Viktor

Member since

Engine Design Engineer

Prague, Czech Republic

CAD render with dummy machines (front top right view)

CAD render showing just the cool pack and frame (front top right view)

CAD render showing with dummy machines (rear top view)

Frame parts arrived. Unpacking in bathroom as it was raining really hard when I was taking it home and it got wet. :D

Assembly in progress

Test fit

Flow meter on pump/res

Temperature sensor

Drawers finaly fit. Two hours of work.

Bays already attached. As you can see the right one is mounted upside down, so I had to turn it around. No one is perfect. :D

Rack chassis reinvented - just cheaper. :)

Do not EVER use cheap power splitters. Always be sure that every power connection is tight. This was the only time when my server had any kind of lighting.

Server hardware in place.

The 3.5" bays need two 4pin Molex and two SATA power connectors each. The 2.5" bay needs just on 4pin Molex for power.

Measure twice, cut once. The measure part is tricky as there is barely any fixed point to start from but it was almost spot on. I also drilled the corners because I did not have a straight grinder.

Long cuts done. Short ones finished by hand saw.

Deburred.

Should be just four simple bends from here. Well.. Remember the "measure twice" part? I measured once, so it was five simple bends including one back and forth. :D

It fits!

Tabs on bottom will support the rear end of the PSU.

Here together with the modified 5.25" bay for pump.

and rads

No hoses and rads and just before cleaning the GPU block.

Dirty CPU block

The white coolant was original clean so it was already time to clean it (few months ago :D).

Pump pulled out - no spill. :)

Test run for the pump

Clean GPU block

Under-shelf parts - pump and PSU.

Case fitted

Everything on the bench now

Socket area coolers in place.

Overall picture of the build before complete disassembly to hang the frame structure.

Disassembly begins..

I already disassembled the other bay for cleaning. I got chance to clean this one too. Turns out I have two different revisions of the bay. One has v2.21 blue PCB and this one is v2.22 red PCB. The more recent one has two settings for the fan speed (low/high).

This shows the system before the server upgrade

Cooling for the UPS compartment

PCs already in cases

Shows how far the slides go

GPU riser

Final view

Under-ceiling Build

Hello there!

As I moved into a new apartment I will not have a dedicated computer desk so I wanted to place them somewhere and in the saying "the most silent computer is the one next door" I decided to put them in the entry hall and use optical cables to connect the peripherals.

Little bit of history.. In the mania for small form factor PCs, I build a SFF PC. Later, after switching from Fractal Design XL R2 to Nano, I realized that it is really not what I was after. This build will cover two PCs as this build will held my gaming PC and also my server/NAS.

Current gaming PC is in Fractal Design Define Nano, cooled with EK-SPC pump and SE 120, SE 240 and a passive CE 140. It works, it is small but messy and the maintenance is pita. I will reuse most of the computer hardware and some of the watercooling hw. I already had CE 280 laying around so I just bought a CE 560 and a D5 pump. I am still not decided on the motherboard side as I have a spare ATX MSI X99S SLI Plus but I got slightly higher overclock on the current ITX Asrock X99E-ITX/ac.

Server is not a real server, it is just a bunch of desktop hardware. Consists of Asrock AM1H-ITX, passively cooled Athlon 5370, SATA controller card, bunch of 3 TB drives and some SSDs. This now sits in Fractal Design Node 304.

The base idea was sketched on paper but the packaging and final design will be done in CAD. This project will take some time. I already did some CAD and recently switched from wooden board structure to aluminium frame structure. I will publish some Fusion screenshots later today.

Color(s): Black

RGB Lighting? No

Theme: none

Cooling: Custom Liquid Cooling

Size: ATX

Type: General Build

Build Updates

Frame assembled

Drawers and drive bays

Cool pack assembly

I assembled the radiators on the frame. The long EKWB 5/32'' bolts are just enough long to mount the fan with the bracket to the radiator. I would probably go with longer ones, but I would have to find them in the first place. I also realized that almost all the fans I have are air flow optimized, so not ideal for the radiators, but I will sort this out later.

