Black In Control

[Mysterae]

holy shit that looks awesome
give us benchmark scores now !

Cheers, I'll definitely be benchmarking it once it's complete, see how high I can push the system .

That GPU mod is totally awesome imho! :rock:

Can you turn the fans way down? I assume their purpose is to provide some air flow for the power
system and RAM's on the cards, but that doesn't really need all that air which the GPU itself
would have required, right?

That's the plan! Probably use Afterburner to either fix the fan speed to 30% or set a pretty flat fan curve with a drive upward if the temperature gets too high. I wonder if there will be more scope for a better overclock since the vrms won't have the hot air from the gpu passed over it. Looking forward to see how it turns out and if I can pass that 1300mhz mark.

Ohgod, I love this mod

I'm glad you like it . I was half expecting a bit of flaming for ruining the look of cards!

I never would have thought to do something like that with the original OEM shroud... huh... O_O. Looks almost like it came like that, turned out nice.

Cheers, I was hoping for an "out of the box" look. Apart from the dodgy dremel work (it slipped once, honest guv) it looks good and I'm happy with it.

Looks epic so far mate! Nice work!

Thanks again!

I was thinking that the same treatment could be done to a Titan . That way you can keep the awesome looks of the Titan and get the benefits of watercooling. So if anyone wants to donate to me a Titan, I'll gladly give it the same treatment ! You won't get it back tho... .

 

[da axxxe]

that,s a killa idea with those 670,s .that,s gonna be some cold gpu,s lol

 

[Mysterae]

that,s a killa idea with those 670,s .that,s gonna be some cold gpu,s lol

Cheers, I have high hopes for the cooling of the video cards.

A little update for you guys, nothing too major, just planning.

I have been reading up and getting to know the Aquacomputer Aquaero and deciding on the connections I need from the inside of the case to the outside.

Various things to note in the diagram above.

- The fan headers (x4) of the Aquaero have a maximum power output rating of 19.8W (1.65A @12V) and each Silverstone AP181 fan has a rated power of 5.4W 0.45A. So the max number of these fans per header is 3.

- The diagram for the USB pinouts is for the other Aquabus devices (flow meter, Aqualis pump block and USB D5 pump) as these need USB when first configuring them. Once configured, the Aquaero takes over control duties. So a pernament USB cable is not required for these devices.

- The relay of the Aquaero will be used to control the case lighting. It's not very often it's on, but is nice to have (and show off!).

- The 5V input is an optional standby power input and will not be required as long as I connect the Aquaero to a USB port that still provides 5V when the system is shutdown (using the USB's 5V charge function).

- I could have reduced the number of external connections from 3 to 2 by using a 6 pin connector and mixing the Aquabus wiring with the D5 pump power. I thought it prudent to keep these separate (minimise signal interference).

- The number and allocation of physical thermal sensors is not completely decided yet. The Aquaero makes use of virtual sensors, i.e. taking temperature readings from other programs to report CPU, GPU, etc. This will minimise the number of physical temperature probes needed.

So here's the business end of the system, the Aquaero with a replacement black front plate, the supplied remote control (I'll need this, you'll see why at some point ) and the flow sensor (MPS Flow 200).

The flow sensor is small enough that I shouldn't have too many problems hiding it.

Here's a quick mock up of the front black plate (it's slightly bend but I'll sort that).

I really like the black front and it'll work well with my plan. Remember I mentioned the need for the remote control? Well, my plan is to mount the Aquaero around the CPU and RAM area rather than the traditional 5.25 drive bay. I rarely look at the front of my case so it would be wasted there. Having had the old Coolit Vantage for a while, with it's constantly displayed coolant temperaure, fan and pump speeds, I found it really useful and reassuring (hint to Corsair, who took over Coolit - make something like the Vantage again!). I digress...yeah so the Aquaero will become my replacement Vantage display. Not decided exactly how or where it will go yet. As it will be behind the case window I can't press any buttons so the IR remote will allow me to configure and change displays, without using the software, for when I don't want to alt-tab out of a game for example.

