What do you think of my "water cooling" case design?

[Mick64]

I havent seen any radiator pictures in the thread, but from the looks, this is only a single rad on top and bottom? Would it be possible to double the rads?

I have designed it to have a single 480 at the top and a single 360 at the bottom, but there is plenty of room for double that if you were to go for a stacked rad configuration.

the real deal about the design of this case is using it for liquid cooling.
But if you want to take this case in the comercial league, you had to re edit the front of the case and the top chamber.
Making a hole on the top part of the front so you can fit 3 more 5.25" drive Bays.
One more PCI slot is need for certain mobos to run Tri-Sli (the classified one from evga).
Radiator supports have to be modular so if you dont want the extra rads you can put 2 drive cages for lots of HDD.

Actually, I would probably add one or two 5" drive bays below the current ones, with a modular
HDD bay that can be installed in the top or bottom section of the case, as well as a little mesh
behind the hole the in the motherboard tray where the CPU is.

The reason I think the extra 5" drive bays would be handy, is alot of people use fan
controllers with watercooling, they can take one or two, and one may be used for
a reservoir also. This doesn't give you any room for IR receivers or optical drives.

But seriously it looks awsome!

I was thinking the same thing. If you turn the top into a 360 rad, you could fit the 5.25 bays in the top chamber giving it the desired external bays. Or the space could be used for HDDs by those who want more storage. This was why I was wondering about double rads. So you could have a triple loop system.

Mount the top rad horizontally on the roof and pust some more drive bays, the always come in handy. Also having it horizontally i believe is better since you may get some tube blockage like that and there is clearly no reason to put it vertically since it will occupy too much space.That way you can actually have an extra PSU and extra HDD bays

Also try to use aluminum, it is more lightweight and easier to handle.

Typically around here, I've seen people use 5.25" bays for optical drives, temperature monitors, fan controllers, X-fi controllers, and etc. I think expanding the number of bays is the way to go.

Yeah, I actually use 2, but I put my fan controller in backwards so I don't need to see the ugly display on the front of my case.

I just hope this guy can possibly get it fabbed, cause I am now very interested in getting something like this. With screw slots not holes so it can accommodate any rads of course.

I have been thinking about adding one or two 5.25 bays at the top. Now that I have extended the depth of the case, it would be possible to have a couple of shallow bays for a display or fan controller, but not drives and still have room for the 480 rad.
Adding another PCI slot would not be a problem as I have extended the height of the case to allow more room around the motherboard.
As I've said before, this case has been designed for liquid cooling not as a server case. With the huge capacity of HDD's these days, I'm sure 4 is adequate.

I love your case and I enjoyed reading this thread to see the progression. Here are my suggestions (which, of course, you can disregard because let's face it: Everyone is a critic):

1- To solve the foot problem, why not go for hourglass design like they do on high-end A/V equipment? It works wonders on hardwood/ceramic/flat floors and it would give it some more style (i.e. http://www.edesignaudio.com/hourglass.gif)

2- Is there any chance that you can push the design towards something silent? I’m thinking extensive use of rubber and possibly even air-filters to keep the dust outside.

3- Maybe I don’t quite get it but it looks like the PSU area is made for a top-fan PSU while my current one is bottom-fan (my tj-09 has a bottom fan grill). I’d need to mount mine upside down and I’m thinking it would push warm air into the case. Is it possible to make the stand-off a grill and another hole/grill in the bottom part?

4- For the radiators, I love how that would work out. Let’s just make sure that a ½ID / ¾OD tube on straight or (at most) 45degree barbs would “fit” with the pre-cut holes in the divider.

5- As for the pump area, is it possible to make pre-cut holes to fasten the pump? Mine is currently on a pad that isn’t fastened but I’m thinking some kind of vibration dampening system could be made on this tower to help reduce the noise and make it even more pretty :P This could also be made for two pumps (I mean, at that point, what’s an extra 4 screw holes with soft plastic threads…)

6- I don’t think you need to extend the case even more than it is. Triple SLI is fun but really, it accounts for a minuscule amount of configurations these days (with double dual cards being the “norm”). I think that if anything, you should try to optimize it to reduce the dead space as much as possible.

7- For the backplate, a standard “enthusiast” setup would be 2x dual slot video cards, 1x single slot audio card, 1x esata/usb ports card and possibly 1x light controller. That means that with 6-7 holes, you’d have plenty. I know some folks will say that they need more for raid controllers, tv capture and whatnot but then they probably can re-arrange their cards to make it fit, or buy another case. There has to be some limits to a design at some point or else you’ll end up with a case like Homer Simpson’s car lol

On a side note, I was thinking how cool it would be to have either a detachable motherboard tray that “snaps-on” with some kind of locking system (clamps?). The Silverstone sliding trays are a decent start though.


Finally, I’m thinking that since this case is geared towards water-cooling enthusiasts, might as well go all the way and add some funky stuff to the front panel like a small gauge for GPM, a reservoir front-view or maybe a fill-port at the top? Something to give it some STYLE!

Keep the good work going

Thanks for all your ideas. Just like to point out that, as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), the fan on a PSU blows air into the PSU enclosure and vents out of the back. This is why there is a hole above the PSU, to improve air flow through the case, so yes; you would mount your PSU with the fan pointing up. Also, although it's not very clear, I have designed the motherboard tray to be removable.


Again, thanks for all your input.....