southpark11235

This is my second time building a small powerful PC designed to be easily moved between homes. The loop is designed to be easily drained and GPU removed for long transport. It is a CAD/gaming PC for my little brother Jimmy. He needs to be able to move it half way across the US 2-4 times a year for school. I used hard line tubes for everything because I don’t think I could have gotten soft tubing to work for some of the weirder bends without kinking. The run between the 240 and 280 rad is a tight 3” s bend with a 90-degree twist in it. It does not need to work in a high vibration environment all the time so I felt I could get away with hard line tubing. My original idea was build something the GPU could be left it, so that is why I went for a vertical GPU mount. However, PCIE 4.0 proved to be a problem for this. The PCIE 3.0 riser for the case prevents the GPU from displaying anything and you can’t change the slot on the motherboard in BIOS without being able to see. I got a PCIE 4.0 riser to fix this, but it is flimsy. I don’t trust it for long travel and considering Jimmy might want to fly with it GPU out is the safer way. If I had known this from the start, I would have gone with a normal GPU mount and saved myself the headache. My first portable build bonces around in a semi-truck all day and is fine because the riser mount system is so much better. I drilled two holes in the case for drain and fill ports. There is a t spilt off the 240 rad to drain the system and it work well for that. The fill port is connected to the low half of the reservoir because the fill port plug extends blow the top reservoir plug and I could not make a good run to that. This ended causing an unexpected problem will filling. Air could not escape the fill tube so the coolant was stuck in the reservoir. The reservoir’s top plug is blocked by the fill port so I could not easily remove it. I tried blowing in to the fill port to get the coolant moving and that was a big mistake. I got the coolant to move, but air bubbles got past the coolant and pressurized the system. When I tried to stop blowing, I felt coolant trying to come back up into my mouth. I quick blew the coolant back down and tried to come up with a plan. I sat there for about two minutes kissing the case before my cheeks where about to give. I didn’t want to spill coolant all over the brand new PC so my best plan was to take the coolant in my mouth. As I let the pressure go, I was force fed coolant. I tried to keep it all in my mouth, but some went down my throat. I ran over to the sink and spit out the coolant, saving the PC and the cost of my mouth. The coolant was sweet so I figured it was glycol based. I don’t think I drank a lot of it, but to be safe I decided to counteract the poison with ethanol. I don’t drink, but I had a bottle of cooking rum above the oven. Now I don’t know if liquor can expire, but I swear this stuff was. It was the nastiest thing I ever drank and it was doing somersaults in my stomach. The bottle had been sitting above the oven for over a decade getting heat cycled. When I tried to put the cap back on it desegrated in my hand. I poured the rest down the sink and the bottom of the bottle was chunky. In the end I cut down an allen key to get the top plug out of the reservoir and let the air escape out of that hole. The PC has a 5950x and a 3080 in it so I knew it would have to deal with a lot of heat. To keep the temps down I used liquid metal between the GPU die and water block, and between the CPU HIS and water block. The case barely fits a slim 240 and 280 rad. I had to use a hammer to get the 240 rad in. Coolant flows from CPU and GPU to the 240 rad on the side. Then it goes to the 280 on the front before returning to the pump reservoir combo. The front 280 is an intake and the side 240 is exhaust. There are vents in the bottom of the case so the 240 should get some fresh air mixed in with the warm air of the 280. The 240 is the first and hotter rad so that should be the best cooling order. The fans are just the stock Phanteks 120mm and matching 140mm fans. At full speed they are fairly quite and don’t seem to move a lot of air through the rads. I think I should change them for some better/higher pressure fans in the future. For now, Jimmy just really wanted to start using his shiny new PC. The motherboard has a bunch of tiny fans on it for active cooling. I set the PSU fan to always be on so that should keep the motherboard happy. Overall, I feel like it came out ok, but if I where to do it again I would change somethings. If I didn’t only look at vertical GPU mounts I feel like I could have found a better case and gotten it smaller. Something that could fit a fat 280 with better fans would probably have worked better. Also I should have tried harder for soft line tubes. However, Jimmy is happy with his new blazing fast PC. Part list AMD 5950x GIGABYTE AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE 3080 ASUS ROG Strix X570-I 32GB G.SKILL Trident Z Neo DDR4 4000 Seasonic PRIME TX-750 2TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2 EK-Quantum Velocity - AMD Nickel Plexi EK-CoolStream SE 240 EK-CoolStream SE 280 EK-Quantum Kinetic FLT 120 D5 PWM D-RGB Plexi EK-HD PETG Tube 10/12mm

I would guess filled with water about 100 pounds. I like big cases and room to work. This build is supposed to be crazy excessive and ridiculous. If I remember my thought process for the actual dimensions it was as long as the radiator, tall and wide enough for two 200mm fans and two disk drives plus a card reader.

