Water Box Plus "Dark Water"

[metry]

Hi guys, here we go with my first Danger Den build:

Waterware:
MC-TDX for Intel 775
DD - IONE for NVIDIA G92 GTS
Thermochill PA120.2
DD12V-D5 Pump Fixed Speed
Tygon 3603 Tubing 1/2"
DD - Water Box Plus, Mobo Tray Color: UV Blue



Hardware:
q6600 G0
OCZ Reaper 9200
8800 GTS
Asus Maximus Formula (i know: no sli but it's not my plans anyway)
WD Raptor-X
Zalman 750W



Assembling the first pieces of the case:





It's going to be a little bit of a light show and I want to be able to adjust the lights without having to open the case ... So I was lucky to find these revoltec cold cathodes with a switch that just fits between the IO shield brackets. I was planning to cut holes in a bracket myself, but why bother when it already fits quite tightly.



I started to plan the cathodes from the beginning because the box is compact and there is not much room for hardware and cables. Also, the cathodes are going to stay in the case longer than the hardware … hopefully.
The switches on the outside :



Just pumping the juice from my kandalf case: here's the general idea



I'm going to have a push/pull setup on the radiator; the front ones will be more decorative with leds just for the effect and I’ll have some heavy duty fans in the back sucking threw them for performance. The problem is, it's going to be a tight fit for the hard disks between the power supply and fans: I decided to create my own hard disk holder mod:Drawing credits and getting the pieces cut go to my little brother.



the naked mod before the paint job:



and all black:



In the end it looks like this in the case: Plenty of room for the air flow.



As my build is called Dark Water, on with the paint on the DVD-burner



and the hose clamps, just out of the oven. hmmm makes me hungry!



So far, so good?

[dark4181]

nice build so far. looks nice

btw, i nominate your custom HD bracket for danger den R&D. i don't like having my hard drives precariously suspended by only having screws on one side

you wanna have your bro make me a 3 HD holding bracket? i'd pay for one of those

[madman666]

It looks good so far.



I think every system should have at least one custom made part. Either created or modded from a original part.

[walshlg]

why did you toast your hose clamps? My wife would kill me if I used the oven to dry pain, LOL

[metry]

@dark4181

I’ll see what bro says … also keep in mind we live in Switzerland, shipping costs to the usa sucks. (24% of my big DD order) I’ll see if it is possible to post a link to a drawing file of the holder, so you can eventually get it manufactured. The hard part is to have the two metal pieces perfectly parallel. I used an old hard disk during the gluing process to get everything aligned. I also had some rubber washers between the holder and the disk for vibration damping while is was gluing it:



I used a two componet epoxy glue like areldit, because hard disk are heavy. The meterial is 3mm metal, so the holder weighs a bit too. Once it was dry, on with the paint but no oven cooking as the epoxy will melt! As you can see, the tricky part is to be able to screw the holder to the case with the hard disks already fixed on the holder. That’s why I ended up with this form. As you have a Water Box, you what I mean, when I say it’s a tight fit for the hard disks …

@walshlg

Cooking the paint while it dries makes it harder and more resistant. (They do it on cars) As I will be tightening the hose clamps, I don’t want the paint to chip off easily. After the cooking, I tightened the camps to be sure that paint hasn’t blocked the screws and used a black marker pen to cover up the places I missed. Don't forget, only cook 100% metallic parts or you will melt something that your wife won’t forgive

[savage]

Hey metry, first of all great bulid.
and secound what cad software do you use?

[metry]

Hi,
The CAD software is Autodesk Inventor 9 (3D mechanical design software)
I've posted some higher resolution scans (300dpi, 1bit black/white)

HD-holder-1
HD-holder-2
HD-holder-3
HD-holder-4

We didn't keep the original file unfortunately as we did some last minute modifications on the paper prints.

@dark4181:
my brother's not to keen on doing more of these. He did it between work hours and it took some time. For family it's OK but for anybody else, it's a no go. Sorry!

[dark4181]

it's cool. the switzerland thing pretty much killed it anyway.. now it's up to DD to give us a spiffy HD bracket like that

[metry]

Here is a side pick of the hard disk holder. If I were to redo it, I would try to keep the space between the hard disks free for air flow. But for know, it will just have to do.



A received my coolant: I choose Feser One Black with UV Blue effect (the voice on their webpage is so annoying after a while … be warned http://www.feser-one.com/site/product_info.php?products_id=264 But, I’m a bit disappointed from the “UV effect” as you need half a dozen cold cathode lights to make it slightly glow. My guess is they took the product picture in a solarium on full blast.
What I’ve done to compensate, is order some uv-blue coil but as I’m rather impatient, I’ve already started to fill my loop. I can always twist the coil in after and we’ll see how it looks without it for starters.

Here I’m tanking up the pump from my kandalf case so everything else in the waterbox is safely off for leak testing.



In goes the venom:



Loop testing







I've left the asus blower on, as it should probably help for cooling the NB and 8-phase analog PWM.



here we go for a 24h wait ... but unfortunately i had a leak after 30min. Nothing to do with my tubing! It was the plastic fittings to the thermochill radiator. Both of them were damp, just were the barbs screw in. They gave me 3 for starters and I thought to myself: are they so crappie that they give you a spear one just in case? I'll do a post on that later, together with other difficulties I ran into. Did anyone else have a problem with these plastic fittings? I wish they would supply brass ones with a rubber washers instead. But no worries, I found a solution that problem.

[clamdip]

looks damn good!!!

[WolfofMiburo]

I've had my plastic fittings for about a year now and still no problem. I still don't like them, but am too cheap/lazy to find some metallic ones.

Did you keep the original wrapping around the threads, or add some more? You may just need to wrap it a bit more to snug it up.

[raidengl]

Nothing wrong with a little teflon tape but T-Plus2 pipe dope sold at any good hardware store is way better and it can be used on natural gas line as well if you ever want to hard pipe a gas grill in at your house. If you really can't get the fitting to seal even with the pipe dope then try putting pipe dope on the threads then wrapping over the pipe dope with teflon. Doesn't make sense logically but it does work just makes a mess.

[Spart]

That looks awesome!

[walshlg]

OK this qualifies for my highest rating :Wicked Sick!

[metry]

First, thanks a lot for your comments, coming from you pros means la lots to me.
Second, lots of credit goes to DD for designing such a hardware showcase. The motherboard lying flat and the GPU cooler perfectly visible from the front on the case is a killer.

I’ve finished the build so I’ll start to post some more photos.