Project: Self-Inflicted

I'm trying to start thinking about 'what next?' as things have stalled a bit for the moment. I've got a DDC pump with a nice Barrow top (the volute looks particularly good) and heatsink and I have a Bitspower Z-Tube res. Trouble is that the res is really too small for the build. Yeah, I know but I can't help it! :D
Now I believe there is a longer Z-Tube on offer in the near future....but I've started thinking by now....or rather over-thinking...and that's a dangerous thing! :eek: I started idly surfing and browsing the reservoirs on offer and decided two things. It needs to be square rather than round and it needs to have the pump integrated into the bottom - both for aesthetics, you understand. I've built things with bits zip-tied together in the past and that's not what I want to do this time. The one I particularly like the look of was a Swiftech Maelstrom that has a (rounded) square tube but it's no longer available and has been replaced by a V2 that no longer has that. Also, like most others of this design, it takes a D5 pump...and that's not what I have. I also decided that I didn't want to throw a hundred-odd quid at the problem to make it go away :D So instead I have complicated my life in a somewhat apt self-inflicted way. I've ordered a 55 x 4.5 x 200mm borosilicate tube from a Chinese lab supplier and I reckon that I ought to be able to knock this together:

ResPlan.jpg


It'll need the top of the pump-top skimming down by about 1mm to get rid of the Barrow logo sticker recess. Then an o-ring groove milled in the top for the tube to seal directly against. Ditto for the top that will need making out of acrylic or Delrin - I'm favouring the latter as it doesn't need to be transparent. The upright struts will screw in from top and bottom to compress the o-rings against the ends of the tube. That will mean making the existing threaded holes in the pump-top into through-holes and finding some much longer screws that will then hold heatsink, pump and top together by pulling them to the struts and squashing them against the base of the tube.

I'm hoping the RGB light strip in the pump-top might also illuminate the res....but we'll have to see. It's ARGB so I don't yet have anything to power it with. I have my eye on a Jonsbo test controller for a whole £4 but I need to make that order up to something that isn't taking advantage of OCUK's good will. I might have to swallow my pride and buy some fans. I didn't want to as I have a literal box-load of them. Trouble is that the only ones that match are silver and light up green....and I'm not sure I can carry green and purple in this build! :rolleyes:
 
Yup, seen it, liked it, pinched the external strut design from it!
Mostly they seem to be for D5's. I think there might have been a DDC version but I didn't want to part with that much cash for one - not when I could so easily make my life much more difficult!
 
Gotta love home brew. For 2 projects that will never happen at this rate, I've also looked at custom res mounted directly to a distro but taking the Aquacomputer/EK glass route in having a central steel bar threaded at both ends. Screw one end into the distro, screw a Delrin top into the other end and tighten to seal. One variation I looked at uses a steel tube instead of the bar with holes cut into the sides of the tube so I can retain a central feed into a pump.

If yours turns out nice I might be in touch for a chat about some bits ;) there's definitely some lathe work if I can't find decent (i.e. aesthetically pleasing) cable strain relief.
 
I started with the central column approach as that's what I've got in the Aqualis res I have in mine. However, I then realised I'd modeled everything with central holes and completely forgotten the column to hold it together! Also I then decided it needed to be square and hence needed the external struts instead. I briefly thought about threading some acrylic but then I might just as well hunt down a longer Bitspower Z-Tube that isn't too long (like the 300mm I could find)....and I'd still have to mount the pump.
Always up for a chat.
 
Ok, glass arrived. Seems pretty nice. Edges are flame polished which is good.....and possibly bad. It looks nice but it does round it over - which is good for not slicing yourself to ribbons but maybe not for sealing....we shall see. Worst case, I may have to lap the ends flat and square with the tube. In the meantime, a mock-up for testing is called for. This is black (in case you were wondering! :D) 8mm acrylic. I plan to use the pump top itself for the bottom which is clear acrylic and my preference is for 10mm thick black Delrin/Acetal/POM for the top.....'cos it machines nicely and doesn't have the irritating tendancy to stress fracture round the fittings, screws, anywhere you look at it funny.

O-ring is food-grade silicone 52x2mm part. Why? I'm hoping that the ARGB lighting strip embedded in the pump top, might light up the res. So partly for not blocking the light as much as possible and partly that a black ring between two clear parts will stand out more....but not in a good way!





