Project: parallel HEX (completed!)

While it looks like pure S3X and it must be so nice to have only basic fans making noise; the temps arn't that great, I know you mentioned that, but is there any way you could get the temps lower?
 
Yeah I agree my temps aren't brilliant. The thread I started in the WC forum about it has had a bit of a muted response. I was thinking of adding another radiator, but some think it won't yeild me the temps I desire.

There are things to bear in mind. My ambient during some of the testing was quite high, due to the warmer weather lately, but that would change anytime soon. Also, I have a fair amount of water and tubing in the loop and the placement of the crossflow fans are placed differently to what how they will be in the case. So the temps with one rad aren't set in stone.

I have to make a decision soon on the extra rad as the case panels are pretty different for the two rad design. Something to mull over at the weekend.
 
These renders are buried somewhere in this thread, and certain things have changed slightly since then, but it gives you a fair idea:

From the rear with the one rad at the top:

stage_25a.jpg


Compared to 2 rads positioned at the back:

plan_b_2_radsx.jpg


The location of the hard drives also depend on how many radiators are used (they will be placed at the rear of the case in the single rad design, that's not shown in the images).

I stopped using the plywood mockup when it became weak from taking it apart so much!
 
You mentioned the amount fo water in your res being a potential problem. Have you/can you reduce the amount of water in your Sprite bottle and run the downspouts lower to test whether water volume is making a big difference?

 
What if you put both rads at the top, and move the manifold down towards the midsection close to one of the sides?
 
well hopefully what you design is better, one of the buddies at the local LAN has one he got as a giveaway and it works like shit. Drains extra power and has very little effect on the case temps. For something like that, you would need a case that is pretty much air sealed apart from the fans, and the unit itself would need to use a better coolant or something. Plus the dam thing looks goofy sticking out the front of your case, and obstructs the 5 1/2" drive bay below it
 
^ And above it. Like I said, I was thinking of designing one of my own based on the same concept, that one dosnt look like it would do much.
 
Some notes on the watercooling Mysterae :

One of the reasons why your temperatures may not be as low as you expect could be the simple fact that you have 6 (?) parallel loops. While running everything in parallel reduces the head loss, it also splits the flow so you have 1/6th of the flow (roughly) going to each component. With parts like the Cuplex XT which improve dramatically with increased flow that could be a problem.

The way you have the dual pumps set up right now is in series, which increases the head pressure but not the flow. (It does increase the effective flow as a result of the higher head pressure, but not much) You might want to try running the pumps in parallel, this would dramatically increase the flow. Since you are running a massively parallel loop the overall pressure drop from your loop should be relatively low, so running the pumps in parallel should help.

I am not sure if adding another radiator will dramatically help things, but you do have a lot of heat going into the loop. However judging from your temperature testing, having two pumps dropped the temps by about 2C, and the ambient temps were 2C higher. So it seems the increasing the flow is making a rather large difference, which leads me to believe that is your main problem.
 
Running the pumps in parallel is actually a very good idea because although your loop uses tiny tubing it's still massively parallel so it should be a fairly low-restriction loop overall.
 
Mysterae said:
Many of the wires aren’t long enough to reach the fan controller.
Click to expand...

I found these 24" 3 wire fan extensions handy. http://www.svc.com/fan3mf-24uv.html beats the hell out of trying to cut then splice in wire in the middle.

The hydra pack hdd water coolers from Koolance should get you better contact without sealing off the breathe holes on the drive, they make single and double units.

double http://www.svc.com/hd-55-l06.html

single http://www.svc.com/hd-50-l06-18.html
 
Excellent mod!!!

BTW you can get a lite version of Sketchup from http://sketchup.google.com which Google are giving away so that people can model buildings for Google Earth, so it should be able to do case modelling?
 
Wow!

I go away for the weekend and the amount of views to my worklog shoot up! Thanks for the front page exposure Steve, I missed it personally (lots of news because of the E3 thing) but a friend let me know. The good news too is the end of the mod draws near...

However, no update tonight, just going to chew the fat with those that have posted.

uzor, I have indeed tried with less water, but I found lowering the water level in the sprite bottle increased the amount of turbulence because of the height the water falls, and the height from the water line to the outlet to the pump meant more bubbles were sucked into the pump. This won't happen in the real thing.

board2death986, I too don't like the idea of the two rads at the rear, but I would be prepared to do this if it helped. It does lower the overal height of the case too, not that that's a big deal.