The cables that go to the externals of the case have to be tidy and detachable, so I've recycled some connectors from a previous build.

In 3 pin, 4 pin and 6 pin variants. These have a little catch that keeps them in place but it's a right pain in the finger to release, so considering omitting that.

So it's time I stripped down the FT02 and made some holes for the wiring and the hose quick disconnects.

Thanks for reading!

 

[alpenwasser]

Bloody hell, how much time do you spend drawing those diagrams? :lol:

I just wish the aquasuite was available for Linux

Looking forward to more.

 

[Mysterae]

Bloody hell, how much time do you spend drawing those diagrams? :lol:

I just wish the aquasuite was available for Linux

Looking forward to more.

Not too long actually! It's a force of habit...it's the best way to work things out.

If you really wanted an Aquaero you may be able to just program it with the remote control and not use the software side. Not sure though.

 

[alpenwasser]

Not too long actually! It's a force of habit...it's the best way to work things out.

Haha, yeah once thoroughness becomes habit it's hard to break that pattern :lol:

If you really wanted an Aquaero you may be able to just program it with the remote control and not use the software side. Not sure though.

From what I've read that's true, but I just don't feel like clicking myself through all those menus
and config options on a small screen with that remote. Just not enough user friendly for my
tastes.

 

[Mysterae]

I appreciate that, would take 3 times as long and not be much fun.

 

[badtaylorx]

i suppose watercool never inteded to have someone mount their cooler with the shroud installed, can you just turn the screw around and have the nut on the inside???

 

[Mysterae]

i suppose watercool never inteded to have someone mount their cooler with the shroud installed, can you just turn the screw around and have the nut on the inside???

I think you're right there. Technically you could reverse the screw I think, but I solved it by just using smaller nuts.

Editing some pictures for an update .

 

[Mysterae]

Next on the list was to sort out the connections at the back of the FT02; water and electrical connections.

The holes marked up:

Some serious drill bits required , 16mm and 18mm. I was glad I used these and not the stepped core cutter I considered. The panel was way too thick for one of those.

The case was thicker than I thought it was going to be! That's 6mm thick.

For those modding their case, drilling holes, dremelling etc, I'd highly recommend a deburring tool, shown below, used to remove the sharp burrs (edges) from the holes you have cut. Save you staining your case with blood!

A test fit of the quick disconnects and power/electrical connectors:

A mockup of how it will look:

The placement of the electrical connections means you won't see them amongst all the PSU cables. You can see I still need to give the case a good clean!

So it was time to start messing with the copper pipe, make test pieces before using the chrome tubing. This was about learning to use the pipe bender, working out routes and angles etc.

Testing a 45 degree pipe.

How the video cards will be installed. As they are now on water, the airflow isn't as important as it was before, so I can now install them in the two x16 slots, for whatever difference it may make.

Now I have a dilemma: Should I pipe the video cards in serial or parallel? The difference in pipework is considerable:

Serial:

Parallel:

Most people say serial is better than parallel, but by how much I don't know. As you can see the extra pipe for serial is much longer and complex but not impossible. Does it look right? Not so sure. What do you guys think: go parallel for simplicity and minimal pipework, or serial for performance whatever the looks?

I have noticed that the pipe bender I'm using (Rothenberger) digs in and marks the pipe at the start of each bend. Not sure if it's the way I'm using it, the tool or the quality of the copper pipe. I don't want this on the chrome tubing, I know that much. I haven't bent any chrome pipe yet so it's yet to be seen.

At the moment my pc is on it's "test rig", which considering what you can get nowadays and what Tom uses it's a bit of a joke . You can see it somewhere amongst all the wires below.

That's all for today, thanks for reading!

 

[alpenwasser]

Some serious drill bits required , 16mm and 18mm.

Ooooh yeah!

Now I have a dilemma: Should I pipe the video cards in serial or parallel? The difference in pipework is considerable:

Serial:

[...img...]

Parallel:

[...img...]

Most people say serial is better than parallel, but by how much I don't know.

