SFF2: Electric Bugaloo... The PlayStation 2 build!

[GDRRiley]

I can't wait to see this get closer to being done.

let the madness continue

[Ross Siggers]

@GDRRiley Cheers fella!

 

I've got my pump and distribution block on order...once that arrives I can really start locking down my layout and where the piping will run.

 

I still want to replace the plastic spine with a metal one, so that will be the next step after layout. Hopefully it'll make things easier to mount; I remember having issues tapping into the plastic on the Dreamcast, and here they'll literally be hanging off the standoffs   

[fordy_rounds]

19 hours ago, Ross Siggers said:

I had a lot more positive support about my last ultra-SFF build, and that was just as ambitious in a lot of ways. I wonder what changed.

Please, don't let one hater get you down. I loved the Dreamcast build, and I'm intently watching this one too, dreaming that someday I might do something so ambitious....

[RollinLower]

oof, that watercooling setup is gonna be toight!  Definitely following along for this one!

[Ross Siggers]

On 1/20/2021 at 8:57 AM, RollinLower said:

oof, that watercooling setup is gonna be toight!  Definitely following along for this one!

Toight is definitely the word  

 

A few bits came in today. Firstly, my Chinesium quality block. I'm a bit disappointed at this one, the measurements on the Amazon listing were all wrong, and it's actually nearly 5mm taller than advertised. Which I'm my world is a huge amount! 

 

 

 

So as a result.... It's a tad too tall to fit. Thankfully...it doesn't need to be as thick as it is, and I only need a couple of mm.... I'll have to find a way to accurately skim the top down a little bit, I don't trust myself doing it by hand for once! 

 

Thankfully some more quality items also came in today; my Alphacool pump and pump block. I'm absolutely amazed by these DC-LT pumps, the fact these can push a small custom loop is amazing. It's literally the size of a large coin.

 

 

 

The original plan was to mount it directly to the radiator at the top, with the pump mounted on the underside of the block to stop it drying up. But this would mean I can't fit a fan in the top slot. If I spaced it out with an extra fitting, I'd run into space issues on the opposite side of the block where the exit is. So that plan went out the window.

 

 

After a minute or two of deep thought, I reckon I've come up with a better placement anyway. If I position the pump lower down, as close to the Pico as I can, I'll be able to put it between the two components, hopefully simplifying my piping. I've sketched an idea out of how it would sit.

 

Because it's so tricky, I'm going to finalise the pump placement last, probably when I do the piping. At least I have a little space around that area so I can mess with it a little.

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

Long overdue update coming soon, but in the meantime I thought this was funny, regarding the waterblock. I previously said;

 

"I'll have to find a way to accurately skim the top down a little bit, I don't trust myself doing it by hand"

 

WELL....guess what I did by hand 

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

So it's been so long, I had to read through the thread to actually see what I'd last posted...

Not too much obvious progress, but more structural stuff; I realised that not only was the plastic spine of the PS2 not strong enough to hold components, as almost all of it would have to be cut away. The smaller section of the PS2, is about 36mm tall, the height to the middle divider that's inside the case. And a lot of the components being fitted into it, fans, radiators etc, were all 40mm deep. And you'd then have no way to mount them, if you cut away at the internal structure. 

 

 

 

The solution? Create a new internal spine myself, that's stronger and can still have components attached directly to it.

 

It just so happened, that there are a load of plastic threaded standoffs on the PS2 case, that align perfectly with the 40mm height of my radiator. So I picked a few of your around the edge of the plastic panel, to use as my mounting points for my new internal 'floor'. And then I cracked out the CAD, Cardboard Aided Design  

 

 

 

 

Not all the mounting points were the same height, so some had to have plastic dowel sections glued on top to level them out. Transferred the template into metal, and BOOM!

 

 

 

 

Excuse the slightly mottled look of the sheet metal; I had some laying around my garage and had to clean it up as best I could for now. The two screws at the bottom labelled with the red dot aren't actually tied to the plastic of the case. My AlphaCool radiator has 4 threaded holes along each side. I don't know if this is specific to server/sff radiators, but it was very useful because it meant I could literally hard-mount my radiator to the metal sheet with very little effort(don't worry, there's no damage to the radiator).

