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Bustin' out a Q6600 in a small cube clear acrylic case - assembly pictorial

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pclausen

Registered
Joined
Mar 1, 2006
I have never done a water cooled rig before but I decided to jump in with both feet and doing one up in one of those Sunbeam clear acrylic cube cases (the UFO).

The parts I'm going to stuff into this small cube are as follows:

Asus P5E-VM HDMI
Q6600
2 x Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800
2 x Raptor 150s (configured as a small "enter the Matrix" raid0 boot partition, and a larger raid0 data partition)
LG Hd-DVD/Blu-Ray drive
Corsair 520HX

The cooling system is as follows (also all stuffed inside the cube except for the radiator):

MCP655 Pump
MCRES-MICRO reservoir
Apogee GTX
MCR220
2 x Yate Loon D12SH

I'm expecting the Asus tomorrow (it just got released last week), but while I wait, I went ahead and mounted the radiator and loosley fitted the other items:

Side angle (here you can see the reservoir in the front upper left corner):

q6600angle.jpg


Top (MC655 visible on the "lower level" and of course the CPU block on the "upper level"):

q6600top.jpg


Front (here you can clearly see the "upper level" where the mobo goes, as well as the lower level containing the drives, PS and pump):

q6600front.jpg


Radiator:

q6600radiator.jpg


The fans are about 1.5" away from the back of the case. There is no hole into the case since the PS takes up about 3/4 of that area anyway. I'm a little concerned that the Yate Loon's are going to be restricted a little, but perhaps not?

I need to pick up a 3/4" hole saw to drill the 2 holes for the 1/2" I.D. tubing to enter the case from the radiator. Since the Asus is a Micro-ATX, there are enough vent holes to allow me to run the rest of the tubing with no additional drilling. So the flow will be as follows:

Lower reservoir exit -> pump inlet
pump outlet -> lower radiator inlet
upper radiator outlet -> cpu block
cpu block -> upper reservoir inlet

I only expect to end up using like 3 feet of tubing being how compact everything is. I'll likely also go through the pain of cutting all the electrical wires to exact length and solder and heat shrink them. The Corsair is modular, so I won't kill it by doing so.

I plan to run the 2 chassis fans on the upper level from the "chassis fan" header on the mobo. Likewise, I was planning on running the 2 Yate loons from the "cpu fan" header on the chassis. This way the chassis fans will only speed up enough to maintain a certain temp on the upper level, and the radiator fans will likewise only run fast enough to keep the cpu cool.

I do have the "slackr" stepping, so I'm hoping to at least get 3.6 out of it. This machine will mostly be for playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, but will also do a fair amount of ripping and transcoding. No gaming.

Anyway, like I said, this is my first attempt at water cooling, so please speak up if you see me already doing something obviously wrong!

I'll post more pics as the assembly progesss continues.
 
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For cutting those holes for the tubing, DON'T use a hole saw. They heat up the acrylic too much and make a mess. Get a simple wood boring spade bit like this:

173-88804.jpg


The bit sheds off the material as it cuts and won't heat up the acrylic.

The trick to a case like this is to do some serious sleeving/cable management because everything shows. I haven't seen this case before. It looks pretty neat although it also looks like it is going to take some work to get everything stuffed in it neatly.
 
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Thanks for the tip. I'll pick up a fresh spade bit then as I think the ones I have laying around the house are quite dull. A 13/16" or a 7/8" should work well I would think as 3/4" will likely be too tight since that is the actual O.D. of the tubing.
 
I can't wait to see what you come up with!

It's going to be interesting to see how it all comes together in that small case!
 
Man, UPS sucks around Christmas time. My mobo didn't show. Last scan is from yesterday. I called them as they told me to ask the shipper to put a tracer on it tomorrow if it is still not in the system by them.

Anyway, I did manage to pick up a 13/16" spade bit and it worked like a champ. I was also able to permanently mount the pump tonight.

Here's a shot of the hose going from the pump outlet to the lower inlet on the radiator (don't worry about that upper radiator hose, its just temporary):

q6600hoses1.jpg


And a shot from above showing the hose going from the reservoir (still not mounted until I get the mobo) to the pump inlet. Notice how the hose fit nicely through the vent from the upper deck to the lower one:

q6600hoses2.jpg
 
in my experience theres a bit thats even better than the spade for cutting plastic... The Forstner bit! Kinda pricey though.

No matter what though... Take it SLOW and with light pressure. Also, go to your local hardware store and buy up some of their scrap plexi. Practice on this before drilling into an expensive case.

PS: I have a drill press so a Forstner might not be the best choice if you don't.
 
If I was you man, I'd place those yate loons on the other side of the Radiator, pulling air through. On the side closest to the case, you're not giving them a whole lot of breathing room, regarldess of whether they're pushing or pulling.
 
Sunrunner, I do have a drill press and things did work out well with the spade bit. You're right about going real nice and slow through! I drilled small pilot holes initially as well.

Superdave, I hear you on the tight space for those yate loons. I'll look into moving them to the other side of the radiator. Long term, I'll likely switch from using 2" 8-32 screws to hold them to some sort of beefier spacers that are longer. I'll likely wait until I get the rig up and running to see what sort of temps I get out the gate.
 
For any holes larger than 3/16" or 1/4" I've had the most luck with spade bits, hence why I've recommended them so much. I'm also rather fond of brad point "lip and spur" bits which produce very clean holes in plastics.
Going down to as slow of a speed as you can gear your drillpress to helps a good deal. Also use very minimal down force when drilling. Keeping the material as close to room temperature as possible when working with it is always advised for keeping control of the piece your working on and for minimizing fume production.

I pretty much avoid acrylic now. It's just too annoying to work with for most applications.
 
All done!

My Asus mobo finally showed up today so I was able to complete the install. I haven't cleaned up the wiring yet, but I wanted to get this sucker fired up. So here are some pics of the rig up and running:

q6600water1.jpg


q6600water2.jpg


q6600water3.jpg


q6600water4.jpg


q6600water5.jpg


q6600water6.jpg


I just tilted it back and fourth a little and that seemed to get out the bubbles/air. I suspect it will take a few hours for all the microbubbles to work their way out. But so far the cores are only 17 degrees C according to the BIOS!
 
Looks really good. Usually acrylic cases don't appeal to me but yours came out well.

It's ok to leak test with your stuff in the case. You just need to run the pump off of a separate PSU. Also I'm pretty sure his comments about tilting the case back and forth was after he leak tested ;).
 
I just built one of these for a review. I am in the process of WCing it. Very nice layout. I like the rad at the bottom. I was thinking of putting it on the top fan. I am still not sure how to coll my video card. I guess i will run the tubes out the top....Nice job.
 
Nice build!

Did you leak test on live equipment? *shudder* :)
Well, I added as much distilled water/coolant mix as I could while tilting the unit, I then went ahead and fired up the rig and kept adding water as needed until my reservoir was above the fill mark. In hindsight, using an external PS just for the pump at this critical stage would certainly have been safer!

I have done about a half dozen cooldowns and just began running prime @ 3.4GHz. Everything appears stable and temps are only just approaching 40c. I feel getting to 3.6 or even 4 should be possible. This new BIOS has a lot of OC settings I haven't seen before, so there is lots of stuff to play with.

prime1.JPG
 
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