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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OliverS said:
@ DrDeathhand, you asked:




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.

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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Dear Oliver,

Thanks for the answers!! One more question. Why have you mounted those fans on top and not on the bottom side of the top like most people do?

Greetings from DrDeathhand
 
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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Oggled.

Very nice tidy job. I was wondering how you could tidy up that rat's nest... you've excelled.

It's becoming evident just how much money you're spending on this build. I'm very impressed and envious.
 
Cheers Tattysnuc. :)
More pics and updates soon.
Current temps are 32'c system. 35'c cpu. Not bad as its 30'c outside.
 
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.
 
OliverS said:
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.
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Yoww Oliver,

Dang man.... I had this happen to me before and its NEVER fun if this happens.

Well i wish you luck getting a new mobo!.
 
This is the beauty of the AMD socket design. If a pin gets bent, you can reshape it easily. If it gets broken, just straighten it up and pop it in the socket.


:D
 
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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Updates in most sections.


I'm exploring replacing all PVC pipes with copper pipes now.
The down side is if it freezes in winter I'll have a leak XD
 
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.
 
OliverS said:
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.
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sounds like a delightful area.

are you ok though? tech can be replaced
 
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.
 
Try not to take this the wrong way, but I got to be blunt, it looks a right old mess and tbh I have never seen such a mess in water cooling.


Needs some serious alterations or just start over with the layout but do some research/ask here for advice, it's some quality kit you have there and much can be gotten from it if gone about the right way.

Please try not to take offence.
 
hyperst said:
Try not to take this the wrong way, but I got to be blunt, it looks a right old mess and tbh I have never seen such a mess in water cooling.


Needs some serious alterations or just start over with the layout but do some research/ask here for advice, it's some quality kit you have there and much can be gotten from it if gone about the right way.

Please try not to take offence.
Click to expand...

A bit harsh, if you're referring to the "tidied" loop layout. There's a hell of a lot going on in there for a start.

Any progress on this piece of work?
 
Reminds me of the my first Cosmos build many moons ago - on that I did the CPU, GFX, Northbridge (remember those) and had some weird OCZ coolable ram - which meant I had the Y-shape splits back into Y-shape joins... it looked like your iteration 1 even down to the airlock and bubble. Iteration 2 - much better.

Good luck with the build.
 
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