I put the temperature sensors between the rads and one in the reservoir. Why two? Well because we can!

I am curious about the thermal inertia of the system and the efficiency of each radiator to set the correct hysteresis on the fan curves. I also have a fluid meter after the pump to monitor if the pump is working as I can't see it physically. I may add second pump in future to have redundancy in the system.

Parts used:

Barrow TCWD-V1 - design is very close to Bitspower sensors, I still have to evaluate accuracy
Barrow SLF-V3

Yes, these are from China. Price is also a factor, at least to some level.

Flow meter on pump/res

Temperature sensor

Server hardware installed

How the PSU bracket was born

For this build I could have used some kind bench tables, but that was way too expensive, so I salvaged two old cases that I had laying around. The PSU bracket and 5.25" are both from the silver not painted case. The cases are old so they are made from a thicker sheet metal. After doing these bits I should have all HW to finish the build.

Measure twice, cut once. The measure part is tricky as there is barely any fixed point to start from but it was almost spot on. I also drilled the corners because I did not have a straight grinder.

Long cuts done. Short ones finished by hand saw.

Deburred.

Should be just four simple bends from here. Well.. Remember the "measure twice" part? I measured once, so it was five simple bends including one back and forth. :D

It fits!

Tabs on bottom will support the rear end of the PSU.

Here together with the modified 5.25" bay for pump.

Gaming HW test fit

Last week I disassembled the gaming PC, cleaned all the water blocks and test fitted the HW on the "bench". Also did some testing of the pump and the rads, since the SE 560 and the pump were not tested yet by myself. The packaging under the shelf had to change because of the cables from the PSU but it has to change again.

Pump pulled out - no spill. :)

The white coolant was original clean so it was already time to clean it (few months ago :D).

No hoses and rads and just before cleaning the GPU block.

Dirty CPU block

Clean GPU block

Test run for the pump

and rads

Under-shelf parts - pump and PSU.

Case fitted

Everything on the bench now

Testing

During and after assembly I tested both systems. Some parts were not working of course.

On the server side on of the slots in the 3,5" bay was not showing up and the fans turned out to be super loud. The not working slot turned out to be a power issue on the +12 V rail on the PCB. Probably a cold solder joint, so I fixed it. New fans were also ordered and fitted. I opted to power the fans externally. This solution turns out to be a bit problematic because the bays are showing faulty fans. I will make a special cable to feed the RPM signal back to the bays while still powering them from the motherboard.

The gaming PC was mostly working. The water temperatures are showing up and I finally have also the Corsair Link from the PSU connected. The Corsair iCUE is sometimes messed up and showing like 11000 RPM and 150 degC but I will massage these issues away. The flow meter turns out to be not working at all. It does not report any signal. Supplier send me a replacement rotor but I think it might be due to low head pressure from the pump. The quick connects are very restrictive so I might need to add a second pump in the future.

New power cables. Turns out you can use 2x SATA power or 2x Molex power or both.

Cooling for the socket area is in place together with the SATA controller card cooler.

SATA controller card fan detail

Only three out of four drives were showing up.

Disassembly begins..

Fixed PCB before cleaning.

Socket area coolers in place.

Overall picture of the build before complete disassembly to hang the frame structure.

Frame mounted

Winter 2020 update

It is finally the day! A lot happened - server is new (again) and the case is finished (99%).

I put both PCs into regular cases. Dust and fire safety (to some point) were the reasons.
The EKWB reservoir got a micro crack, which was very slowly leaking for months. When I was putting the system to the new case, it got worse so I had to replace it.
Turns out that the connections on the 1080Ti water block are really tall, so I had to print and modify a riser to turn the card 90deg.

Server

Server is now MSI X470 Gaming Plus board with Athlon 3000G. Power efficiency was the biggest push to this change. I am happy with the performance so the previous Xeon was and overkill. From 110W to 60W on idle.
I dropped the 2.5" bays from the server setup and switched to M.2s (Corsair MP510 - high TBW value, good enough performance).
I also got a new "server" - heimdall. It is my standalone router/firewall solution and it is based on pcengines APU2e4.

