Zippyc's "Air-Stream" Lan Rig, Opinions Please?

[zippyc]

Zippyc’s “AIR-STREAM” 2.6 Ghz Portable LAN Rig. It does 21 K MO's with no volt mods anywhere, without breaking the bank. I run the 9800 at 467 core.
(Edit due to a little more benching)

Ok, so I’ve been working on a somewhat unique (I think…) gaming rig for the past couple of weeks and wanted to get opinions on looks/ functionality/originality if you don’t mind. I had fun building this, and may offer to build these for sale if people like what they see. Keep in mind this is about 80% complete, but the temperature dissapation results are excellent so far.

I wanted a rig with handles for portability, and this All Aluminum Rack Mount chassis caught my eye as it was A) All aluminum B) Had handles and C) Has excellent airflow characteristics if you chuck the factory hard drive mount and strategically place additional slot coolers and D) Is no larger that a Mid-Tower system.

The Hardware I am using:

Barton Mobile 2600 XP, 2.6 Ghz at 1.775V on air
DFI Lanparty
2 x 256M Kingston Hyperx PC3200 cas 2.0 (BH-5), 217FSB+
Fortron FSP 530 (Adjustable Rails Baby!)
Radeon 9800 Pro at 450Mhz Core, 355Mhz Mem
52x CD Rom (El cheepo)
Coolermaster Aerogate II Four Fan Control/ 4 Temp Display with Alarm
AMD OEM CPU Cooler and fan for GPU
Vantec C7040 CPU Cooler
Hitachi Deskstar 180G IDE w 8M Cache


Unique Features:

This chassis is the only chassis I am aware of that provides 360 Degrees of Radiating Exterior (When mounted in these little inexpensive rack stands.) NO SURFACE TOUCHES THE GROUND!!!!!

Airflow is all front to rear…the majority is directed through the front 120MM Fan (At 86 CFM) after going through a removable air filter. A small amount is also directed by the little fan in the Aerogate that also serves as a hard drive cooling source.

But most importantly there is a suction created by the combination of 2 High Flow Slot coolers, a 60MM exhaust fan, a 80MM exhaust fan, and the two 80 MM exhaust fans in the power supply. ALL EXHAUSTS POINT/ EXIT IN REAR.

This results in like 230-250 CFM suction. (This will become more balanced when I add the cold air funnel for the CPU.)

The whole assembly weighs around 26 Pounds.

The are also two additional 80MM Internal fans (Aluminum, blue LED) that push like 36CFM each right over each side of the video card for cooling.

And of couse I drilled, Lapped, and Polished the old AMD OEM CPU Cooler to fit the 9800, and fashioned a focused-clamp point mounting system to pinch the GPU directly against the cooler (see pic for detail)

And I added an exterrior-accessable BIOS reset switch in order to be able to completely reset the bios without opening the chassis, whick is Key-Lockable for security.

So first…here it is, Zippyc’s “Air-Stream” mobile LAN rig! What do you think of it?

To Do's:

1) Paint to match the CD and control panel.

2) Add 120MM fan/shroud combo to top cover to provide lots of cold air to top of CPU cooler.

3) I need to get a north pole cooler for the North Bridge

(I’m posting more pics of shinny blue inside, rear, along this thread….)

[zippyc]

Inner picture showing the heat-draw slot cooler I custom mounted right next to the power supply. It sucks from the top/hottest 1/2 Inch of air off the inside of the top cover right next to the power supply...capturing and keeping tons of heat out of the system....

And the two 80MM fans that blow right on top of the vid card...which has a CARD STABLIZER!

That's a pretty neat high-end feature.....

[zippyc]

Rear with Bios reset switch:

[zippyc]

And here is the spring-loaded pinch mount method i used to mount the CPU cooler to the GPU and have it apply even pressure across the core.

The blue painters tape is helping secure my thermal probe to the top line of the GPU square, center, opposite side of PCB from GPU...

Below the rubber are two carefully cut squares of thin neoprene that are compressed and taking the pressure of the mount. These were nescessary because the sorrounding square of resistors/etc cannot safely be the pressure-bearers. Kids, don't try this at home unless you know what youare doing!

But the HIGHEST TEMPERTURE I have read on the GPU to date was 108.7F/ 42.6 C, which is similar to water cooling results, but with air. At 450Mhz with zero artifacts.

:banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:

[zippyc]

Here it is with its mouth open. I need to paint that CD and Control panel, but right now it is raning and like 110 Pct humidity in Austin....

[zippyc]

With the fans inside that have four blue LED's, combined with the fact that the interior is all silver in color and somewhat shiny, this rig looks really cool with the lights off. All the air intake cutaways glow blue from inside, and you can clearly see the interrior through the slots and fans in the rear, with blue light reflecting everywhere!

"Looks really neat" my wife said.

[zippyc]

So please tell me... do you like it? Anyone else getting similar results on air with a 9800 and no volt mods?

Am I on to something with the 80MM fans on each side of the GPU?

I know this is the only suspended computer I have seen (besides the plane/computer kit that won't travel to lans well....), it radiates heat from all sides....

I think I've got a good-looking machine here, do you? B honest please....

[felix88]

looks pretty sweet. how heavy is that case?

[zippyc]

The case is light as it is aluminum. As light as my kingwin aluminum case.

After I added the weight of that overkill (I LIKE it) of a power supply, two blowers, and three aluminum fans, and the GPU cooler and everything else, the whole rig weighs in at 26 Lbs.

It is pretty darn light and easy to carry relative to a steel case. With the top cover thubscrews hand-tight, the case feels very, very solid. The DFI board even came with a case carrier that fits!

