2CPU Antec Titan 550 Project

[karbonkid]

Hi Guys,
Welcome to my first watercooled project. I have been meaning to get this log on the web for a while now, to be honest I should have been taking more pictures as I went along. Anyway, as a little introduction, here are some shots of my first completed mod which I did about 2 years ago - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=2587


And now onto the project at hand -
This is going to be my primary PC/Workstation. It's my first liquid-cooled build. On the hardware side I'm using an MSI K9ND Speedster mainboard, with 2 Opteron 8220 CPUs.

On the cooling side, I'll be using an XSPC RS360 rad with 3 Nidec Beta V tri-blade monster fans strapped to it. What can I say, Ive always been a fan of Deltas, etc. I am going to mod a fan controller into the top of the case, in front of the rad, to allow me to tame these beasts a little. I will be using a D4 as the pump, with a Primochill T3 as the res. It'll all be hooked up with high-gloss black 3/8" tubing over 1/2" barbs, with no clamps (don't be angry ).

My first step in this project was acquiring and test-fitting the CPU blocks - 2 Swiftech MCW60s converted to Apogee 1Us. As you can see on the below picture, I'm using a 3-card SLI bridge to connect the blocks in series.


The next thing to do was to draw up a template for the cuts on the top of the case. I used Inkscape for this -


I then printed out the resulting drawing onto sheets of A4, trimmed and glued them and then stuck them to the top of the case with double-sided tape.




Then it was time for some angle-grinding and filing... (Not a final shot, the cuts got much neater than this!)


Testing with some trim...


I used a dremel and some files to make the slot from which the fan control dials would protrude...






The fan controller itself needed modding too. The pump in the drive bay would interfere with either the fan connections on one side, or the metal of the controller on the other. I trimmed down the excess parts of the controller mount and resoldered the fan headers onto the back.

Before:





During:



After:





Here you can see the controller in situ, and get a glimpse of the replacement dials I bought for it:




I then decided that (surprise surprise) my initial cuts on the fan controller slot weren't perfect enough, so I re-did the design allowing enough room for me to use a large dremel sanding barrel to make perfectly circular ends. I printed onto tracing paper this time so I could easily line up the new design with the old one:


After a while filing and dremelling, I had this:


I then sanded the top panel flat ready for the first coat of primer -


I ended up doing about 4 coats of primer in the end, sanding between each one with 800-grit wet-or-dry, followed by about 5 coats of matt black, which left me with this -




As you can see, it still needs a bit of a rub-down, but I'm happy with it overall. I was planning to repaint the whole case, but I actually like the contrast between the top panel and the sides.

Next tasks are to make the holes for the rad tubing and get everything installed