 

The second picture down shows how much the internal floor has moved upwards; You can see the edge through the hole for the power button.

 

You can see in the last photo we've skipped forward a bit, and I've cut out almost all of the plastic structure inside the case so I can start mounting components directly to the metal. I cant to the same as I did with the rad, so I'll be fabricating little brackets for the other components.

 

 

     

 

    

 

 

 

Next up, a little modification to my Add2psu. This is the little circuit that holds my HDplex, I used something similar in my last build. Unfortunately, the standard one sits in a way that it takes a lot of space. What i ended up doing was de-soldering the connector, severing the traces on the bottom on the board. Flipping the connector the other way around and soldering wires on to the back, to reconnect the traces to the appropriate(reversed) pins.

Unforutnately, the soldering came out really bad in this case and I....uh..... forgot to take pictures >_>

 

 

    

 

here's a couple more pictures of me modifying the CPU block. I just attacked it with a Dremel and a grinding stone, and then sanded the result to a nicer smooth finish using some small hand files. After so much work using files and a Dremel on the Dreamcast  build, I'd say I'm pretty handy with them now...

 

 

    

 

Okay this next one is gonna make a few of you wince....I didn't realise that the chips on the SSD would sit facing outwards....and because my tolerances are so tight, this meant that it touched the lid when assembled. I had to take a Dremel to the standoff, and take a few mm off it's height. Now the SSD bends downwards slightly at that end, although it's hard to see in the picture. It gives me just enough peace of mind that it won't touch.

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

I also drilled and tapped the M3 holes for the motherboard standoffs. I also had to shorten the standoffs too, so that's one component hard-mounted now. I did want to mount up the GPU as well the same day, but I had second thoughts about the way it was positioned.

I did have a 15cm riser cable, but it touched the power delivery for the CPU, because the PCIe connector is right up against the edge of the motherboard. And I'd already removed a heatsink from there, to get the riser to fit, so I wasn't confident in having it touching. I'm going to order a 25cm riser cable, and see if I can't orient the GPU a different, safer way.

For now, here are a few pictures of the motherboard in place.

 

    

 

    

[Ross Siggers]

Next step is probably making a bracket to mount the CPU waterblock.

That way I can start cutting holes in the metal backplate for piping.....then I can actually order piping....and finalise the positions for the pump/pico on the other side.

[Ross Siggers]

I modelled the new brackets for the CPU, so I can fit my cheapo amazon waterblock.

 

Hopefully a friend will be printing them soon! And if all goes well, I'll be printing more parts for this build. I may round off the ends to make them a little....prettier. but I've not designed OR printed anything before so I want to make sure they work right first!

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

I bought another of the cheap chinesium waterblocks, literally from the same Amazon page...and a completely different one turned up The orientation of the screws on this one means it can't be modified to be shallower...but it looks like it has a better pattern in the copper.

 

It's a good job the GPU die is lower to the PCB than the CPU socket, because I'll probably be able to get away with not modifying this one. Plus....I can't be arsed to return it

 

 

If anyone knows of a legitimate company that makes a low profile side-exit block, let me know because using these crappy ones is making me die inside....

[RollinLower]

10 minutes ago, Ross Siggers said:

If anyone knows of a legitimate company that makes a low profile side-exit block, let me know because using these crappy ones is making me die inside....

Alphacool makes 1U server CPU blocks that are side exit. also give you multiple ports on all sides.

i'm using one in my latest watercooled server build.

 

Spoiler

 

[Ross Siggers]

@RollinLower Good shout, although I think I saw that but dismissed it at the time because this cheap block was slimmer. Although it turned out to not be as slim as advertised, it's still lower profile than the XPX.

 

I would use a better quality block and just cut a hole in the metal layer, having it poke through to the adjacent compartment. But the CPU die overlaps the radiator so if I did use anything taller they'd interfere

[Ross Siggers]

Oh yeah, look how nice these countersunk cooler brackets came out!!

