Custom Mineral Oil PC

[Aaron1001]

 

Hey guys,

 

This build log is gonna be a bit different from others that you have seen. This is a project that has been in the works for nearly a month now. My custom designed/built mineral oil PC. I’ve documented a bit of the design process here.

 

SPECS:

 

Case: Plenn-Plex 7.5 gallon radius aquarium

Motherboard: ASrock X99 Extreme4 motherboard

CPU: Intel i7 6800k

Memory: 2x8GB Kingston HyperX savage

GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1070

Storage: 250gb samsung SSD and Seagate 1TB HDD

PSU: TBD (Thinking about 850g2)

 

Radiators: 280mm Alphacool radiator

Fans: TBD

Pump: swiftech mcp35x

Fittings: Mostly Alphacool with a few koolance parts in there

Coolant: mineral oil

 

Here are all the custom acrylic pieces laid out. Assembling something that you’ve designed yourself is always extremely satisfying and rewarding. But, like I said on my first update, If you do not have someone check your work, there are bound of be mistakes. And sadly, my mistake came very quickly

 

“Kerf” is the amount of material that is lost when cut by a laser cutter. In my case, I have some test pieces cut out and found that the kerf was .015. A substantial amount. I compensated by making the outside edges .00625 larger, and the inside edges .00625 smaller, for a compensation of .0125. I had hoped that this would create a easier slip fit instead of a friction fit. However, the cut tolerances were not good enough. And when I tried to force the pieces together, not only did they warp out of shape, but they also cracked. A expensive mistake. Every difficult project passes a point where you want to just give up and never look at it again. And for me, this was the point. After nearly a month of design work, it failed. Immediately. However, I was already way too invested in the project to give up, so I chugged forward, just with a lighter wallet.

 

 

So I remade the parts, and started assembling everything. I decided to use acrylic glue instead of nuts and bolts for aesthetic reasons. But, because the parts don't line up perfectly, there are gaps between the pieces, making it look ugly. However, where they do line up, the joints look very clean and professional. A lot of the mess can also be attributed to my lack of experience gluing acrylic. besides that, here is the frame finished. with the "front" IO as well.

Lining up the radiators reveals that they do not fit quite right. Which means I need to re cut the mounting systems. At least this is a Inexpensive fix.

"front" io plate also cracked when i forced the power button in. But it is so small that I can't bring myself to recut it for such a small mistake.

Now, it is time for the build. I choose the ASrock x99 extreme 4 for three reasons.

1. EVGA’s matx board has a oddly lower than normal cpu socket. Which means most large CPU coolers will block the first PCI slot. (WHY would you do this?)

2. It was pretty cheap on ebay at only $208

3. The black and blue will fit in with my color scheme.

I choose a 6800k because I found a pretty good deal on ebay at only $385. And since this is not a system that you upgrade often, I believe that a powerful six core processor is the best way to go. It has strong single threaded performance, and as games start to leverage more threads, the CPU will stay competitive. I also work on a lot of CAD, so the extra cores help.

Normally, with most builds, I would default to a hyper 212 for cost. A noctua nh-u15s for performance, or a noctua nhu-u9s for low profile. But, as much as I love noctua, their coolers just don't look very good. So I went with the thermalright silver arrow ib-e. While it does not look good with fans, it is definitely one of the most beautiful coolers on the market if you want to passively cool your CPU..

For RAM, I originally wanted to go with g.skill tridentZ. But there were no colors that matched my build. So I went with the hyperX savage as I love it’s aggressive look, and there was a sweet deal on a used set on Amazon.

It is at this point, after I have assembled everything, that I find out that on the ASrock X99 extreme 4, the ram slots on either side are flipped. WHY would you do this ASrock?! It obviously isn't for cost reasons since they now need 2 different types of ram slots. It won't affect performance or anything, but just doesn't look good unless you have symmetrical ram. Which the savage is not.

Now with the motherboard mounted in, I can finally see the build coming together.

@19_blackie_73 asked me to tag him. So there ya go.

[comicsansms]

Very interesting. I want to see more from this build.

For the PSU, I'd probably just get a 550W EVGA G2, 850W is way overkill for a single graphics card setup.

[RollinLower]

looking foreward to this one, it already has 'epic' written all over it

also pretty curious as to how the fans on the 1070 hold up to the oil, which should be way more difficult to move through then air.

[Aaron1001]

11 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

Very interesting. I want to see more from this build.

