Project: Silent Overkill

[LePhuronn]

The alternative would be to t-line the pump out, but that still involves drilling a hole somewhere. This is why I'm trying to get my screw holes on the back of the case, front edges and clear of tube runs for my new project so I can avoid this problem.

I feel you

 

[Cenedd]

Ok, I think I have a compromise.
One of these on the pump inlet:



They seem to be really low profile as the connections are cut into the piece rather than extruded out - if you see what I mean. Also rotary which is a must I've come unstuck on previously!
Then one of these for the drain. Pricier even than an EK tap but it should look less in-your-face without the tap on the top. It just twists for on/off and uses the same principles as a 1/4 turn ceramic tap valve. Obviously a stop plug as a backup!

I already have a low-profile male to male connector to connect tap and T-piece and a selection of fittings (30, 45, 90) if I need to re-work the link to the res. It's not as stealth as I'd like in that OCD sort of way...but it does mean not having to try drilling the shroud in-situ without either drilling through stuff that shouldn't be drilled through or filling things with nice, conductive swarf! Will post pics once stuff arrives. More coolant ordered too - for top-up and for t' wife's PC.

 

[Cenedd]

No coolant yet but started looking at rebuilding the software side of my wife's PC. It's got a 240GB OCZ Revodrive in it and an i7-2600k so it shouldn't be slow....and...yet...it's...like....treacle. Annoyed me so much I started sorting it out before the coolant arrived.

The plan: out comes the Revodrive, in goes the Muskin Scorpion you can fry eggs on, install Windows 10 afresh. Worry about changing graphics cards later when the coolant arrives.

The reality: What, you're surprised it's going to be different?! The reservoir is mounted such that it blocks removal of the RevoDrive from the lowest slot. Moving the res and swapping out that card eventually led to me having to drain part of the loop - and mop coolant off the desk, my trousers, the usual. Not loads but enough to cause....frustration. So, cards swapped, loop adjusted to fit, leak tested and Windows reinstalled. Disk performance varies by benchmark test but anywhere from 2 to 6 times improvement.

What was learned: If QDCs are used to make the rear panel-mounted rad removable for access, and you've disconnected the one that's directly connected to the pump outlet.....no amount of blowing or pipe-squeezing is going to get that pump primed! Doh!

The leftovers: This now means I have a spare MSI GTX580 Hydrogen O/C. If this is of use to anyone, I'll happily post it to them for the cost of the carriage. I know it's an older card but who knows what you guys can make use of....better than letting it rot in a box. Looks like this one (port on the left is mini HDMI - can chuck in a mini HDMI to HDMI cable if needed):

 

[ALXAndy]

Glad to hear I've been a huge pain in the arse

 

[Cenedd]

Well, I've got one of the two litres of coolant from OCUK and the T-piece. Now had a delay notification on the other delivery as they cannot find the drain valve in the warehouse. Given their site now says stock expected 30/4 this may take a while! Gah, anyone would think there was some sort of pandemic disrupting things!

 

[LePhuronn]

Gah, anyone would think there was some sort of pandemic disrupting things!

I finally get some degree of energy and motivation back and then this stupid human malware means Halfords closes and I can't use my love2shop vouchers anyway because they're paper! No paint and battery water for me just yet

 

[Cenedd]

Liking the idea of human malware! It's ironic though, you finally have time (and motivation) to do these things....but no parts. For one of the mini projects I'm planning (just many of those small things you know you ought to get round to but haven't previously been bothered) I'm actually going to make the right screws rather than buy them as stuff just isn't turning up in any sort of predictable timeframe. Don't get me wrong, I'm not whinging at OCUK or anyone else that's trying to stay working as a business when I say any of this...it's just....ah, well you guys of all people understand already. Sometimes you just need toys to play with

 

[LePhuronn]

I'm working from home so I technically don't have "the time" anyway, but after gutting the spare room/workshop to get the PCBs and associated wiring done, I've now done sweet FA again

 

[Nigel Kingdon]

Just read the entire thread as I'd like to have a crack at some of these things, more out of interest than need, and a couple of things struck me.

Firstly on a scale of 1 - 10 for bonkers this gets about an 8 compared to some of my fishy friends. I used to keep marine fish as a hobby but it started getting too expensive. Made a few friends there but liked to follow the 'big builds' like this one. Be aware that this build involved building an extension to the house, complete with it's own 'fish room', and it's around page 60 that he gets water in the tank.

Secondly when pushing the boundaries mishaps are common and it's good to learn from others. In the case of my fishy mates they are using swimming pool pumps to push water around the system. They use plastic pipe welded with glue. So harder to execute but much more water tight. I got around 100 gallons of salt water from a mistake over the lounge carpet. Wife was not pleased. Can't imagine how you explain 10,000 litres.

Finally, the other issue is that if you'd just spent your annual bonus on a pump you want to get the most from it. So no 90 degree bends and even 60 is frowned upon.