And the 9800 card is stabilized on the top for better transportation resistance...that center crossbar came with a stabilizer for each slot if needed. And the center crossbar allows you to position those 80MM internal fans exactly where you want em.

The airflow in there is awesome, yet it stays pretty quiet overall.

[felix88]

sounds nice. my Lian Li is definatly not light after i stuffed it full of my SCSI stuff. :rolleyes:

[saaya]

hehe funny im building something similar as well, mine will be smaller though.

personally i dont like the black metal holder. i would try to replace it with something made of plexi. (you can heat plexi and bend it into shape)

looks nice :toast:

[antipop]

Originally posted by zippyc
I think I've got a good-looking machine here, do you? B honest please.... This is the ugliest case i've ever seen :stick:









I'm kidding :D This is one of the best job i've seen, the result is really really nice. The fact that you can oc, in a such small case is a great feat. You have a very good amount of aiflow, even if i don't know if those slot cooler are doing a god job? I had one and the flow was pathetic.
The work you've done on the radeon is great, the mounting you've designed is pretty ingenious
And the reset for the bios outside the case is kinda neat, now you just close the case and never open it again :)
Congrat for the good work :banana: :banana:

[antipop]

I forgot to aks you where was the reset switch cause i can't see it in the rear view. For better airflow you should cut the rear fan guard (the one cut in the case) and replace it by a fan guard like te one on the psu, it might help a bit

[TheDude]

Excellent job! ;)
:toast:

Nice looking rig too. :D
I noticed you said you were going to add a Northpole to your Northbridge and I think that's a great idea and very important.
I have one on mine and I also added their new tiny heatsinks that fit those very small mosfetts on the LanpartyB and the PLL chip. Those little suckers get very hot. The sinks are slightly larger than the chips but work fine. It would be silly to go this far and not add them. They are made for this board. Here's a pic of mine:

[wymjym]

Zippyc was nice enough to come by today and give me an unexpected birthday present…wow!!! (yes it is computer related)

At any rate he also was showing off his super neato aluminum cased rack mountable box-o-fans.

It is really gorgeous, the lights kick a**, even in the daylight.
It was sort of funny…he couldn’t wait to take its lid off and show me the guts…couldn’t care less about how it performs (more later).
So off pops the lid and everything is nice and neat, very colorful and very shiny.
I stood there a few seconds counting the fans..big fans, little fans, medium sized fans and a couple of blowers. I started counting and got up to 12.
I was asking about the mobo and he said that the selectable bios setups were just too cool. I had to see…..so he leaves my room and I hooked it up to my monitor and keyboard/mouse and hit the start button. Yep…neat stuff. He came in and showed me a few more things about it, ran mad onion etc and I noticed that it really wasn’t very noisy. It was more than tolerable even with all of the fans churning away.
So….nice job zippyc and thanks for the present.
wj

[zippyc]

Thanks to all of you for your opinions.

antipop: Regarding the slot coolers these are ball-bearing based larger (thicker than single slot) turbine fans capable of blowing 45 CFM each. They move more air than any of my 80MM fans, at a pretty low noise level. They both have unobstructed exhausts, so I think the actual airflow is pretty close to that...and I agree with your opinion regarding cutting out that factory grillework obstructing that fan...I actually purchased the 60MM chrome fan guards last week for that purpose....lol.

The BIOS reset switch can bee seen in the center of the PCI slot cover right next to the vertically mounted slot blower (Right hand side on the picture of the rear.) It is a tiny switch to help avoid accidental reset. Actually I'm kind of glad you did not see it right away......

But I think I've changed my mind and will re-locate it to front panel so it will be behind a lock too...

wymjym, thanks for the kind comments about the noise level and looks.

Deliberate precautions have been taken to isolate fan vibrations from the chassis with add on rubber grommets (Fan Silencing Kits), including the power supply which is pretty quiet to begin with. And I have fan speed control over the GPU Cooler, the front and rear fans, as well as the two internal blue fans. So I can run this sucka near silent at stock settings. But that's no fun...is it?

[antipop]

Originally posted by zippyc

The BIOS reset switch can bee seen in the center of the PCI slot cover right next to the vertically mounted slot blower (Right hand side on the the picture of the rear.) It is a tiny switch to help avoid accidental reset. Actually I'm kind of gald you did not see it right away......

But I think I've changed my mind and will re-locate it to front panel so it will be behind a lock too... Actually i saw the switch on the pci but i hesitate and thought that it might be a reflexion cause you said it was protected by a lock so i was looking for a lock :)

The slot blower looks pretty thick, but as i had a bad experience with one of those this is why i asked you about this

[zippyc]

I see the misunderstanding, actually just the chassis is lockable, and I had that switch on the rear, but am moving it up front so it CAN be behind the locked door.

Looks like we were thinking right along the same lines!

zippyc

[kommando]

OMG, thats absolutley stunning.

[zippyc]

I installed the Microcool northy cooler after lapping it properly and sanding away the anodizing between where the coolers shroud and the where the copper block meet. I added thermal paste at each of the four screw monting/surface mating points before reassembling the Microcool to encourage additional dissapation by the aluminum shroud. Probably no measurable difference by doing so, but it made me feel better....

Anyhow this sucka is hitting almost 21K Madonions now with the northbridge getting cooler....temps on the northy used to hit well over 129F and set off my temp alarms with the factory (DFI)cooler, now it gets as hot as 121F , but no more alarms!

Here is a benchie from this rig...I've voided no warranties to get here....

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7726860

[LilGator]

WOW, i want one, that's sweet ! Suspended in mid air :D Do you have a linky for the case ?

[zippyc]

All the items I used for this build can be found at newegg (except the Microcool). The case link is here:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-150-046&depa=0

The case is also available in black (painted?) aluminum too.

[Farbror]

Look´s nice....