nycesquire

The GPU side is complete now, and performing famously. Let's talk CPU/Mobo/Ram, power supply and SSDs. I've made a motherboard tray out of black acrylic. Here we are cutting it to size: And cutting a notch for it to slide cleanly into the aluminum extrusion Drilling each motherboard and SSD standoff Here we are all laid out Here, you can see how the tray slides cleanly into the extrusions that hold the case together. Also, you can see the placement of the PSU above where the SSDs will sit The CPU, an 88 Watt part (4690k) is connected to the heat sink with six heat pipes, all with only minor bending: It looks almost organic, doesn't it? Note the reflections that look like kinks. It's not really kinked much at all actually. Just bright lights. Here we are all sealed up and on the desk plugged in and running (a sketchup model of itself!) Not bad for zero fans! It's under 80 degrees with your usual (non Prime95 voltage voodoo) stress testing and runs under 60 degrees in Heaven and in games. Thoughts? Feedback? ...For those who want to know about totally unrealistic, "never happen in the real world" scenarios, here we are under Prime95's ridiculous stress test in a very warm (25c) room.

Enough with the design. Let's talk engineering. This is how I am cooling the GPU, which is an EVGA 1080 Super Clocked. First, I start with the HDPlex H5 GPU heatsink system. Shout out to the folks at for hooking me up with a few at a discount. They advertise the device as only being able to dissipate 95 watts. In truth, the block and eight heat pipes can dissipate significantly more than that. Much, much, much more than that. They are just hooking it up to the modest heat sinks on the side of their H5 Chassis, which limit the cooling capability. I don't have that problem. I'm drilling into 300mm beast. Behold: For the evaporator end (the end mounted to the GPU) I use two of the base H5 units back to back, sandwiching eight of my own 6mm heat pipes within. For the condenser end (the end mounted to the heat sink), I use the full h5 unit with the base and fins. Grease them up nicely: et voila, the complete GPU core cooling system: It raises the card off the heat sink enough to leave vertical room for the power connector, PCIE extender, board components, etc. Add a big block of aluminum to connect the VRM to the heat sink: Drill the necessary holes to securely attach said big block of aluminum to the heat sink (rube-goldberg-esque drill press setup incoming): Add some standoffs for ensuring good mounting pressure: And you have (what might be?) the world's first passive cooling for the Nvidia GTX 1080: No fans, no water, no pumps, nada. Here's a vertical shot: and here we are testing on the frankenbench (sorry for potato quality): Speaking of testing... RESULTS ARE GOOD. In my ambient room temp of 24 degrees C, here's temps after browsing in chrome for an hour or so: And of course, the temps that matter - after an hour or so of Heaven: 1911 is the boost clock I was getting with stock cooling, so there's no loss due to the cooling solution. You might note, though, that it is thermal throttling (pink bars). Indeed, all GTX 1080s will keep clocking up until they either throttle due to max voltage or max thermals. So, I may not have lost any performance, but my headroom for overclocking is probably diminished considerably, unless I'm willing to push past 84 degrees. Right now, I'm happy with it. I have some ideas to revamp the cooling solution, in which case I may subject it to the 1080ti when it's released. Guess we'll wait and see Next up, the CPU cooling solution! Until then, what do you think? As always, I welcome your feedback.

Thanks! The front, top and back are all open, actually. the translucent panels there are just how sketchup renders mesh Still, there are very good reasons to think the internal temp will be a problem. I have still not tested it with both the CPU and GPU attached together as shown. Yes, the CPU is heatpiped as well. One heat sink for each major heat generator. My early tests of the CPU heat pipe solution shows that it performs much worse than the GPU, but still well within tolerances. No throttling even after an hour at 100% usage! Will have pics of that soon. The problem there is that I can't press the CPU directly up against a heat sink. Thanks!

Admit it, you thought I had given up, didn't you? Here's the story: I got busy with work, time passed. I started building the GPU cooling solution (which is complete - as demonstrated by the screenshot above) then three things happened: 1) I started getting into the SFF forums and well... I decided that Antimemetic was just too damn big. So much wasted space on the inside! I am not an SLI guy, so why bother with four heat sinks anyway? Where am I going to find the space for the gull wings in my tiny apartment? 2) I realized that copper wouldn't match my new office decor. Most importantly: 3) I decided I wanted to keep it, not sell it, and I still wanted to automate it. So I completely redesigned the thing! No copper. No hinges. Instead, low key stealth: From the top: And from the bottom: Here we are without one of the heat sinks: And without the other: Here's a sense of size: With a case this tiny, it'll actually be quite difficult to maneuver around inside. It is only 100mm from the inside of one heat sink to the inside of the other. Indeed, the entire width of the case, heat sinks included is less than 165mm... SO HOW ABOUT WE AUTOMATE IT The automation separates the heat sinks by a total of 200 mm for a total of 300mm of space inside to work. It is driven by a single large linear actuator. You can see the two rods that will push the heat sinks out. They ride on a set of drawer slides: Let's be honest with each other though: These heat sinks are monstrously heavy. There's no guarantee that the slides will support the weight without sagging or otherwise falling apart. If, in the sad face case, the automation is unsuccessful, It'll be a dark day, but I will settle for this alternative: An even tinier, but much simpler and sturdier case. Next up, an in-depth description of the cooling solution (with pictars). I'd love your feedback!

GPU Cooling solution is done. Details on the way..

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that I've done more than needed here. Over-engineering FTW! I think the bottom two heat blocks are overkill and will be removed. Heatpipes don't work well in that configuration, and I have sufficient surface area for contact anyway. As to the VRMs, there is currently a heat spreader (you can see it in black) covering the entire card. I will either attach a few heatsinks to the spreader or just use small copper heat sinks on each VRM individually. Do you think the distance between the copper blocks is important, or will thermal equilibrium take over and make the arrangement irrelevant?

I'd like to solicit some feedback on the cooling solution. Can you suggest a better arrangement than the following? Imagine that all of the copper blocks are connected by heat pipes like the two central channels at the top (the chassis is laying on its side with the top facing the camera): here we are simulating an installed card, looking in from the side: And the other side: And the top again: Paging @Stefan1024: What do you think?

After many moons lacking posts, the folks over at OCN got a little riled up and threatened to send a team of storm troopers to China and force them to ship my heat pipes. It worked: Updates coming...

You're generally correct. Heat pipes work best when the cool side is above the hot side. That's known as gravity-assisted flow. The working liquid evaporates at the hot end, rising up to the cool end. It condenses, and then flows back down to the warm end. Heat pipes will work even without gravity assistance, though, because they have wicks. Still, they work more efficiently in the orientation you describe. I'm using heat pipes in my project (linked in sig).

You should consider brazing each of the aluminum pieces together. you can do it at home without welding. That would seal everything up quickly and reliably.

It's a GTX 980! I'll use 4-6 6mm heat pipes, as necessary.

AHEM. Check my sig.

wherein @Prysin expresses his opinion in all caps.

Roughly 14" cubed.