Awesome thanks! I'll look into the splitty9 and crimping on the connectors.
No worries, i've got a load of 22AWG and the pins so let me know if you cant figure it out and I can always crimp 4 lengths of 3 meters to extend.
Project: Little Bit Big.
- Thread starter Smffy
- Start date
No worries, i've got a load of 22AWG and the pins so let me know if you cant figure it out and I can always crimp 4 lengths of 3 meters to extend.
Tell me about it, with 4 x 480 radiators minimum fans would be 16 though
. I’m on the fence about push pull on the top radiators so will see when it comes together a little more... Good fun though
Howdy...
Long time no update, go side tracked eating and drinking all Xmas followed by illness and back to work! A few updates:
1. The frame and all parts is now at the powder coaters, i'm hoping to be able to get a sample piece next week to see if the colour I ordered is good and the finish looks ok. Looking forward to that!
2. Fans are paired and braided, working fine in testing and will be starting to mount on the radiators ready this week - long boring task they were but they look good. I will be getting Aluminium discs laser cut to replace the old stickers, this will be a little while as...
3. Design and get made new motherboard tray, although the old one is being powder coated its just flimsy and crap so i'll get a simple done when its back to replace with some nice thick 2-3mm aluminium.
4. Distro designs on hold until above is done for precise measurements but I have come to the conclusion I need to split the cable management from the res/distro for future proofing. For example when I change hardware I only need to get a simple acrylic panel recut not an entire sealed distro plate (I hope).
5. Custom NVlink bridge now started/designed, see below - this is to fit the insides of the NV standard bridge, the logo is TBC its just a bit of a meme which I was about to write RTX and the power icon
Slow and steady wins the race, I think... Designs finalised this morning:
This will likely either be just black acetal with an aluminium/metal plate OR i'll just get the top bit milled in solid Aluminium, the internal back plate in acrylic pins it to the standoffs. If you are wondering its deliberately offset the be larger at the bottom, what this does is mitigate the offset you get from the natural fit of the link when attached as the bottom SLI fingers are at the top of the card... In short I hope this centres the bridge over both cards to the eye
More to come next week I hope!!!
Long time no update, go side tracked eating and drinking all Xmas followed by illness and back to work! A few updates:
1. The frame and all parts is now at the powder coaters, i'm hoping to be able to get a sample piece next week to see if the colour I ordered is good and the finish looks ok. Looking forward to that!
2. Fans are paired and braided, working fine in testing and will be starting to mount on the radiators ready this week - long boring task they were but they look good. I will be getting Aluminium discs laser cut to replace the old stickers, this will be a little while as...
3. Design and get made new motherboard tray, although the old one is being powder coated its just flimsy and crap so i'll get a simple done when its back to replace with some nice thick 2-3mm aluminium.
4. Distro designs on hold until above is done for precise measurements but I have come to the conclusion I need to split the cable management from the res/distro for future proofing. For example when I change hardware I only need to get a simple acrylic panel recut not an entire sealed distro plate (I hope).
5. Custom NVlink bridge now started/designed, see below - this is to fit the insides of the NV standard bridge, the logo is TBC its just a bit of a meme which I was about to write RTX and the power icon
Slow and steady wins the race, I think... Designs finalised this morning:
This will likely either be just black acetal with an aluminium/metal plate OR i'll just get the top bit milled in solid Aluminium, the internal back plate in acrylic pins it to the standoffs. If you are wondering its deliberately offset the be larger at the bottom, what this does is mitigate the offset you get from the natural fit of the link when attached as the bottom SLI fingers are at the top of the card... In short I hope this centres the bridge over both cards to the eye
More to come next week I hope!!!
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How did you solder the copper joints without there been any visible solder round the joints?
Mad skills
after much experimentation this is using a cold weld method. Held up pretty good over the years!
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something like JB Weld?
Yeah pretty much but this is a specialist compound called Just4Copper or something lame like that. When you twist it in, if you followed the directions, you have about 5 seconds before its never coming out or turning again... Its tricky to work with but gives you confidence given you cant pull it apart no matter how hard you try even after about 2 minutes. Its supposed to be water resistant to 7 PSI within about 10 seconds as it cures super quick in the joint where there is no oxygen.
