FEATURED Build Log: Water & Wood

MIAHALLEN said:

You're welcome to come anytime Sebastian
My wife was tired, and was yawning in the picture.

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I may one day take you up on this Miah... If my current plans go how I envision them; I could be visiting that part of the world within the next 12 months. I have been wanting to go visit a cousin of mine who's been living in China for a couple years now (relocated there to head that region's subsidiary of the company he works for)... So a trip to that part of the world is not entirely out of the question... Here's hoping.

This build reminds me a lot of an entertainment center I built for someone a few years ago. They had a large surround sound system stealthed into the Cabinets in the room. Aswell as three computer desks that appeared to be bookshelf's when the doors where closed.

I ended up getting a bunch of Speaker grill cloth, and used it to hide the sub woofer, front and rear L/R speakers. The cloth head great airflow, and was also stretched across the panels on some of the doors that where not hiding speakers. This was to help the overall setup look more consistant.

In this situation it might work great for hiding your fans.

Thanks Juan...I already have some fabric I was planning to use for dust filtration. But I am concerned about it's air-flow attributes (or lack thereof). Do you know where I can get speaker grill cloth online?

Flushing with plumbed water, especially hot, will contaminate your parts rather than clean them. Same reason you shouldn't use hot tap water for cooking or food prep, the heat leaches anything in the water lines out into solution. If you flush later with distilled you'll probably be OK.

Subscribed! Loving the ingenuity with this one!

El<(')>Maxi said:

Flushing with plumbed water, especially hot, will contaminate your parts rather than clean them. Same reason you shouldn't use hot tap water for cooking or food prep, the heat leaches anything in the water lines out into solution. If you flush later with distilled you'll probably be OK.

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Thanks Mark....step two will be to flush with distilled a couple times

Um, wait. Using tap water boiled and cooled a bit, then poured into a rad for the 'rad dance'.

The hot water breaks down the flux, heat always make things get slimy and come out easier. It's the massive rad shaking that really helps. Add soe scrubbing bubbles if your paraniod and like bubbels and a few extra rinses.

Boil water, let cool 5 min.

Fill rad. 5 min later drain about half. Plug holes with a rag, twist and shout the rad dance for a few min. Just some cheap sink soap gloves if any is enuff to prevent whining.

Drain into a glass bowl. Let sit for 10 min or so, Perfectly clear? No stuff at the bottom?

Do it once more, inspect bowl.

If good run sink water for a bit through the rad. Drain perfectly well.

Fill/rinse with distilled x2, your done.

Common sense really...................

The more I see of this the more jealous I become... I realize there isn't a single game you can't run at it's highest with max AA below 200FPS

Man this build is turning out awesome though. This is a thread I'm 100% pleased I subscribed to!

Next, I wanted to setup the loop and continue flushing & leak testing. First I drilled the top of the desk for the fill port:


This is the underside showing the hole near the rear of the desk:


The mounting thread on the fill port was not deep enough for the depth of the desktop, so I had to increase the diameter of the hole on the bottom side to effectively secure the fill port. I used a sanding wheel on my dremel to accomplish this


After that the fill port went in without issues:


The fill port feeds straight into the top of the res....but I'll probably shorten the tube about 1/2" to get the res to sit up closer to vertical. The res/pump will hang here with support only from the tubes. Does anyone see a problem with that?


I know this is non-standard and a lot of people will question my decision, but I'm setting up the loop with all four blocks (3xGPU & 1xCPU) in parallel. I'm doing this for routing simplicity and ease of use...and I'll determine if performance is sufficient once I get up and running. THis is what I'm referring to:




Here are some shots of the loop in its test configuration:




And here is a quick video which gives you an idea of the flow:


I think this single pump will be fine. And to keep noise low, I'll be having the mobo CPU fan header control the speed of the pump automatically with PWM control based on CPU temp. The fans will all be controlled manually with the custom PWM controller xXSebaSXx and Bobnova built for me

nice. excited to see how this turns out. Subbed

MIAHALLEN said:

Thanks Juan...I already have some fabric I was planning to use for dust filtration. But I am concerned about it's air-flow attributes (or lack thereof). Do you know where I can get speaker grill cloth online?

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I don't remember off the top of my head where it was obtained from. It was a farily common black cloth, its kinda stretchy, usually you stretch it tightly in place and that helps its pores kinda open up.

This is looking really good. You're making me want to do an "all out" build with the best of the best hardware... I've never had one of those...

There are a few things I really like about this build so far:
- The mobo tray on rails is a great idea.
- Using the desk to your advantage as a fan shroud, and a fillport hole in the top.
- Running the CPU and GPUs in parallel makes for a clean look, I would probably do the same.

I noticed your wife yawning in the pic too...lol. Looks like she's having tons of fun

Awesome pics too! What camera are you using? Are you using a tripod as well?

Thanks guys

Matt, its a Panasonic DMC-ZS3 point and shoot, and yes its on a tripod. I've also been using some studio lights to my advantage

Here's my studio photo setup

MIAHALLEN said:

Thanks guys

Matt, its a Panasonic DMC-ZS3 point and shoot, and yes its on a tripod. I've also been using some studio lights to my advantage

Here's my studio photo setup

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Miah.... I get a "You do not have permission to access this page" message when I click on the Photo Studio Setup link....

Aw, can't see that thread. I was thinking you were using a really expensive camera. Good job on the pics.

My bad, I thought that forum was public.....well, you can see the pics from the thread here:
http://s161.photobucket.com/albums/t228/miahallen/photo studio/

MIAHALLEN said:

Thanks Juan...I already have some fabric I was planning to use for dust filtration. But I am concerned about it's air-flow attributes (or lack thereof). Do you know where I can get speaker grill cloth online?

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Found this interesting thread after reading your log: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1032450546

One of the guys there posted this link: http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/tr...ers/hvacr/ecatalog/N-8y8?contextPath=Grainger

Maybe this can help you? Anyhow, kudos to you on this incredible endeavor! Man, 3 580's in sli?? It's gonna be a beast! I can't wait to see how the cork and wood combo perform with noise dampening. Keep up the good work man!

Looks great miah. I think you meant running the CPU & GPUs in series, not parallel. Series for all of that is just fine when you consider all of the radiator you have. I definitely wouldn't run it in parallel because of the restriction difference between the XT and your GPU blocks, but series is perfectly fine.

Nope, check again Jeremy, all four blocks are running in parallel
Check the discussion I had about it here.

Like this:

Maybe drawing the picture a little differently will help too



The CPU is not competing with all three blocks....but all four blocks are competing with each other for flow. Naturally, the block with the least resistance will get the most flow....since all the GPUs will have equal resistance and equal flow, the question is simply: "Is the Apogee XT Rev2 more or less restrictive than an EK-FC580?" If the answer is "less restrictive"...then the CPU will get more flow than each GPU block, and the temps will be best for the CPU (the goal)...if the answer is "more restrictive", then my CPU temps will suffer.

If the CPU block has the same resistance as each GPU block, than every block will get the same amount of flow, and in that case my loop will need to perform at 4GPM in order to achieve 1GPM over the CPU block. I'm not sure I'll reach that goal, but like I said, my goal is based on temps/performance, not GPM