eXtreme Liquid Cooling - Build Log + Overclocking

[Pneumonic]

So a while back in undertook my extreme air cooling project (here) and since then I have been wanting to build a 24/7 chilled liquid rig

So with it coming up to Christmas I have some time on my hands to get start what I have had planned for sometime now!

Over the next few weeks I will be posting my updates here.. I hope you all enjoy this one as much as the Air build..

Sponsors:
To Follow...

Edit:
I have re-organised the first post and added links to updates so hopefully will be a little easier for people to quickly follow progress / see pictures

Links to Posts:
Update 01
Update 02
Update 03
Update 04
Update 05
Update 06
Update 07
Update 08 - added 03/01/10
Update 09 - added 05/01/10
Update 10 - added 08/01/10
Update 11 - added 09/01/10
Update 12 - added 10/01/10
Update 13 - added 10/01/10
Update 14 - added 14/01/10
Update 15 - added 15/01/10
Update 16 - added 15/03/10

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 1 Chassis:
A couple of weeks back a friend decided that his Mozart case was just to big to sit in his front room (well I think it was more his misses to be fair), anyway's with the snow today I finally got round to building his new rig and as compensation have received said Mozart case, which is going to form the basis of my new build.

The case was in a pretty dire way (dust, dead creatures, etc...) so having got it back this evening its gone straight into the bath for a good clean!

As you can see it has certainly interested one of the cats...

Hardware:
I have thought about this for a while and decided to use my AM3 set up rather than my i7, main reason being that AM3 CPU seem to respond a lot better to sub-zero cooling than the Intel.

Motherboard: Asus Crosshair III Formula
CPU: 965 BE
RAM: TBC
Graphics: Two 4870 X2

From what I have seen other 965 BE doing at sub-zero I am going to aim for 24/7 clocks of 4.5ghz with maybe a 4.8ghz superpi run

Cooling:
Well the new rig will run three water loops:

Loop 1: Graphics + Full Cover Board Block (Maybe)
Will be my current graphics loop; two full cover blocks, DDC Ultra with XSPC Res Top, ThermoChill 120.3.

The Full board block will go into this loop if I can't think of a way of insulating the whole board.

Loop 2: CPU + Full Cover Board Block (Maybe)
Very simple... EK Supreme block (am considering getting myself an HK block), DDC Ultra Pump and the 130mm x 130mm heat exchanger (cold side)

Loop 3: Heat Dump
Nice Simple loop ; 130mm * 130mm heat exchanger (hot side), Large Capacity Res (I may use two), DDC Ultra (Again two for flow may be required), At the moment I plan on two ThermoChill PA 120.2 and two ThermoChill PA 120.3.. will see if I can squeeze it all in!.

The Heat Exchanger
I shall be using two 130mm by 130mm 'water blocks' which will have eight 19911 TEC units sandwich between them.

TEC Unit Specification:
Qmax: 225 Watts
Imax: 15.5 Amps
Vmax: 24 Volts
DTmax: 64c
Tmax: 125c

I expect day - to - day to run each unit at somewhere between 3v - 12v depending on the cooling required.

The hot side will need at max to cope with around 2000 watts to heat output (including CPU output) hence the abundance of radiators.. If I can aim to keep the hotside at around 25c - 30c then I should see some nice subzero temperatures on the cold side of the loop

Hope that has given you an idea of where I am going with this build.. some pictures of parts later

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 2:
So whilst I wait for the delivery man to battle through the snow with the heat exchanger and various other goodies I made a start this afternoon on the case..

So first step was to remove all the internal drive bays and other 'things' that are just going to get in the way of radiator goodness! So with the rivets drilled out (and believe me there were plenty!) I got the case downstairs into the basement..

After some sanding I got the undercoat on:

Front

Internals

Side View

 

[Pneumonic]

My last case was white with black 'highlights' and although it looked really cool its an arse to clean, as the dust really shows up... so this one I have done black as the main colour (pictures to follow)... not so sure on the offset yet probably white.. not original I know but it does look damn nice..

So at the moment I plan to paint the radiators white, along with all the block tops.. board is black PCB so should offset nicely and I will use white tube. I am also planning on compartmenting the case using either black acrylic which should look pretty cool with the tubing going in and out.. also means I can have different direction on air-flow through the case.. for instance the PA120.3 for the graphics loop I am going to mount on front blowing out in the motherboard tray compartment, so airflow into this compartment will come from the rear.. where as for the main exchanger loop airflow will go from front -> rear

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 3:
Last night I applied the first two coats of black to the case, followed up this morning by coat three which was just a touch up job.. so just needs a couple of coats of lacquer (sp?!) now to protect it from knocks and scraps and will be ready to start housing some equipment..

