Watercooling Case Mod

It's that time again.

The time when I get sufficently bored, and happends to lay my eyes on something moddable.

This time I was thinking about how to make the watercooling case mod, a bit moddier.

And I just happend to have a digital photoframe.

So I removed the front of the Watercooling case, (hereby known as Heart case.)

The white front on the photoframe might reflect light, So I decided to mask it with tape, and paint it dark.

The tape was used just in case it didnt turn out as good as expected, I could always just remove the paint and be back with a nice white frame again.

Here we can see the painted frame displaying a random picture.

Originaly i was going to dismantle the photoframe and just use the LCD screen, but it fit so good with the frame, that I decided to use the whole frame.

The USB connector didnt quite fit though, so I had to butcher the cable a bit to make it fit.

And then I glued it in place.

Testrun of the front.

The USB cable I had was very short, and I didnt have an extension cable around, so the thing ended up on the floor next to the PC until I go buy a longer cable.

I added some random art which is displayed on it.

The screen is powered by the USB and since its plugged in, It's quite easy to just upload new pictures to it without having to dismantle it again.

The software to update the pictures are located on the photoframe usb disk, so its just a matter of running it directly from the USB disk.

And here is the Finished results.

Not bad. =)

Heart watercooling build part 2

The build continues.

So I finaly got around to finish my watercooling build the way I intended it from the start.

Watercooling blocks for Graphics cards are not cheap.

So I figured I'd have a go at making my own block.

One good thing about this card is that it already have a good solid copper base.

Dismantling it reveals a big copper base, plastic fan, and a piece of aluminum to top it off.

The Card is a XFX Geforce 9600 GSO with 768MB ram.

The GSO line is more like an in-between of 9600 and 9800. (And there are ways of modding the BIOS so it turns into a 8800 GT 512MB)

Anyhow here's a picture or it never happened of the card in pieces.

So the First thing I had to do was make a way for water to flow over the copper base.

What I'm using here is a copper pipe 6mm (atleast I think its 6mm)

The copper pipe is tricky to bend, even with a tool, because the tool makes large bends, and I had to shape it smaller by hand. Something that can easily ruin the pipe, because if you bend the pipe too hard it will just fold.

This is what I finaly ended up with.

I was a bit worried that the hose connectors would be difficult to solder onto the pipe.

But it turned out to work just fine.

Next up was to solder the pipe onto the copper base.

It takes quite alot of heat to warm up the whole thing to the point where you can solder it. I used a small blowtorch, I'm not sure if a soldering iron might be enough on this much copper.

Here it is after that's all done and mounted back onto the card.

Next up is to dismantle the whole watercooling system and rebuild it with a few additions.

Here is a picture of the pump and water tank standing ontop of the Heart case.

The Heart case used to be an old printer server which I got from a friend, I've been saving it for a project like this. and you can also see the bigger radiator at the bottom of the picture.

I have the old fluid in the bottle there, and used that to top up the new liquid I bought.

oh yeah,, I should mention here that in order to ensure airflow in the Heart case, I unscrewed one of the 120mm fans and turned it around, so it will create an in-out flow in the case, as the Heart case does'nt have any air holes.

A Picture of the insides, before I remembered to mount the graphics card.

And here is the insides with the card mounted.

It turned out to be very very tight at the bottom with the hoses from the card.

Note to self, Next time, remember to angle the hoseconnectors sideways.

More pictures of the snakes nest of cables and hoses the insides of the PC has turned into.

Here is the inside of the Heart case after mounting the radiator and pump.

Notice the difference in color of the hoses, the realy green ones are new, and the yellowish one is a piece of the old hose. well , I say old, but it's only about 2 months old.

I have no idea what made it go Yellow, and it only affected the hoses on the outside of the case. the hoses inside of the case was still green. I got a UV LED inside the case, so it's probably not because of UV. Odd.

And Finaly after assembling the whole thing, Making a 2 powercable to power the fans and pump, and rebuilding the whole cooling system, here is the finished result.

Front and back pictures

I have to say that the Heart looks great. and looking at it like this I can realy see how ugly the PC case is.

It was alot of work , but in the end it was worth it.

And it works just Great!

