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[KzE]

Hi Forum,

my 10 year old watercooled 2.8ghz quadcore leaked a year ago and there's something causing bluescreens from the hardware.. It's time to build something new.
I once was very good at this stuff, but 10 years of not paying much attention to hardware development.. you need a hell lot of time to get back into it.

All of linus' videos helped great there. Thanks Linus & team!

For my build I was inspired by wall pcs (google it, plenty there) and this guy who cooled his pc passively, build log here. Now I am ready for a build log:

Requirements I made up:

• On the wall
• quiet
• no fans
• portable for lans (gaming get-togethers, like physically. Is that still a thing with young people?)

I like hardware and specs, but in the end it has to look good. If a floppy looks good, I'll put that, so don't complain about hardware not being the best I could get.

First I made a render, so you can see where this is going. After that I will post progress on the production of all the parts. That will take some time. I hope to be done by the end of the year. Dimensions are about 160cm to 70cm.
 

[Brennan Price]

I am sure this will look awesome 

[8-Bit Ninja]

"portable for lans (gaming get-togethers, like physically. Is that still a thing with young people?)"

 

How are you going to wall mount it, and have it portable? I'm interested. But that render looks awesome, needs more rgb tho  

[NoobCase]

Thats a lot of heat spreaders how will you make it portable? 

[KzE]

Concept

The following screenshots are out of my CAD and show the current state of the project.

But even here, it's not all up to date.

I did not make more renders after the ones I posted already.

 

The whole Idea is a board off glassfibre reinforced resin on which the black aluminium

coolers are mounted. What's not coolers I call the insert which contains the computer hardware.

This part is mounted on a cutout of the mentioned glassfibre board. If all goes well, this part

will be detachable.

The plastic glass is so that light can come from the back. It will be white only. rgb, sorry 8 bit-ninja,

is just not my style.

 

The insert holds the watertank and pump which is connected via soft tubes and drycouplings

to the copper tubing that runs in a circle under the aluminium coolers. When I want to go somewhere

the insert will be detached from the main rig and will be much smaller. I made a handle in the insert.
(see later picture of board)
With the detachement I lose my cool (ha, good one) and thats why there will be a second small

ghetto rig, made from some cheep plywood or so, with a 3x18cm fan radiator on it. But when I go

places I don't need it to be quiet like at home.



Hardware (detailed list later)

The insert consists out of three parts, which I call the trays.
In the left tray is the graphicscard, hooked up in the loop after the CPU.
The middle tray holds the mainboard to the left, and two passive cooled PSUs to the right of it.
In the right tray there are four SSDs on top and at the bottom the reservoir and pump combo.

[NoobCase]

This is insanely cool... hands down just awesome!

[KzE]

Progress

1

Three trays out of 2mm thick aluminium sheets

and aluminium angles 25x25mm at 2mm framing it.
corners cut with mitre joint.

2

then the mid tray's floor with the cutouts. Big holes

for the CPU, long one at the bottom for the PCI cable..

3/4
3rd is the glass insert. It is colour less but does tricky things

with light. Anything light will appear yellow and anything dark

will get a blue shade. It also is blurry/matt -> 4th picture.

5
The 5th picture shows the copper cooling pipes with its

mouting. I first wanted to make copper blocks and fittings

on every side.. lots of cnc and a total of 70kg and 1000$

of copper. That was a huge blowback.
The epiphany was to use floor heating tiles, 1kg per

squaremeter and 40 bucks.
So the copper pipe snaps into the metal sheet which

pulls the heat from the pipe and transfers it to the aluminium

cooler (which would be on top)
The back of the sheet is a block of EPS (Styrofoam)

left: mockup
mid: two boards of those floor heating tiles
right: cnc cutting of insert

 

I am currently waiting for the ordered spacers to arrive and

mount the hardware on the trays. If that goes well I will order

the cooling fins.

[KzE]

The cooling panels arrived. The next step is

to drill the mounting holes. Haven't done that yet.

 

 

 

I designed the project using two passively cooled

PSUs called HD-Plex which deliver 250W each.

Banana for scale.

 

 

They are connected with an adapter called add2psu.

It switches the slave PSU on and off as soon as the master PSU gets power.

It also has a turn off delay option.

 

 

 

That was great on paper but I needed to make sure it works.

So I set up the whole computer on the "insert" with the "trays"

which at this point are just the plates really.

 

 

almost fried my MOBO when I confused PCI and CPU powercables.

Why again do they have the same plug but + and - inverted?

 

 

 

I did a lot of research and found lots of evidence that even an SLI setup will

not pull more than 500W. But I needed to make sure that this is true and

did a heavy load test with prime95 and furmark running at the same time.

I think that is quite an unlikely load, so this should be sufficient to proof that

the PSUs are working well together.

The Master PSU has MOBO, CPU, FANs
The Slave PSU has GPU, SATA, PUMP

 

Max. Temperature reached was 72 C for the CPU and 32 C for the GPU

over the course of 3 hours. Pump going at 2500 rpm and fans at 680 rpm.

