A Work in Progress - Page 2

KG_AGCent · #11 09-18-2006, 11:12 PM

I have gotten nearly all the parts needed to begin putting this monster together. I got the 1st of the two x1950xtx video cards today.

This is a diagram of the component placement and cooling loop I intend to follow. The arrows are the direction of water flow. I haven't yet fixed the location of the reservior to the 5.25" bays. I may end up fastening it to the case bottom near the pump.

This past weekend I began to do a little modding of my case.

The case:

The bottom drive bays are going to have to come out in order to fit the radiator and fans. There are a ton of rivets that I am going to have remove and I will have to cut the lower section away from the upper section. I will leave the cross bar support in to ensure stability.

Cutting out the 5.25 bay dividers in 2 areas as the dual HD cooler for the Raptors needs it.

4 Dremmel cutting wheels later...

KG_GASXTREME · #12 09-19-2006, 01:16 AM

Looks like you are off to a great start amigo, keep up the good work :)
-steve

KG_Swampfox · #13 09-19-2006, 07:47 AM

A great start to the 286 machine......

Where do the flux capacitor coils go?

Nice work

KG_AGCent · #14 09-23-2006, 02:52 PM

I am putting together the liquid cooling plates for the hard drives. I am going to have 3 drives in this computer. These two are Western Digital 74gb 10,000rpm Raptor drives with 8mb cache each. I will configure these drive to work as a RAID 0 drive. This means these two drives will work as one by splitting the data between them essentially cutting the load time in half over one drive alone. Also, operating at 10,000rpm they are nealy 45% faster over a standard 7200rpm drive most computers made after Kozinski's have.

On each contact surface between the copper plates and the drive I have put some thermal contact paste that ensures proper heat transfer from the drive to the plate, then, obviously, from the plate to the liquid that will be circulating to take the heat away.

The liquid will come in one side, flow through the tranfer tube then out the other side to the reservoir.

The drives will no longer fit into a normal drive bay. The cooling plates are designed to sit in two 5.25" bays that a CD or DVD drive would normally sit in.

KG_AGCent · #15 10-06-2006, 07:00 PM

An update;

I have purchased the last bit of hardware today; a second ATI x1950XTX Crossfire video card and 2 GB Corsair PC6400 DDR2 RAM. Ought to be here by Monday.

I will be able to buy my cooling parts a bit at a time as they are smaller priced per piece.

At this rate I will be up and running by Christmas.

KG_AGCent · #16 10-12-2006, 01:57 PM

In case you are in the market to build your own computer, one of the most important thisngs you can do is make sure you have a power supply that will nmeet your demands. The following link takes you to a wattage calculator. All you do is input from vaious drop-down menus the stuff youyr computer is goping top have and it'll calculate the wattage needed. It is recommended that you have between 10% - 20% "slop" in your powersupply to ensure you don't burn it out or do some other nasty thing to it.

My set up, without any overclocking, came up to 515 watts required for peak usage. I have a 600 watt supply so I am just where I need to be (*whew!*) I bought my PS before I knew about this page or even the need for slop. Lucky duck for me!

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

A wonderful post about almoist anything powersupply related.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=458204

KG_AGCent · #17 10-20-2006, 06:44 PM

All the final pieces have been ordered, ought to be in by Tuesday. Goffy will be meeting me at my place on Nov. 4th to do the final hook-up and Win XP Pro installation.

KG_AGCent · #18 10-25-2006, 12:11 AM

Well, the rest of my stuff came in, now I have to begin the true assembly.

I start with the radiator and cooling fans. hese fans run at 65 cfm and 13 dba, very quiet considering a human whisper is around 20dba. Yes, it looks like a heater core from Kozinski's 1982 Chevy Citation. He still drives that car because his wife made him spend too much money on porch lighting at the guest house.

A closeup.

Fully assembled.

KG_AGCent · #19 10-25-2006, 12:15 AM

A picture of the reservoir. If you look carefully you can see an angled peice of the acrylic inside the body. This ensures the inlet fluid is forced first down toward the outlet to make sure there is no starvation and to cut down on air cavitation.

Set in place with velcro pads.

KG_AGCent · #20 10-25-2006, 12:18 AM

This is the fill-port. I tapped this in to the top of my case. This will be tee-ed into my reservoir line.

And the fluid pump.

And the abortion of piping created when using this crap=assed tubing called Tygon. This shit was touted as the best on the market. It's crap. It kinks unless you use an obscene amount in a turn, its thin walled and has not impressed me in the least.