Black In Control

[alpenwasser]

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!

It looks really nice 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).

Yeah pipe benders aren't cheap (at least the good ones I've found)

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!

Hehe,

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

Sometimes things just don't go according to plan on the first go around. Analyze, adapt,
proceed, I would say.

 

[Reloaded2]

THIS IS AWESOME. Well done mate you made it look clean and stunning
100/10 from me:lol:

 

[s3ns3]

this build looks so fcking SICK dude ! gj

 

[Mysterae]

Cheers guys.

Nothing to update regarding the hardware, the pc is still a bit open. I've been messing around learning the ropes with the Aquacomputer Aquasuite.

So powerful...and a bit frustrating at times. I think I've got all the foibles sorted now though. I'll post a few screenshots if anyone's interested.

 

[Mysterae]

Well, I continue to learn stuff about controlling my system and watercooling in general...

I have learned that controlling radiator fan speeds based on the delta between the in and out temperatures is not always ideal. For example, I had it configured to switch off the rad fans when the water temperature delta was 0.0C, however, when there is little load this delta can vary little, while the general water temp rise! This meant that the delta could be zero but the water temp 34C ;( . I watched this happen from a cold boot - the radiator fans would have stayed off, the water temp creep up, cpu temp creep up etc! So a slight change in config there.

Another issue is that when I'm just browsing and not using much power, the Aquaero sets all fans to minimum or even off, as I desire. However, one fan I can't control is the one in the Corsair AX1200 PSU. As all other fans are really quiet, I can now hear the AX1200 fan and it's now noticeable. I'd like to reduce the noise of that fan, perhpas replace it. Looking at me options for that.

Work continues getting the right balance of settings...

 

[JMMP]

I noticed that you have the radiator on the window! IMHO you should remove it from there, because the sun has direct contact with radiator, and black things have the tendency to warm more with direct sun contact!

 

[sheroo]

Just read through your entire log. WOW. Love it, the amount of detail you've gone into is awesome. You are obviously a complete control freak - a man after mine own heart :lol: - well done. Keep us updated with any other changes you make.

 

[Mysterae]

I noticed that you have the radiator on the window! IMHO you should remove it from there, because the sun has direct contact with radiator, and black things have the tendency to warm more with direct sun contact!

Thanks for the concern mate, I did think about this but decided it was negligible. The sun does shine in the room for many hours of the day, but the majority of the radiator (tubes and fins) is stainless steel, the black parts are just the fan shrouds or the frame to hide nasty bits of the radiator. Also, here in the UK we get about 4.3 days of sunshine a year, not enough to make me worry . Seriously though I did think of putting tint in the window to reduce the light, but that monster rad cools so well I can run passively at night, fans at 3V (yes, 3 volts!) during the day on tick-over or at 5 to 7 volts when in power mode (i7 2600k, and two 670's).

Just read through your entire log. WOW. Love it, the amount of detail you've gone into is awesome. You are obviously a complete control freak - a man after mine own heart :lol: - well done. Keep us updated with any other changes you make.

Cheers bud! It's odd, but once the control is mastered, it will control itself so I won't need to control it any more. Sounds counter-intuitive but you know what I mean! A benefit I've found from the Aquaero (honestly, I don't work for Aquacomputer) is that it is independent from the operating system. Once programmed it does it's thing. So if the pc crashes due to whatever reason the system will still be correctly cooled. I'll post some screenshots of my mucking about with the software, but I still haven't got it set up the I want it.

 

[berthez]

Some internal lighting. A little too bright and distracting but still useful. I'll be doing something to tame it, as well as the switching of it (see below

I would've had the cold cathode on the motherboard tray instead of above the GPU, I think that would make your GPUs light up like angels (kind of like the big statue of Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite).

Overall your build looks very clean and awesome, I really like the 90 degree motherboard rotation in that Silverstone case. If I would change my 800D I would go for a Silverstone case, no doubt about it.

 

[Mysterae]

Cheers berthez, I do need to revisit the lighting. I like the idea of the angels!

If I could fit one between the gpu's I would, but I've got them right next to each other now. I need to be more creative on where to place them, cheers for the prod!

I agree, I like the 90 degree rotation, looks more natural and the gpu's sit better in my opinion. The only problem is the connecting cables; popping out the top of the case is not natural! Thankfully the top cover hides them.

 

[theDTP]

Epic!

 

[BPRSM]

That looks soooooo nice

 

[Mysterae]

Cheers for the comments guys, long time no update! I have been soo busy with work, life, OU and getting my project car back on the road etc, to update with anything meaningful. Not to say that this is a meaningful post either!

