Project Dianoga

[ALXAndy]

Update. This will be quite long due to me philosophising over water cooling and whether it was worth it or not. Not just worth it financially (note before I even begin, it wasn't worth it financially. It's cost me a small fortune even with half of it being free !) and as to whether the final result was worth it. I would say on that I am completely happy, thrilled even.

I've not been putting up rig pics for a while as I had to take it all apart again after the leak but I now have the face plate mounted up properly and bolted on (something I thought I was not going to be able to do due to a mistake I made ) but any way, just leak testing it now with paper towels etc so it looks stupid any way.

OK, so here is the total cost of Dianoga. And when I say total cost I mean, total cost. Even though I probably have £30 kicking around in spare fittings and £10 worth of bolts I did not use or only used half of etc. I have, however, left out any tools whatsoever because I do not count those into the costs of builds. They will all be reused at some point any way no doubt and well yeah, they're tools.

Total cost of Dianoga

PC itself - free​

CPU block - £10.53
GPU block - £16.09
M3 black bolts - £4.78 (not used)
Molex - 6 fan distro - £4.70
NIC card for killer - £4.39
8 x LED strip - £4.44
Alien head metal badges £3.08 (not used.. Yet...)
20 Green pre wired 12v single LED - £2.99
UNC bolts short (for fans) - £1.99
UNC bolts long (for fans) - £5.89
Steel mesh - £3.19
50mm fan for memory cooler - £0.99
Green dust caps - £2.99
Memory cooler - £13.99
Lime A4 vinyl X2 - £1.98
Met green candy apple vinyl - £6.58
Green SATA cable - £3.29
Bitfenix Alchemy USB 2.0 extension (black) - £5.99
Feet - £8
Fans - £39.94

Fittings​

O-rings - £3.30
Barrow fittings - £5.60
Hose - £10.77
XSPC straight - £6.64 and £7.80
45' after refund - £4.72
Acrylic - £17.88
Black acrylic (A4 ) - £3.85
OCUK order 1 - £10.73 (ball valve)
OCUK order 2 - £10.98 (coolant and face plate for res)
OCUK order 3 - £12.97 (fittings and coolant)
OCUK order 4 - £16.97 (fittings)
OCUK order 4 (XSPC temp guage) - £5.99
Other order 1 - £11.92
Other order 2 - £17.92
Rear radiator - £10

Total cost £303.86

At some point today I will rake back through the figures and basically deduct anything that I did not use. For example to this I bought 6 Thermochill fittings that are still wrapped in paper, four Monsoon 45' as back ups, a white chain gun fitting no longer needed and so on.

So that's the cost of water cooling a PC "on the cheap". When I say on the cheap I mean it. Every fitting was at least 1/4 of the price it should have been. It's actually quite scary when you sit down and do the calculations. You start to see the costs rack up and then realise just how much you've been had Joking aside though I have really enjoyed the project so far and a couple of hours will get me to the finish line. I will then snap some pics, before a complete redesign of the living room and most notably PC area.

Three days ago my wife (after having used her desktop only twice) said I could have it back. It's not just any old desktop either. 2009 Area 51 8 core Ivy with a Fury X and all bionic fans and AIOs. So my plan is to basically take all three desktops down, get rid of her chair, monitor and speakers and then set all three desktops up on her old desk and get myself a 4 port USB switch KVM thing. I don't need to switch video, as my monitor has three inputs IIRC so I only need to switch the K M and my mic.

Pics coming soon (I promise) but until then it's all something to ponder

 

[ALXAndy]

I've got a res and enough fittings to cool a rig tbh. It would be messy, as they are pretty much all straight but yeah, pump and rad....

I'm going to get rid of it though. It will be tempting if I have it all there and I have realised after building this rig just how over cautious I have been when it comes to rigs. A Phenom 2 X6 clocked to 3.4ghz DDR2 and a 950 and I can play Borderlands maxed out at 1440p.

Obviously I will need my main rig to play any recent garbage but yeah, for MP co op it will run everything.

 

[ALXAndy]

About Waynio.

Waynio, AKA Wayne Wilkinson was a modder who used to frequent the Bit-Tech community. That was where I met Wayne. Wayne's work was incredible, and he soon became the modder I looked up to. Wayne was such a nice person.

Sadly Wayne died recently of a very aggressive form of cancer. Please take the time to have a look through Wayne's work logs. You can find them [http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=3783064&postcount=26]here/url]

Even though this build is not befitting of the work Wayne produced and his incredible talent I would still like to dedicate this build to him.

Please open spoiler tag for pics. Cheers.