Parallel loop parts become a problem when the two (or more) branches have significantly
different flow resistance. If you do two GPUs like you're showing here the two branches
will have almost the same flow resistance, so the flow should be quite equal through
the two GPU blocks (at least that's what theory says :lol: ).

In any case, I think parallel looks much better, and since W/C is (at least for me)
also very much about looks, I would go for the parallel setup if it was my own rig.

Nice work btw.

 

[Mysterae]

I agree that the parallel arrangement looks better. The serial is a bit too cluttered. Oddly, I strived for the serial look first, it wasn't until I thought it coudl be done better that I then checked the layout for parallel.

The balance of flow rates between the gpu blocks is a given, hopefully half the flow rate for each gpu won't mean poorer performance. I guess I will see .

 

[alpenwasser]

The balance of flow rates between the gpu blocks is a given, hopefully half the flow rate for each gpu won't mean poorer performance. I guess I will see .

As long as your "base flow rate" (or however you like to call it) is sufficiently reasonable, you
shouldn't have any problems. Water cooling in PC's is not that highly dependent on water
flow rates. It is to some degree, naturally (that's just the laws of thermodynamics and fluid
dynamics), but once you have passed a certain minimum (namely the minimum which is
required to get turbulent flow instead of laminar flow) you see very little improvement in
performance for great increases in flow rate (law of diminishing returns).

There isn't too much info out there about this (since it's pretty complex stuff), but Daz did
a small test which should give you a basic idea. There is some benefit to higher flow rates
but it's not exactly drastic.

Link.

Also keep in mind that your base flow rate will slightly increase if you do the GPU blocks in
parallel since the GPU part of your loop will have lower flow resistance, so this might also
offset some part of flow rate loss within the individual GPU blocks and might give you slightly
better performance in other parts of your loop. Although tbh, this effect will most likely be
rather minuscule; hard to tell without testing it.

 

[Mysterae]

Cheers for the link alpenwasser, interesting stuff. It's going to be educational monitoring the effect on temperatures with pump speed and fan speeds, courtesy of the Aquaero. I'll know for sure, applicable to my system at least.

Ah, resistance in parallel - bringing back memories from my studies and a previous build. The total resistance of a parallel circuit is:

1/R(total)=1/R(1)+1/R(2)+1/R(3)+.....

So if the gpu blocks had an imaginary resistance of 10, two in parallel means a total resistance of 5. Those same blocks in series would have a total resistance of 20.
Now, considering the cpu block also with an imaginary resistance of 10, in series with the parallel gpu blocks, means a total resistance of 15. Where as the same 3 blocks in series would be 30. So having the gpus in parallel effectively halves the total resistance of the loop. The pump will be happy!

This is perhaps getting in to things a bit far, but it's interesting (I hope for others too). As I said before, I'm looking forward to the tweaks to the system to find the optimal balance .

 

[alpenwasser]

This is perhaps getting in to things a bit far

No it's not. :lol:

Seriously though, nobody is forced to go read through fluid dynamic calculations, if someone
is not into that sort of thing they can always skip to the pretty pictures. And what are internet
forums for if not for having some interesting discussions once in a while

 

[Mysterae]

So it's been awhile since my last update. Plenty has been done...

I'll spare you images of all the wires I've soldered and sleeved (there was a lot - aquabus, fans, usb's etc) and I finally came up for a solution on where to place the Aquaero and the MPS pressure sensor. The best place for them I'm sure you'll agree.

So I'll jump straight to chrome tubing in place and about to fill the system up. Always the worst part of a watercooling build - will it leak or won't it?! I did have a small leak on one of the fittings on the CPU but I caught and replaced the fitting.

In the image below you can see water in the tubing from when I flushed the MO-RA radiator, the obligatory wire for jumping the psu and all the paper to spot leaks. The measuring jug is for mixing the coolant.

If you look closely at the copper chrome tubing you can see the marks made by the pipe bender. Not ideal but unavoidable. I've ran out of chrome tubing and I do think I may revisit it at a later stage. A tip for those considering chrome tubing - don't get it in a coil. It's a pain to make straight. When I redo the pipes I'll get them in the required straight lengths and perhaps a better way of bending them. Some of the bends were a little complex though, my fault for where I placed the quick disconnects, but they were placed where they are to avoid certain psu cables.