For the PSU, I'd probably just get a 550W EVGA G2, 850W is way overkill for a single graphics card setup.

I would do that, but the used market for PSU's is all over the place right now. There isnt a single used 550g2 on sale. A used 850 is around the same price as a new 550. And on amazon, a used 1000W G2 is nearly $20 cheaper then a used 850W G2. I would go with the 1000G2 because it's extra length will fill up more space and allow more of the fan to be submerged, if only EVGA didnt use red cables on their GPU power cables.

[Tech_Dreamer]

@Slick

[vorticalbox]

I've always wanted to di this, but I want to section off the front off the tank and put fish in it.

[comicsansms]

Just now, vorticalbox said:

I've always wanted to di this, but I want to section off the front off the tank and put fish in it.

The problem with having 2 chambers is that the case has to be bigger and there is more places of failure, if something fails you just killed a fish.

[vorticalbox]

Just now, Comic_Sans_MS said:

The problem with having 2 chambers is that the case has to be bigger and there is more places of failure, if something fails you just killed a fish.

Yeah would be a lovely project though and would look mega awesome, I would probably be worried about the hardware than the fish.

 

sure it could be done.

[Aaron1001]

7 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

Yeah would be a lovely project though and would look mega awesome, I would probably be worried about the hardware than the fish.

 

sure it could be done.

didnt stop this guy

[Mihle]

Can you be kind to Night theme users and not let the text be black for them?

[19_blackie_73]

thanks man  looks even cooler in real  

[Heesleemer]

So excited to see this finished! 

[Aaron1001]

Update 8/16/16

Project duration: 27 days.

 

Got a bunch of work done today, and also got a lot of problems. The tank itself is almost finished, but I still need to buy some components. the most notable of which is the graphics card. (MSI, EVGA, ASUS, if you are reading this *wink wink nudge nudge*). I also found out that the ASrock board that I purchased has bios version 2.0. when I need bios version 3.0 to run my processor. Not too big a deal as I can purchase a new bios chip and sell my old one.

 

The hard drive mount has been one of the only things that has gone smoothly for the build. It is a bit more wobbly forwards and backwards then I would have liked due to tolerance problems, but i am not too bothered by it.

 

 

I did find a really asinine flaw in the design. In fact, while I have the rest of the design memorized by heart, I could not for the life of me figure out how to assemble the hard drive lock because of how stupid it is. I must have modeled it pretty late at night to make such a mistake. In order to remove the lock for the drives. While all the screw heads are on the top of the tank, I need to stick a bit inside the tank and unscrew the lock from the bottom. Which is just asking for a screw or bit to fall into the oil.

 

 

I also finished the hard tubing bends, and I found that I am really really bad at it. I needed around half a meter to make the bends, but I chewed through two and a half meters worth of PETG to get the bends the way i want them. The oddly twisted zip tie on the tube is to keep the tubes parallel to the ground. Something I thought the other three zip ties can accomplish on their own.

 

 

From the back, the tubes split and bent around to the front, shooting the cooled oil in front of the GPU, where the fans should pull the oil in, and straight through the center of the CPU heat sink. A more elegant, and quieter design then the the linus built in my opinion, where the coolant simply splashed down in between the GPU and CPU heatsinks. Hopefully the flow isn't so strong that it will create a fountain every time I turn the computer on.

 

Got the radiators mounted on. The super short tubing run required me to screw in the fitting last. A very tedious process. Also found that alphacool radiators do not have 90 degree corners. Not even close. This is down to simple manufacturing tolerances, but one side was so bad, I had to use some paper to space it out to be 90. (no pic. sorry)

 

I was excited to see the finished loop when I realized that I was one fitting short. A real tragedy.

 

 

Now all I have to do is get the rest of my parts, and I can finally build the computer. After nearly a month of work, the end is in sight!

 

 

 

[Zhou]

did you finish it？

[Julian5]

10 hours ago, Zhou said:

did you finish it？

Well considering this post is 2 years old and the OP is not active, I doubt you will get a reply.

[IAnthonyFX]

11 hours ago, Zhou said:

did you finish it？

 

33 minutes ago, Julian5 said:

Well considering this post is 2 years old and the OP is not active, I doubt you will get a reply.

he did 

 

[Zhou]

On 2018/7/4 at AM12点36分, IAnthonyFX said:

 

他做到了 

 

THX！