Project: Quad Insanity

[Sparky]

The idea behind this was a cheap quad socket build, to give 16 cores dedicated to crunching for XS WCG. If you don't know what WCG is, take a look here

Well, I needed to cool these CPUs, but space between the sockets wasn't a lot for good sized air coolers. So I did the math for air coolers that would fit, vs water cooling with mostly used parts, and found for not much more I could watercool the entire thing. Thus the name "Quad Insanity"

Parts list:

2x MCR320-QP radiators (used)
1x Swiftech Apogee water block (used)
1x Swiftech Apogee GT water block (used)
1x Dtek Fuzion v1 (used)
1x Dtek Fuzion v2 (used)
1x Swiftech MCRES (used)
1x Swiftech MCP655-B (new)
2x Y fittings (new)
7/16" ID 5/8" OD Duralene tubing (new)
6x Yate Loon D12SM-12 fans (new)
1x Sunbeam Rheobus extreme (used)
1x Iandh killcoil (new)
a mix of new and used fittings

Hardware specs:
Arima quad socket F board
4x AMD Opteron 8347 quad core CPUs
8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 ECC memory
random SATA DVD-ROM
random SATA 80GB HD
Antec Truepower New 750W PSU

One issue was this board is not standard form factor, so I needed to come up with something. Well... in the WCG section, I was dubbed the "cardboard master" since at one point I had a stack of crunchers in cardboard boxes for cases So this gave me the idea to use cardboard for design work I don't think using cardboard is a good idea for a permanent solution this time...

OK, PICS of progress so far. First few were with my cell phone as my main camera's batteries were dead.

Board with the CPUs in it - as you can tell, this Arima board is not standard form factor, at all.


Stuff!


Designing the design




Radiator mount holes on the side. Not sure if I should go with the fans blowing out, or blowing in. The final chassis is going to be semi-open. I cut this by hand, using a 120mm fan grill, a pencil, and a box cutter


Partly assembled with the motherboard standoffs mounted.


The hardware set in place, to see how it all fits together. Note the PSU in this pic is just a random one I have that I'm using for test fit purposes, and is not the Antec PSU I'm going to actually be using.


I'm now trying to visualize how much space I really need, once I get the tubing in place. Could I make the final thing narrower without making things too tight? What should I make the final chassis out of? How to fabricate the final chassis? These are all questions I have right now that I need to mull over.

Don't expect fast updates on this, I'm busy with work and other things going on in my life.

Comments and suggestions welcome, especially to my questions I have above