[Build Log] H2O-Micro (<3 Liter watercooled gaming system)

[QinX]

This question is a bit unrelated to the build (which looks like it could be dope) but i was wondering what 3d software you are using for your renders?

I do my CAD work in Autodesk Inventor.

Then I import my model into Autodesk 3dsmax with Vray for the materials and lighting.

[QinX]

Hey guys,

 

Just a quick question I am curious about. What kind of finish would you like to see on the case? 

A. Normal Black Anodized Aluminum

B. Brushed Black Anodized Aluminum

C. Black Powder Coating

[Norman_the_Owl]

C.

[spwath]

Sand blasted, like ft05/ft04/ft02

[flibberdipper]

Awesome! What was that 120mm fan that you used for comparison? Looks a lot like the Delta Sensflow 92mm that I have.

[QinX]

Just a small update as it has been rather quiet now.

 

I’ve ordered the waterblocks and reservoir from my supplier, they should be getting milled come Monday, so with a bit of luck I’ll have them in my hands before the end of next week.

 

I’m also close to ordering the case itself from another supplier. Because of pricing I will be getting 2 Horizontal cases and 2 Vertical cases.

1 Horizontal and 1 Vertical case will be sand-blasted and then anodized either black of “space grey”

The other 2 will be powder coated black, matte and with a structured finish.

 

The only thing I need to order now are the O-rings for the blocks and the interconnects.

 

Awesome! What was that 120mm fan that you used for comparison? Looks a lot like the Delta Sensflow 92mm that I have.

 

It was either a Delta AFB1212HHE or QFR1224GHE Fan

[QinX]

I kinda made a mistake

 

The fitting that goes on the reservoir is not going to fit.

 

Now I have to hope I can find someone to lathe a lot of material of the fitting and hope the fitting doesn't mind being über skinny

 

[QinX]

Here's a nice update:

 

The blocks have been made and are on their way now!

 

The copper is fairly scratched judging from the pictures, but nothing a bit of spit and polish won't fix

They should arrive early this week and I will be taking some better pictures of them so stay tuned!

 

 

 

Really looking forward to trying them out!

[ForsakenLive]

Really looking forward to trying them out!

 

 

Looks like it needs to be a pretty thin and precise drill to make a decent block like these. How common is it to find a shop/machine that can do those pretty small micro-channels?

 

The custom block idea has been on my mind for a bit now, considering that where I live there is little to none availability of such WC components.

[QinX]

Looks like it needs to be a pretty thin and precise drill to make a decent block like these. How common is it to find a shop/machine that can do those pretty small micro-channels?

 

The custom block idea has been on my mind for a bit now, considering that where I live there is little to none availability of such WC components.

 

Honestly I have talked with 2 shops that I work with through my job and they both were able to do it.

 

Using a drill mill to cut the microchannels is possible but not time consuming and difficult. The way is to use a 5 blade slit saw. you can saw 5 channels at a time and it is super fast.

[QinX]

I've made some good progess and had some setbacks

 

First the progress:

I've received and assembled waterblocks, I had a small problem with the GPU waterblock but you can read that a little later in this post.

I also assembled and tested the complete system, for 2 days....

 

Here is an overview photo of the assembled system, all that is missing is the case and the HD-Plex board.

Click the image for a larger version

 

It seems the GPU has given up on me. I was in the middle of stress testing the system when all of a sudden the screen went black.

Systems seems to be running okay with the video output on the IGP, but no video output from the GTX970. Windows/BIOS also doesn't see the GPU.

 

I'm going to have to disassemble the system and remount the air cooler to test in on a secondary system. If it's dead I will have to RMA it.

 

Also a slight problem with the GPU block itself.

The micro-channel design I made has not been implemented correctly. This is leading to higher then expected temperatures on the GPU Core and imbalanced flow between GPU and VRM.

My supplier is going to look into it, where they made the translation error and send me a new block free of charge, that's some good service

To give an indication of what has happened, here are some Computational Simulations I've run.