 

[Cenedd]

To be honest Nigel, you're coming from somewhere that's not all that dissimilar. Back when watercooling a PC was something that only lunatics did, a lot of the pumps were things like Eheim and Iwaki - which are probably familiar names to you.
There's no reason, functionally, that you can't use fairly similar plastic tube (just needs to no leach plasticisers into the coolant) and compression fittings for a build. Compression fittings are generally rock-solid for reliability with the only gotcha I can think of being that if a piece of hose twists the fitting and loosens the o-ring enough for it to leak there. The reason for less reliable connectivity is because we like living on the edge! purely aesthetics, experimentation. Technically there are losses for every bend in the system. These are measurable as you can see if you read Martin's Liquid Lab's tests (frustratingly the image has been lost to time) but generally the very minor drop in performance is outweighed by the gains in aesthetics and not having tangles of tubing. I would suspect the loses of such bends are more of an impact when you're talking much higher flow rates that I'm guessing could be relevant to a large aquarium. For reference, I'm pushing about 200 l/h and I could manage closer to 300 at max. That's more than I need so I turn it down to reduce noise.
I've done builds long ago before there was as much choice and it's perfectly possible to do it with just barbs (and something like jubilee clips to retain them for paranoia's sake) and hose to get round the bends. It works but doesn't always look pretty. Point is if you have some of the relevant aquarium gear, you could have a dabble without as much outlay. The rules are simply what you're happy with and what works. I contemplated going through a wall at one point so all the pump and fan noise was the other side of an insulated wall

I can't imagine my marriage surviving 100 gallons of leakage! Well done for getting away with it!

 

[Nigel Kingdon]

Indeed even after stripping down my tank I still have a couple of Eheims knocking around. I think I was pushing 1000l/h on a 6ft head but they were completely silent which is why I went for them as they were in the lounge. For me it was short stretches but the big builds often had sump rooms setup in the garage so you were talking 100M of tubing.

I'd agree that the milled collars and so on look the bees knees.

I lurked for ages on UR until I'd got enough dosh and courage together to get my first tank, I'll probably do that here also, although fairly shortly I'll have a 'practice' mobo, CPU + RAM to play with. I think I'll tackle a delidding first.

 

[Cenedd]

Delidding is a fairly extreme place to start but if it's a CPU that potentially you don't mind killing, it's not that hard. Just make sure it isn't a CPU that's got the IHS (lid) soldered onto the die first. Personally I went with the razor blade technique - you have to be a little bit careful you don't slip and slice your fingers off but I couldn't justify buying the delidding tool to use just once. The liquid metal paste is good for under the IHS but I'd recommend something to insulate any exposed contacts on the top of the CPU wafer. Clear nail varnish worked for me.
If it's just a practice, there's nothing that says you even have to build it in a case. Just make sure nothing shorts out the bottom of the board and that nothing falls onto the board or into a fan and you can get to grips with things and test performance without having to make it fit a case.

 

[Nigel Kingdon]

Will ask that question here before starting the butchery.

 

[Cenedd]

Postie arrived today carrying a new backplate and these:



For those in space-constrained builds, that's 28.65mm long and 28.06mm at it's widest diameter. Female threads both ends, so you'll need a coupler. This one's 5mm and gives me something like this:



The silver fitting is just a mock-up as the black version is currently full of coolant. It's going to be a case of fiddling around with that side to see what fits best: this is one option but I could also go with two swivel 90's (to get adjustable angle in that plane) or a 60° fitting that I could rob out my wife's machine. Worst case, I could make it all from fittings but I'd prefer to avoid that lest it transfer pump vibration into the res and that act as an amplifier. Will post pics when I get as far as having drained it....to fit a drain port, nope, the irony is not lost on me!

 

[Cenedd]

Yesterday I thought I'd just slap the backplate on the Titan while is still in place. Nope, ONE screw that's sheltered under the motherboard and just too close to get anything on it to undo it.

So this afternoon I set about trying to cover the carpet in coolant draining it....again. This time, I'm saving the coolant as it's only a couple of weeks old....but this time I have another bottle so the res won't end up half empty!
So: card out, backplate on and fittings adjusted so that CPU to GPU link isn't at a weird-looking angle.
Drain port is in and Dr Drop is on the case overnight.
I'd hoped to get at least a short length of hose between res and pump to absorb vibration. Wasn't going to happen though. Rather than being a totally rigid chain of fittings though I got a Narrow D Plug in there which is essentially two cylinders that slot into each other and seal with a pair of o-rings. Might hopefully absorb some vibration....and also, it's about half a mm longer than the rigid version. Yup things are that tight again.

Hoping tomorrow that I might be able to cut some eSATAp ports into the back of the case. I could do with a neat way of connecting an optical drive (once the cable arrives) and I don't really want it mounted in a PCI slot as it'll look ugly with four cables hanging off it.

 

[Cenedd]

Ok, some progress, some plans and some fails.

Got the GTX 1080 Ti backplate delivered and clad the Titan X Pascal in it. Yes, I know it's got the wrong name engraved on it but there's very little of such old stock available and beggars it seems can't be choosers. It fits, it looks nice and it gives it some protection.



