Gidday LTT forums I’m going to be putting together a submerged streaming PC for my lounge and here shall be my build log. I’m hoping things will progress at a reasonable pace but it will be very dependent on how work goes as at the moment I can only spare a few hours here and there (a good chunk of which goes to gaming or drinks with friends)… anyway on with the show...
Background: I was originally planning a small water cooled custom gaming PC but as I got further and further into the planning stage work got busier and busier so that had to be shelved, the other project I had rattling around in my head was a file server upgrade but alas for that I needed the case my gaming PC currently resides in About this time Steam in-home streaming added support for Nvidia hardware encoding which got me thinking “why don’t I make a low power streaming PC for the lounge?”, pairing that thought with my long time curiosity about mineral oil submerged systems this project was born!
Aim: To create a low power PC that can handle movie and Steam in-home streaming while not being too time consuming.
Hardware: I started by looking around for suitable hardware, after reading that basically any Intel CPU with Quick Sync could handle Steam in-home streaming and with all the noise about the new Pentiums at the time I was thinking this would be a good choice but came to the forums fist looking for input/experiences. After a suggestion from Electronics Wizardy to look at the Baytrail platform I came across the Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V, a quad core Celeron with a 10W TDP adding to that 8GB of DDR3, a 80W picoPSU, a Samsung 840 120GB SSD and a Hauppauge DVB-T tuner I had lying around I had my base hardware to work off.
Peripherals: There were two main types of controls I would need for this build, the first being a wireless keyboard and mouse for ease of use on the desktop and the second being a couple of gamepads, this being a lounge PC the games will be casual multiplayer games for the most part (Nidhogg, Mortal combat, console emulators, etc.). After looking around a bit I found a nice clean looking keyboard with a built in trackpad so I wouldn’t have to fumble around with a mouse on the couch, it’s the Rapoo E9180P. The controllers will be Xbox ones because I find my current 360 one very comfortable, I was hoping to get Xbox One controllers but at this point there is no wireless option for the PC so unless they come out before I finish I’ll be settling with a pair of Xbox 360 controllers.
Design and housing: After the core components were decided upon I could get into finding a suitable aquarium to build around and nut out a design. I ended up settling on a Dymax IQ5 aquarium (including pump) because it was a nice size for a mITX build, admittedly it was a little taller and deeper then I would have liked but those are things I could work around and it happened to be on special at the time.
A while later I had come up with this:
This is still a bit of a WIP and I’m crap at doing natural forms (rock and drift wood)… well that and I don’t have the time to spend gussying everything up, even the motherboard was pulled from my gaming PC design (ASRock Z77) but it’s enough to get me going. The dimensions are 280D x 230W x 315H. In the meantime I ran around trying to find the elusive white mineral oil without having to get it shipped from overseas (the cost of shipping on several Kg of oil was never going to be pleasant), buying 60 x 200ml bottles of baby oil or something impractical like that. I also looked at air pumps, bubblers, gravel and liveries. As luck would have it I managed to find some mineral oil locally (a company called Canadian Oil of all things ), after going in to collect a 20L bottle and having a bit of a chat to the lady at the warehouse about what I intended to do with it I managed to get a decent cash discount which helped keep the budget in check
Some of the considerations while designing the case were:
Wicking/siphoning – Due to the aquarium being slightly taller than I would have liked I wanted to have the I/O under the water line to keep the board more central, this is something you generally try to avoid due to the cables wicking and ultimately siphoning the oil out of the case so to get around this I will be building a custom I/O PCB at the back of the box with some short run cables creating a break point between the inside and outside of the box. This panel will also have some convenience items like power/reset/clear CMOS switches and light/pump control. Mineral oil resistance – Some materials don’t respond well to mineral oil so I am trying to soak samples of everything I intend to put in it from tubing to bubblers for at least a week to see how they hold up. So far everything has gone well with the exception of plasti dip… because the memory and picoPSU I have are on green PCBs I had intended to plasti dip them black but after putting a small length of plasti dipped tube into my soaking jug and waiting a couple of days the plasti dip coating had turned to jelly so the next step will be trying regular spray paint. Heat – Because of the low power system heat isn’t a concern so no additional radiator etc. would be required however I am considering adding a fan to the CPU heat sink purely for aesthetics. Stickers – All stickers on the parts will have to be removed as the oil will dissolve the glue and leave me with barcode fish swimming around in my tank :wacko: Check valve – A check valve on the air line is necessary to prevent any siphoning when the air pump is turned off which would likely be a common occurrence to both mute the sound and visual distraction when watching movies etc. Bubblers – I wasn’t sure how much air pressure I would need and if I wanted to go with a bubble wall or air stone so I picked up both a wall and stone and grabbed the weakest air pump for a starter (Blue Planet Bubbilo SP100) as in theory it would also be the quietest with the thought I could keep one upping it until I had a satisfactory flow. As luck would have it the pump was more than enough, I now just have to decide on whether I prefer a column of bubbles off to one side or a wall across the front of the motherboard… at the moment I’m leaning towards the wall but am concerned it might be a bit much?
What do you all think? A column of bubbles coming up from behind the driftwood or a wall across the front of the motherboard (back of the chamber)?
UPDATES: UPDATE #1: I/O and control board UPDATE #2: Ready, steady, bake! UPDATE #3: Pew, pew lasers…
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($339.94 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.66 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VII HERO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($204.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($174.29 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($129.99 @ Amazon) Boot Drive
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($149.98 @ OutletPC) For storage
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 3GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($504.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 450D ATX Mid Tower Case ($109.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1684.15
Build link- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gZD7Mp
This system would be able to play any game with ultra setting at 1080p with a decent fps.
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