The fans are for the test setup and the later mobile frame.



oh there is no official waterblock for this MOBO so I made one to fit it.

 

[Urishima]

That's some cool shit, mate.

[dylants]

What software did you use to create that model?

[KzE]

15 hours ago, dylants said:

What software did you use to create that model?

Vectorworks for the modeling

Cinema4D for rendering

[KzE]

btw, I am still looking for an adequate project name for this pc.
Any suggestions welcome.

[Urishima]

Wallmaster

Wallmonger

Wallther

[KzE]

I like the name "Wallther". But more names are welcome.

 

Alu fins

Finally the holes and the screw thred for mounting the alu fins to the glass panel were made.

The pockets you see are for the fittings which are a bit too thick and would not fit otherwise.

 

Cut viewer

Next up is the cutting of the glass panel. To make sure it will cut the way I want it the program Cut Viewer simulates the cut.

 

CNC Controll

The program Mach3 controlls the movement of the cnc according to the g-code from the cam program.
Forgot to make a pic of that one. May add it later.
You see x y and z coordinates and on the right of it the paths its running.

 

Cutting

 

 

finished product

 

 

elapsed time

 

 

[MEC-777]

Coolest build project I've seen in a long time. Sub'd!  

[KzE]

With the glass finished I made a first try to mount the aluminium fins to the glass.

First I layed out the fins..

 

 

 

copper tubing..

 

snapping the gap filler plates into the heat dispersion blocks.

(to much space between tubing and heat dispersion blocks for heat paste)

 

 

proping up the glass with the whole construction.

It seems sturdy enough, not all that heavy. I'm glad.

I calculated the weight before, but it's great when it works out as planned.

 

Frontal view of the section with the biggest fin plates.

you can see how they are not alligned. Eventhough the tolerance is minimal, it was really hard and I gave up quickly.

I think I will use spacers, or buy a cheap plywood and cnc wholes for the fin plates, put it over to align and then fasten the screws.

That should work.

 

 

next step are the water blocks for the GPU and CPU, or the connection between the two.

Also a graficscard mount.. hmm..

After these parts are done I can send all the aluminium off for black anodisation.

[RumSwift]

On 5/11/2017 at 8:40 AM, Urishima said:

Wallmaster

Wallmonger

Wallther

(Sorry to quote an old post but) Wallbanger (Cod days, sorry). 

 

@KzE

I've always wanted a wall mounted PC, they look cool AF. You should look into getting RGB behind the board, go full Master Race 

 

Also as for the portability (sorry if you've answered this but I did only scan the read as I'm at work), are you mounting it will some sort of detachable bracket, or do you plan on just unscrewing the wall-mount and doing it that way? 

[KzE]

someone else said RGB too, I find it to be a bit flashy. Not my taste.

But maybe I should do it anyways for some pix and just have it on white later.

 

The portability is done through the detachable hardware part, called the insert.

Look at the post from February 26. There you see a backplate in the backplate.

This one has the whole hardware attached. The tubing will be disconnected with

drycouplings. The "insert" then goes into a housing where the fan array is attached.

Reconnect the tubing and fans and go.

[KzE]

 

"But OP", you say, "hasn't it been over a year since your last post? Isn't your hardware old and suffering from dementia?"

Well, I am glad you asked Forum. Only a few pros in this forum have reached the enlightenment that the performance

of a PC is actually determined by its looks, not its specs. Therefore I am quite confident my computer, even though older,

will always outperform your state-of-the-art-2080x-hyper-ultra-3000-blinky-tera-peta-exa-in-a-80$-stockcase-build.

 

Linus, our lord and saviour, even made a video about it, check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

 

 

 

 

Now that that's settled, here's what happened next:

 

Piping

Originally, when you look at my first renders, I intended to have two massive copper blocks on both CPU and GPU.

But the connection between the stock cooling block and those was very tricky. So I opted for rigid plexi piping.

 

 

I got one of those bending kits and a hot air blower with a silicone tube for inside to prevent kinking.

Below shows the ultrasonic bath to clean the pipes afterwards. This is an industry grade machine. But you can

get them starting from 30$ to clean glasses. And really, it comes in handy anytime you want to clean something.

Right at the first second there forms a dirt-cloud around the part. Crazy effective.
EDIT: You trying to convince your SO that you need this?: This thing cleans jewelery and makes them all new and shiney.
I don't have any involvement with the ultra-sonic industry, but siriously, if you have a ring with a nice stone in it, it

will look like day one again. The effect is astonishing.

 

 

 

The lower pipe has two 90° turns close together but in different directions. That was really

hard to do as novice to pipe bending, as you want to soften one turn, but not mess up the

neighbouring one in the process. There are some small bending tears on the pipe by the

CPU IN-Port outer radius.

I probably will use white cooling fluid to hide that.

 

 

 

Other than that I am quite happy with it. Also I started to have sense of just wanting to finish

this already and I have become less picky. somewhat. Man the last 5% of a project are always the hardest.

Edited December 3, 2018 by KzE
added crucial life-changing wisdom

[KzE]

So guys it seems I mixed up some photos and the resurrection post showed stuff way ahead. Just found some more pix on an old phone. So here are the prequel-posts to the resurrection.