I've not done much with the hardware side, been playing with the Aquaero software getting things right, testing overclocks, temperatures, etc.

The Aquaero can be a bit temperamental to the uninitiated. I had a spate that whenever I adjusted something in Aquasuite, usually the pump curve controller, the Aquaero hardware would crash and reset, or I'd lose mouse control (Aquaero is USB as is my mouse). It was usually due to changing it while it was updating from Aquasuite to the Aquaero - it wouldn't like it and throw it's toys out of the pram. It would bounce back okay, settings saved as if nothing happened. That's all in the past now and it's not crashed/reset since mucking about with it.

The main thing to learn is that when connecting a device to the Aquaero is that the Aquaero should be completely powered off and drained of all power. This is the paramount lesson to take in and heed. It saves a lot of headaches. Connect the device by USB only first, configure it as Aquabus, power down and then connect it via Aquabus. I learned this from Namron and his posts in the SpecialTech forums. He's a member here, and a font of all knowledge Aquacomputer. If you are reading this Namron, I owe you a pint mate!

So I have the D5 pump, the Aqualis reservoir (fill level sensor) and the MPS200 flow sensor all connected to the Aquaero via the Aquabus. How many times do I have to type Aqua.... anyway they are all running in harmony .

At the moment I am testing a control curve for the pump, between 25% and 100% duty depending on the water temp (water OUT). The water temp will never (hopefully) get to the temperature required to run the pump at 100%, which is 40C. Typically the pump runs between 25% (the minimum) and 40% at a water temp of 32C and upwards.

The water temp is obviously controlled by the radiator, who's cooling performance is dictated by the radiators fans. These fans (remember 4x180mm AP181's) are controlled with a separate curve controller. The fans are switched off until the water temp reaches 23C at which point the voltage is set to 25% (about 3.3V) which miraculously is enough to start these fans! From that point the fans voltage (therefore speed) is increased with water temperature (the water IN temp) up to 100% if the water reaches 36C, which it never does .

The third curve controller is for the 3x180mm AP181 fans found at the bottom of the FT02 case. The speed of these 3 fans is linked to the temperature of the motherboards chipset, namely the part that handles the PCIE traffic. This gets damn hot when the 2 670's are running - over 50C. I have noticed that if it gets to about 55C and over, the board can become unstable. To control this temp by controlling the 3 case intake fans, a "software sensor" is used. A software sensor is a feature of the Aquasuite that taps in to a free hardware monitoring program (in my case "Hardware Monitor" ) and allows you to use the reading to control something, it as if connected to the Aquaero. This only works when the program is running, but that's moot. The case intake fans start at 4.5V (must always have some airflow in the case) and stay this until the chipset temp reaches 35C at which point they ramp up with temp until 55C where they run at 12V (100%). Since putting this control in place, the chipset hovers around 53C on load conditions.

That's a lot of words, and I could have just have shown you this:

The little red x's next to the devices simply means they are not connected via USB, they are connected to the Aquaeros's Aquabus.

That's enough Aqua's for one post! I'm still playing with the settings, warm nights are better for this as it tests the limits of the cooling. I'll post sometime soon of the pics A__aero's LCD and the traces I have it configured to display. Handy when the A___suite doesn't show on my other monitor when playing a game.

As always, thanks for reading!

 

[alpenwasser]

Man, the AE really does look like a nice bit of kit, albeit a bit finicky (then again, many great
pieces of tech are finicky and temperamental :lol: ).

 

[Mysterae]

Hi aplenwasser! I like your avoidance of the word aqua .

Yeah it's an awesome bit of kit and is stable when properly configured and left to do it's own thing. I've only shown a little of what's possible - I've still to set up proper logs so the LCD can display the traces I want (i.e. coolant loss over time, say months) and then there is the overview page where I can have everything (temps, speeds etc) shown on one screen. I just need to design it but I'm not in a major hurry.

Did I mention that some folk working on a Linux version of Aquasuite? It's in it's infancy and is missing a lot of the features, but it's a start!

 

[alpenwasser]

Did I mention that some folk working on a Linux version of Aquasuite? It's in it's infancy and is missing a lot of the features, but it's a start!

Damn! I knew about the Linux version for the AE4, but I hadn't heard about this yet.
Thanks!

Sadly I'd say it's a bit late for my build (and my wallet :lol: ), but maybe some day

 

[umahd123]

this rig is AMAZING

 

[Mysterae]

Take Two

Upgraditis has set in...

