Project: Dark Forces

Lazaredz · Post by **Lazaredz** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:19 pm

While I have done some minor moding in the past (mostly blowholes) I've decided to make a run with this case.

The case is a P180B w/window. I am not only going to watercool this thing and run with a red lighting motif, but I've decided to go with a Dark Side Star Wars theme.

In order to get the pump in the right place and have better airflow I decided to remove the top HD cage fan grill and the back fan grill. Both were cut using a dremel and smothing out the edges a bit with sandpaper.

Note that the front cut LOOKS to be offcenter due to the screw holes in the case. However those holes are not used. The front fan is screwed onto a plastic plate that slides into place and does center on the fan hole.

I had to cut out the roof of the 3.5 floppy bay as I needed more clearance for my pump and just removing the lowest 5.25 bay wasn't going to be enough. I decided to leave the sides on the 3.5 bay as they provide good cover for wires and such.

Got the case back from the painters. It went pretty well. I used an interior auto paint, so it was flat and a vinyl base (I think). The guy did a pretty good job in my opinion. I'll be adding in the PSU, HD, and a couple of fans today.

More pics in a bit.

You can see here how the interior case paint matches up to the exterior finish. Looks good to me, just less shine (and thus less fingerprints and dust show up).

PSU, HD cage, & fan in place (Yate Loon D12SL-12 will be used T/O)

As you can see I allready have a bit of touch up to do here and there. Not a big deal but basicly anywhere where its going to scrape will need a fine touch brush to it.

The idea here is to mount a low speed fan to vent the case and also provide mounts for the radiator. The rad is going to be a DD Black Ice 240GTS with 2 of the Yate Loons mounted to the BACK to PULL air through it. I do wish the screws were a bit longer but 50mm is the longest I could find at Lowes in this size. I may fiddle with this more in the future.

This is some simple floor padding bought at Lowes. I put some cheap flat black over it to match. I plan on using this plus some velcrow to mount the pump in the case.

Velcrow in place.

Padding on top.

Pump in place also.

Hopefully this will dampen the vibrational effects of the pump on the case and reduce overall noise.

More to come.

Lazaredz · Post by **Lazaredz** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:20 pm

Cooling the MCP (SB) on the 680i is a bit of a bitch with a 8800GTX. Bluntly it was REALLY poor planning on Nvidia's part. I had been thinking about this for weeks now as the MCP does need cooling but I didn't want to put a little chipset screamer down there.

SO, I did a little cutting work on a DD Maze 4 chipset block and came up with:

The straight screwslot on the "north" end had to go as A) it was to thick and would not fit under the 8800 and B) if I used it to line up with the MB hole, the barbs would have been in a less accessiable position.

Its no where NEAR as tight as it would be with a real setup, but it only twists a little. Seems to be making good contact and that is what is important.

I'm giving this a quick try before I commit. I want to cool the MCP (SB) WITHOUT a louad 40mm screamer chipset cooler on it. I bought a MAZE 4 chipset block from DD just before they put out a 680i chipset (NB) cooler, so I had an extra. After doing alot of measuring and thinking I decided to cut off the straight screwslot as it was in the way (too high and ran into the 8800GTX card) AND was not in the right position to give me good access to the barbs.

The zip ties are for now. It gives me good enough contact. The block moves if pushed but holds in place if left alone. IF this works out allright I'll cut the tied and use thermal ADHESIVE to hold the block on.

The rest of my stuff showed today and I cannot stress enough how much more flexable and easy to work with the masterkleer tubing is as opposed to the home depot stuff. Night and day people. WELL worth the money.

The 7/16th tubing work VERY well on the 1/2 barbs IF you boil the tubing so its more maluable. Once again the pump barbs were the hardest part but I eventually worked them on (with only minor steam burns to show for it).

Looking good to now to add the actual fluid. I'm using FluidXP+Extreme red.

So far so good. No leaks and I probably have 90% of the air out of the loop. Can't hear the pump at all nor any trickle from the rad. I'll be turning it off and on a few times while tipping it here and there. Its a little harder this time as I have to beware of the intake from the res this time, its not gonna stay flat like the testbed and I don't want air to get back into the loop.

Now we play the waiting game. /fingerscrossed

Lazaredz · Post by **Lazaredz** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:20 pm

LIGHTS, WATER, ACTION!!!!!!

More to come (and a little more wire management.)

I did some finetuning and was able to get 3.6 solid so:

EDIT BY MOD: THE FOLLOWING PICS ARE WAY TOO BIG TO BE POSTED IN THIS FORUM. BREAK THEM UP AND REDUCE DOWN TO 640PX WIDTH AS PER RULES.

http://aloader.com/files/67/3.6%20idle.JPG

http://aloader.com/files/67/3.6%20max.JPG

http://aloader.com/files/67/3.6%20GPU%2 ... stable.JPG

The secret was to bump the SPP to 1.55. Have not had any issues since then. I could probably bump the CPU even more now (with some added voltage) but I'm VERY happy with my results and am starting to hit my acceptable limit on heat.

I'll play with this for a couple of days and if no issues, then back to working on the 8800GTX overclock. I think if I can find a way to up the voltage, I will be able to get some SICK overclocks with it.