 

 

 

Hey.....wait a second.....hand me that waterblock....

 

 

 

 

.....

 

I think cutting them out would be too weak, so I'm going to redesign the brackets to be wider in the middle

[Ross Siggers]

 

Man....yknow....I just......

 

 

I JUST LOVE RESURRECTING DEAD THREADS...

And putting builds on indefinite hold...

And disappointing followers with lack of updates...

 

 

I'm going to assume you all forgive me. You're nice like that, right? So, the last post was May? Last year? Geeez.....Well, I picked this project back up, and I'm gonna make a proper post this weekend. I got some new bits that will make life easier for this build, but for now I'm gonna leave you with this picture;

 

 

[RollinLower]

well dang, nice to see this get back to life!

[Ross Siggers]

22 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

well dang, nice to see this get back to life!

Yeah I think one factor to me repeatedly shelving my builds is a lack of dedicated workspace. I'm always packing stuff up after working on it, which is really disruptive. Sometimes I just don't get space at all, to work on pc builds

 

[GDRRiley]

can't wait to see this build get finished.

[Ross Siggers]

So, first thing that happened was I finally bit the bullet and bought my low profile SODIMM. I must say, I'd been putting this off for a while. I mean, £160 (that's 210usd) for a pair of 8gb sticks? Ouch. But, well here they are, and yes, they're very smol. They're not even as tall as the retention clips on the socket! It's sort of adorable ngl.

 

And, look at all that space when the motherboard is mounted! Before, the regular ram would touch the metal spine of the case. Not only was that well, not ideal. It also made the motherboard sit a few mm proud of where it was meant to, so now the plastic PS2 shell slips over the top slightly better as well. And not having a 'barrier' there will definitey help with running cables and all sorts once we get to that stage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So with regards to CPU bracket I tried and failed to make. Well I ended up buying a cheap 3D printer, so now I can try and fail repeatedly and brush it off as 'prototyping'! For real though, a £50 printer? I could hardly go wrong, and this sped up the design process tenfold. I dropped the longitudinal bracket....started designing one in the oppose orientation....and then ended up bridging it all together into a square anyway for strength. The waterblock is currently mounted with just some thumbscrews, that's temprary; I'd like to have some spring loaded screws for nicer mounting, but that's a problem for another time. 

I still need to design the GPU mount, although that's proving to be a little bit more difficult because the 2060 has less than idea hole placements in the pcb. We shall overcome, though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up, we prep for water!!! As in, we need to mark out where inlet/outlet fittings are going to land. Some of this is set in stone; The motherboard for example I know exactly where the ports for the block are going to be. In other cases, I actually had to wait until I got some piping, to test out how tight I could go with my bends. How close can I mount the pump to the motherboard? Well, the tighter the bed, the closer. 

 

As it turned out, I was really worried about how tricky it was going to be to do hardline for the first time. Hell, I've never done any kind of watercooling before! My first attempt was a 180* bednd, and to be honest, I think it came out really well. But it wasn't particularly tight radius, so I heated it back up, and made it muuuuch smaller. Admittedly, this wasn't quite as clean, probably because I was trying to alter an existing bend rather than doing it from scratch. 

I also tried a really small 90* as well, to see what it would do. The inside edge kind of kinked a little bit, even though I was using an insert. I think this may be something I have to put up with trying to manipulate such tight turns. Also maybe I need to heat up more on the outside, and stretch that rather than compress the inside? I don't know, anyone who's dealt with hardline before I'd love to ehar your thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway that's all folks! See you in another 10 months  

(I hope not)

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

I've successfully cut my pipe too short. Is this a rite of passage? Am I a water cooler now?

 

R.I.P

 

 

[RollinLower]

5 minutes ago, Ross Siggers said:

I've successfully cut my pipe too short. Is this a rite of passage? Am I a water cooler now?

 

R.I.P

 

no hardline build is complete without atleast a few failed bends. 

bonus points if you actually run out of tube too!