Next Gen ULTIMATE Desk PC is ALIVE!

[ColinLTT]

It's finally here - the next installment of the 1U Desk PC build - we know, it's been a while, watch to find out why.
 

 

Buy AMD Threadripper 3970X CPU (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/N3bJ7

Buy Alphacool Eisblock XPX Pro 1U (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/N3bJ7

Buy ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/ReXk5

Buy Crucial Ballistix MAX RGB 16GB 4400MHz DDR4 RAM (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/j8qJWZx

Buy Sabrent 2TB Rocket 4 Plus NVMe SSD (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/Ixaa4c

Buy Crucial MX500 2TB SATA SSD (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/88f8

Buy ASUS RTX 3070 ROG Strix GPU (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/8idJAb

Check out the HDPLEX 800W DC-ATX PSU at: https://lmg.gg/apT8V

Buy Noctua NF-F12 Fans (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/BFaWCuh

Buy Alphacool ES1U Reservoir (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/dXaF

Buy Alphacool Laing DDC310 Pump (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/3WrnB91

Buy Alphacool Eisfluegel Flow Indicator (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/MFUYkx2

Buy Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Radiator (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/KGrlp
Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.
 

Thanks to Trotec for sponsoring this video! Contact them for a free laser demo and more information about their laser engravers at http://geni.us/trotec

Thanks to MetalMart for the WaterJet time! Check them out at www.metalmart.ca

And remember... Blame Jake 

[wall03]

didn't another channel do basically the same thing but without rgb?

[BaidDSB]

Colin, what happened to your fingers at 2:16?

 

Are those burns or is that psoriasis?

[ColinLTT]

11 minutes ago, BaidDSB said:

Colin, what happened to your fingers at 2:16?

 

Are those burns or is that psoriasis?

Magenta printer ink- I got caught by a leaking bottle while cleaning some shop bins  

[BaidDSB]

5 minutes ago, ColinLTT said:

Magenta printer ink- I got caught by a leaking bottle while cleaning some shop bins  

well that looked scary so glad its not an issue

[ActionsOfHonour]

Love this build idea. Too bad about the drill Colin, easy mistake to make. Don't feel bad. We've all been there.

[ColinLTT]

I had brassed off the tip with the intention of it working, but jeeze is acrylic ever a temperamental material. 

[Nystemy]

31 minutes ago, ColinLTT said:

I had brassed off the tip with the intention of it working, but jeeze is acrylic ever a temperamental material. 

Acrylic is indeed a pain to cut in general.

I personally wouldn't have done it as 1 big 18mm thick piece, in a laser cutter, that is just asking for trubbel.
But rather gone with a few thinner layers and not actually rely on the acrylic to hold the water. _{(for reasons stated bellow)} One can also try a hand at laminating multiple layers, but that is its own can of worms...

 

Though, personally I think your cutting speed seemed a bit on the slow side, this tends to just melt the acrylic behind it instead of properly cutting.

Sometimes it is worth while doing the cut in 2-3 passes when dealing with thicker material. But this isn't always a solution either.

 

Acrylic is simply abhorrently fragile and the stresses induced from laser cutting will crack it eventually, one can try to anneal it, but I haven't had any luck with that myself, it usually just makes it crack faster. (Another thing that makes it crack fairly quickly is Isopropanol and a lot of other solvents.)

In short, I wouldn't rely on it as a reservoir in a computer build, it is eventually going to leak.

 

Machined acrylic is though not having this problem. But machining has its own issues as you already know.

Polycarbonate might be a better option, but I have not worked much with that myself.

[burh4n]

Nice work Colin. Sounds like it's been a pain to work on, but I'm happy to see/hear there's been progress

[Nystemy]

7 hours ago, Miracle Nachos said:

I feel like I'm going crazy here.

 

For that logo thing one attempt was like "This method was good at x, but bad at y" then then next was "This method was great at y, but not at x" and at no point did it seem to occur to use method 1 to achieve x, then method 2 to achieve y.