I still have to print some covers that will go over the nuts and also come up with something clever that will keep the front door up. There is very little space aside the cases so it seems that I might not be able to use standard "insert english word" - you know the gas-spring thingy.
More info under the pictures

This shows the system before the server upgrade

PCs already in cases

Shows how far the slides go

Cooling for the UPS compartment

GPU riser

Final view

Recent changes - 2020 catch up

As I am spending MUCH more time at home now (everybody does probably), I have made a list of stuff to finish in my appartment. It contains some stuff on this build. So lets start what I already did

Replace 40 mm generic fan in the 2.5" bay for a Noctua with a higher static pressure. The original one was doing some funny noises and the Noctua is silent even on almost full speed. It is thicker, but with some modification it fits.
Replaced cabling on the server side. I had cool looking SATA cables from Aliexpres but the drives occasionaly threw a UDMA CRC error so I decided to change the cable. I wanted something better (like from Adaptec), but there is not much choice in SATA cabling and some generic ones (but with thicker shielding/isolation this time) were on sale, so I went for it.
Rotated PSU on the gaming rig. This was necessary as the fan out was facing towards front and there is going to be the door to the whole thing. Now it faces towards rear, where the fans from water cooling pick up the air and blast it upwards. The rotation was easier said than done, becuase the internal cabling has to be longer now.
Replaced switch - New 8 port switch - never buy 5 ports, it is never enough. Also there is a Netgear router in AP mode running OpenWRT which holds another four gigabit ports and serves as a backup in case that a pfsense VM goes down. Which already happened of course - so it is a lessons learned outcome.
Grills - I am working on covering this rack. It is just taking a lot of time. Shops will be opening soon here so I will be able to order the wood. The hinges are already ordered (90 deg opening angle with soft close), assembling the bottom cover.. Everything is either in my head, on paper or in CAD already. The grills arrived yesterday and boy.. this is going to look cool!

To do with possibile to dos.

Replace APC power splitter - I am considering using a server PDU attached to the wall behind as it would be sleeker. This would have to be done during the water cooling maintenance when only the frame would remain up.
Second D5 pump - with the two quick connects there is really a lot of restriction and the single D5 has to work hard to push the water around. Also the deairing is difficutl with one pump and the current loop design.

Hardware

Category / Value

Brand / Part

CPU

Intel - Core i7 5930K

Socket: LGA 2011-3

Cores: 6

Motherboard

MSI - X99S Sli Plus

Chipset: X99

CPU Socket: LGA 2011-3

Size: ATX

Memory

Crucial - Ballistix Sport LT (2400MHz) (Grey)

Type: DDR4

Capacity: 32 GB

Graphics

MSI - Sea Hawk

Chip Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip: GTX 1080 Ti

Interface: PCIe x16

Storage

$ 87.39

Samsung - 970 EVO Plus

Form Factor: M.2

Interface: M.2 (M)

Capacity: 1 TB

PSU

$ 279.99

Corsair - AX860i

Wattage: 860

Form Factor: ATX

Efficiency: 80+ Platinum

Case

Custom - Custom (custom)

Cooling

Alphacool - Reservoir

Type: Custom Loop

Cooling

$ 88.95

EKWB - CoolStream CE

Type: Custom Loop

Size (WxHxD): 280 mm (2 x 140 mm)

Cooling

$ 282.88

EKWB - CoolStream CE

Type: Custom Loop

Size (WxHxD): 560 mm (4 x 140 mm)

Cooling

EKWB - EK-D5 Vario Motor (12V DC Pump Motor)

Type: Pump

Cooling

$ 80.97

EKWB - EK-Supremacy EVO

Type: CPU Waterblock

Approved by:

Under-ceiling Build

Under-ceiling Build

Build Updates

Frame assembled

Drawers and drive bays

Cool pack assembly

Server hardware installed

How the PSU bracket was born

Gaming HW test fit

Testing

Frame mounted

Winter 2020 update

Recent changes - 2020 catch up

Hardware

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