Project: Aquarius

Hello guys! How has everyone been?
We have an all new project, our most ambitious yet, and expensive :(


Brought to you by:

I will highlight just some of the amazing mods we are doing to this. First. It will be a dual system. Ivy Bridge for main system (when it comes out next month) and 1155 low power mini- ITX as the top system. We will have full 3 Loop water cooling. One for top system and 2 for main system. We’re not sure on the video cards yet. We’ll see when Kepler is out. But we intend on at least 3 cards for main system and 1 for top.

Custom electronics through out for monitoring, control and automation.

We will keep it black with UV Green highlights and Chrome fittings.

There is so much more but we don’t want to spoil it for you.

We would like to thank our Sponsors for their contributions.

CrystalFontz Has provided 2X CFA 735 Controllers for our systems.

Azza has of course given us the awesome Fusion 4000 chassis to work with.

EKWB Has sent us a nice Dual Bay Reservoir which we will use in this.

We are currently seeking a few more Sponsors as this is going to exceed many thousands of dollars.


First we started with the top. Our intention is to flip the doors so that they open UP not down.

So we brought out the Modders friend, the Dremel 4000. Complete with extension cable which is a life saver.

Once the doors were removed, we also cut out the design in them to replace with Plexi. In the pictures it looks like the cuts are not clean, but indeed they are perfectly straight. We used Dremel’s Saw Max to cut it out. Works great with light steel.

After all the cutting, we placed a custom cam through the hinges so that we can attach servos to open the doors together.

Here is a video of the result. Keep in mind we don’t have the servos installed yet so we just turn it by hand.
http://www.youtube.com/v/LD-0OpPSRp8

Top door operation
Later we will be adding the servos and plexi, we’ll update the pics then.

We then moved to the top of the Chassis, the Louvers. They didn’t open very far, and you had to do it manually. We cant have that now can we?
First thing we did was remove the stopper on the edges of the louvers so they could raise higher.

Then we crafted a whole new lever action which will also be opened by a servo. Only this servo will be temperature controlled. You will be able to open and close it manually also though.

We fashioned these pins that will connect to each louver. The moving bar will then push or pull each louver.

Louvers in Action
http://www.youtube.com/v/_p65I8ZBYLg
Now we moved on to the newly designed Feet/legs. With this tower being so tall, we wanted a more aggressive and stable stance.

We started with 1/2” Aluminum and painstakingly cut out each piece We will let you guys how they will look when we’re done

This was the remnants.


We have the legs cut out, but NOT finished. We just wanted to give you guys a look into what they will kinda look like when the PC is mounted on them. They are more than just for looks, they give the rather tall chassis more stability and a more aggressive look. We like it and hope you do too.

We plan on beveling the toes at about a 35 degree angle in addition to polishing it up real good and adding some detail and effects to it. The feet will swivel with the case if it needs to be laid on it's side.
These are on hold for a bit while we move on to the right door. We're very excited about the side doors so wanted to get started on them. So sorry for the short update but more is coming.

Awesome start!

+sub :D

Okay! We have the Reservoir and doors cut out and plexi in place. Some fine tuning left to do so don't start tripping thinking it's done. Just wanted to get you guys some updates so you can see the progress.

Here is door BEFORE:

Then we cut the sides for the reservoir. We stuck sand paper down on the table so we had a flat surface to sand them on to ensure they were flat. After all they will be used to hold in water!

We went ahead and got all the holes drilled for the upper doors and lower doors.

Then went back to finishing the reservoir.

With that almost done we mounted the plexi in the doors.

Then we cut it out for one of our features. We are mounting a 120MM radiator in the middle of the door opening. So the doors will close AROUND the Radiator.

So our end result was this: (with the doors closed)

Hope you guys like it. If you have ideas we're all ears.

That radiator is adorable.

Huge Update guys. I hope you like it.

We finished the reservoir on the left door. We also finished the right doors. Take a look...

Oh we finished the Upper door also.

Then we finished off the left door with the reservoir.

In this image you can see our diffuser. It will disperse the water the full length of the reservoir.

And here we are with it finished. Hope you guys like it. It will be the reservoir for the video card cooling loop.

Take care guys, thanks.

Love the reservoir man!

I wanna see video on this... haha... just a heads up

Nice update for you guys. This is really starting to come together.

We decided to lift the top of the case, as if it isn't tall enough, but we wanted MORE ROOM!
So we cut a strip of aluminum and bent it to shape of the rest of the top.

This turned out quite well and will suit our needs.

We moved into the front in which we removed the stock 2 fans and decided to put in a Hardware Labs X-Flow 240mm Radiator.

We permanently attached some DangerDen Delrin fittings

We cut out the vent in the lower area, not only to make room for the tubing, but for some other things we have planned which you will see later.

Huge thanks to Dremel for making that easy to do

We just got in our servos and some other things so we'll begin automation real soon. Stay tuned!

Very interesting. So there will not be any fans on the front rad?

Looks promising... moving panels and stuff, nice idea with that aluminium top as well.

Oh, and looking for that dremel right now, i think i need 1 of those ;)

That bend came out excellent! How did you do that?

Projects really coming along, Looks really good so far. How do you plan on avoiding kinks in the tubing when you open the front panel?

Wanted to let everyone know that the project is still alive. We have made a lot of progress on it. We were delayed by the company move, which took almost 2 months.

This is more of a teaser as a "proof of life" thing. I'll get more detailed soon.

As you can see there is a TON of sleeving to do still. We're finishing up the Electronics part which will control the servos and remote control system. Then we have to sleeve all of the temperature monitor wires once we get most of the components in place.
Here's to praying that all of these wires will fit in.

What did you paint the heatsyncs with?

Progress nice!

