Custom Radiator Shroud Navig Style

Since my last watercooling project, the Exoframe,


I’ve had a dream of building a custom radiator shroud.







The purpose of a shroud is to hold the fans off the radiator allowing for airflow to fill in the space behind the fan motor.

Like so:









Since I’m borrowing their picture I will link the product.




http://www.frozencpu.com/products/9...Box_360_-_Acrylic_.html?tl=g30c429s1074#blank


Haven’t purchased this product myself, looks okay, but seems a bit flimsy and maybe we can do a little better on the aesthetics.







.

Here was my general design concept:







I pictured 3 components:

1) An interface plate to line up to the mounting points on a radiator, with maximal open space for airflow.

2) A sidewall box made from ¼” plastic.

3) A fan interface plate for mounting of fans.

I planned on holding the sandwich together by having folding tabs on the sides of the interface plates to allow for sidemounting to the walls of the plastic box.



At this point I started adding some numbers and measurements to my interface plates (in mm):











It was pretty clear to me that clearances were going to be tight. To keep things aligned and symmetric, for example, radiator hole spacing of 15mm will put the corresponding fan holes with like no spacing between. Then there are tight clearances allow for mounting of fittings to the inlet and outlet holes.



But after a few tweaks, I settled on a design.

Special thanks to Matt Mione, Mione Solidworks who did my CAD work for me

Next step: Sent the designs off to Erik at Norcal Laser.

(I worked with Matt and Erik to create my not-so-diy outside corner brackets: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=703474)












And bent the tabs on my brake:












My final outsourced step: powdercoat matte black.







Wicked thanks to Platinum Powder Coating (Chico, CA) for the 1 day turn around.




Great design. It definitely seems much stronger than the all-acrylic version.

Sign me up please!

looks great cant wait to see results. But one thing I have always been mind boggled by is this. Ok so ya have a 360mm rad say 60mm thick now add 25mm fans so now were at 85mm. This barely fits in most cases (roof) these days. Now add say 25mm for the Navig Air Box Supreme now it deffo will not fit most cases. So you have to drop rad size down to something that will fit. So heres my mind boggle. Wouldnt a 60mm thick 360mm rad with normal fan placement, cool better than a 30mm thick 360mm rad with an airbox??? I have yet to see any tests done to show its better. Only tests that show that putting the fans out more does improve surface contact thereby aiding in temps. But those were done on same size rad with and without airbox. Not real world application of fitting it in a case. Yes I know if put in the front of a case there is more real estate to accomplish this

The only variable in that case would still be the radiator I would imagine. Though this helps a couple of C, more rad would, to me, help a lot more. It depends on the radiator performance as the shrould's results should be similar across rads (the only variable there is FPI).

Hi!

Thanks for all the interest.


Getting a lot of questions here and at other threads.


First I should have prefaced this entire thread with this: while I have toyed with the idea for a long time, the major impetus for completing this project is for my current watercooling mod,

the Vertical Benching Station (self advertising, please click the link).




1) Performance. I doubt it will give much of a performance benefit. 0.5 degree? I think I've seen martinm's numbers, and they weren't impressive. Probably working on other aspects of a loop would yield better results.

On the other hand, I plan on mounting these in push-pull to a pair of Alphacool Monsta's, which may maximize their benefit. I will be happy to post some numbers when the time comes.





2) Size? Yes they will make your radiator system big. As you will see in my next posts, since the box is made from gluing 4 pieces of plastic together, I can make the height of the box just about any size I want, maybe the shortest being about 1.5cm.

I'm not sure this will fit within any standard case out there. I don't know much about standard cases as the last standard case I owned had Dell stamped on the side and the year was 19xx.

But I will submit this--if I make it pretty enough, would one be tempted to cut out the top of a case and have the shroud box exposed?




3) Availability? I'm not going to talk about it on this thread, but at some point I will make the rest of this run available in the classifieds.



I'm going to let the cat out of the bag, but not actually post the picture, but when I started my Vertical Benching Station, this is what I had envisioned for my radiator systems, and if that don't put a smile on your face I don't know what will. Part of my check-list for my vertical benching station was to not ever have to worry if I have enough cooling power and I feel that might do the trick.




Next: building the boxes.



.

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve been experimenting with different ways of constructing my boxes. For my Vertical Benching Station, I had planned on 4 shrouds, (2 radiators, push-pull for both). Plus I made one more. Rather than post each shroud I made individually, I will post based on design.