After all, who wants a story told straight forward, right?

Cooling rig

I put the rig together before, but that was only a try to see whether it all fit. I did that, because after that, the parts had to go together with thermal transfer paste.
And one does not simply take that apart so easily, Boromir. Also I made costum spacers for the corner elements, because there I can’t use the styrofoam base.
Downside is, there is no cooling.

 

 

 

 

Then the parts had to be cleaned and marked.
I have access to an industrial cleaner solution.
Fingerprints speed up patina and look bad, that's why the gloves.
Towel on a string to clean inside. The pump wouldn’t like those burrs.

   

 

 

At the beginning I planned solid copper block for each cooling element. But as mentioned before, it’s too expensive and heavy. The downside of this
stock part from hydronic floor heating is that it doesn’t exactly fit standard copper pipes. So I made these copper parts that help bridge the gap, since
I though that filling it all with paste would not be good. May cause dripping. Eww.

     

 

 

 

The pipes were clean and I needed to find out if the circulation would not leak. So I set up the pump with the
HD-Plex PSU and the jumper to make it run. Had that running for a day, only one fitting was leaking.

 

With the blocks and the circulation in place, it was time to put them toghether, all the while be
careful not to deform the circulation too much. I did another leak test afterwards.

 

 

 

[KzE]

Cooling fins

Yay cooling fins are back from black anodizing. It is a electrochemical process where the part is submerged in a tank.
Electrical current is then put through the part which causes the desired effect. simplified.
Where they were held the treatment had no effect, so I used a permanent marker to hide that.

  

 

So everything was going very well, when suddenly I realised that the copper pipes are just a bit above the sytrofoam blocks and metal sheets. To acheive the boxed and flat look, it was important that each cooling fin panel was absolutely straight relatively to the glass. Since there is a glass panel behind it, and the styrofoam is always the same thickness, this would go very smoothly. But now with this pipe too high.. damn. You almost can’t see it in the picture, and I don’t know why this didn’t happen in my tests.

A good but labour intensive solution was to mill out a concave groove on the back side.
bye bye anodization. But you won't notice it from the front.

 

I tried it with one part and it worked.

 

 

Then, and we are a few days later now as this took some time, all the fins were to go in.
I was using hard wood laths as spacers. It was hard to feed the screws in from below the
glass, and lower the fins exactly so they would match the holes in the block. Otherwise
I would've gotten thermal paste into the thread.
Here you can also see the frame for the first time. Each side has a small groove where the
glass fits in tightly. The corners are held together with screws, it can't fall away.
The frame just magically appeard out of nowhere, that's why there are no photos of its creation.

doubt.jeg

 

 

Another leak test?
Another leak test!

 

Fittings to the soft tubing were temporary. Needed new holes I didn’t think of before. The glass is fractured around
the cut because I had to do it with a power drill. CNC cuts are much better.

 

 

After the leak test, those flexible tubes were all milky.. does anyone know why?
I used some chemically filtered water.. really pure. Maybe it attacked the tubes…
I later bought some made-for-this-application-water.

[KzE]

Insert glass and trays

The glass is the detachable part with three hardware trays mounted on it.
This is after they were black anodized. Retro radio in the back!

 

 

Second picture shows the GPU tray, fitting of PCI raiser. (later made black with a permanent marker) and a very thin HDMI Cable.
It’s like 7mm wide and about 0.25mm thick. Crazy. And since it's on a small piece of PCB board, it is almost invisible from the front.
Really flat.

Started to do put in some wires, see whether it would fit all of them.
And oh surprise I had to add a hole somewhere.

Here I tried the SSDs, aaaalmost didn’t fit. I definitely will never take them out.

[KzE]

GPU tray

So the GPU was one of the hardest to install. There is only one hole I can use to fasten a screw. I made use of the cooling blocks spacers.
The weight of the card sits on that, rubber strips prevent it from sliding around, and one screw at the top secures it from falling out.
Life on the edge !

 

 

The one screw to rule them all & make shift console.
It is a U-shaped aluminium profile with notches for the cooling block spacers.

All the hardware sits in what I call trays. Because they all have a frame to create a boxed look.

I attached the profiles with these sticky things, each is rated with 2 kg, so no worries.

 

 

 

 

 

And here the GPU was in the tray the first time. Looks good.

 

 

Next was the pump. It was hard to fix it to the frame without a normal case. So I banged together these brackets from spare aluminium profiles.

 

 

 

I screamed so many times trying to fit those cables in. Ahhh.
This is the middle tray with the MOBO and the two PSUs.

 

 

Progress… needed a solution to have access to both front and back at the same time.
So often I had to fish cables through holes.. at first I put it on some accoustic padding.
No good.

 

make shift scrap wood stand

 

Finally the insert with the three trays starts to look like something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[_Hustler_One_]

"The Stealwall", because it's not made from steel but still will steal your attention to the wall. Sounds lame but I like it to be called that way..

[KzE]

I will add it to the list Thanks Mr. Steal.