Building a wooden box under the case?

[Roger24]

I've found out the fitting a heater core in my case will be a pain. I'll have to cut away 1 or 2 3.5" bays to make a heater core fit.
Now I'm thinking of building a wooden box the width and lenght of my case, about 20cm in height and cut away the floor of my case (except a small strip around the edges to attach the screws).
How does this sound?

 

[Diggrr]

Sounds okay, but you don't need to cut out the whole bottom of the case...I've done it, and just cut out the opening for the 120mm fan. The box has wheels, so the heatercore sits horizontal on the bottom, with the box acting as a shroud.
The whole system drafts downward, with air inlet holes on the very top where the harddrives sit.

 

[NASsoccer]

Sounds okay, but you don't need to cut out the whole bottom of the case...I've done it, and just cut out the opening for the 120mm fan. The box has wheels, so the heatercore sits horizontal on the bottom, with the box acting as a shroud.
The whole system drafts downward, with air inlet holes on the very top where the harddrives sit.

That is freakin awesome man, i hope when i goto water i get something that turns out anywhere close to that. I am still trying to decide on a setup though. What are the temps of the case and proc?

 

[Roger24]

Nice setup you've got there.
The reason I wanted to cut out the whole botton was for airflow and to have easy access to the resevoir. I'm gonna have one 172x151x51 fan to cool the radiator and as intake fan, and a 120x38mm fan as exhaust. Doing this will make it much easier to find a heater core as long as the width fits, since I make the height fit the radiator instead of making the radiator fit the height As an added bonus, there's no problem fitting a resevoir and having the trouble of filling/bleeding an inline system either

 

[Diggrr]

The case ran 26C and the cpu ran 30C/35C. That was my first system with a homemade pvc cap waterblock. I used Tim Whattaker's plan (on the front page) to make the block like he did with a pelt, only I used a 4mm copper plate with 6 pins drilled and soldered over the core, and JBWelded on. Worked good, cost $15US. That was my first experiment with stove top soldering.
The water has green dye in it, there's only a small amount of anti freeze (10cc/liter). Notice the pump sitting in the harddrive bays.

 

[Tecumseh]

Diggrr, that is an awesome case. What type of blue paint
did you use?

Roger24, you can see your idea has merit and has been done
very well before.

 

[craigiz1]

Very 'cool' idea!
I was thinking along the same lines. I've been getting ready to build a new AMD system and have been running cooling ideas for a while.
Do you have any pics of while you where building this?
I would like to keep the inside of my case as neat as possible.
Yours looks great!