Project: Rivendell

[artoodeeto]

k, this might be the last update for awhile, depends on how cheap the materials are for the landscaping I want to do. I'm also planning on modeling Rivendell first in sketchup, so I'll at least post progress on that. But, for now... the case is done Got the power button mounted, extended the fan cord, scooted the DVD drive around so it wasn't scraping the inner wall when pulling the mobo drawer out, and....discovered that I really need to run the CPU fan and all 3 case fans on a speed controller cuz they're LOUD. Gotta do one more run to Fry's to get connectors (4 male connectors soldered to 1 female connector).

This shot shows where I mounted the power button. Took some doing - the biggest drill bit I have is a little too small for the spring around the button itself to fit, so I had to enlarge the opening for the button to go through.

All computer parts installed:

Those are a pair of 20" LCD's, so as you can see this case is pretty big. Luckily it's not super heavy, and the way I'm envisioning making the landscape, it won't add a lot of weight.

The dual fans on this side blow right onto the CPU heatsink. You can see my sandcrawler behind the case.

And on this side we've got the PSU, exhaust fan, and DVD drive slot. Note the reams of paper underneath to raise it up above the raised ridge around the top of the desk. It's not designed for any kind of computer, so we may get a new desk at some point and move Rivendell to my desk, which has a higher raised shelf across the top sans ridge.

[Munty]

Wow that is a big case! Poor old sandcrawler looks a bit dusty, have you been neglecting the Jawas in favour of the elves? lol And yes, buy yourself a new desk, looks a little out of proportion on that one

[Mark_Hardware]

wow dude that's gonna look freakin cool! Nice setup

[artoodeeto]

Wow that is a big case! Poor old sandcrawler looks a bit dusty, have you been neglecting the Jawas in favour of the elves? lol And yes, buy yourself a new desk, looks a little out of proportion on that one

LOL! it took me 4 years to finish that Sandcrawler..finally did it right around December 31st 2010. If you go back a couple pages in this forum you'll see the (LONG) worklog, I don't think it's been moved yet to the Completed Worklogs forum. So yeah....

wow dude that's gonna look freakin cool! Nice setup

Thanks Mark! I can't wait to get started on the landscaping, but I want to make sure I do it right the first time. Stuff goes together so much faster that way.

Question for y'all - ideally I'd like to have running waterfalls in this thing. Which means I need a pump. I was initially thinking of using the pump from something like this:
http://usb.brando.com/usb-illuminate...7c035d015.html
It's USB, and would have a pretty low flow rate, which is what I want since I don't want water spraying everywhere. However, it occured to me that usually pumps like those fountain ones need to be submersed to work. I'd rather not submerse it if I can help it, but standard water cooling pump flow rates are, I think, far too high for this application. Anyone know of a pump that'd have a low flow rate like the fountain pump, or if it'd be a good (or bad) idea to hook up say a fan speed controller on a water cooling pump to knock its speed down?

[Munty]

I imagine you'd probably have difficulty finding a small enough pump if you went along the lines of fountain items. I've never kept fish before but are there small pumps in water purifiers maybe? If not could you maybe use a standard water cooling pump but adjust the speed somehow?

Just doen a quick Ebay and turned up small water pumps for model boats and r/c submarines. The most interesting item is something for a smale scale locomotive model so maybe the railway modellers would be a good group to ask!!! They're definitely worth asking about your scenery anyway as that's kind of their forte lol

[artoodeeto]

I imagine you'd probably have difficulty finding a small enough pump if you went along the lines of fountain items. I've never kept fish before but are there small pumps in water purifiers maybe? If not could you maybe use a standard water cooling pump but adjust the speed somehow?

Just doen a quick Ebay and turned up small water pumps for model boats and r/c submarines. The most interesting item is something for a smale scale locomotive model so maybe the railway modellers would be a good group to ask!!! They're definitely worth asking about your scenery anyway as that's kind of their forte lol

I acutally have a fair bit of space inside the case where a pump could go, although I'd have to make sure there was enough extra tubing so I could still pull the drawer out, and I'd have to make sure that said tubing didn't kink up when the drawer is pushed in. It'd be easier from that standpoint to stick the pump somewhere other than the drawer, so I may try and approach it that way. but yeah, adjusting the speed of a standard WC pump by using a fan speed controller or some such is what I had in mind, at least for now. I *do* like the thought of a model railroad type pump, I'll have to check that out.

