Project P160

[tommithy]

Well thanks to everyone here for the good reading and advice in this thread
How does this look? (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=131097) I've ordered all of my parts and have started the project. Being that I work and my son demands a lot of attention from me I really only get to work on this for a few hours during the weekend so it will be a long project but it should be good.

The parts list is as follows:

D-Tek Fuzion cpu block to cool the A64 3200+ cpu
MCW60 to cool my ATI X850
DDC+ with Petra top
MCR320 rad
Swiftech micro res
Masterkleer tubing

I started the case mods 2 weekends ago. Pics and descriptions are below.

Here is the stripped down case.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7081-2/DSC01123.JPG

The case marked out for cutting. I'll be using my trusty jig saw to cut it.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7085-2/DSC01124.JPG

It's cut! It's not exactly perfect but it'll do the job.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7088-2/DSC01125.JPG

The view from below. I like this angle so you'll see it often.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7091-2/DSC01126.JPG

Test fitting the MCR320 radiator. The fans will be outside the case in a shroud you'll see later.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7100-2/DSC01129.JPG

Here's the test fit again from my favorite angle. The rad barbs are up in the
5 1/2" bay in front. There is about an inch in the front and the rear free space. It's a tight fit but it works.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7097-2/DSC01128.JPG

[tommithy]

Ok, next up is the fan shroud. I am terrible at geometry so this took me some time to get right. Like 2 sheets of metal right LOL. But I managed and learned from my mistakes.

Here she is in all her glory with one bend.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7103-2/DSC01134.JPG

Ok, we have 2 bends. Up to this point it was pretty easy.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7106-2/DSC01135.JPG

I've cut a couple of holes for the 3 120mm yate loons that will be cooling the rad. They will be drawing air through the rad from inside the case.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7109-2/DSC01136.JPG

Here we are test fitting the fans. They fit perfectly!
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7112-2/DSC01146.JPG

Another view of the test fit. Yeah, there are bits of fan gasket sticking out. I'll fix them upon the final install.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7115-2/DSC01147.JPG

Here is the almost finished shroud. I got the end plates on.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7118-2/DSC01149.JPG

One more view. I got to buy 2 new toys out of this deal. A new Dremel tool and a pop rivet gun. sweet!
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7121-2/DSC01150.JPG

Inside view of the shroud
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7124-2/DSC01151.JPG

That's what's been completed as of this weekend. The next step will be to clean up the cuts, smooth down the edges and polish the whole thing so it's nice and shiny. Then I'll line the inside of the shroud with some dynamat to keep vibrations at bay.

[Sparky]

gonna watch this one with interest. Trying to store up ideas for when I finally get the money to watercool my rig and get to take my case to the dremel specialist :D (a buddy of mine, BugsBMD here on XS, mostly a lurker).

[p0tter]

Looks awesome, subscribed!

[RAINMAKA]

Looks good I have a P180 which is similiar to your P160 and have been thinking of puting a 120.3 inside my case and looks like you are doing what I planned. Keep us updated

[Foxy_PT]

Looks pretty good.
Keep up the work, i´m curious how it´s going to be like. :)

I have a modded P160 my self :D


Regards

[tommithy]

Alrighty, here is the third update. So far we've built the shroud. This weekend I didn't have a lot of time to work on my computer (my son was sick all weekend) but I did get some stuff done.

I got a hole drilled in the top of the case to run the fan wires down through.

Soldered all three fans onto one plug as I'm going to run them all off of one header on my BigNG fan controller that I'm still waiting for.

Sleeved the fan wiring.

Polished the fan shroud, installed some dynamat on the inside of the shroud to limit vibrations (it's made out of 28 guage steel so it's flimsy) and mounted the fans.