I was worried that the copper pipe did'nt have enough coverage area on the copper block , but turns out to work just great. After running the system at MAX ,, with 100%CPU and Furmark to max out the card, The peak temp of the card was only 56C with the CPU at 54C. Not bad considering that the same water is used to cool both.

Before the build the graphics card easily hit peaks of over 76C, So a 20C difference is not bad at all for a first try DIY waterblock =) . And the Heart case looks great.

Update on the server

After some time of mainly boredom and GTAIV, I finaly installed most of the software for the server, and mounted it on the wall, on the balcony.

One thing I am planning on doing in the future, Is adding a light to the latern, powered from the server.

Scanny Flatbed ..uh.. PC

Yay!

Finaly got my mini ITX motherboard

The box measured 22cm,

The motherboard itself is 17x17cm.

The CPU is an Intel Atom 330 which is Dual core and it also got Hyper threading.

In the single DDR slot I will stick an 2GB DDR2 667mhz.

Ok, So having satified my Need of "I Got To Have One of THOSE!!!",

I immediately starting thinking, "Ok, So now what do I do with it?".

Some quick thinking turned up a few ideas, but after searching the web for a bit, I found that the C64 PC had been done, same thing with a Guitar PC.

After some head scratching I found a nice wallclock case, but unfortunately i couldn't locate the actual clock parts for it, so that idea didn't work either.

Eventualy I found this old flatbed scanner, which I had already stripped of parts for the Lamp I made (see my blag history).

The first thing I had to do was to remove one of the spots for the screws to the lid,(see yellow rings) and using that material I made 2 spots for the motherboard to be screwed into.(see red rings)

Next thing to be manhandled was an old PSU I had.

300W is more than enough to power this ITX build.

Ofcourse the PSU was too big to fit, So I had to remove the casing and strip it clean.

After soldering an extension of the power cable (which was extremely short.), I mounted the power cable connectors and power switch to the lid.

This is also where things started to go downhill.

I had told myself that This build isn't gonna be using ANY ducttape at all.. nooo way!

So after taking this picture i realized I had used ducttape to insulate the soldersing of the wire.

Doh!!! ><;

Here is the circutboard mounted in the flatbed case.

Also mounted the HDD which btw is an old PATA 120GB I had.

Mounting the Motherboard.

Ofcourse only After mounting the boards and HDD did I remember that the big fan will need a big hole.

Anyhow, here's the picture of that mess.

After having used ducttape already, I just chucked any aspirations of making a nice and clean build out the window and just repeatedly stabbed the plastic until I got my holes.(with a dremmel tool)

Found an old microswitch and a LED which I glued in place for the power light and to-be power button.

And eventualy everything was installed and connected.

Here is a folded picture of the Sides, Top and bottom of the build.

If you print it out on paper, you could make your very own origami version of this build.

(it would probably even look nicer than my build)

Final shot of everything installed, including the Lid for the scanner.

And here is the obligatory "Yes It's Running" Picture.

(background has been removed to protect the innocent.)

Also I might add that I am using the scanner lid as a mouse mat at the time of that picture, so even that part found a use. =)

I might add here that this build was not realy meant to be a serious attempt, more of an warming-up until I can find something nicer to place this in.

But in the end it turned out pretty good after all.

I'm thinking of adding lights inside the case and placing a poster on the glass, and hangit on the wall. but that's for next time.

until then. Have fun!

Cheapo IR photography

So here's an experiment you could actualy try at home for little to no cost at all.

Take a piece of developed film. (that old kind we used to have before digital cameras)

Cut a piece and place it over the lens of your digital camera.

Aim at some vegetation and take a picture.

Wonder why the grass turns blueish.

What we're actualy doing here is filtering out the normal light, letting mostly Infrared light into the camera.

You can easily test this by aiming a IR remote control at the camera, you can't see the lamp blink , but the camera can.

You'll need long exposure times, so preferably use a tripod or something steady.

These pictures was taken freehand with a mediocre camera, but i'm sure you could achieve amazing results with a better camera and a tripod.

Have Fun =)

PSU fell off

PSU kept falling off, so still with no explainations , here is the new server setup. =)

quote

This world is so big, that atleast in one place, one of the words in this sentance will have the same meaning as the word poo.