For now, one last not-super-exciting update to the system - I added one of my two fan speed controllers and wired it up to the three 120mm fans and the 80mm CPU fan so I can control their speeds simultaneously with 1 knob. It's mounted on the rear of the case next to the power switch.

[xr4man]

why not integrate the waterfall into a liquid cooling system? instead of a reservoir container, the pool at the bottom of the waterfall could be the reservoir.

[Munty]

It's not as easy as you'd think mate, I looked into a similar idea as a complete water-cooled-noob and all the advice was that it wouldn't really work. Firstly you're still going to end up needing a big rad as without one your only method of cooling would be constant evaportion from the reservoir which would in turn require frequent top-ups. Also you'll have to filter the crap out of it due to any particles of dirt and dust that will inevitably find their way into the open system. In a design with a waterfall incorporated I'd also imagine (but this is pure speculation) that you'd be left with a dry pump when the system is shut-off, depending where you were able to locate it. Pretty sure that would be bad :p

If there's a way to use one pump to feed 2 different systems though, well that might be a nifty solution! If you could manage to pump 2 individual water sources without significantly increasing the necessary hardware you could run a room-temperature open reservoir and waterfall while also incorporating a standard water-cooling system using the same pump. No idea if there's any kind of pump around that would fit the bill mind so probably a pipe dream

[artoodeeto]

why not integrate the waterfall into a liquid cooling system? instead of a reservoir container, the pool at the bottom of the waterfall could be the reservoir.

Yeah, I did think of that, and it's pretty much what Munty says:

It's not as easy as you'd think mate, I looked into a similar idea as a complete water-cooled-noob and all the advice was that it wouldn't really work. Firstly you're still going to end up needing a big rad as without one your only method of cooling would be constant evaportion from the reservoir which would in turn require frequent top-ups. Also you'll have to filter the crap out of it due to any particles of dirt and dust that will inevitably find their way into the open system. In a design with a waterfall incorporated I'd also imagine (but this is pure speculation) that you'd be left with a dry pump when the system is shut-off, depending where you were able to locate it. Pretty sure that would be bad :p

If there's a way to use one pump to feed 2 different systems though, well that might be a nifty solution! If you could manage to pump 2 individual water sources without significantly increasing the necessary hardware you could run a room-temperature open reservoir and waterfall while also incorporating a standard water-cooling system using the same pump. No idea if there's any kind of pump around that would fit the bill mind so probably a pipe dream

An additional issue is you want the reservoir to be the highest point in the loop, not the lowest, because that way any air bubbles that build up do so in the reservoir and not elsewhere in the loop. There just isn't any practical way I can think of to do it, aside from having a closed WC loop and a separate pump running the waterfall system. And since the system that's in there is older and not really worth trying to watercool, I'm not going to do a loop until we have the $$ to upgrade it at some point. Still, I plan on leaving enough space for a WC pump and reservoir to go in, and I can always stick a dual 120mm sized rad on the outside of the case and flip the dual 120mm fans on the right side so they blow air out over the rad.

Unfortunately I think the dual loop idea is a bit of a pipe dream if one of the loops is open. You'd still have the same issues as though it were a single loop, namely evaporation and contamination. The latter could be dealt with via effective filtering, but that hot coolant would evaporate pretty quickly from an open reservoir. If both systems were closed, it'd be a different story, and completely possible. I'm sure it's been done plenty of times - WC pumps are pretty strong and most would be more than capable of doing it. I *could* pull it off by doing fake water - usually done with epoxy - and leaving a volume of space under it so the river would be fake but have moving reservoir water under it. Same with the waterfalls, although with those I'd have to run tubes under the epoxy and I'm not sure how visible any of it would be. That would create a closed WC loop and possibly leave the moving water visible, although with how fast pumps move the coolant, I'm not sure it'd be apparent that anything was happening. And again, with the amount of trouble and headache designing, building and maintaining it, I don't think it's worthwhile.

