Project: Water Cooled Apple Cube Case

Rooster212 said:
Firstly, can't see the link, and it has a certain disallowed site in the link.

Secondly, I don't really get what you mean, is the backplate the bottom part?
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Apologies I didn't realise about disallowed sites - have removed that link to the auction site.

Yes, for want of a better word by backplate I meant the bottom part of the Cube which includes all the IO.

I will post a jpeg tomorrow to illustrate this conversion piece a bit better.
 
Laser said:
Hey Nick. No it is me! Most of my stuff these days is pure case mod.s and I have had a few people telling me they had heard of the Laser Hive from here.....so I thought it was time I started contributing to what is obviously a very active and inventive community.

:)
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There's a nice G5 build also on this sub forum - I put in the good word for you :D

It really is a good community, and UK based!
 
I am still waiting for a few bits and pieces to arrive before continuing the Cube build.

In the meantime though I thought you might be interested in the fact that I am starting a companion mod. which will sit well with the Cube when it is finished.

There were reports of the iPad Retina display being hacked to be used as a stand alone monitor and a company in the Czech Republic are making adaptors for it....so I have decided to be an early adopter!

In theory the interface board should give an easy way of hooking all this up so I am going to make my own case for the adapter and display. It'll be in the style of the old Studio displays that Apple made, but adapted so I can cut it from flat sheets.

Here is the link to the adapter. It is not cheap at $99, but then again promises to be a good quality item and with new iPad retina displays on eBay for £50 and 15" Apple Studio Displays being able to be picked up for £15-£20 it will still be an affordable and striking little piece of kit (I hope) when completed.

I'll let you know how I get on!
 
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Here is a link to a youTube video just uploaded.

http://youtu.be/Gn_FbjipYfA

Today I worked out the length and connectors for the cooling in the case and hooked that all up.

The radiator and push pull fans are shown here fixed by the drive braket and the centre bracket. Here the system is inverted and filled and running. At first there was a lot of air in the loop and the pump very noisy, air is easy to get out of this loop though and a few top ups later the pump is running very quiet.

Fans here are hooked up to the corsair block and running full speed. Even so, they are not too noisy. The inner fan is soft mounted and the outer is hard mounted to the case parts. I might see if I can change the outer mount to a soft one too as this fan produces noticeably more noise.
 
Had some time today to progress a little further.

I'll post some pic.s tomorrow hopefully, but the internals are now almost mapped out.

I had been wondering how best to secure the mobo in the cube core - as the corner struts unhelpfully make it awkward to fix a tray. Today though I bit the bullet and made a support that joins the aluminium handle support rails to each other (to give it some extra strength and resist against twisting now that the heatsink has gone) and also fixed some threaded inserts into that support to take standoffs that will attach to the top of the mobo. In this way, instead of the usual support from underneath it is suspended from above. This extra support piece and the mobo fixing means I can build everything up without having the top or bottom of the cube in place.

Also wired my push pull fans into a single fan plug and then mounted the fan controller board to be at the bottom rear of the cube to make fan speed adjustments an easy step.

Last thing today was to re-wire the Corsair H80 block so it will draw it's power from the CPU fan header. I know the pump only uses 4W and as I am not using it to actually feed power to the radiator fans this convenient method saves a lot of messy wiring. Just plug the short lead in and it's done.

Wiring is one thing I am trying to be really neat with on this one and my aim is not to have to attach a flying molex trail from the pico PSU. SO my solutions to this are:
1. The two fans will take their power from the fan controller and that will take 12v directly from where the mains adaptor comes in;
2. The Corsair block powered from a fan header.
3. (And I think this should work) for my 500GB SSD the power draw is max of 2W. As the SATA data plug is right next to a USB 2.0 header I am intending to use just the power from a dual USB header into a SATA power connector for a minimal routing of 5v and GND power to my SATA drive. I have never seen anyone do this, but I presume that as I have seen external USB devices use a power only connection from a USB port that there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to do that internally.

By doing these three things I can reduce the connectors going to the pico psu down to just the CPU power plug.
 
Latest pic.s

This pic shows the core of the cube without the bottom plate. Here you can see the three plates I made up that hold the core parts together.

p3281781.jpg


First plate at the top of the shot is the metal plate that holds the outside fan and is bolted to the original drive carrier.

The second plate is a 5mm black perspex plate that fixes to one side of the original handle guide / Heatsink retaining pieces

and the third plate fixes to the other side of the same pieces.

Here is a closer shot of the first piece:

img0277pk.jpg


and the second piece:

img0282fk.jpg


And in the shot below you can see that the third piece is also used to suspend the motherboard via standoffs:

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In this one you can see looking from the front plate down into the cube that the central area I have tried to keep as clear of clutter as I can - the water pipes have to go here and this is also the area that the fans will draw their air from.

Here is a side view showing how the SSD will fit.

If you look closely you can see the SATA power to USB power cable I made up.

p3281783.jpg
 
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My all time favourite mod subject, Apple cubes. I'd love an i7 based mini itx hackintosh in one of these, I think they are just gorgeous. SUbscribed
 
Thanks for the positive comments guys.

I love this tiny format and I really believe that these days the case is becoming more and more practical. The challenge is trying to squeeze more and more (quiet) performance out of these 8 inch squares.

Can't wait to see what Haswell brings to the ITX format.
 
Sorry not been updated for a while.

Here are a few shots from just now.

ijib.jpg


This one shows the latest version of the back which I have laser cut in house from matt black acrylic. I am bonding the acrylic to the original base, which I have given a quick spray of satin black to see if I like the colour.

The extra holes in the back panel are for a power inlet and outlet at 12v, the adjustment knob of the small fan controller and for an extra USB port.

The 12v outlet is intended for my small "retina" display that I am making up, and the USB port can of course be used for a number of things, but internally it is connected to two of the 5v sources on a USB header so that it can provide higher power - such as for DVD recorder and also to give more possibility to use an original set of Cube speakers.

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I'm using JB weld to bond the parts together and when it is set I'll add more to smooth the join and then sand back, mask off the acrylic panel and spray the sides again. I have a compressible adhesive strip coming which if it looks okay I'll use to replace the original type of spongy trim strips the Cube had. I am hoping that that strip will provide a nice seal between the Cube base and the inner can (and also conceal any messiness where the panels join!).

So the current plan is for the Cube inner to be satin black....
 
I know you shouldn't take photos at night, with a flash, a bad camera etc. (so apologies) but thought I'd do a micro update.

7epc.jpg


This one is showing the back part after bonding and with the compression seal applied.

Also I made a small retaining piece from thin ABS sheet that holds my 500GB SSD in place against the side of the rad bracket (i.e. what used to be the drive holder before I butchered it). This thin ABS sheet is enough to hold the 2.5" drive in place and also to act as a trim piece to tidy cables out of sight.

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Next post won't be for a few days. I am now though getting seriously close to being able to add the last bits and pieces and do a switch on.
 
Okay.....I lied.

Had to spend a little time today and so I cut a new top sheet for the Cube from 0.25mm plasticard.

mxhf.jpg


Essentially this is the same as the original top sheet, but where there would have been a space for the plastic grill insert I have instead filled the space with a honeycomb pattern to give a false top grill.

I could only find this plasticard in white, but as it is a material used a lot by modellers I gather it should be easy to spray paint.
 
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