Few more shots of the NVLink bridge which is pretty much done, I've learnt how to translate this to drawings so will have a look at printing a 1:1 and checking my measurements before it gets made
. The more astute of you will notice I was a weetard and had the bridge the wrong orientation so corrected that and added a simple logo in the centre, this will be frosted clear acrylic and lines up to the existing LED panel in the bridge so I can still RGB all the things.Now, its time to GET HYPED. Because I just picked up this sample from the multitude of bits left at the powder coaters, basically to confirm I like the finish before we do the whole job... I like. A lot. Difficult to get pictures but the former 1000D stock of matt textured black next to dark grey sparkle with gloss finish. The quality is well worth it vs. painting myself so i'm really glad I went this route - what do you think?
Old left, new right:
Sparkle is difficult to photograph but it looks very tasteful:
And under a strong white light in the bathroom to show the real life colour a little more:
I cant wait to see the rest all coated up! While we are at it the new paracord colours are in, all the way from the USA - a massive thanks to Atwood Rope for not declaring the VAT paid and ignoring all my emails
. So glad you were there to support me by ignoring all my communications and leaving me with about $20 charges to pay on $22 of rope. It looks good though, will probably be the odd single strand or two next to black matt. I've also been trying melting the ends to secure in place of crimping over the sleeve - works really well so this will be the new method for me, more reliable and no need for sacrificial sleeve as the para melts neatly and sets like rock.Odd flecks of bright blue, bits of black and matching grey to the case:
Did someone say progress?
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That's fantastic. It makes me want to dump my flexible tubing
I like a challenge, but in all seriousness it does make life harder with chunky 16mm copper and a lot of hardware changes over the few years
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Looks good @Smffy colour looks like Skoda Grey, had my Golf R wheels powder coated in the same colour. Good choice. Keep it up mate.
Thanks mate, it’s a special colour blend, base is Matt black and then a top coat with the special flecked finish. Whole rig is now back and I’ve been rebuilding/riveting back! Will get some snaps up soon, managed to face plant some ice while skating so been out of action getting my head stitched up
(doh!).More measuring to do and designing for more internal parts I’m going to replace... getting there!
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Great looking project, following for sure
Great looking project, following for sure
Cheers, some updated pics coming soon of the powder coated monster! Should get a few things in place and then start measuring for the board tray design!
Update time!!!
So the case parts (all of the various bits individually) are now powder coated, in the end the special colour was worth a few extra quid in my opinion as it gives a really subtle finish but a few white LEDs will show it sparkle ever so slightly. A few shots of the finish, hard to tell in these photos how different it looks but i've done a quick video also
Yes even all of these coated...
Fan/Rad mounts:
This shot shows the colour reasonably well, i've kept the 'foot' and the top as stock in the nice brushed dark aluminium:
Next up needed to flush out ALL the radiators, this was a fun hour... Have to say they cam out pretty clear really so kudos on that job XSPC:
Needed to test mount...
Added a layer of the push pull fans... I have some more to pair so will get those done in no time - they look very neat so glad I did all the work rewiring and braiding. However... I couldn't mount them as planned at the top with the mount tray inverted, so sadly I CANNOT fit 4 x 480 56mm radiatiors
. Solution: I've got a pair of the 36mm and going to stealth fit them in the tray above as you can see here:
Its annoying but you cant quite get the radiator to sit on the tray mounts due to the lip at the side, I could design new trays but instead i've opted for the slimmer radiators hidden in the top tray. I will mod some hols through it to get to the ports, then a row of fans over it and it will look like it was all on purpose.
Right now i'm working on the designs to replace the board tray, i'm probably going to remove the old piece above the rear doors in the picture above again and just have a gap through which I think will be a good look. Its just been put back in with rivets so not hard to take out or change my mind.