I have been working on this build on and off for a long time now and it is finally in a state were I want to post it. It is about as finished as it will ever be, because with projects like this there is always tweaking to be done. Currently the PC hardware is: CPU: i7-7700k CPU/Motherboard cooler: EK-FB ASUS Z270E Strix RGB Monoblock GPU: Gigabyte AORUS GTX 1080 Ti Waterforce with liquid metal form the previous owner Motherboard: ASUS PRIME Z270-A RAM: G.SKILL TridentZ 16GB 3200 MHz PSU: Corsair AX1200 Gold (from a very old version of my PC with 3 GPUs) SSD: Samsung 970 EVO M.2 1TB HD: Three random drives totaling 11 TB Now on to the interesting part of the build. I build the case from 1 inch and 1x2 inch square steel tubing with 16 gauge sheet steel for the panels. Originally I was just going to use 1 inch square tubing at the front and back of the case with the sheet metal connecting them. However that turned out to be surprisingly floppy, so I ran two pieces of square tubing top and bottom to sport them. I had ran out of 1 inch tubing at this point and the place I get my steel from was out of it too, so I got 1x2 inch tubing for the rest of the build. This did not help with the weight of this beast. For the back panel carving out the holes for the I/O plate, PSU and GPU was not too hard, but the fan mesh took forever. I had to drill something like 100 holes in the back and then I used a countersink bit on each side of hole to clean them up. I bought a cheap drill press to help and it was still not fun. The front mesh went a lot smother once I figured out a good source for the mesh. I ended up using a gutter guard I cut up to give access to the two disk drives and card reader. I tried welding it in place at first, but it just kept melting and a bunch of set taping screws turn out to be a much better way of attaching it. I made a motherboard mount out of 1/4 inch steel bar that I welded to the top and bottom of the case. The mount its self was not too hard to make but tapping the hole for the tiny standoffs was a nightmare. In total on the case I think I had to tap 13 of those holes and I think I broke 10 taps doing that. Those taps are not designed to be used in sold steel. To mount the disk drives and card reader I made a little cage out of 1/4 inch bar steel and a strip of some bendable flat bar. For the hard drives I just bent two "U"s out of the flat steel bar and weld that to the bottom of the case. To mount the radiator I welded two bits of square tubing to the bottom of the case and bent two more "U" out of the flat steel. I screw the flat steel over the radiator to hold it place. Both side panels are just big pieces of sheet steel I cut to size and welded quick release hinges to one side and have two bolts hold the other side. They can swing open and be removed easily to get in side the PC. For the window I just cut a big hole in the side panel and bolted a piece of acrylic I found to the inside. I used way more bolts than I needed because I though it look cool. For the water loop I used a copper/brass radiator out of a 1978 Chevy Nova. I found adapters to take the hose size down to 3/4 inch right out of the radiator. It then goes through the top of the case to a seconder heater core water pump out of a BMW Mini. To power the pump I got 12v form a moxel connector that I feed into a speed controller. The power then goes to the pump which I have mount to the underside of the top of the case. There is a potentiometer on top of the case so I can control how much the pump pumps. This turned out to be really useful for beading the loop because I can't turn the case on its side to try to get the bubbles out. At full tilt the pump can just power force the bubbles out and I can turn it back down for normal use. After the pump there is a 3/4 to 1/2 inch adapter. Then it goes in to the CPU followed by the GPU. Then there is another 1/2 3/4 adapter before the custom brass reservoir. I made the reservoir out of a sheet of brass. I bent it into a cube shape with no top and use copper rivets and solder to seal the sides. I put two 3/4 connectors on the sides for the inlet and outlet. I also put a barb on the side for bleed port of the radiator, but that turned out to be useless. On top I used an aftermarket bleed screw for an e36 (90's BMW 3 series) has the fill hole, because that is my first car and I love it. I though it would be a nice little touch, but filling from the reservoir turned out not to work. I ended up adding a fill port to the top of the tube that runs between the radiator and pump. I also put a drain valve in right after the GPU after an expensive lesson I got while trying to drain the loop. That cost me a GPU. To turn on the PC I put a key on top to keep with the automotive theme. I can also start wirelessly it with a key fob I leave on my desk. On top I also have a display that show the water temp right before it goes in to the CPU. Today I ran a stress test to get temps. Nothing is currently over clocked and the CPU bounces between 62 and 72C while the GPU peaked at 34C. That is after a 15 test with both the CPU and GPU being hit. I think I would need to delid the CPU to get the temps down. I am happy with the GPU temps but the CPU temps are disappointing. The radiator is passively cooled. I have be using versions of this PC for a long time and I never see the radiator pump out much above ambient temp water. Here is a link to a photo album with a bunch more pictures of the PC. https://flic.kr/s/aHsmMe6yqf

