Project: Hush! - updated 26/12/23

Monkey Puzzle said:
Thank you sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar. Still at a rough and ready stage still though - the prettier shots are still to come after polishing the aluminium, applying veneer and oiling the wood and putting hardware, water pipes in etc.
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Looking forward to seeing the end result, you've put a lot of time and effort into it, I can see this project being one to be proud of for a good long time
 
A lot of this update is faff.

Cat decided not to supervise.

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A 25mm outer diameter steel pipe...



A sharpened 25mm OD pipe for stamping holes in the veneer for the copper ports.

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Gives a nice tight fit (video):

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I recast more resin on the top pipe manifold... Trying to get it so I can have this veneered manifold sit flush with the aluminium frame...

Blurry photo with cast resin on the top manifold up to the edge of the aluminium frame (if you squint hard enough it sort of looks like this).

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And some sanding with the sanding guide/frame to get nice sharp edges - snowstorm:

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I then needed to reattach the aluminium frame to check the cast resin level - still a mm to be taken off one side. The other side with this polished top fill port is more problematic - milling needed to tidy the 1/4" plate with 'HUSH' at the top to sit flush as the original milling for the aluminium angle leg to sit in and be bolted to it is off and needs extending by ~2mm, so new aluminium legs needed for the now repositioned countersink screw holes, new aluminium angle leg with the optical drive slit, as it sits too high atm (the drilled holes to bolt to the copper wall are 3mm of so too low on the legs, so the top edge sits too high and can't be milled to sit flush with the veneered manifold...

Fiddling around to get the fins at the top to sit high in the slots to try to get a flush fit at the top of the case between the aluminium frame and veneered manifold, a few mm would be milled off the top of the aluminium plate here...


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Few pics of the case with lacquered polished pipes at the side - spraying this had been difficult - the structure of 16 rows of 3 pipes curving with a flat wall behind meant in ensuring all the polished copper pipes got covered that there ending up being a lot of overspray of lacquer on the flat copper back wall and orange peel, and some overspray on the pipes at the ends.

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May be able to polish this down later to reduce hopefully, but regardless the pipes catch the light beautifully, giving a copper red glow in daylight and catching salmon-white on the pipe arrays in white artificial light, that doesn't show up that well on a phone camera...

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On a brighter note (pun unintended) - I jerry-rigged some lighting in just held in place with some micropore tape (the lighting strips do have 3m adhesive backing for attachment- COB LED strips (direct mounted LEDs to a PCB strip allowing more LED density compared to usual LED strips - these are around 400 LEDs/metre with a silicone diffusing coating, so much more continuous bar or light rather than specular... I tried a square strip behind the front aluminium frame - quite difficult to see the LED light strips from normal viewing angles. A full square is probably a bit too much, though will be using some very thin lower wattage 2.7mm thick LED strips rather than these, which are 8mm wide with flexible PCB strip and contact points to the sides, so should be a bit less bright. I may remove the horizontal strip at the bottom and have strips under the radiator fins at the bottom front and back to give underlighting - the light bounces off the shiny pipes, but didn't get pics yet.

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The shiny backwall gives a nice infinity radiator effect, but refpect the light strips....

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The effect of underlighting under the fins looks really nice.

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I added the veneered wall - still unattached and looking a bit hideous here as the low tack plastic sheeting is still on it, and the veneer is still unattached (as are the venner sheets for the manifold, that have gone a bit wavy in the recent heat and are unttached still so all a bit wonky..just to give a rough idea...

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Wing-Man said:
this things really starting to come on, and it looks amazing.

have you run any temp testing?
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last temp testing!

Not recently! Last time I ran temps was with an nvidia GTX480 overclocked to 900Mhz core/1100 memory over 700/900mhz stock, and i5 750 at 4.2Ghz, 1.42vcore, ~49-50C for GPU, 63C CPU running furmark and intel burn test together. The 480 was a very power-hungry card overclocked - ~300-330w stock from review tests under stress-testing with furmark from what I can see - god knows how much it pulled overvolted at 900/1100MHz - I think it was likely around 600w or so being dumped into the loop.

I'm waiting on the next round of CPUs and GPUs to build a new PC to go in it; it will be interesting to see how it does!
 
I've veneered the resin manifolds - a lot more work than I expected - had to sand and trim down the resin then make everything flat and even. I then polished and sprayed the ports to the radiator case with incralac acrylic lacquer to protect from corrosion, leak-tested and cleaned the inside of the radiator with oxalic acid solution, rinsed out with deionised water a few times, and then applied the pressure-sensitive adhesive veneer - here are all the pieces before going on:

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The comb like pieces there are for the resin manifolds that the 48 pipes go through, and a very tight fit to insert the past the pipes, so I used a scalpel to cut the backing plastic sheet on the veneer into small pieces and thread a pull cord to each of these pieces so I could then push the comb-shaped veneer pieces past the copper pipes and into position, pull all the threads to remove the backing sheet of the pressure-sensitive adhesive-backed walnut veneer and then press against the resin box.

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The veneer pieces are applied and then you need to apply a lot of pressure with a rounded hard object. The edges are trimmed (I found a stanley knife blade easiest to do this) as exactly as possible to have as seamless an appearance as possible for the next piece of veneer.