So some eye candy for you all (please excuse the image quality! I will be getting some batteries for my digital camera today to take some proper pictures):

Logo:

Internals:

Front:

I will be striping down and washing the front panel today and then will start the modification process to fill in various parts prior to it going down to the basement for it's paint job.. Back panel (i.e. PCI slots etc..) will be getting the same treatment although this part will be in white..

 

[Pneumonic]

Bath with some fairy liquid and then power shower = Win

Time to remove some more rivets... {engage rivet rage} I hate them so much!

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 4:
Well not had much time today, but have got the back panel de-riveted and painted... images below:

Back Panel + Case:

Back Panel PCI Slots:

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 5:
So a little more work carried out, everything's been drying for a good 24 hours so time to put it together.

Case Rear:

Back Plate Close Up:

With that complete it have started work on the front panel of the case, pictures to follow..

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 6:
Well being Christmas I haven't got a huge amount done but I have now go everything on order! YAY! So should be able to start putting parts together soon!

With that in mind I thought I would detail a few of the more unusual parts of the build:

Heat Exchanger:
To ensure heat exchange between the two sides of the TEC units I will be using two Lytron CP-15 cold plates. As per the picture below the cold plates will be mounted with the tubed copper in direct contact with the TEC units. Thermal resistance should be around 0.004 C/W at my expected flow rate, this (if my calculations are correct!) at 24/7 power use of the TEC units should give a liquid temperature on the cold side of around -40 to -45 depending on ambient. Of course these are 'rough' calculations as there are far to many variables at play to get exact temperatures.

The cold plates are coming with pre-drilled M4 sized holes to allow the units to be bolted together at the required pressure. The TEC units will sit in a pre-cut 3mm thick silicon rubber gasket (not sure if that's the correct terminology?!), to ensure separation of the hot and cold plates. The cold side of the plate will also be insulated by 6mm silicon rubber to ensure minimal heat loss.

I have chosen silicon rubber over closed cell neoprene as I am assured by the manufacture that it will retain its flexibility and rubber like properties down to around -80c, whereas the neoprene may not cope with constant -40c temperatures for long durations of time.

Cold Side Tubing Insulation:
The tubing on the cold side will need to be insulated to stop condensation and ensure minimum loss to heat to the sub-zero liquid. This will be achieved using nitrile rubber insulator tube which is rated for temperatures down to -50c.

The insulator tubing is relatively flexible and has a wall thickness of 13mm (for a total tube diameter of 28mm) so shouldn't look to bulky.

 

[Pneumonic]

Not even slightly, tecs to chill water is definitely the way to go.

How many tecs? Which tecs? I'm guessing half a dozen or so 50mm square ones undervolted driven from a dedicated psu.

The cold plate is a slightly odd design. Only the areas in direct contact with the copper will be cooled (as ceramic is a poor conductor) so are you planning on putting some form of heatspreader between tec and the tubes?

Finally 70 below ambient is a hell of a lot to ask for from peltiers at reasonable heat load, can I conclude that you're stacking them?

Apologies for the questions without constructive input, I'm starting to suspect that this project is very similar to what I'm planning so I may have useful things to say in the future. Cheers for the build log

p.s. wall thickness of 13mm, total diameter 28mm, surely you don't have 2mm OD copper tubing in mind?

Jon, you guess correctly

I will be using eight:
TEC Unit Specification:
Qmax: 225 Watts
Imax: 15.5 Amps
Vmax: 24 Volts
DTmax: 64c
Tmax: 125c

These are 40x40 Units

Stage one if successful I guess should see temperatures at low ambient of around -40c, stage two is to run a chiller loop on the CPU chiller loop so duel chilled loops.. But as always with TEC units its not an exact science so I want to get loop one up and running first and see what sort of temperatures I get.

The picture of the cold plate is a little poor, but it solid aluminium with copper tubes, they do make solid copper units on request (at much higher prices) so I am going to start with the stock units and see how they do first.

 

[Pneumonic]

p.s. wall thickness of 13mm, total diameter 28mm, surely you don't have 2mm OD copper tubing in mind?

meh my bad

15mm OD tubing, (bore on the insulator tube is 15mm) and then 13mm wall thickness

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 7:
Test Set-Up Power Supply Prep
So whilst I wait for the TEC Units and Heat Exchangers to make their way through the post-Christmas mail I am starting to prepare my test power-supply unit..

Now for the time being I am going to run the TECs between 0v - 12v just to see what sort of cooling I get... the nice thing about the units I have is they are rated at 15.5 Amps @ 24v, so running them at 12v each unit is drawing a mere 7.75 Amps which multiplied by eight gives a total draw of 62 Amps @ 744 Watts which is within the range of most 'high-end' PC PSU.