Over the next few weeks I'm planning a bit of an upgrade and a few modifications. I got hold of a MSI Z87 XPOWER motherboard, and I knew before getting it that because it's XL-ATX size it wouldn't fit my case, the Silverstone FT02.

I like my case and I have no plans to replace it so I have given myself the challenge of making the XPOWER XL-ATX sized motherboard fit my case! .

I've taken one of the 670's off water and back on air to be able to run the XPower independently of the if the rig for the moment, just to test the basics.

The motherboard will be furnished with an i7 4770k and 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinums 2400MHz - there's no point in having this motherboard if I don't attempt to at least push it as far as possible. It's going to have to feed 3x overclocked 4GB GTX 670's after all .

I'm going to lose the ability to fit any optical drives (no great loss I hear TTL say) so they shall be relegated to being external units. I'll also lose one if not two hard drive slots, but that's no biggie. The removal of both optical drives and a few hard drives will reduce the vibration and noise of the rig too, so bonus all round.

Talking of noise, since watercooling my rig the loudest component is now the fan of the AX1200 psu. It's damn annoying and appears to be a known problem, people have RMA'd their AX1200 because of it. Rather than return it and risk getting another just like it, I'm going to replace the crap Yate Loon fan that's fitted as standard with a Noctua NF-A14 FLX 140mm fan.

The fan is a fugly looking thing but I won't be able to see it once the psu is back in the rig.

I'll have to redo the chromed copper tubing to suit the motherboard and wondered about going acrylic tubing, but I'll stick with the chrome copper for the moment. I'm planning a few other mods but I'll show you them when I come to them.

Cheers for reading.

 

[Mysterae]

Some further progress I thought I'd share.

Time to sort out the psu noise issue, as mentioned before it's the nosiest part of the computer since water cooling. I don't think the vent of the FT02 helped much as I think it's quite restrictive. This can be seen from the tell-tale sign of where dust has been caught.

Some light dremel surgery and it's a lot less restrictive. The filter will still be attached.

Now the next victim, the power supply unit itself. I'm not completely sure with this particular model, but in the later variants the fan is only meant to spin up at a particular load or temperature. When jump starting this unit (usual green/black paper clip short trick) the fan spins immediately with absolutley no other load present other than the fan itself. From what I've read on the many posts on the subject of AX1200 fan annoyances it can be a fault with the fan control circuit. Rather than send the psu off for a RMA which would be the wise approach, I'd thought I'd void the warranty and replace the fan altogether .

Some caution needs to taken when taking psu's apart due to the risk of electrocution because of the potential residual power than can be stored even after unplugging from the mains for a while!

I was quite surprised at the amount of dust present considering a fan filter is in place on the intake of the FT02 case.

The wiring of the Yate Loon D14BH-12 is non-standard so a 4 pin pwm fan can't simply be connected. This thread here has some good info about pin-outs and stuff. Rather than connect it back up to the psu's fan controller, I used the Noctua's supplied speed reducer cable to limit the speed of the fan to 1050rpm (mid level) and butchered the Yate Loon's connector to give the Noctua 12V. This means that the Noctua will run at this speed regardless of the heat or power load. I quickly tested to see if this would be sufficient - it blew out a lit match at 80mm away so I think it'll do the job!

Next up is modifying the FT02 to allow the MSI XPower motherboard to fit. I first made a template using a pizza box top and marked out where the cuts should be.

I effectively lose one hard drive slot and all but one cdrom slot, not that I'll be using them anyway.

I contemplated opening out the bottom vents like I did with the psu vent, but decided it wasn't that critical.

Cuts made although not that tidily. I think I cover the cuts with tap or edging later.

It fits .

The labels of ram modules are upside down but simple to sort later.

I'm still between systems at moment which makes an interesting sight!

The MSI XPower isn't playing game (quite literally) with 3 cards in SLI, with constant driver crashes as soon as a program like Unigine Valley or Heaven gets started. Perhaps the 6 pin power cable for the PCIE needs to be connected after all. Needs more investigation for later. It's not that important as I won't be staying with 3x 670's for any length of time. The previous system will be separated and with the 3x 670's put up for sale to fund a GPU replacement.

 

[BigDaddyKong]

Nice setup, keep us posted.

Is the MPS reading enough flow in your system, or do you think you need a larger flow sensor?

It's funny, you get used to the Aquasuite software, and it makes Link feel like a tinker toy.

Do you have a problem with the software getting glitchy after several days turned on? Mine stops working, and needs to restart itself.