PCs.com, all said and done they were about $147 shipped.
Thanks for the info; I like those ones. I'm in the US.
Take a look over at AllElectronics
They have Domed Vandal proof switches for $3.95us
Or Flat topped Vandal Proof ones for $3.95us
There's no lighted ring in them but a frosted ring of plex and an LED around them looks pretty too :) and is a bit cheaper ;)
Nice work again Langer! Very top shelf!!!
Man those switches are sweet. They look like copper powered down.
Recently got one for my computer. Awesome switches if a bit pricey. Mine was $16USD for a black flattop with green ring. That and it didn't come wired, those cost more.
I like it though. Nice audible click, makes it feel sturdy lol.
Quick drop in:
I'm headed north for x-mas some what unexpectedly.
My grandfather is due to pass-on any day now and I'd like to see him one last time, so I'll be gone until the 30th.
Solong folks. Have a very merry christmas.
Sorry to hear about your Grandfather mate, mine passed away mid last year. Enjoy your time with him and enjoy your Christmas.
This mod is blowing my mind.
Sorry to hear about your grandpa man. Go have sometime with him. Didn't get to when mine died, so I know how that is.