 

Instead of combining methods to get the result they wanted they had to find one that did it all, which is completely unnessessary!

 

This is a textbook example of too many tools and not enough thought.

 

 

I would have personally routed the whole thing. Maybe cleaned it up with some hand filing/polishing after depending on required surface finish. I would also not be in a hurry with the machining part, since it is a one off part, better take it a bit slow and easy. Minimize the risk of it getting dinged up.

Laser cutting in general creates thermal stresses in acrylic that ends up cracking it after a couple of months in the majority of cases. Usually starts out as many smaller hairline cracks around the sharper corners, and steadily only gets worse over time. And since this part is intended to be a water reservoir in a mostly wooden desk PC, a leak isn't ideal for multiple reasons.

[JanusM]

Im just curious, wouldnt it be better and easier to make a back part deeper ? From what i see this desk gona be around 80 cm, so if you would make the last 35 cm deeper than rest it would fit normal power supply, motherboard etc... , and you could do it that the thicknes of sides would be still same as front, and only way to see that there is diference would be to look under desk or from back. Easiest way of doing that would be to glue and screw another part of plywood under and cut proper shapes with millmachine. Final effect would look like in a picture below. 

[DorrisDormouse]

Would installing the power supplies into the desk legs have been a decent alternative? Keeps heat out of the main chassis.

[jriker1]

Know the 1U footprint but is that HDPLEX 800W going to be able to sustainably power the threadripper and the 3070/3080 PSU at load and not overheat?

[Razgriz9]

I think I know why you were experiencing issues with laser cutting that 18mm acrylic, and why it cracked when drilling the screw holes.

 

The First laser that you should be using is a 250W laser over a 130W. Driving that 130W laser at max power is pushing that diode too hard. (Higher wattage laser at a lower power level is best here)

 

The second thing is that you haven't masked off the bed of the laser cutter and you had the acrylic rased off the bed. The bed needs to be masked off and the acrylic needs to lay flat on the honeycombing in order to create a vacuum. This does two main things (1: it allows for the formation of a venturi, the remaining air that is present above the where the new hole you just punched to flow through one small area, reducing the pressure and more importantly the temperature of the material would be well below ambient and it would stop the flame out that you're seeing on the back. 2: Since the excess carbon that is coming off from the cutting process needs to go somewhere, the vacuum will almost instantly vent it out and won't blacken the back with carbon.)

 

The third thing is I don't see a gas-assist on the end of your cutter. The gas-assist will produce a jacket of gas (Nitrogen mainly) around the beam, stopping the oxygen from getting near the beam and prevents that flame out you got.

 

There is also a way you could have etched those channels in the acrylic, and that is through laser ablation.

 

After cutting the piece you need to anneal the acrylic at 200 F (93.3 C) for about 3 to 4 hours, the lower the temp by 10 F (5.5 C) every 10-20 mins. For 18mm acrylic, this should take about 6-8 hours. This time may vary based on the density and thickness. This process will allow the stress in the piece to be released. After that, you could just use a thread tapper, and it wouldn't have cracked as it did with the drill and if there were any micro scratches a good flame polish would finish it off nicely. 

[Elikster]

Colin,

 

   I wanted to ask, since I have watched your video few times, and I pretty sure that you guys have mentioned modeling the whole layout in CAD with files for the parts to model everything to make sure things fits before purchasing parts and materials to put it together.  I would love to know what you used and where you get all of those files for respective parts and other repos to compile to model my own for it.

Since I  have long thought about building the desk with PC embedded inside it, but with water cooling system as you guys are doing.  But trying to model all of those from scratch is pretty difficult since you won't have exactly the benefit of modeling to make sure everything would fit together before purcahsing them only to find that you are way off one way orother.  Can you provide more information what you used to model it all together as referenced in the video?