The differences do seem very small but it is enough to make the GPU throttle the Boost clock because it is getting to warm.

 

CAD Drawing

Click the image for a larger version

 

CFD Difference in Flow, This shows a highlight of all the parts where the Velocity of the Water is 1 meter/s you can see that the velocity in the original design is smaller around the VRM

Click the image for a larger version

 

CFD Copper Temperatures: Here you can see the difference in Temperature of the Copper where it touches the RAM/VRM and GPU the Original Design has slightly darker colours, which means it is cooler. Especially the GPU Core is visibly cooler

Click the image for a larger version

 

CFD Core Temperature: Here I samples the average temperature of the GPU core. You can see the average has gone up by about 2C. Again the colour shows that the temperatures are higher.

Click the image for a larger version

 

I'm expecting the case to be done this week.

[CtW]

Damn, you go really in depth with this stuff! Did you major in this type of engineering in college or something?

[QinX]

Damn, you go really in depth with this stuff! Did you major in this type of engineering in college or something?

 

I actually don't have any degrees, everything is self-taught.

[Chris Stout]

I actually don't have any degrees, everything is self-taught.

Excellent work.

[The Benjamins]

 

Here's a nice update:

 

The blocks have been made and are on their way now!

 

The copper is fairly scratched judging from the pictures, but nothing a bit of spit and polish won't fix

They should arrive early this week and I will be taking some better pictures of them so stay tuned!

 

 

 

Really looking forward to trying them out!

 

do you CNC it or is it from a place, if so were? I would start doing models like that if I knew where i could get it made.

[QinX]

Stop! Update time.

 

So  as mentioned before the GPU stopped working, I thought the GPU itself might have died  but after I disassembled the system I found the cause.

It was my own fault, I hadn't checked my sources enough.

One of the purposes of the Riser was to disconnect the 12V from the motherboard and only supply 12V via the HD-Plex 250W Board.

I used http://pinouts.ru/Slots/pci_express_pinout.shtmlas my guide, but Pin A3 is stated as reserved. 

However according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_ExpressPin A3 is a +12V line.

 

Sooooooo... upon inspection the trace got vaporized, causing the 12V to be disconnected and the GPU to stay off, apparently the GPU requires a 12V supply via the PCIe slot. So after connecting the the 12V from the HD-Plex to the PCIe RIser, as I had foreseen in my design but had not done yet, everything worked like a charm again.

 

So I finally got the case. This is just the 2mm bare Aluminium. I have 1 more of each and they should be coming back from anodizing late next week. I will transfer to the new case and send the other 2 out for powder coating.

 

 

So next up is the BIG Squeeze. It all fits nicely. Only the HD-Plex board is not the way I had intended but works fine as it is now.

 

 

 

Having it up and running

 

System is running nicely with decent temperatures, running Unigine Valley at 1920x1200 8xAA.

 

But I do have a room ambient of only 15C so add at least 10 for the summer and the system can be classified as running toasty but stable, the fans are running at about 50%-60%.

 

The pump is rather noisy but I think I damaged it when I was drilling a hole, so I will be replacing it.

 

And as a final image at least for now, when drawing in CAD you sometimes forget to put things in perspective in terms of size. So when I received the O-rings I needed for the build I had a chuckle about the smallest one.

 

I wasn't quite expecting this small

 

What is on the ToDo list?

1) new GPU waterblock

2) anodized cases

3) Powerder coated cases

4) new reservoir and pump

5) more stress testing and finetuning the fans

 

If I can gather enough interest, say 10-20 people, I will look into a small batch production and a revision 2 that takes what I learned and make it easier to assemble and maintain, so I would appriacte some feedback about the design and "featureset". Pricing for the kit would depend on the amount of people, I can't give a real estimate, 5 or 15 people will make a big difference.

 

Hope you enjoyed the update!

[TheElt]

I am severely impressed, bravo man.

 

I think it would be nice if the case had the same kind of wide end at the bottom as it does at the top so you could run it horizontally, since it looks like in it's current state it would starve the rad fans of air, but I would buy one in a heartbeat (If I had the money)

 

I'm also impressed with the temps, how hot does it get under full CPU and GPU load?