I just need to take it all out again and fit the last screw I missed out *sigh*

So, on to the drain. First I tried to get it all to link up with a short section of soft tubing as it was previously. This is just for vibration absorbtion between pump and res - don't want the res acting like a sound box and amplifying the sound. Well, that failed. Just not enough space. So I tried a hard link with a Barrow D-Plug in there which is essentially two cylinders that slide into each other sealed with a pair of O-rings. This short video (8 MB) shows that fail under pressure testing from Dr Drop.

D-Plug Fail video 8 MB

So this is the current link that works. Hopefully it won't cause too much noise - the pump can still move on its mounts so I don't think it's too rigid.




Next up, I want to add some eSATAp ports. This should, in theory, allow me to connect a SATA BluRay drive as and when needed. Currently it means hanging the cables out the door to plug in....which isn't great. eSATAp carries USB (you can use them as additional USB ports which could be a bonus) as well as SATA and in this case (not all ports do) both 5V and 12V so it should run the optical drive.
It comes with a slot mount but with four cables hanging off it (floppy power, USB and two SATA) it's....well, it's ugly and I've put a fair amount of effort into making things not ugly. So the plan is to mount it in the back of the case between the PSU and the rad. There should be JUST enough space.

I've taken the plate off and made up a steel bracket. This will mount to the inside of the case and holes will be drilled and tapped (threaded) into it once it's in place.





I was going to use the slot-mount plate as a filing guide for the port holes in the back of the case.....but I managed to screw up and it got chewed through the rollers in the band saw. On the plus side, it could have been chunks of me so all in all, I think I got out of that one fairly lightly. In theory there may be a spare low-profile plate I can use but the chances of having it and finding it seem slim.....so I've called Beer O'clock and stepped away from the machinery for today!

 

[ALXAndy]

lol that's one way to stop it leaking I don't mind the BP either, looks tidy man.

 

[Cenedd]

Ok, some semblance of sanity has returned and I've actually got a *spoilers* functioning PC again. eSATAp ports fitted and working. Even found the long eSATAp cable I was convinced I had but couldn't find.....after I'd ordered a replacement, obviously!

So, to cut chunks out of your case, you should obviously first remove all electronics because the swarf (metal filings) will conduct and short circuit things that could be expensive. So, with that in mind, I masked everything up, cut it, hoovered out well and prayed! Do as I say, not as I do does seem to be the mantra of the times, no?!

New filing template was made out of 2mm stainless steel. Did it need to be stainless? Nope, but that's what I had. Clamped and taped it on in an insufficient fashion, drilled out the two holes and then bolted it on properly!




Drilled out the bulk of the rectangles, joined the holes with a Dremel and a carbide burr and then filed until I'd got this:




Painted the edges and screwed in the module:




Module came with an internal USB header (eSATAp ports also carry USB - you can plug a USB device or eSATA device) but it was too long and ugly. Cut it down and then found out just how thin the wire is! It's 0.2mm but at least it's solid not stranded....or you could argue that it is stranded, but just one of 'em! So these crimps were a joy to do. Used the Engineer (brand) crimps again that do just one pair of wings at a time....fiddly but they do get a decent connection.




And here we are. That's two SATA, one floppy power (which needed making up) and one cable carrying a pair of USB channels. You can see why I didn't want this slung in the bottom PCIE slot, right?



Next was to find out whether the door still shut....since the right-angle bend that returns from the rad sits in that cut-out at the back of the lower edge of the case. It did....but there wasn't much in the way of clearance!

About as soon as this was back together, my wife declared that the office needed to be a different layout. It all looks lovely now but because of the layout changes, the window of the PC is now pretty much obscured by her PC (shared home office) so you've got to question whether it was worth the time to do it without making it look ugly. Ah well.

Might get round to sleeving an ATX extension so that you might call things "finished"....as much as they ever are!

 

[seth1969]

Good skills dude, how do you find the mora 420? Thinking of getting one for my build.

 

[Cenedd]

It's good. Big, but that is sort of the point. I tend to run mine passively most of the time and a Aquaero kicks the fans in for a bit when the coolant gets up to near 40°C and stops once it's cooled a few degrees. The one thing I'd say is that the grill is a necessity - if it's on the floor, at some point you're going to kick it. Maybe they've changed the design slightly since I bought it but the gap between the rad and the grill is quite slim. This means there aren't many 200mm fans that will fit in the gap - hence why my 200mm fans are off most of the time. They're not loud exactly but louder than a decent fan would be at that speed but all the decent ones are too thick. You could, of course, mount the grill on washers or pieces of tube to space it off the rad a bit. That would let you put thicker fans in but leave a gap between the rad and grill that I didn't want. If you're looking at 200mm fans (4x200 fans are cheaper than 9x120) let me know and I'll measure the clearance between grill and rad for you.
The other thing to note is that you'll need a bit more coolant than a small rad. Mine takes slightly more than 2 litres from a casual drain (not trying to get all of it dry) and the res is 880ml if 100% full.