The main design will look something like this:
PSU shroud is completely done and measurements tested with a cardboard version from printed 1:1 drawings. The rest is early days but most likely i'll have two distro plates, the base one connecting in the front rads and back from built in D5's (x2) and the vertical one connecting all components and top rads before heading back to the pumps. work to do here but i'm currently focused on checking and rechecking the mainboard tray as its a crucial thing to get right. In order to then fairly accurately map out the distro plates i'm modelling other components which is really pushing my CAD learning to new levels but so far i've created the front radiator model based on XSPC measurements and some judgement:
Done to scale to be best of my knowledge but drawings will be tested soon and anything which needs to be adjusted will be, pretty sure the ports are in the right place horizontally which is the main thing! Finally, see below video of a quite round the case to show the finish - sorry the size is a bit off just a quick job so dont go full screening it:
So the case parts (all of the various bits individually) are now powder coated, in the end the special colour was worth a few extra quid in my opinion as it gives a really subtle finish but a few white LEDs will show it sparkle ever so slightly. A few shots of the finish, hard to tell in these photos how different it looks but i've done a quick video also
Yes even all of these coated...
Fan/Rad mounts:
This shot shows the colour reasonably well, i've kept the 'foot' and the top as stock in the nice brushed dark aluminium:
Next up needed to flush out ALL the radiators, this was a fun hour... Have to say they cam out pretty clear really so kudos on that job XSPC:
Needed to test mount...
Added a layer of the push pull fans... I have some more to pair so will get those done in no time - they look very neat so glad I did all the work rewiring and braiding. However... I couldn't mount them as planned at the top with the mount tray inverted, so sadly I CANNOT fit 4 x 480 56mm radiatiors
. Solution: I've got a pair of the 36mm and going to stealth fit them in the tray above as you can see here:Its annoying but you cant quite get the radiator to sit on the tray mounts due to the lip at the side, I could design new trays but instead i've opted for the slimmer radiators hidden in the top tray. I will mod some hols through it to get to the ports, then a row of fans over it and it will look like it was all on purpose
.Right now i'm working on the designs to replace the board tray, i'm probably going to remove the old piece above the rear doors in the picture above again and just have a gap through which I think will be a good look. Its just been put back in with rivets so not hard to take out or change my mind.
The main design will look something like this:
PSU shroud is completely done and measurements tested with a cardboard version from printed 1:1 drawings. The rest is early days but most likely i'll have two distro plates, the base one connecting in the front rads and back from built in D5's (x2) and the vertical one connecting all components and top rads before heading back to the pumps. work to do here but i'm currently focused on checking and rechecking the mainboard tray as its a crucial thing to get right. In order to then fairly accurately map out the distro plates i'm modelling other components which is really pushing my CAD learning to new levels but so far i've created the front radiator model based on XSPC measurements and some judgement:
Done to scale to be best of my knowledge but drawings will be tested soon and anything which needs to be adjusted will be, pretty sure the ports are in the right place horizontally which is the main thing! Finally, see below video of a quite round the case to show the finish - sorry the size is a bit off just a quick job so dont go full screening it
:
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The colour of the case looks fantastic.
Cheers gents, subtle colour but quite nice in person! Worth the extra £35 to order that finish in. Will post up more designs as I finish them...
Still working through/getting better at designing in CAD but getting to the layout before I start mapping out the ports to finalise the distro plates... PSU shroud is finalised and measured/model built and good to go!
There will be two distro plates, the base one is a simple connection for the radiators where it will exit the two in build D5's to that plate and in and out the radiators before heading back in to the top plate and beyond. I've also ordered one of these and a basic air cooler to strip my rig further and make all this stuff so much easier to measure and map while I finish the project!
Always wanted one anyway for testing and this open source model is amazing:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/streacom-bc1-aluminium-benchtable-black-ca-059-sr.html
Thats it for now, i'm going to focus on the tray and making sure I dont mess up the board alignment to the IO plates etc. Once that is done the distro is actually pretty simple to do in CAD... Well we will see
There will be two distro plates, the base one is a simple connection for the radiators where it will exit the two in build D5's to that plate and in and out the radiators before heading back in to the top plate and beyond. I've also ordered one of these and a basic air cooler to strip my rig further and make all this stuff so much easier to measure and map while I finish the project!
Always wanted one anyway for testing and this open source model is amazing:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/streacom-bc1-aluminium-benchtable-black-ca-059-sr.html
Thats it for now, i'm going to focus on the tray and making sure I dont mess up the board alignment to the IO plates etc. Once that is done the distro is actually pretty simple to do in CAD... Well we will see
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Looking good @Smffy keep the great work up mate.