Cosmos 2 extreme water cooling system

@ DrDeathhand, you asked:
DrDeathhand said:
But because your mounting them on the top part I was wondering if you are able to mount 3x 140mm here --> http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/7260/20120728143018.jpg
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Yes you can BUT:
  • Look at the two screws that are right of the bee, and left of the first Noctua. The 140mm fan can fit here; but those screws and fittings will get in the way. So to have one fitting you will need to come up with a way of attaching this top part to the case, without screwing in here, by use of [ brackets.
  • These are the only places that the Fan Control Unit (FCU) is screwed in. without this it looks sutpid, plus the top mesh rests on one side on this FCU housing.
  • This top unit also has no fittings for a 5.25" bay, so you cant put a resesvior there easily if you were to take out the FCU.
  • More importantly, with 140mm fans, most of the 3rd fan will be underneath the FCU. There is v.little exhaust here. It'll go through the mesh, but it'll be noisy.
  • The fan holes already cut in the case dont align with 3x 140mm. Unless you have a metal saw, fitting them wont be fun.

This wouldnt be easy modding and arguably wouldnt be worth the effort unless you placed the entire top with a custom made mesh.

To be honest, I find the FCU some what obtrusive and pointless, but CM shipped with it when they could have raised their case ~1" and had more expansion space in the 5.25" bays. They could have easily pushed the boat and put the inbuilt FCU in a case side panel; there is that much space in them.


For the rest of you, updates soon. I'm just reinstalling hardware and powering up! :) ==> No more ****** netbook.
 
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DrDeathhand said:
One more question. Why have you mounted those fans on top and not on the bottom side of the top like most people do?
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Firstly, I forgot to add another point to the previous answer. see the update.:)


I mounted them on the top for these reasons:
  1. Convection currents. Hot air rises, this gives v.small airflow bonus due to air trying to go their way anyway. This helps negate some of the lost airflow due to the radiator. Why bother fighting basic physics? Allow it to assist you.
  2. Mounting under the radiator doens't ensure aminar flow (wiki link here) for the exhaust. Air is just a less dense fluid. Hydrodynamics are similar to aerodynamics. You can use a lot of the equations with air/water. If you break laminar flow, you have turbulence. This is what most people commonly know as "noise". Why buy powerful quiet fans to ruin the silence? mounting them underneath insures the tublance on the output is more akin to laminar flow.
  3. Mounting on top ensures laminar flow through the radiator due to suction. Mounting underneath does not ensure this due to how the air exits the case through the mesh. You will have a build up of air pressure around the fan which is situated ~60% under the FCU. Unless you have high speed air flow here you'll get a small pocket of hot air which will warm up the case, which is metal. The radiator is then screwed to the metal and warms up from this air pocket too. Not efficient cooling.
  4. Mounting on top allows you to seal the radiator and fans to the case. So the only way air can get through to them is by rising through the radiator, this increases cooling. 3x 120mm fans will not cover all of a 396mm radiator Not even close. Top mounting negats this issue as the radiator is firmly screwed to the case, and v.little air can get between the radiator & case to make it into the fans. When I've nearly finished this build, I'll be using a suitable liquid silicon (window sealant) to seal the airflow between the radiator & fans completely, so air HAS to go through the radiator to go through the fans. Underneath mounting doesnt. It also limits drive bay space, plus the 3rd 120fan is a pig to get in underneath (which is where most leakage comes from).
  5. Mounting on top gives more space for piping inside the case. More space for piping = you can use a long top pipe, so you can pull out the top resesvior and fill it via a top filling port. This is easier than tipping a ~40kg pc.
  6. I've used 1/2" ID & 3/4" OD pipes for a reason. 1/2" ID pipes. This means the pipes hold a lot of water. ~1.7x the amount 3/8" ID pipes hold. Bigger pipes take up more space and arent flexible. Also check out section 3. My loops arent small, they require space and connectors. You'd find the loops easier and would require less connectors with 3/8" ID pipes. Bigger pipes, bigger space required. But also higher thermal capacity of the system. This helps with thermoelectric cooling (more later).
  7. If you can air cool the compression fittings and pipes, thats extra heat you can ditch. The cooler the fluid, the cooler the rad, the cooler the system. (later on the fluids going to be nicely chilled ;)). Mounting underneath doesnt give you aircooling potential as its so clustered. You'd end up with still pockets of air in the corners where there was no suction.
    [*] I've just checked your link. Thats an air cooled system, with either a pelter cooler or a Noctua cpu cooler. If you mount the fans underneath (and they're 140mm fans) they will actually be too big for the holes cut in the Cosmos 2. This means a small section of the fan will be pushing air straight into a metal plate. It'll reduce efficiency of the fans & cooling. Also create nosie. You'd still have this problem with them mounted on top, but it wouldn't be as bad.