For the test bed I am going to be using a Corsair 850 Watt PSU which is rated to draw 70 Amps / 840 Watts on the 12v Rail. The unit is redundant and has been previously 'modified' so I am not to worried if it doesn't make it

The nice thing about TEC's is the lower the power you run the unit the more 'efficient' the unit is... so even at 12v (50% power) the unit will give around 65-70% of its total 'cooling' capacity. Ideally you want to aim to run a TEC at around 35% power. In this instance I would get around 55% of the TECs total 'cooling' capacity at 35% power.

So running eight units at 12v still gives a total 'cooling' capacity of 1260 Watts... even running all eight at 3v will give around 400 watts of cooling which should be enough to hold the cold side liquid temperatures at load.. (well lets hope so anyway!)

With the ever increasing TDP of modern CPU this is one of the main reasons why it is better to use multiple TEC units to chill a medium rather than direct-die cool.

So the first stage of this job is to take the PSU to pieces and start the process of separating the various wires and then I will have to get the soldering iron out

The picture shows the wires separated out into 3v & 5v (which I am not interested in!), 12v and the ground wires. Although on 'one' rail the 12v is actually connected on four different 'contact points' within the PSU. The end goal is to have two contact points feeding a PWM unit which will then control four TEC units. The only other wire I am interested in is the green wire which is normally found on the 24pin motherboard plug.. you can see it grouped with a ground (black wire).. this wire is what tells the PSU its connected to the motherboard and if to turn on or not.. it will therefore be connected in the end to a switch on the front of the PC so I can switch the unit on and off.. The two PWM units will also have there control wire to one control knob so I can control all eight TEC units in one place.

I am currently toying with the idea of mounting the PSU PCB in a new housing... it is rather noisy with its standard fan control at 80% load + so I may just ignore that and set it up in a custom housing with adequate quiet cooling or I may place some spare mosfet water blocks I have on the heatsinks and water-cool the bugger not sure yet.. Although this build is 'eXtreme' I also intend it to be quiet!

 

[Pneumonic]

shadow thanks for that do you have any pictures on how it was mounted?

I am thinking of a electrical tape wrapped piece of aluminium behind each of the heatsinks to bolt the blocks onto..

 

[Pneumonic]

snip..

Jon, I was looking at using the 30cm (ish) length unit and starting with eight adding more if required..

The QMax on the the TEC you have linked is 80 watt (ish) at 25c where as I plan to use units that have a QMax of 225 watt at 25c which is where I get the additional cooling power.. I am using the data sheets from the web-site where I ordered the TECs to calculate out the values..

I will provide a load more info tomorrow just got home and am very tired.. but will update in the morning

 

[Pneumonic]

JonJ,

I have sourced mine from a company called AMS Technologies Ltd, who are charging £64 / unit.. this includes the drilling of M4 holes in the units to allow mounting. ..

The TEC units I have got from custom thermoelectric module number: 19911-5L31-15CQ

Surge,
Thanks for all the info I will go take a look although I think I must have read every post on TEC's at XS now..

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 8:
Parts have started to arrive YAY!
So I didn't have time yesterday to take the photo's make a post but the postman knocked on the door at 7.30am Saturday! to drop a few things off!

Water Cooling:
2 x XSPC Laing DDC Tops - these are going on the two pumps that are going to be in the hot loop on the heat exchanger..

4 x Thermochill PA120.2 Shrouds - to go on the four 120.2 Radiators that are going to cool the hot loop

Heat Exchanger:
8 x TEC Units!

Water Cooling Configuration:
The case is pretty big but I started to plan out the liquid loops in more detail last week with some cardboard mock-ups in the case and realised I may not have as much room as I thought!

The current plan therefore is for the following water loops:

Loop 1 - Heat Exchanger Hot Side:
Components:
4 x Thermochill PA120.2 radiators with shrouds
2 x 250ml passive cooling reservoirs mounted on the case roof (will have two 120mm blow hole fans underneath to give some extra cooling).
2 x Laing DDC-1T Ultra with XSPC pump tops
1 x Fill Port
1 x Heat Exchanger Unit

Loop 2 - Heat Exchanger Cold Side:
Components:
1 x Heat Exchanger Unit
1 x Laing D5 Vario (probably with an EK top if I can get one)
1 x CPU Water Block
1 x Fill Port

Loop 3 - Graphics Cards
Components:
2 x XSPC 4870x2 Graphics Blocks
1 x Laing DDC-1T Ultra with XSPC reservoir top
1 x Thermochill PA120.3 radiator

Loop 4 - Motherboard & RAM
Components:
2 x RAM Cooler
1 x EK Asus Crosshair Formula III Full Board Block
1 x Thermochill PA120.1 radiator
1 x Laing DDC-1T Ultra with XSPC reservoir top

TEC Power Supply Unit Update:
I continued with the destruction of my Corsair 850w PSU, I have decided to mount it in a new housing as I can save room and keep a lot of the wiring inside the new housing rather than have it looking messy in the case.