 
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Yep, manual mill with a rotary table to get the circular cuts. Rather conveniently a 25mm radius for both the 6mm endmill (3mm deep groove for the glass) and the same for the 2mm endmill (1mm deep groove to retain o-ring).
Got the second test piece done and clamped it together to see if it works. If it doesn't, it could be down to my naff clamps or the rounded glass....so I'm hoping it just works :D

 
And our survey says......"Your clamps are naff!". Borrowed a pair from my neighbour and it held 0.5 bar all night. Have ordered some 10mm black Acetal sheet to make a proper top. Was thinking of some black Acetal square bar to make the struts from - mainly as it'd save me from having to spray them black! But it looks like I can have white Acetal square bar, black acrylic square or black Acetal round bar in this country but if I want black, square and Acetal I have to move to the US! So, I think it may have to be Aluminium, chamfer it and then paint it black.
Look, EVENTUALLY there'll be a PC! :D
 
Not going to get sidetracked now....oooh, SHINY! :D So I was looking at mounting the lighting controllers - the joys of finding right-angled connectors for tight spaces, that sort of thing. It dawned on me that I've got a mix of RGB and ARGB lighting but could I go all ARBG for simplicity? The RGB is - unless I've missed something...which is very possible! - only for the CPU block and the GPU block. And those I've got to make up from 5mm RGB LEDs with umpteen resistors per LED and much colourful language. A quick search later and it turns out that 5mm ARGB LEDs do exist...and have been ordered! The massive bonus (to me!) is that they have the drivers in-package so there's no need for resistors for each colour or each LED. They're also designed to be chained so I can at the very least do one run to the pair of LEDs in the CPU block and one to the GPU pair...or maybe one run for the lot; I'll have to play with the controller to see what's possible....and also test that they work when they turn up!
 
ARGB LEDs arrived :D They look just like normal RGB LEDs....suspiciously so in fact. Perhaps I'm just getting (more) cynical in my old age! But after some jury-rigged breadboarding, some colourful language and shouting "Yee Haw!" a bit (because cowboy'ing it) they work!
You have four pins on an ARGB LED....yes, four...no, not three like you might expect. Those are 5V, Ground, data IN and data OUT. You can chain the 'out' of one to the 'in' of the next.
I also understand about splitting ARGB lines and how to make a Farbwerk 360 do my bidding!

If you continue a string of LEDs - such as connecting the 'OUT' port of an 15-LED Aqua Computer RGBpx strip to the 'IN' port of the next strip, they continue sequentially; like one longer 30-LED strip. The same principle applies for the singles if you chain out to in.
If instead, you split the connection before the strip and connect the channel to two strips in parallel, the act like clones of each other with LEDs 1-15 on each. This would work quite nicely for fans and RAM where you want them to be doing the same thing. Not so useful if you want them to do different things. On to channels and it'll make sense in a minute.

So there are four channels on the Farbwerk 360 and you can have up to 90 LEDs per channel. While there are initially two controllers set for each channel, you can assign just one or a bunch of them. The key thing that isn't immediately obvious is that you can shrink the size of a controller so that it only covers say two LEDs and then drag it about to select which two you want...and then name it so you don't get confused. Why is this important? Well, put the two together and it means I can run one channel from the Farbwerk to the first LED on the CPU block, then on to the second and then on to the first and second LEDs in the GPU block. No resistors required and I can address each of them separately - or, in this case, in pairs.

Cenedd said:
The RGB is - unless I've missed something...which is very possible! - only for the CPU block and the GPU block.
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You could see the foreshadowing, right? Well, in comes my son and says "What about the RAM lighting?"....and yup, that's RGB rather than ARGB. So I looked at completely new ARGB RAM....but it all requires specific software to drive it and isn't compatible with the Farbwerk as a controller....and I want to have just one controller for the lot. I'm awkward and demanding like that! :D So I looked at new ARGB RAM heatsinks. The Jonsbo NC1 that OCUK has (cheaper than anyone else, I might add!) aren't bad looking and only £8, I'll have those.....oh, hang on that's a single and I'll need four. Hmmm, more than I want to pay to make the RAM look 'pretty' - especially when for just over twice that, you can have new sticks of DDR4 with them pre-attached! So I started taking the heat spreaders I had apart to see what's in them. It turns out that it's very dismantle'able and contains a small 4mm wide PCB with RGB LEDs on it. So I've ordered ½m of 4mm wide ARGB tape that I reckon I can jam in there instead. Total cost? A fiver.
Next on the list is the connections. @ALXAndy is bang-on when he says how bad RGB/ARGB connectors are - always falling out or not lining up when you're trying to get them in. Aqua Computer actually uses some tiny JST style connectors on the Farbwerk (in addition to the standard type) and the RGBpx strips and I think I might standardise on those. As far as I can tell, they aren't JST though (as another post claimed) but Molex Picoblade. I've ordered some crimp pins and shells so we'll find out when those arrive. Incidentally, if you feel a dark tension in the atmosphere in a few days time, it's because those pins are 1.25mm pitch and tiny enough that there's going to be serious magnification required! ....and a LOT of colourful language! If I can do them - and I ought to be able to, they're not that different from the pins I had to crimp to externalise the Aquaero screen - it'll mean they stay put once plugged in.