Well, I redid the loop to as show on picture two and I think I just fried my 1080 ti like an idiot. A quick test shows slightly more stable temps but not much better. I think I am done for a while and I am going to forget about my PC for now.

Thanks, I though it was something I screwed up with the loop routing. I will try getting rid of the Ys and see if that does not fix it. If not I will try delidding. After all the time and effort I spent building everything it sucked to not get the temps I was hoping for. The radiator is about 31x18x2 inches counting the end tanks and the pump is a secondary coolant pump for a bunch of cars. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BHKX9PA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I build a custom water loop to cool my i7-7700k and 1080 ti. Right now it is doing a good job cooling the GPU, but the CPU is getting warmer than I would like, for how big the radiator and pump are. Under a stress test the GPU will quickly get up to 38C and stay there fairly steady. Even after 30 minutes the GPU will still be at 38C and the coolant coming out of the pump is at room temp. I am happy with these temps and that is what I expect with how overkill everything is. The CPU on the other hand under a stress test will shoot up to 60C and bounce between 50C and 60C every few seconds. This is with no overclocking. It gets even hotter when I overclock it. If I remember correctly it was peaking near 80c with the same 10c bounce with the hottest OC I tried. I currently have the CPU stock clocked has I want to get the temps under control before I spend the time dialing the prefect OC. The water coming out of the pump is always at room temp and turning the pump up does not seem to help. Currently I have the water flowing from the radiator to the pump then a Y splitter into the GPU and CPU blocks separately then into a Y merge then the reservoir. I think maybe the GPU is less restrictive and is taking most of the water flow from the CPU and that is what is casing my issue. That or there is something else I am missing and hopefully someone here would know what that is. Currently I have two ideas on how to fix the issue. One, I could ditch the Ys and run from the pump to the CPU to the GPU directly. Two, I could get a second pump and split before them so the CPU and GPU would each have there own pump. I drew some simple pictures of the loop to make it clear what it is now and what I am proposing.

You don't need to mess around with momentary switches to make this work. A normal car ignition switch is exactly what the OP wants and this is a simple first mod to do. With a car ignition switch when you turn the key all the way to start a connection is made and it turn on the starter motor. There is a spring in the ignition that pushes against the key and tries to turn it back to on so you half to hold the key to use the starter motor. After you let go of the key it springs back to on and the connection is broken. To use this system in a PC all you have to do is put one wire for the power button on the ignition's common and the other wire on start. That way when you turn the key to start the power button will be held down and as soon as you release the key the power button will be released. With the key in the on position no contact will be made and it will not affect the PC. In that state you can turn the key to off and remove it if you want. I have attached a rough drawing of how to wire the system with an option to keep the normal power button. https://www.ebay.com/itm/UNIVERSAL-IGNITION-SWITCH-LOCK-FLUSH-MOUNT-12-VOLT-2-KEY-3-POSITION-OFF-ON-START/272106578888?epid=1054512195&hash=item3f5ad0e3c8:g:2ocAAOSwCypWmbcj&vxp=mtr