The necessary connectors connected. The water in and water out, pump and aquabus. Those quick disconnects are great - not a drop spilled by either of them

Time to make some coolant. I'm a bit old school when it comes to this; none of that fancy stuff. Just a summer coolant and as much water as possible. My mix of choice is 30% coolant (to provide some corrosion resistance and an acceptable colour):

Topped up with 70% de-ionised water.

The system took less than 2 litres in total, probably more like 1.5, there was some spillage during my change of plastic tubing routing for the radiator. That leaves me with a lot of spare coolant to use in my cars (another summer job once this pc is complete!).

After running for a while to ensure no leaks popped up and waiting for as much air as possible out of the system, it was time to fire it up. In the image below you can see the temperature of the water in and water out. Less than a degree of a difference as suspected. However, during my testing later, when the gpu's are at full tilt this delta changed by as much as 4 degrees c. Getting a bit ahead of myself though...

Just letting it tick over...

Those paying attention will have noticed a change in plumbing of the reservoir and radiator. I thought it best to have the radiator's output at the top, to help get air out of it. I need to shorten the pipe from the pump/res to the radiator. The bubbles stuck to the side of the reservoir glass will go eventually.

An attempt at an arty shot...

And finally how it will look, kind of...

I've still got a lot to do. Still have to finalise the cable routing (the back of the case is not in place), enable the other Aquacomputer MPS devices (flow sensor and D5 pump block, it has a fill level sensor) put the lighting in, clean the perspex window, etc...

Then there is the Aquasuite. I've had a quick play to control the D5 pump and fans, check temps etc. I'm a bit in awe. So much to tweak and sort out, it'll keep me busy to perfect!

As the case stands now, which isn't finished yet, my gpu temps have gone down from a 50C idle to 28/29C idle. During a quick few runs of Heaven the two 670's didn't even reach 50C when they used to hit over 80C. That was with the gpu fans at 30% and all other fans at 42% (about 550 rpm) and pump at 25% (equivalent to the lowest D5 pump setting).

But still a lot of tidying up and system tweaking to do still.

Cheers for reading!

 

[AverageNinja]

Oh yes! Right there! Watercooling pr0n!
Really clean with that tubing!

 

[alpenwasser]

That is turning out really nice. But yes, the damage to the copper pipes is indeed rather
noticeable.

Ingenious placement of the Aquaero though, I really like that idea. And the pipe routing itself is
well done too imho.

 

[Mgutierrez33]

I'm willing to overlook the damage to the pipes BECAUSE they are copper pipes. turned out really nice so far!

 

[Mysterae]

Oh yes! Right there! Watercooling pr0n!
Really clean with that tubing!

Cheers, I do think the parallel setup for the gpus although not ideal for the purist was the better decision. The lengths of plastic tubing outside make up for the length of copper inside!

That is turning out really nice. But yes, the damage to the copper pipes is indeed rather
noticeable.

Ingenious placement of the Aquaero though, I really like that idea. And the pipe routing itself is
well done too imho.

Yeah, the damage is noticable, and it wasn't a cheap pipe bender I was using. Perhaps use normal copper pipe, bend it to perfection by some other means and then send the pipes out to be chromed by someone at their leisure (cheaper to wait until they are doing a batch).

Glad you like the Aquaero placement, it's the ideal for me. Right where I can see it, and still ogle at the shininess of the chromed Raystorm . The Aquaero is mounted to the ceiling fan by way of 2 bits of metal covered in black tape (yes, I cheated!). An age old cdrom drive died to provide me with the metal as it had the perfect hole spacings ! An added benefit of where the Aquaero is placed is that the remote control still works through the window!

I'm willing to overlook the damage to the pipes BECAUSE they are copper pipes. turned out really nice so far!

Cheers, that's what I was thinking. It still bugs a little, but until I find another better method it'll be like that.