I think I'll be best off using a slowed-down WC pump or some kind of fountain pump and essentially the waterfall system would be like those little desk fountains. I'm still debating whether to even do running water - it'd be really cool, but then I think of how much of a headache it'd be to get to the inside of the computer. I'd need to have some kind of drain valve installed in the "river" (ie, front trough), drain all the water out, pull the case down, open it up and do whatever, stick it back up on the desk, then pour all the water back in. Not to mention having to make sure it didn't run dry - I have a little fountain and a noticeable amount of water evaporates from it within days. Still...we'll see...I'd really like to do the running water. Just debating on whether it's worth the trouble. It probably is

[Munty]

I'm still debating whether to even do running water - it'd be really cool, but then I think of how much of a headache it'd be to get to the inside of the computer. I'd need to have some kind of drain valve installed in the "river" (ie, front trough), drain all the water out, pull the case down, open it up and do whatever, stick it back up on the desk, then pour all the water back in. Not to mention having to make sure it didn't run dry - I have a little fountain and a noticeable amount of water evaporates from it within days. Still...we'll see...I'd really like to do the running water. Just debating on whether it's worth the trouble. It probably is

What the hell is going on! I posted, then I somehow doubleposted so I deleted the second one and both were removed!

Here it is again anyway...

I think if it's how you see the end product then it'll totally be worthwhile putting in the extra work to get there. Stressful though it probably will be Would it not be possible to keep this system separate from the drawer part of the case to avoid difficulties in access? If you can attach the pump to the main body of the case and use the river itself as the reservoir then you could keep it from affecting the drawer at all. The biggest concern IMO would be the possibility of leaks in the future as thats probably the biggest problem you'd face (especially with an open system)

I'm still a water-cooling noob so I'm speculating a great deal but hey there you go :p Just had a thought of a possible solution for you but be very hard to describe will try a quick sketchup and maybe post an image if I think it would really work!

And I've had a play in sketchup now so here is a thought for you which I think should make the speed and power of the pump a little less important...

Apologies for the MSpaint additions :p

Think it should be fairly self explanatory but the way I see it is you use the riverbed as the reservoir, open of course. You can do this easily enough by making up a watertight container, adapting an actual reservoir or even resorting to old tupperware! With this as a leak-proof failsafe you can use the sort of materials found in fishtanks to detail the riverbed so the end result should be a practically invisible reservoir.

The pump is in the bottom right with it's highest point below the water in the reservoir at all times. That'll ensure the pump never runs dry as it'll be below water even when it's switched off.

Anyway, I figure if you use the pump in a slightly different way to that intended you'll have more control over it's speed. Instead of using it to pump straight out at the top of the waterfall you can set it up just like a fountain so it's filling a secondary reservoir above it which will then create the waterfall affect when the level inside reaches a certain point.

You can then vary the speed at which the pump fills this reservoir (and therefore the intensity of the waterfall) in a number of ways. Introduce more overflows from the secondary reservoir in order to create multiple waterfalls (therefore halving the intensity of each for 2 waterfalls etc) or you could have direct control over just one waterfall by installing a secondary overflow pipe just above the level of your main waterfall outlet. Just like the one on a bathtub! It can be concealed inside the case and run straight back to the river or wherever you want and you can ensure it's a big enough overflow to carry out however much excess water the pump produces (in the instance that your pump is too fast or powerful giving you an over-excitable waterfall!)

In the instance that you find the pump isn't up to the job of pumping the necessary amount of water up that high then you can either lower the top of the waterfall or failing that get a better pump!!! Based on the images at the beginning of this thread though I think it would be great to have a couple of waterfalls framing your work. Maybe 3, all at different levels. It's still done fairly easily and again just like a garden fountain.

Have the pump fill the first tank and then place an overflow to a second lower tank. Place another overflow in this tank to fill a third tank which will have a finall overflow directly into the riversoir Hey presto, 3 waterfalls, their locations restricted by imagination alone and intensity controlled directly by how high above the main outlets you place the overflow pipes

Let me know if that makes sense to anyone other than me, I think it's theoretically sound though :p

EDIT : Here's another one, wanted to illustrate the second example a little more! Bear in mind that the pipe sizes are way out in this example. What you'd be looking to do here is have small outlets for each waterfall so only a certain amount could pass. The overflow pipes leading to the next chamber would then be much larger but located slightly higher than the outlets for the falls. That arrangement would prevent water escaping through the waterfalls to quickly and also prevent too much water accumulating in any one tank which would cause an increased pressure on the outlet port and therefore increase waterfall speed and power

But I'm not making any more so you'll just have to visualise it now