Umbra Aqua - Mac Pro Mod -Leak test, first boot 2.20.14

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This is awesome build man! Great job!

 

WHAAAATTTT?? THAT IS A ONE HELL OF A CARD SETUP YO GOT OVER THERE!   <-- Sry for capslock

 Thanks Man

 

2 GTX R9 295 Unltra X2 HOF LOL

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Week 55 and counting.

 

[Tea1337]

You've put a lot of work into this, I can't wait to see the finished product

[atomicmonkey101]

lookin good!

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You've put a lot of work into this, I can't wait to see the finished product

 

Modding a Mac was a lot harder then I thought. The reward is also greater. 

lookin good!

Thanks.

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I wanted to have a brushed aluminum look to the front panel. So I sanded the back side with 220 grit and painted it silver. I sanded the front to 800, starting at 80 and working my way up.Then I sprayed the front will clear coat. By doing this I was trying to achieve and deeper brushed look. 

 

 

 

There is not allot of room in this case to hide wires, so most of the wires need to go in before the system does so i can route them behind things. I used the original SATA connectors mounts for tide downs.  Also drilled small holes to pass the wires through for the fans and re-attached the connectors back on. 

 

 

 

 

Here is what the front Rad and mount look like after some paint. 

 

 

 

[Raboo]

looks really cool subbed

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Installing the water block time.

 

Finally time to install the water blocks. I am using EK Supremacy clean CSQ nickel plexi blocks. I am really excited about water cooling the R9 290 which already overclocks really well for me. I used a two step cleaning and purifier from Arcti clean. 

 

After the blocks where installed I started installing the fittings and routing them for now. 

 

 

I am currently having some issues with the size of the RAM heat spreader. Not sure if I am going to cut the ram heat spreader or just use low profile RAM. Ordered 16 GBs of 2400 Mhz low profile RAM but the sticks come with yellow heat spreader.

[Raboo]

Very nice

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Very nice

Thanks man.

 

The RAM arrived and it clears the rad. Thank god now I can carry on with mounting the rad and start tubing this beast up.

If any body was wondering what I picked up, two Team Vulcan 8GB 2400 Mhz ram with the orange heat spreader. There on sale right now for $69.99 each.

Team Vulcan SALE Link

 

With the price of RAM right now, I was able to pick 16 Gb of 2400 Mhz Ram for $160 shipped to my door, not bad.

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First off, the issue I had. The RAM I was using had heat spreaders that was to tall. So because of that the rad on the bottom would not fit in. I needed 6 mm less heat spreader. 

 

In the end I had the option to either trim the heat spreader or use different RAM. I picked up Team Group Vulcan 8 Gb 2400 Mhz RAM. They where on sale for $70 so I picked up two.

 

 

They look really cool inside the case, and at this point I wont be painting them either. 

 

 

 

Little bit more sleeveing. This time for the rear thin profile fan.

 

 

I needed to trim the 5.25 drive bay, to make room for the fan controller and switches in the front of the case. I also trimmed the top part of the drive bay to make a little room for tubing and fittings on the top rad. 

 

Before

 

After

 

 

Also I have been routing lots of wires and trying to hide them or figure out what I am going to do with it. I have found with this case there is not many places you can hide wires so I must work extra hard to hide or trim wires. 

[spwath]

Over the May two four weekend I took a trip down to frozencpu.com (Rochester, New York) to go pick up my parts in person. 

 

LOL i live 5 min away from frozen CPU and 10 min away from that bridge! They named it the Susan B. Anythony Fredrick Douglas bridge. Aparently they couldedt decide who so they did both.

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LOL i live 5 min away from frozen CPU and 10 min away from that bridge! They named it the Susan B. Anythony Fredrick Douglas bridge. Aparently they couldedt decide who so they did both.

I would love to live so close to Frozen CPU. 

[spwath]

I would love to live so close to Frozen CPU. 

Yeah im going to try to get a job there when i am 16

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I will do a full update soon. But till then here is something for the eyes.

 

COMING TO A FORUM NEAR 

 

[shouldervalley]

I will do a full update soon. But till then here is something for the eyes.

 

COMING TO A FORUM NEAR 

 

looking forward to it already

 

[Raboo]

[MrSuperb]

Some Aquacomputer radiator would have looked nice in that build.

 

[ViruZ_HUN]

omg too awsome:)

 

I want to go home to you and watch it in real life...

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looking forward to it already

 

Thanks. I hope the waiting is worth it.

 

:rolleyes:

 

Some Aquacomputer radiator would have looked nice in that build.

 

These wont fit in the case. They where to long. The 360 version is to long and the the 240 was to tall to use in this case. They would have been really sweet to use though.

 

omg too awsome:)

 

I want to go home to you and watch it in real life...

 

I might do a a video log build next. 

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So filling the system was interesting to say the least. I didn't have any leaks but I did have a aiming issue. Thank god the liquid I am using is non conductive.  I used my HTPC to power the pump and the fan controller to test the system for leaks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the UV light ON.

 

With UV light OFF

 

 

I also started working on a hard drive mount. My wife challenged me to finish the hard drive mount in 1 hour.  After working on this project for the last year I gladly toke the challenge. I finish making the bracket in just over 50 mins. I already have a bracket to mount a 3.5" drive into a 5.25" drive. The bracket I made was so I can also mount my SSD to my hard drive and mount that whole thing into a 5.25" as one piece. 

 

 

 

 

Testing

 

 

This is what my desk looks like for now. Still need to connect a few more wires inside the case, finish some trims pieces and then I think this just might be done.  After working on this project for so long, I was expecting a fire work show when I booted up the system for the first time. 

 

 

 

 

[Raboo]

WOW awesome 

[alpenwasser]

Now that is efficient usage of space!

Side note: Non-conductive fluid is rarely really non-conductive AFAIK. As

long as it is water-based there will always some conductivity (self-ionization).

I'm not aware of any way to get around that (I'm not a chemist though,

so if anyone has any credible info to the contrary feel free to drop

some knowledge ). Also, when it gets out of the bottle and impurities

get into the fluid, conductivity rises.

The only fluids which are truly non-conductive (again, AFAIK) are things

like Fluorinert and such.

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I am not a chemist either but I read some where ( might be totally wrong ) if you add alkaline to a solution, the conductivity ability decreases. 

 

I did some research and found that.

 

'The commonly used units for measuring electrical conductivity of water are:

 

μS/cm (microSiemens/cm)' 

 

Drinking water is any where between 50-1500 mS/cm

(http://water.epa.gov/type/rsl/monitoring/vms59.cfm)

 

"Distilled water has a conductivity in the range of 0.5 to 3 mS/cm"

(http://water.epa.gov/type/rsl/monitoring/vms59.cfm)

 

EK-Ekoolant UV Lime Green 1.4 mS/cm

 

So the EK-Ekoolant does conduct electricity but not as much as other waters. Also as the temperature of the water rises, so does the conductivity. About 2-3% for every degree up to 25C.

 

So aplhenwasser you are totally right.

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An update is coming. I just finish painting the trim piece to cover over the hard drive sleds. I should have an update up sometime this week.

 

Also working on anther piece to clean up the wires from the GPU. The idea is to drill out 7 small holes in acrylic and cut it in half. This will give me grooves for the wires to be places. In the end a few of these should make the wires look neat and clean.