All veneer pieces now on, and need to give it a day or two after application before finishing the wood - I'll experiment a little but I think probably a coat or two of tung oil then either polyurethane or gloss polyacrylic varnish as a topcoat to seal/waterproof.

Here's some pics and a vid at the end:


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Video:

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Only seeing it on a small screen but it's looking pretty flawless from here! Very nice. Almost wondering if it would have been easier (it wouldn't!) to make the end caps of actual wood and resin-impregnate them to waterproof them!
 
Cenedd said:
Only seeing it on a small screen but it's looking pretty flawless from here! Very nice. Almost wondering if it would have been easier (it wouldn't!) to make the end caps of actual wood and resin-impregnate them to waterproof them!
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Haha, yes would almost certainly have saved a lot time making it from stabilised wood instead but the plan for wooden veneer came much later.
 
Put the fiddly little pieces shown here between the pipes with tweezers.

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Tricky to show and the torch gives a purplish colouration, but nice pretty seamless fit
:)


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I got these little brass p-clips for the drain hose, to go with the brass fittings.

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Fitted the drain pipe:

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Shiny! :D I think I may have missed that you polished up the internal back copper wall.
The top port that had a circle of screws through the copper ring seems to biw have a chunk of copper on it. Change of heart or just something covering it as a mask for the oil?
 
Cenedd said:
Shiny! :D I think I may have missed that you polished up the internal back copper wall.
The top port that had a circle of screws through the copper ring seems to biw have a chunk of copper on it. Change of heart or just something covering it as a mask for the oil?
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No, it's just upside down! The shiny cylindrical copper port there is the drain port, that's at the bottom usually! The top port with the screws is just at the bottom in these pics so not seen.
 
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Update time!

Firstly some good news - a big thank you to Alphacool (and Christopher at Alphacool) who have kindly offered to sponsor the project, with what looks to be a superb waterblock for the nvidia GTX4090! Seen here

Now onto the update... Added some more liberon finishing oil to the walnut veneer - up to 2 or 3 applications and starting to get some depth in this short video:

20221018_170514 by Tom ., on Flickr

I enlarged the PSU cutout of the aluminium wall (the one with the motherboard IO and PCI bracket cutout) so it can be used to slide the PSU in from the back of the case as an option, but have a veneered flush panel that should be pretty invisible with the PSU attached to the back of the case. It'll maybe have the cables from the PSU feed through the panel if I can't feed them through a billet motherboard tray.



20221021_171910_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

When I made the 1.5mm thick aluminium wall, the countersunk screws were drilled flush with the surface, so adding the 0.6mm thick veneer left it sitting above the screws and the 1/4" thick aluminium frame (the plates with the 37 slots in for the copper fins to sit in. I sanded down the aluminium wall by ~0.6mm with 3" sanding discs on a drill attachment to leave the countersunk screws flush with the walnut veneer.

20221025_194226_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

I attached the veneer to the aluminium wall. Wish I'd found the razor thin paper hole drill bits when doing the veneer for the aluminium wall - the punches I used were inaccurate to position precisely, and some of the holes were off.

20221103_154808_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

So I repaired the inaccuracies with the paper hole drill bits, and replacing the gaps with tiny crescents of veneer, matching the grain as best I could from scrap veneer pieces.

20221103_154851_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

20221103_155407_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

20221105_180157_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

20221105_180245_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

20221106_144008_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

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There's a little bit of filing and tidying up to do. Here's the aluminium frame and wall, with motherboard tray. This mobo tray is too big and ugly, so will be replaced or possibly cut down.

20221106_144205_HDR by Tom ., on Flickr

But it's difficult to resist putting in the new hardware and running the pc - have had a gtx4090 sat in it's box for ~3 weeks, have a lovely CPU block from techN (ignore the moiré from the camera - in person the channels are perfectly straight and even).

PSX_20221106_165719 by Tom ., on Flickr

M.2 SSDs

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7950x CPU and Asus x670e Crosshair Hero motherboard

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And the RAM arrives tomorrow.. Will likely measure up the aluminium wall etc for some machined bits to be made and put in the system for some testing and gaming! Looking forward to just running the 7950x cpu in the loop to see how it does!

Thanks for reading.
 
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Update

Couldn't help tinkering a bit more before putting pc hardware in.

Tidied up the alternative orientation PSU hole with sone dremelling/filing and sanding. Cut and installed some rubber spacer strip between the aluminium angle legs and the veneered backwall, and drilled/countersunk 8 holes to give more structural tigidity and some vibration dampening. Made things shiny.

Bought a vertical GPU bracket that bolts to the usual pci bracket slot. It's 2 slots max, and the gtx4090 I have is 3 slots, so will need to wait until I receive the GPU block with replacement 2 PCI slot bracket before taking a dremel to the aluminium PCI bracket of the IO panel. Bought a coolermaster vertical PSU mounting bracket.

Here's the backwall/frame, with the 'alternative PSU orientation' hole open.

PSX_20221201_231915 by Tom ., on Flickr

Really must break out the full-frame DSLR and take some better photos, as my phone camera really struggles in low light and the noise reduction smears details!

PSX_20221201_234912 by Tom ., on Flickr

PSX_20221201_234350 by Tom ., on Flickr

PSX_20221201_232600 by Tom ., on Flickr

Thanks for reading.
 
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