Here is the nice shiny shroud
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7144-2/DSC01155.JPG

Another shroud shot
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7147-2/DSC01156.JPG

Shroud on top of the case
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7150-2/DSC01157.JPG

Another shot sitting on the case
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7156-2/DSC01159.JPG

The completed shroud. You can see the spare rpm wiring wrapped up in the sleeve from 2 of the fans.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7159-2/DSC01160.JPG

One last shot of the completed shroud.
http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7162-2/DSC01161.JPG

Next weekend I hope to actually start putting things together. This shroud has been an undertaking for me. I'm not good at geometery and I strongly believe in the rule of measure once cut twice! :eek: I've learned also that trying to polish something this large with a dremel does not work. I ended up buying a couple of polishing wheels and mounting them on my drill. That ended up working very well and was much faster.

So back to what's coming.. I'll clean the rad and blocks this week. I'm going to go ahead and clean with lots of hot water and short vinegar soaks. Then rinsing with distilled water. Next will be to apply foam weatherstripping to the top of the rad and mount it to the case. More foam will go between the shroud and the case to seal that up. Then I'll make some cuts on the MB tray to hide my wiring. I've never been one for cable management but since I plan on putting some plexi in the door of this case (I have the aluminum sided version of the P160) I'm going to try for neat tidy cables.

Until next time...

[Solarfall]

really cool looking project really like what you have done so far. i'll be lurking around this thread for sure.

[tommithy]

Thanks! It's slow going but at least it's going. I'm taking a week vacation next week (staying at home) so hopefully I'll get things moving along. I've got everything I need to finish the project except for the BigNG fan controller. It shipped from Austria last Friday so it's gonna be a while. Hopefully I'll get it while I'm on vacation so I can finish the build.

[[cTx] Nooc]

sound great, hope everything goes well.:)

[tommithy]

Ok, I've gotten some more work completed. I've added some soundproofing foam, mounted my T-Balancer BigNG and extension kit, done some wiring, mounted the radiator and shroud. The soundproofing is 3aLink. I'm hoping it will rid the aluminum of any vibrations from the fans and pump.

http://www.miserable.com/gallery/d/7165-2/DSC01191.JPG

Another shot of the soundproofing foam.

http://www.miserable.com/gallery/d/7168-2/DSC01192.JPG

Here is the BigNG and extension kit. They will be hidden behind the side cover of the case. Nice and tidy.

http://www.miserable.com/gallery/d/7171-2/DSC01193.JPG

Here is the radiator, finally mounted. You can see the foam door and window weather stripping that I used to seal it sticking out a bit.

http://www.miserable.com/gallery/d/7174-2/DSC01194.JPG

And finally the angle shot. The bottom of the radiator.

http://www.miserable.com/gallery/d/7177-2/DSC01195.JPG

The shroud is now mounted but I didn't get pics of it yet. I'll take some today and post them later as well as the additional work I'll be getting done today. I'm hoping to start leak testing tomorrow. :banana:

[Solarfall]

LOL
i see that you have asus a8v deluxe board, i have that on in my net surfing setup, really pain in the arse i kid you not..
and actually have amd 64 3200+ too paired with this nightmare mobo. :explode:

[MazterX]

Really nice! Does the hardware really deserve that nice build?
Good luck and keep up the "wow-wow" work :)

[tommithy]

LOL
i see that you have asus a8v deluxe board, i have that on in my net surfing setup, really pain in the arse i kid you not..
and actually have amd 64 3200+ too paired with this nightmare mobo. :explode:

I've had good luck with this board. It runs stable at 300MHZ FSB. I have to change memory dividers as my memory is Crucial value ram but other then that it's been good. The biggest issue I had was with the Asus nic drivers. The Yukon drivers from Marvell are much more stable.

[tommithy]

Really nice! Does the hardware really deserve that nice build?
Good luck and keep up the "wow-wow" work :)

That's what I love about watercooling. I can use all of these parts on my next build which will be whatever quad core cpu AMD comes out with later this year. And since I hate changing cases I'll continue to use this one.

[tommithy]

Alright, got some more work done and more pics.

