I am proud to present "Aeris Lignea"
Aeris Lignea, which means Copper and Wood, is a custom built computer desk with the computer and water cooling system integrated into the desk. The desk was entirely designed and built by me over the course of the last 6 months.
Before starting this project, I had never welded steel or sweated copper pipe. I learned as I went and made many practice pieces before attempting the real thing.
Once I had decided on the materials I wanted to use for the main desk construction, I started to design it out on paper. The biggest challenge I was going to face was that I wanted to make sure all the computer and cooling components stayed inside the 8" wide I beam. I had to custom build all the mounts for every component to achieve this. I needed to use PCI-E Riser cables to extend from the motherboard to the 3 PCI-E cards (2x GPU's and 1 NIC).
Another challenge was that I did not want any SSD's or HDD's visible. This is why I went with just the 2x M.2s. However since I am a video production guy, I needed to have a large amount of storage. To achieve this I actually built a separate 36TB storage server. This is housed in one of the other areas in the office. The desk system and the storage server are connected via a 10gb network. I am getting sustained transfer speeds of around 800MB/s.
Here are the specifications for the desk and computer:
Desk Components
- The frame is constructed out of 8" wide steel I-Beam.
- The desktop is 2" thick African Zebra Wood. The two reservoir and pump towers are also made from Zebra Wood.
- All the copper piping is 100% functional. They are carrying the water to and from the computer and cooling components.
Computer Components:
-CPU: Intel i9-7980XE Delidded and Overclocked to 4.5Ghz
-RAM: 128gb Corsair DDR4 running at 2666mhz
-Motherboard: MSI X299 Gaming M7 ACK
-GPUs: 2x EVGA 1080Ti Kingpin Hydrocopper Edition OC'd to 2083mhz
-Storage: 2x Samsung 960 EVO 1TB nVME M.2 SSDs
-PSU: EVGA 1600w P2 with full custom sleeved cable's by me (using Teleios Carbon Sleeving).
Network: ASUS 10gb Network adapter
-Audio: Schiit Audio Modi2 DAC and Valhalla2 Tube Amplifier with Beyerdynamic DT770 250ohm headphones.
Cooling Components (Dual Loop System):
-Pumps: 4x EKWB D5s
-Reservoirs: 4x EKWB 250mL X3s
-Waterblocks: EKWB Monoblock
-Radiators: 2x EKWB 480mm Coolstream XE
-Fans: 8x Coolermaster Masterfan Pro AirBalance
-Piping: 1/2" Copper
-Fittings: EKWB Compression
-Flow Meters: LZT M15 Mechanical Fluid Meter
Some fun specs:
-Total weight of the desk is roughly 600lbs.
-There is 87ft of copper tubing to complete the watercooling runs.
-There are 120 copper fittings, all of which needed to be sweated together
-All the copper piping has been sprayed with a matte clear coat finish to protect them from turning green over time.
-The total volume of coolant for the system is 9.7L.
-To fill the loops I need to use a 500gph pond pump to force the water into the system. I can have both loops filled and purged of air within 15 minutes.
-Over 90% of the wiring is not visible unless you are on your back looking at the bottom of the desk.
-The LED lighting on the desk is actually the Philips HUE light strips so they can be controlled even if the computer is off.
The overall size of the desk is 7ft wide, 3.5ft deep, and 33" tall.
I need to give a HUGE shout-out to my wife for letting me do this. I spent more time away from home trying to get this thing done than I probably should have. I also need to give a massive shout out to Dave at Hughes Manufacturing. It was his shop that I did the majority of the fabrication. He taught me everything about welding and sweating copper pipe. I couldn't have pulled this off without him.
If you have any questions about this project, please feel free to ask!
For a full built log, please visit this link: https://www.cmws.global/modderszone/xtc-mortuus/blog-posts
Thank you for looking!