Also on order are a couple of 90° molex power plugs which should let me power the Farbwerk and the Aquaero once mounted at the rear of the case...and still be able to shut the door!

Also some coolant and some fans. I gave in. It's irritating but the only ones I have that are even a set of three at least similar fans are the silver ones that light up green when you power them. I was going to put up with them being silver as they're quite reasonable fans....but the green's going to clash with the purple something horrible!
 
Oh I DO like to make life difficult for myself! Molex Picoblade 1.25mm pitch connectors arrived this morning. The good news is that they fit the Farbwerk 360's ARGB ports (the smaller, white, non-standard ones that don't fall out). The bad news? Well, in this picture, the picoblade pins are in the foreground and for size comparison, you have a fan pin (right) and an ATX pin (back). Wish me luck!

 
It is - at least from quick caliper measurements but no actual test - the smallest die on the PA-09. Gah, you're gonna make me try one now....when I have many other things that I'm busy procrastinating over!

First good news is that the stripping length is but half of the minimum that my Knipex will do....so that's going to be fun. Might have to pad out the stop on it!
Looks like it'll work but drive me slightly insane!

 
When I was playing with Molex Milli-grid for USB3 I didn't use my Jokari strippers in the end. Even with the 3mm ATX mod I did it's still too fiddly. I have some horrid cheapo thing that does a nice enough job stripping thin wall insulation from 22AWG wire and if my eyeballed 2mm strip is too long then I just trim manually.

Wouldn't want to do that for more than the 9 wires I ultimately did; never bothered doing all 20 because I couldn't get USB3 speeds working.
 
Got the fans in the roof and lit them for your pleasure....and my son's :D



I've been re-spraying the rad for the front as there were some bubbles, chips etc down to bare metal. Probably should have put more prep in as some of those just look like I've sprayed over them....which is more or less what I have. The side you'll see looks nice though and it's black on black so *shrug*
Now that's dry, I can start mounting them. With the 6-32 x 30mm screws I ordered specially - this is an EK rad using 6-32 UNC screws where the top rad is AlphaCool and uses M3.....just to keep it consistent :D So in it all goes and ....the screws are too short! Previous fans: 25mm thick. New fans 27mm thick *facepalm* So a quick look round and 30mm is about as long as I can get. There are 35mm (aka 1-3/8") available but in silver....with really long shipping. Or, I found some in black....but with £20 shipping from the US! No thanks. So I've tapped them out to M4 and ordered some of those from the UK that should hopefully turn up before the weekend.
This is a roll tap - also known as a forming tap. Rather than cut metal out of the hole, it forms it - pushes it about to form the shape of the thread. I've found they give a more reliably good thread on sheet metal than a normal cut tap. They also don't make any swarf (metal chips) as they don't cut the metal, just displace it. You need a bigger hole to start than a cut tap....which is quite fortunate as that's what I'm starting with!



Steel rule as a back stop - don't want to pierce the core....or scratch the new paint! :eek:



Did both sides to avoid confusion in the future - or perhaps increase it, time will tell!
And now I have to wait for the screws to turn up.
 
Looking good man. I didn't notice you had added some purple to the board. That's cool.

Really looking forward to seeing this done now. I bet the nipper is too ! jammy sod, got his dream BMX last week and will be getting a sick PC soon too !
 
Soon? Not at the rate I work at! :p

Rad screws turned up this morning :D
Front rad now mounted. It's ....a little unorthodox but it's the only way with the stupid design decisions in this case. I want the connections at the top so it has to be dropped as low (well lower to be honest) as possible. It's a 38mm thick rad so it's not like I've shoved a Mo-Ra in there or something. The top rad isn't even in the case where they intended it to go either!






The extra couple of mm thickness on the new fans (mainly the rubber pads on them) almost bit me but some colourful language got 'em in!



Should be able to start swearing at the tubing runs and the cabling next :rolleyes:
 
ALXAndy said:
Looking good man. I didn't notice you had added some purple to the board. That's cool.
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It's not quite the right shade but it's better than the red that was there previously that clashed. The red latches of the PCI-E slots have also been painted black. The slots themselves have been filled with black 3D printed covers and the RAM slots won't be visible once there are some dimms with heatspreaders shoved in them.
 
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