Spoiler

The end

 

[ALXAndy]

Thanks guys. I've started adding up the leftover cooling stuff. And I've deduced that all I need is a rad, block and a pump for another loop.

I'm bad, aren't I? is it terminal?

 

[ALXAndy]

TBH I think I am going to WC the 2008 Dellienware. Not the GPU, as it runs a Fury X (so no point) but deffo the CPU, even though it's only 60w lol. I have some nice fittings and stuff left so I'm sure I can make it look half decent

My wife is going to regret giving it back to me Whilst it was hers I never touched it.

 

[ALXAndy]

Dianoga, Redux.

OK so I pointed out that this build started off as a bit of a joke. However, once the parts started flooding in it got a little bit more serious than that. It reached the point where I was happy enough to make it a tribute for Wayne. The hardware though was pretty dire. Very old then, let alone here over a year later.

I have used the build quite a lot because I had networking issues with Win 10 where I could not watch any football streams. Plus it's damn near silent and I like Ubuntu a lot. However, due to recent events I am now needing a gaming PC to take to my mother's house. I recently put one rig on the TV so that only leaves Dianoga.

Upgrade parts.

I don't need to upgrade the GPU. It's a GTX 950 but I can clock it stupid. It does 1500 quite easily and IIRC I almost got it to 1600. When I play with friends I only play the bread and butter stuff, L4D, L4D2, Borderlands and so on. All of which it does with ease in Ubuntu. However I want to switch back to Windows now so I can play more games.

Last summer I overhauled my Triad rig with a 14 core Broadwell and new board. This left me with an X99 board.



It's a real ugly duckling. However, power that bugger on and you have a swan. Killer E2200, Intel Proset wireless, Intel Gigabit LAN, Soundblaster Recon 3D and so on. It also supports triple SLi and gawd knows what else. So it's more than man enough. I will probably paint the sinks all satin black and then try and make a full board cover for the first time. I will need to scan it, if it fits under the scanner of course.

For the CPU I picked up one of these.

https://ark.intel.com/products/92981/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2630-v4-25M-Cache-2_20-GHz

For £169 with the postage. Not got any RAM yet, but that will come last. I also ordered this from OCUK on the cheap.



I can get the "arms" for around £15. I may just make them myself tbh. I want them black any way, so yeah I will see about that..

 

[ALXAndy]

In a twist of irony I went through countless purchases on Ebay and it turns out I had ordered the CPU from the same company I got the 14 core one from lol. This eased my nerves a little. I do always feel nervous buying these CPUs. Not sure why, I've bought loads now lol. The last time I tracked the CPU and it took 48 hours to show. I wasn't best pleased about this (see also nerves, and handing over £360). This time though it arrived on time. Had a good look at it up close and there is no evidence of it ever being used.



Also kinda ironic is that the boost speeds/core speeds when boosting are pretty much the same as the one I have now. So this CPU will be almost as fast at pretty much everything. Which is good considering it cost less than half of the last one !. I consider £160 for a 2.8ghz on all 10 cores CPU to be about the best value for money on a CPU anywhere in the market right now. It's just unbeatable

Block should arrive tomorrow, then I can ID the exact arms I need and order those.

I am also considering making a full cover for the mobo. It won't be expensive but it will be serious amounts of work. It will require scanning the board to scale and then chopping out everything that wants to come through it. However, that shouldn't be too hard. What will be hard is fitting it under the scanner. It may simply be too big. Which not only means I would need to scan it in two halves but also plotter cut it in two halves like I did with the hex pattern. That wasn't so much of a problem with that but a board needs much higher accuracy.

I shall ponder it. Would be nice though eh? a board cover the same colour as the mid plate making the whole thing look sorta invisible

 

[ALXAndy]

Another update, and a huge sigh of relief and plus some comedy for Gareth (because he always seems to laugh when I am in pain lmao).

OK so I found some RAM. TBH? this was the most daunting part of the upgrade. I don't need to explain how much DDR4 costs now (hint - about a ton for 8gb). I really begrudged paying that tbh. A real kick in the nuts when you are on a budget. Any way I found these Hynix sticks on Ebay (UK seller) for £70. Offered the guy £50 offer rejected but counter offer of £55. I offered £50 again this time with a note explaining I really didn't have any more than that (which I don't it has come out of my savings for now).



I literally waved my arms around in the air like this.



All because I scored some bare green RAM for £50. Nuts isn't it? any way, after celebrating I started to think about how to make it look like £100 RAM. Pondered a couple of my usual "go to" coolers but then I spotted something out of the corner of my eye.