Its primarily the piping reason which made me mount on top, but the others are still valid reasons too.
 
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Bad news chaps.

While cleaning up a leak (due to no supporting strucutre, and use of a 4x cube splitter instead of one of the alphacool T splitters) I had to take the cpu out the socket.
As intel boards are precious and their pins bend if you look at them wrong, or dont tell them that they're pretty, I bent several pins.

Whats worse is while unbending said pins, one broke off the motherboard.
So while I speak to MSI to see if they can repair it (i suspect not) I'll have to order a new motherboard, which delays the thermoelectrics & graphics more.

This is why you don't be a geek while whacked up on loads of painkillers.
 
Ye I know Scrlk, I was an AMD fan. Did that several times on my K6 back in the day. I'm now sick of how uncompetitive for high end systems their processors are.

Laptops, sure. Bulldozers good. Anything else? Terrible.

Pity the intel sockets are so precious :(
 
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In a wonderful twist of irony.
The new board is in.

Nearly went horribly up too, there was a strand of solder connecting two ram pins & two slots. Not sure how machined boards have that, but. Simply cut it off, tested all 32gb of RAM, its fine.

New thermal paste is on the North-bridge and CPU. After ~4 hours gaming with fans on medium, I'm hitting 38'c. There is still no active cooling in this. Only passive.

The previous north-bridge thermal "paste" was laughable, I've only ever seen paste that bad on cheap Dell PC's for word processing.

But in a wonderful twist of irony my S2 has given up on me, so no photos (or bad quailty photos) for a while! :)
 
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Small update for those interested.

Copper pipes are doable, and def worth the cash. They're in the process of being made. Problem is retro fitting them to the existing connectors. While I can junk the right angle ones, I cant exactly junk the ones in the CPU fitting/RAM blocks. I'm considering turning the end of the copper pipes into barbs. Hardly efficient but... we'll see.


Pictures delayed as my S2 is still being repaired by Samsung and I was relieved of my replacement phone in wood green by two delightful gentlemen. However its camera was ****, hence no new pics.

Temps are stable. Pushed up to 50'c on the CPU today, with 37.5'c on the actual CPU block, and 34'c in the reservoir ~29'c outside temperature today.
 
Oh yeah, apparently that's why you don't go there after probably a few too many cocktails and attempt to catch a night bus. I'm fine though, just down a replacement phone. Tis all they got.
 
@skyripper, I think the Y splitters tactic is probably a common one.
OCuk doesn't have many decent angle joint available, at least when I ordered so made do with that.

As for everyone else, the second iteration is stable, I'm updating it slightly and replacing all PVC pipes with copper pipes.

Got a new S2, so pics inc soon & big update, just been hectic at work & hunting for a flat near the office.
 
Not much progress at the moment. Works getting complex & flat hunting is tedious.

Few fitting problems with the pipes going into the ram blocks, not an insolvable problem but just taking time, which I'm short of. :\

Oh and I've not started work on modding the case yet to make a supporting pillar to attach the pipes to. Got it planned out, but no more progress than that.
 
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I'm using a ram block atm outside the pc to see if its all watertight. Problem just finding a fitting the copper pipes work with, which only has 3 1/4" threads on. Other wise it just sticks out loads and isnt exactly secure.

I'd have that problem in the CPU block/RAD etc. Primarily being limited by a massive lack of time at the moment.
 
Their claim was I lied to them on the medical they requested before hand, when the doctors thought I was cured. I was not (the docs screwed up reading the test results) so they claimed I lied to them during the interview process.

Probably completely illegal, but their loss.


Back to the build update.
These connectors are becoming a real drag, I'm trying to avoid replacing all the compression fittings and just making parts which will fit over the top. So now I have a blowtorch, and am going slightly off piste.

In the mean time I'm debating tidying up the second iteration & getting the graphics cards in now.
 
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After moving into the new place, I'm now getting "Late CPU Initialization" errors and the mobo won't post.

Suggestions for what could have happened during transit?
PC wasnt knocked/dropped etc.
RAM hasn't changed.
There's no leaks.

The pc did boot, then BSOD'd with an IRQ less than blah blah blah error, which makes me think some ram has come unset.
The CPU is heavily held in place.

If the cpu's moved in the socket, then I have to drain my entire system & dismantle it... so help me out here, suggestions!
 
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Checked the cables last night after a few glasses of wine. Couldn't see any lose ones.
Loose HDD cables wouldn't cause late cpu initialization and auto shutdown of the mobo before posting checks are complete though.

Can't remove ram without draining and dismantling all the system....
And if im doing that might as well redesign the piping.

Plus im at work now so can't check :/
Just sitting here worrying about my Behemoth. Its injured and im not there for it!
 
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