NOTE:

nvappfilter.dll (or nvidias firewall) was cause HUGE issues on my machine. Specificily with utorrent but I also suspect it was involved with some other lockups I had. Anyway I did some research and I am not the only person having a problem. Best answer I found (for now) was to uninstall the nvidia control panel and wipe it from my system (crap cleaner/driver cleaner). Unfortunately this also disables the optimizaitons they put into the ethernet port (first packet and such) but at least its stable.

I'll probably try to get the control panel loaded back on the system again once I'm SURE about stability (plus it gives nvidia/evga time to sort a few issues out).

Some night pics:

Lazaredz · Post by **Lazaredz** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:24 pm

I'll be doing some fan experiments when I get done adjusting the overclocks. Hopefully I can pull the front intake fan by the pump and the lower chamber fan behind the hard drives. This would not only reduce the noise but hopefully lead to better cable management.

Anywho, its very quiet right now (that heavy front door helps ALOT) but I'll take even quieter.

Just wanted to thank SPCR for all its info and insight over the last year or so and show that you CAN have a high end gaming QUIET computer with a little thought and effort.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 4:45 pm

Wow! Looks nice!

Shukuteki · Post by **Shukuteki** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 7:18 pm

The red really looks nice!

Also, good choice on the Yate Loons.

skudmunky · Post by **skudmunky** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:17 am

very nice looking rig! I wish I had money for an E6600 :p

hope the southbridge cooling works out for you.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:34 am

That's a quality build - good job! (But it looks a bit loud IMO.)

Lazaredz · Post by **Lazaredz** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:05 am

HammerSandwich wrote:That's a quality build - good job! (But it looks a bit loud IMO.)

All I hear is a mild swish of fans. And I mean mild.

Like I said I'm going to work on taking out the front intake and bottom mid-fan and even perhaps one of the top/back fans.

You CANNOT hear the pump at all, nor the 60mm on the PSU. HD have seek sounds but not a rattle that vibrates/resonates with the case. Just a percise "tick-tick" when appropriate. The DVD remains the loudest part (as usual) but I only ever use it to install stuff (after that I get no CD patches or mount an image).

I MAY upgrade the rad to a 360 Thermochill PA 120.3. I'm going to do some research and find out if it would REALLY be worth the effort or not.

The southbridge cooling is working just fine. 40C on a VERY hot little chip. If/when someone comes up with a REAL solution, I'll get that, but for now it works (and no little 40mm screamer!)

Now if any ARTISTS want to help out, shoot me a PM. I need someone with photoshop skills to help me generate some case art for printing.

Thx

unimatrix0 · Post by **unimatrix0** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 8:41 pm

Hey nice looking, good job Lazaredz. I like your dedicated "throne" for the pump

About the tubing you are probably right about the home depot tubing; that's what I have right now and it's a pain to maneuver, not malleable at all. Iâ€™ll have to give the masterkleer a try.

Taking a closer look on your tubing, you donâ€™t seem to be using any sort of clamps; Iâ€™d put some if I were you

McBanjo · Post by **McBanjo** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 3:28 am

Nice...

I've sent this link to my girlfriend, she might have time to help you with that art

Bories36 · Post by **Bories36** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:10 pm

omg thats amazing

If i had the money and time, I would defenetly do that

v3n · Post by **v3n** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 4:07 pm

Awesome job

Whats the voltage on the CPU?

Whats stoppint you get to 4ghz?

porkchop · Post by **porkchop** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:01 pm

never really been one for bling (until the first time i saw this anyways

), but when its done so well and thoroughly, its simply amazing.

fantastic job.

Elixer · Post by **Elixer** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 6:07 pm

It looks like you could go without quite a few of those internal fans. A single fan blowing out should be all you need to keep your insides cool. The only thing dumping heat into the upper chamber of the case is your ram and some VRMs and other chips on the motherboard. The only thing you really need to worry about is the voltage controllers on your motherboard (and only because your system is highly overclocked). If you could get some nice heatsinks on them you definitely go without any fans in the top chamber.

Lazaredz · Post by **Lazaredz** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 6:26 pm

Voltage is at 1.46 (actual). And not being TOTALLY insane kept me from 4.0.

I've since removed the intake fan and the bottom chamber fan. Good idea about getting some sinks on the voltage controlers. I assume those are the little hot boxes around the CPU with R50 written on them. Those are pretty much the only things that are hot at this point.

I've done some improved cable managment since last shots too.

TBSN · Post by **TBSN** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:10 pm

That is the coolest looking case/ liquid-cooling setup I've ever seen. And I usually hate lights and other computer 'bling.' What is that black tubing in the more recent pictures? Are there cables in those tubes?

I think you could definately get away with getting rid of the top 120mm case fan, for example. Just seal up that port and you can get rid of the grill on top of the case I believe.

I'm digging the Star-Wars themed look, too. Nice job.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:05 pm

That looks awesome. I instantly started thinking Darth Vader... Black with red... Mean looking... Awesome ^^

DanW · Post by **DanW** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:49 am

very nice paint, what paint did he/you use?