I had four to play with. I bought these for the coolers a very long time ago for a fiver (4x1gb DDR3 1800) so wasn't worried whether or not I would "Do a Dominator 2" and rip the entire chips off, cooler and all pmsl. I started to experiment and then long story short realised that you need heat. Lots and lots of luvverly heat. I burnt my ring finger tip so bad it's like glowing red. However, I got there in the end..



I did find out something very interesting about Corsair's methods of attaching coolers, though. Now when I heated this thing I needed to heat it to the point where there was literally smoke coming off of my gaming mat. Then you can pry them off quite easily. It was nasty gooey sticky stuff and I figured I would just attack that with white spirit and then isoprop to get them like new. However, I soon found out that once this stuff cools down it immediately turns to concrete and isn't sticky any more. As they would say in the Southern USA "Now ain't that a thing?". So I am going to grind it off with a wire brush on a Dremel, then polish with a rag end.

Decals will obviously be replaced.

 

[ALXAndy]

Quick update. The block came and I was quickly able to ID what arms I needed. Turns out they were these ones, as I suspected.



They were £11, so the block has cost me £36 total and should now fit almost anything big. I can order AM4 arms too, so will remember that if I ever change it in the future. The block weighs a ton. It's machined from a solid lump of brass with a copper cold plate. Heaviest block I've ever had.

Due to the "Must spend £20 thing" on Some stupid website I got two of these too on sale for £4.38 or so each.



I am currently running odd ones as the original fittings leaked. So I will swap those out whilst I am there.

 

[ALXAndy]

The tear down began last night. It took me about two hours. I removed and plugged off the rad as I didn't want it peeing everywhere and so on. Managed to save the coolant too



Then noticed "Houston, we have a problem". Basically the block -



Has the inlet as the lower hole. This is a problem, because the rig is not designed that way. The inlet is at the top and the outlet the bottom



Because the tubing is so fat it was close to impossible to change it. So instead I flipped the block upside down. But then it looked stupid, as all of the logo etc was upside down. So I popped out the logo plate, flipped it over and then sanded it to a polished finish before gluing it back in.



I won't be able to use the green 45s I bought. They hit each other, and even the smaller XSPC so I can't even use one. Harumph. Oh well, it is what it is.

 

[ALXAndy]

I bought one of these.



It will go into the inlet of the block (top) and then allow me to use my green 45. However, I didn't just do it for that. I remembered that when you screw in both the inlet and outlet you have to do so with it all intact just using the rotary thread part. It's incredibly difficult and fiddly, so spacing it out a bit will make it a lot easier to do.

I also remembered the board needs an extra 8 pin EPS for the PCIE lanes (bottom right). What a faff that turned out to be. I went and dug out the box of leftovers but realised the PSU does not even have two EPS. So I took a 8 pin PCIE cable, removed one of the grounds (leaving four) and then split one of the 12v (giving me four). I am not worried about it melting, it's got a GTX 950 on the end FFS. I also made a braided extension with other left over parts. Thank god I had enough plugs.



So that is another pretty savage PITA dealt with.

Oh and I also bought 1m hose..



I think I may need a piece or two. Nothing majorly long, just enough to alter the position of the CPU outlet.

 

[ALXAndy]

Realised earlier I had no antenna for the WIFI or Bluetooth. This is important, as I can't run it on a network cable at my mum's place.



£3. That ought to do it

I only want the plate and antennas.

 

[ALXAndy]

Behold ! the desk top computer lol



All wired up, press the power button and pray.. Annnnnnd...



And I can breathe again. This is ruddy annoying, and, you can't disable it in bios either.



So I need to do some research on that.



Then I ran into a couple of issues. Firstly I was happily installing all of the drivers and etc and I got to the last one and it said "You can not install this driver on X86 Windows". I was like eh? da fuq. Turns out that Windows assumed I wanted the X86 version on there so I had to bloody start all over again. Annoying. Then, once the mobo drivers were all installed it was acting funny. I rebooted and after the Windows logo it went to a black screen. I booted into safe mode, which was where I noticed a conflicting device in Device Manager. It was the Intel Turbo Boost 3.0 driver. After a lot of head scratching (I initially disabled it and then the rig behaved) I realised that this Xeon does not support ITB 3.0. So all I had to do was uninstall the driver.

Then it was off to Dell, pop in the serial number for the rig, and.



And then installed all of the drivers again. Which worked. I am typing this from the rig



Kneel at the feet of my "Jar of bolts" cooler.