Here is a full on pic so far.

http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7180-2/DSC01196.JPG

The angle shot

http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7183-2/DSC01197.JPG

A shot of how much room there is between the power supply and radiator.

http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7186-2/DSC01198.JPG

This is where the pump will be going. I have a Petras gel pad that will go under it.

http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7189-2/DSC01199.JPG

The wiring nightmare. At least it will be hidden.

http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7192-2/DSC01200.JPG

That's all for today. I'm hoping to get the rest together tomorrow, enough to start leak testing at least.

[tommithy]

:woot:

We're leak testing!!! I got the tubing run, blocks mounted and started leak testing at 2 pm today. It only took 15 minutes to get the bubbles out and now it's just running to check for leaks.

http://miserable.com/gallery/d/7196-2/DSC01249.JPG

[dnb#]

it's looking good, but it looks like you have some ditches in the radbox?
Or is that the camera reflection?

keep up the good work m8 :)

[tommithy]

it's looking good, but it looks like you have some ditches in the radbox?
Or is that the camera reflection?

keep up the good work m8 :)

Not sure what you mean by ditches... dents perhaps? If so, yeah there are some dings and dents. It's pretty thin steel that I built the fan shroud out of and it was my first attempt at building anything out of steel in my life so it's not the prettiest but it is functional

Today I'll be doing some tidying up and then finally putting this thing on my desk and seeing what the temps are. I can't wait.

Thanks!!

[tommithy]

Well, we suffered a major setback in the project. Evidentially my X850 Pro did not like the bending I gave it when I mounted the waterblock and has died. It flexes way to easy with only 2 holes to mount cooling items. I noticed it when I put my VF900 on but it still worked. I guess when I put the waterblock on it toasted it.

On the good side, I ended up getting a new X1950 Pro which should arrive tomorrow.

I had 2 small leaks on the rad barbs but tightening them up fixed the leaks. I put in a crappy PCI vid card just to get the system running and the cpu seems to idle at 36c and loads at 39c. Not a bad delta eh? It used to idle at 36 and load at over 50c.

[Sparky]

Looking good. Sorry about your card, but hey look at the bright side, it gave you a reason to upgrade ;)

What is the bigNG for, what does it do? I've probably asked this before but I've forgotten :rolleyes:

[tommithy]

Looking good. Sorry about your card, but hey look at the bright side, it gave you a reason to upgrade ;)

What is the bigNG for, what does it do? I've probably asked this before but I've forgotten :rolleyes:


What sucks is that I just bought the card 2 months ago off ebay. I used it to upgrade from an aging 9800 pro in hopes that it would get me by for a year or so before going pci express. But yeah, now I have a really fast AGP card to pass on to my wife when I do upgrade.

The bigNG is a really neat fan controller and temp sensor. You can read about it here http://www.t-balancer.com/english/index.htm

It will automatically ramp up fan rpms based upon temps and also shut down the pc (if you buy the analog extension kit) based upon temps. I know that the shutdown based upon temps can be handled by software like MBM but I don't want to rely on software that must be running on my pc to shut it down if a fault occurs as sometimes I leave it for days and cannot make sure that the software is running, etc. The bigNG gives me this ability once programmed. It's spendy but I like it.

[IanY]

You are very skilled! I wish I had 1/2 of your skills.

I wish your beautiful shroud were not that shiny and had a surface which matches your case aluminum.

In any event, fabulous work!

[tommithy]

You are very skilled! I wish I had 1/2 of your skills.

I wish your beautiful shroud were not that shiny and had a surface which matches your case aluminum.

In any event, fabulous work!

Thanks!!!

I agree that the shroud would of looked better if it matched the brushed aluminum look of the case however I couldn't find any aluminum to work with and make the shroud out of so it ended up being some cheap sheet metal. Believe me, it looks better polished and shiny then it does unpolished. The next time I upgrade cases I'll make sure to buy one that I can fit everything in so I don't have to mount anything outside the case.