[QinX]

do you CNC it or is it from a place, if so were? I would start doing models like that if I knew where i could get it made.

 

It was CNCed for me by a company, I'm not disclosing what company yet, I'm in talks about sponsorship with them for my next project

 

 

I am severely impressed, bravo man.

 

I think it would be nice if the case had the same kind of wide end at the bottom as it does at the top so you could run it horizontally, since it looks like in it's current state it would starve the rad fans of air, but I would buy one in a heartbeat (If I had the money)

 

I'm also impressed with the temps, how hot does it get under full CPU and GPU load?

Thanks man! I have a horizontal version of the case, different front and rear. I have yet to test the performance of it but the clearance underneath is 8.25mm. I will be testing it out over the weekend. I could also turn around the fans so they blow downwards if the current orientation is lacking in performance.

 

I'm looking for a good way to fully load the system, running prime95 will bottleneck the GPU test. Any suggestions?

[TheElt]

Thanks man! I have a horizontal version of the case, different front and rear. I have yet to test the performance of it but the clearance underneath is xmm. I will be testing it out over the weekend. I could also turn around the fans so they blow downwards if the current orientation is lacking in performance.

 

I'm looking for a good way to fully load the system, running prime95 will bottleneck the GPU test. Any suggestions?

I'd say in horizontal an upward exhaust would work better in a typical kinda cabinet setup where one could go, then just add dust filters to keep everything clean. Blowing down could work, but if it was put ontop of something then you wouldn't want the heat exhausting onto that.

 

Prime95 on Haswell is usually a bad idea anyway, download intel XTU and use that's built-in CPU benchmark, but I'm not sure what won't get bottlenecked by the CPU under load other than Furmark, and that wouldn't be a good representation of real world.

[QinX]

I'd say in horizontal an upward exhaust would work better in a typical kinda cabinet setup where one could go, then just add dust filters to keep everything clean. Blowing down could work, but if it was put ontop of something then you wouldn't want the heat exhausting onto that.

 

Prime95 on Haswell is usually a bad idea anyway, download intel XTU and use that's built-in CPU benchmark, but I'm not sure what won't get bottlenecked by the CPU under load other than Furmark, and that wouldn't be a good representation of real world.

Dust filters shouldn't really be needed. The airflow is only through the radiator which should be easy enough to clean, also I wouldn't be to sure about placing it inside a cabinet, at least not with some holes/fans. We are talking between 200W-275W heat output.

[Norman_the_Owl]

Out of curiosity, why did you go with a custom 2x80mm rad as opposed to a normal one?

 

Performance PCs have been selling dual 80mm rads for 15 dollars on sale recently...

Edit: They're thicker, but my point is they do exist  :wacko:

[QinX]

Out of curiosity, why did you go with a custom 2x80mm rad as opposed to a normal one?

 

Performance PCs have been selling dual 80mm rads for 15 dollars on sale recently...

Edit: They're thicker, but my point is they do exist  :wacko:

for 2 reasons, most radiators don't have the high FPI(Fins per Inch) that I was looking for. and the current height of the case is Radiator thickness+ fans. A 54mm radiator is thicker then the entire case is now. plus I had a special requirement for the fitting I am using.

I also used that exact radiator to spec my custom radiator .

 

Dammit... It's happening again: Clearing cache, different browser and even different device won't show me the pics... Same goes for TPU!

I hope it isn't related with my ISP... it won't let me connect to ANY tweakers.net directory

Anyway, happy to hear that works

 

I'm really sorry to hear that, In for the next project I will see if I can get my own hosting somewhere.

[OnCue]

This looks awesome! Very nice work, dude! I'll definitely be on board to buy a version 2, this would be fantastic for either a LAN PC or something to take with me to college.

 

Twice the performance of my PC in 1/8th the size. Kudos!

[Miqle]

That is one impressive machine!

[spwath]

I would want one, but i kinda have no money