Thankfully it has that gummy sticky paste on, so literally stuck to the CPU without any retention at all. The bolts are just so that it stays there. Temps weren't that bad though, with idle at 40c.



I did some more fiddling and it seems it boosts to 2.4ghz on all ten cores. This yields a score of 1300 dead on in CB but I am not done yet. I started tweaking the bus and managed 102.5 on my first attempt, so I know I can squeeze another 50mhz or so out of it.

Very happy ! I also spent about three hours getting the old glue off of the Dominator sinks, then taking off the labels (much white spirit and scraping needed, god Corsair use good quality glue !) and then putting on my own labels, fitting and etc. The RAM is done but I can't get pics of it now. Looks really nice though

 

[ALXAndy]

Nah the Poweradjust is in the Triad dude. This is Dianoga...

I explained the fix in the email I just shot you, but basically it was a part of the "Halt on error" menu. Thank goodness it's not a 100% real Dell, or I would have been right up the swanny. It's an MSI underneath. I should now be set to start transferring it into the rig.

 

[ALXAndy]

Block extension came.







Note, very dirty from me handling it. Will clean it before it goes in.

And here is how the RAM ended up. I deliberated whether I should splatter DOMINATOR all over it, or go for the more plain look. Decided on the latter. One side is met green the other silver. I have put the RAM stickers on there so I know the model etc. Function over form in this case.









It was still a lot of work. I had to heat them up until they would take your skin off, then scrape at the glue. Luckily after my first burn I found a set of suede gloves I use for riding in, and they withheld the heat OK.

 

[ALXAndy]

Block cleaned and fitted.

 

[ALXAndy]

Teste sack

Before.



Look very closely at the bottom outlet on the WB, and how it connects to the rad using a butt load of chainguns.

What I now have is this.



I got the inlet in OK. I can't use the green 45 degs I bought. It just ain't happening. I am also faced with a massive issue. Due to the spacing in the G 1/4 holes on the WB I can not put a fitting of any sort in there. What I mean is, a proper fitting that you connect hose to. Due to the honking great hose the fittings are also honking great, and none will connect up next to the 45'. So, what do I do? well you can see the issue, and it is a pretty bloody massive one. Look at this pic.



Look closah.... Closah... DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEE? (two movies there..)



Due to the board being quad channel (and thus two DIMM banks) and the fact the block is lower, and flipped upside down there is a massive space.

Now it was already suggested to me that I just use a hose and bend it. However, that will not work. It will kink. This stuff is a real Alan B.Stard. I also cannot use any fittings.. Or can I?!?!

The solution, after about an hour of feeling like it was never going to work. OK, so I need to basically do this when the new hose arrives.



IE - extend out the hose from the rad inlet, moving that black acetal 90' block over the CPU. And it will literally go right to line up with the outlet. However, I can't use a 19mm fitting because it won't go in the WB. So what to do? this. Basically.

One 5mm.



A 10mm, for Justin.



And then I ordered four of these.



Rotaries. I measured the spacing and it is basically smack on 30mm. So I am going to have to use those fittings to make a straight, solid pipe coming out of the block into the 90 deg box.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK, finally some progress.

The hose arrived yesterday. Late last night (I kinda got caught up with Fallout 4 for about seven hours yesterday) I decided to fit in the run off of the rad that will connect up to the outlet of the CPU block. I used the same technique I used before, heating up the tube to make it go back to being straight. After I found out that the rad was still half full of coolant (you gotta laugh when it's ******* down your sleeves and up your arms) I emptied it properly giving it a good blow job.



OK couple of things. 1. It sags a little (it would, it has some weight hanging off it) and 2. It isn't absolutely directly over the CPU hole. However, due to it now being a good two inches longer (that's what she said) it can now bend and flex a little.

I can't see it giving me too many problems now tbh.



So with any luck I will connect it up tomorrow if the fittings from OCUK arrive on time, and it will be pumping water at some point tomorrow arvo.

Oh yeah.. I also measured the distance between the block and 90 deg and it's 35mm. A nice even amount that should allow me to get it bob on. I forget what the rotaries are now (will go check in a mo) but the extensions are 5mm and 10mm. Knowing my luck I will end up using like bloody two of the six fittings I bought

 

[ALXAndy]

All done and finished, thank heavens.







Just remind me never to buy XSPC rotaries again.



All four of the ones I bought did that until I took all lateral pressure off of them and flipped them around. Problem is with 19mm hose you are going to get lateral pressure whether you like it or not. Thankfully flipping it around (after draining it four times !) fixed the issue as I guess now all of the lateral pressure is on the straight pass through and not the rotary.