Design #1

First I cut some stock plastic. The idea of all of the designs is basically the same:










2 long side walls, 2 short side walls.

Some means for reinforcing the corner joints.

These are actually the components for both Design #1 and Design #2.

For Design #1 I went with reinforcing the corners with ¼” clear acrylic square bar.








Corners were glued with Tap Plastic Solvent via capillary method.



And here was the completed box:










This box does have an important con: fan clearance.







If you should want to mount your fans internally, there will not be enough clearance. Fans MUST be mounted on the outside of the fan mount plate like so:









Box Design #1

Pros: Very strong joint
Aesthetically, very good as the joints are barely visible thru the box walls.

Cons: Clearance issues--fans must be mounted on the outside of the box.

Box Design #2




So to address the fan clearance issues, I tried out design #2.

Instead of block corner glue blocking, I switched to these readily available polycarbonate corner protectors:


















Glued them same method:












And here’s a finished block:





(Special note, this obviously designed for mounting the fans within the box--the side walls are 80mm tall, plus include a slot for cable pass thru’s, to be further illustrated later in the thread).











Fans do fit internally mounted, but it is a supertight fit!











Future iterations of these plates and I could probably scrounge up the few necessary millimeters. Or alternatively, I could make the plates asymmetrically offset to still get more length but clear port fittings on one side.







And here we are with fans internally mounted:










Design #2


Pros: Fits fans internally, but just barely and under tension.

Cons: Fits fans just barely.
This may be subjective, but I feel the seams are little more obtrusive.




shroud beast mode engage!

Design #3



As the diagram above shows, I had space on top and below the row of fans, but was still tight at the ends of the row. How about getting rid of the seam entirely on the ends.





Once again I started with some plastic stock, but notice the shorter lengths are longer than before:









That’s because I folded them under heat to make a seamless corner. Here they are, heated at the bend line, on my bending/brake, with a special jig to make sure the width remains consistent.













Here’s the rough layout of the pieces after the fold:












Once again glued with Tap Plastic Solvent capillary style:












Finished box:










No problems with internal fan clearance whatsoever.










Only con:


My folding technique is not perfect and some of the folds end up with a slight waviness:






Design #3

Pros: No fan clearance issues.
Strongest joint of them all.
Curved edges look a little sexier.

Cons: Not every time a perfect bend.





Next: I will post pics of every (five) shroud I’ve constructed.

That’s all I’ve got for different designs. BTW, if anybody’s got any other suggestions, I’m open to them.





Once again, here’s how the shroud works.


You’ve got a fan-mount plate and a radiator-mount plate. Note I’ve added ⅛” foam gasketing along the edges.
















Than you’ve got your side-wall box:




(Pictured is a Design #1 model).











Add threaded holes on the sidewall box and you’ve got your completed shroud:











(Pictured above is actually a Design #2 box).










To install the unit, I’ve found the easiest way is to detach the radiator-mount from the shroud unit, then mount it to the radiator:











Next install your fans onto the fan-mount plate:














Then drop the box onto the radiator-mount plate, and screw in your side mount screws (arrows in green):






And it is ready to go!

Nice work as always navig! I personally like the square jointed exterior fan first design.

that is one B.A. shroud!





p.s. i know some one who knows a guy who might know a guy who is going to be doing rad reviews in the not so distant future im sure i could talk him into testing one of those bad boys out

Sweet shroud! Looks great and should perform well.

Here is a Type 3 box, 80mm depth. It is extra tall to accommodate internally mounted 38mm thick fans.










In order to use internally mounted fans, I put together a method of getting the wiring across. The simplest method would be to just create some tight holes to pass the wiring thru. However, I did happen to have a pair of these type of pci cable passthrus:











So I straightened them out:










Cut a slot in the sidewall:















Converted the fans from 3 pin fan connectors to 4 pin molex connectors, retaining the rpm monitor wire for one of the fans.

Also put together some simple rectangles of plastic as cable clips to keep the wiring tight.














And there you go, 3 fans, internally mounted on one channel with rpm monitoring and no open holes in the sidewall.









Here is my translucent gray unit, 40mm tall sidewalls, box type 3:


































Fans can be mounted internally or externally:













If mounted internally, there is a 20mm standoff height:











Looks sleek and awesome:
















Bet it would look awesome with some LED lit fans.