So after cutting the old wires down to size and insulating and heat-shrinking off wires I won't be using I got the unit mounted into the new housing.

Following that the +12v and Ground wiring has been sorted, I will only have two +12v wires and two Ground wires leaving the unit. The wiring that will be running to the PWM controllers is rated at 45AMP's @ 12v and therefore should be more than capable of carrying the current. Each of these wires is running of 8 contact points on the PSU (so 16 contact points for +12v and 16 for ground), this should spread the load of the TEC units nicely and avoid any unfortunate mishaps.

The only remaining jobs for the PSU housing are to drill out a 120mm fan hole (waiting for a hole saw) and to drive and grommet the holes for the +12v / Ground / On+Off / 120mm Fan wires & Mains Power wires to leave the unit.

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 9:
More Bits!
Well the poor old postman arrived this morning carrying this:

Is 5m * 1m * 3mm of black silicon rubber which I found for the very reasonable price of £25 on a certain auction site. It will withstand temperatures of down to -60c whilst still maintaining all of its 'normal' properties... its also an excellent insulator ..

I also received the two reservoirs that I am going to be using in the hot loop and free of charge (I do like that) two replacement 4870x2 tops for my XSPC water blocks (thank you very much Paul at XSPC), as the thread had gone on one block and the other block wasn't looking as healthy as it could... will teach me to pull my loop apart every four - six weeks

My phone camera doesn't do the reservoirs justice they are very nice

Case Modifications
The next stage of modification to the case involves drilling two 120mm blow holes in the top and then mounting the passive reservoirs over the top.. I will also need to drill some holes for the tubing.. so I drew up a template and have mounted it all up.. just waiting for my 117mm hole saw bit to arrive now..

A couple of reviews I have seen of the reservoirs suggest that with some active cooling they can knock around 2-3c off the loop temperature... so with two a 4-6c drop in water temperature with a couple of low RPM fans underneath is well worth it.. along with the 1/2 litre or so capacity they provide. Should help to achieve my goal of 'quiet' if not necessarily passive.

I still have a load more stuff to turn up before I can really start putting everything together.. notable some electronics and the heat-exchangers but with some luck... and some snow this week should have plenty of time to move the project forward

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 10:
Some More Deliveries!
Well most of the 'bits' are here now.. have some hardware to arrive but just a little update of what turned up today.

6mm Silicon Closed Cell Silicon Foam:

I am going to use this to insulate behind the motherboard and inside the housing where the heat exchangers are going to be placed. Will also make some nice 'pads' to place pumps on.

Tubing Insulation:

What it says really to insulate the cold loop tubes

Cable Braid & Heatshrink:

Nice thick white cable braid to ensure the wires don't show through, have miles of various sizes (you can never have to much).. unfortunately I feel a mental braiding session coming up over the weekend at some point!.

Case Modification
All the modification to the top of the case is now complete. Two 120mm fan holes drilled, along with two tube holes and the mounting holes for the radiators. Case has now gone back into painting for its final few coats.. Once these are complete I can start to add components and hopefully not to far off some test runs (Just waiting for the heat exchangers to turn up and the last few pieces of hardware)

Bit close there between the fan cut and the tube hole but seems solid! I can pick the case up on the slither of steel going between them.. bit irritated its slightly out of line.. but I guess you wont notice once its painted and everything is mounted.

That's it for now

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 11:
Board Insulation
Well the girlfriend has a headache so I have been banned from painting in the basement because the smell sets it off apparently! So... I have amused myself today starting to sort the insulation for the motherboard... Hopefully some of the more experienced phase / LN benchers can have a look at this and let me know its all-right

First job was to cut out a piece of the 6mm closed cell silicon foam to act as a 'back plate' for the motherboard... then cut out the holes for the board mounts to poke through.. Once I done that I then cut back around 2mm of foam for the area under the CPU so that I could use the silicon rubber here as the putty eraser stuck to that much more readily.

Back Insulation:

Silicon Rubber Insert:

With Backplate on:

Art Eraser Added:

Side View:

I then cut another piece of the silicon rubber to go between the back plate and the rubber to stop it digging into the silicon foam:

All mounted up:

And everything 'off' just to make sure that it all connected, as you can see the back of the CPU socket has left an indent in the art eraser.. and the board looks untouched once its all off

Next Stage was to add the art eraser around the CPU socket:

Just need to just some more silicon foam pieces to go around the water block and add some kitchen towel between the eraser and foam to absorb any condensation

 

[Pneumonic]

Update 12:
Getting somewhere...
Well finally started to get some components into (or onto) the case today.. an hours work feels like I have actually achieved something now!! Have to say am pleased with the results...

Warning... lots of pictures!!

Top (Back View):

Top (Back View) Close Up:

Side View:

Reservoir Back (Left):

Reservoir Back (Right):

Mounting:

Fan (Close Up):

Edit: Correct Image Linked