Very nice work so far! I too need one of those saws...unfortunately, the list of things I "need" is pretty long right now. :whistler:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jdbnsn

That bend came out excellent! How did you do that?

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I second this. I'm guessing you have a brake and experience, but it would be so much cooler if that was a product of homebrew shenanigans.

I also love the videos! Keep 'em coming.

@stoner/ We used a standard Fluorescent green aerosol available at Home Depot for around 7 bucks.

Ok here we go with some more substantial updates and news. Finally.

We have started assembly and have gotten pretty far. We got all the fans painted and back together.

This was just the second coat. You can notice the different types of fans. This was intentional. Some of the positions of particular fans required different specs of fan. some PWM, some 800 RPM, etc. All besides 2 fans in the entire system will be controlled by Crystalfontz's CFA735

Once those dried we got them in place on the top Black Ice GTX 480 HardwareLabs Radiator

We also got 2 more fans put in the front radiator, a HardwareLabs Pro II XFLOW

If you notice on the bottom right of the 240, we crafted a custom manifold so we could route the flexible tubing through the front with enough slack to allow the door to be functional while the system was in use.

I temporarily placed the only 2 hotswap drive bays for the upper system, once we crafted a protective and decorative plate over the back of it. These 2 bays will be the only open bays for the upper system. Rest is taken up by monitor, the 735 controller and water pump behind them.

Dennie is busy making some really fancy Fan Header manifolds so we can run each "sector" as one fan, then control it with the CFA735. I'll have some shots of those later this week.

So I got started on the fan grill that I'll be cutting our with a design. We're not 100% set on the design yet, but we do know it has to flow well with the design and be able to match one the 120mm and 240mm radiators.

The radiator in this picture is of course HardwareLabs GTX120 Gen 2 XTREME slightly marred from me sliding rough sheets of aluminum across it for fit testing. Both this one and the 240 are set up for Push/Pull configuration. The 480 is just set up for Pull. Mostly due to space restraints. I would have liked to have added 4 more fans to the 480 but we are flat out of room in this giant case.

Here is a glory (or not) shot of the front. Mostly for preservation as a before and after shot later when we're done.

We're still trying to source three NVIDIA 670 waterblocks, with them being so new and i guess not that popular among enthusiasts, there are only a couple people crafting them at the moment. We have time though as we still have another 50 feet or so of sleeving to do on top of everything else.
I think we were a bit too rambunctious in the beginning and are trying to put too much inside what we thought was a big enough case. Which in reality, the Fusion 4000, as good as it is, is more than enough for most people. We just wanted to push this one way over the top. Let us know if you think we are... over the top that is.

On a side note, stop by our place, http://www.deviceunknown.com and register. We are almost always giving away these product samples we get in for reviews either in our forums or on Facebook and would like to strengthen our community on the US side.

Thanks guys we'll talk to you again soon.

And haven't experienced any issues with heat dissipation after painting?

Hmmmm so much lovely green.

Ok I'm ready to see this loop now!

Well gang, another update. We're moving rather slowly on this. Definitely slower than we would have liked. Part of the delay was a promise by Gigabyte to provide motherboards for this ,then after jerking us around for weeks (after committing to it) changed their minds. The sponsorship really was no big deal, it was the waiting for weeks and having to resend a bunch of irrelevant information to several people. I can see why marketing positions are such high turnover. Seems every month we work with someone new in each company. Anyway, on to what we have gotten so far.

EKWB hooked us up on the blocks for the Zotac 670's we're using. We were apprehensive about the new "CSQ" design but once we had it in place, it actually flowed quite well with our design. Their circles are hardly noticeable.

As you can see we did NOT go with Gigabyte. Even if the color would have matched.

We did make some changed with the upper system. Our thought for the top system would be more of a NAS device, or low power server. So we went with the G630T Processor which is only 35 watts but more than enough performance to push what we need. I also decided to air cool it as adding a water cooling loops to such a basic system would have only increased the complexity of an already overblown system. I found the best CPU cooler to use too. REEVEN's ARCZIEL 12. I have no intentions of overclocking this upper system as it's more than powerful enough to run a Small Business server type setup. All while keeping the wattage under control. But.. With this cooler I am allowed the flexibility of upgrading to a larger processor down the road, especially since the board is 1155. The Arcziel is a fantastic CPU cooler to boot. Shame it's not available in the US yet (that i know of).
We did make one change to the CPU cooler though. We changed to a low profile 1200 RPM fan so that it would fit. We also changed the orientation so that it pulled up. Initial testing has shown us that it made little to no difference in cooling efficiency. We'll look more into it later.

We are using an external 120 watt PSU to power the upper system.

We ran into an issue needing some more internal USB headers and even some External USB headers Inside the case. Primairly for the USB Monitor we are using for the top system, which uses 2 external USB plugs. Plus we wanted to fit both systems with as much connectivity as possible. So we built our own USB "hubs" which includes several internal 4 pin plugs, and some external plugs.

Sorry for the fuzzy image. We are making more of them so I will have you some better pictures soon. Plus we intend to release the tutorial on our website for those who are not sure how to do it.

Now, I'm sorry this is such a small update. This mod really is not my priority in life right now but we know it needs to be done as we have other things to get started on. So hang in there. We should have more updates coming in faster now that we are in the assembly phase.

Thanks again for reading.

Good to see you back, being jerked around isn't good but hopefully some more progress soon..

Nice work on that USB hub! A tutorial would be awesome.

On that fan: It's going to draw most of its flow from the gap between the fan and HS. As it is now, the fan might as well not even be there. If you close that gap, the current orientation will work a lot better. Since it's a low power chip under that HS, it will probably be just peachy with its current ~90% passive, ~10% active cooling. Might want to test it with the fan unplugged to see how/if the temp reacts.

Dat is some bright green