DarkenReaper57, there isn't enough space to put two rads on the top and to relocate the Collector, as you can see in the image below:

stage_109.jpg


The image above also shows the new location of the hard drives and coolers. It also gives a hint to how the case is constructed to give the added strength that is required (hex acrylic blocks with M5 inserts). Look even closer and you'll see the modified crossflow fans...is there no end to what I will modify :D .

Emission, that does look pretty cool, pardon the pun, but I wouldn't/couldn't fit it like they show it. Problem is I'm pretty maxed out on available power from the 580W Tagan PSU, and I doubt adding another 52W to the load will help much. But you do give me an idea - not that I'll be doing it with this build at the moment, I've delayed it too much - if the water in the reservior could be cooled a little before the pumps and the rad that would help! Hmmm, a pelt powered reservior...idea stored for future reference. Good luck on your design and be sure to share it!

Erasmus354, my Oracle! What you say about running the pumps in parallel as opposed to series like I have makes complete sense. For instance, if I had two outlets from the Collector (reservior), each going to a pump, the flow will be hugely increased. However, there may be a good bit of flow loss when I have to merge those two flows into one at the input of the radiator. How much of a loss do you think this would be? I could find out, as the Collector design already has two outputs at the bottom, but I would have to sacrifice my drain circuit and get an 'equal T' fitting to test it. Hmmm. From what you and thewhiteguy are saying, if you have a low resistance loop, aim for high flow, and if you have a high resistance loop, aim for high head pressure?

Sniper_Merc, those cables look sweet! I have the cable situation covered though, by using some blue UV sleeving. It can be time consuming, but cut to length cables will be a lot tidier. If I had saw those Koolance HD coolers before I may have gone with them - they look so much more efficient and lighter than the AC one's I'm using now, and I like the idea of cooling two hd's at the same time. Mounting it in my case could have been a problem though, but possible.

cjkace, that's the exact program I'm using! So yes, you can use it for case modding as I and may others here have proved. The problem with the free Google version is the export function. You can only export a 2D graphic or a model to Google Earth. So if you make something and want to improve it in a 'pro' 3D package, you're kinda screwed with the free version. Not that that should stop you from using it of course.

Cheers everyone, hopefully I'll have a big update soon!
 
You obviously aren't sparing any expense here, so you could get six of those little DDC pumps and find a nice looking way to line them up and you'd have tons of flow.
 
It might seem like I'm not sparing any expense here, but everything is carefully budgeted for; x amount on hardware, y on water cooling and z on the case. This is my first build for myself in 3 years, and I did up the ante on this admittedly. Will this pc last me the same amount of time? Probably not knowing the current pace of technology, which is no bad thing.

Now that my excuses for spending so much are over, I like your idea on six pumps! That would be monster, and your right about tons of flow. Not for this build, but you have me thinking on a modular pump idea...you bolt on centrifugals to a motor, add on as many as you require, within the load limits of the motor...interesting.

I'm so excited at the near completion I've become a bit sticky... :p ...thanks guys!
 
I think this case is awesome and I like all the time you spent on it, but the thing that I don't understand is why you are putting so many big ass fans on the rads. Seeing as how you are cooling the system isn't really based on getting the most cooling for all you work, why don't you go for silent? Kinda in the line of what Erasmus said, it doesn't seem like you are benefitting from all the watercooling all that much. Couldn't you air cool the whole system with all those fans?
 
Thanks SpangeMonkey, but I'm surprised at your comment on the big ass fans. They are Cooler Master Aluminium fans and there's only two! Yes they are a little thicker than the usual, but they are also extremely quiet, even at 12V - the two pumps are louder.

You need fans on a radiator, and the high majority of them require 120mm fans. These were a good choice imo.

To go completely silent means passive rads, and unless you have a huge passive rad, you can forget about good overclocks or a cool ambient room temperature.

If I had decided to go air cooling, I wouldn't have went so extreme and there wouldn't be a worklog for you to read!
 
If you really want to fit the radiators on top, here is an idea. You can sell the current radiators and purchase 4 single 120mm heater cores. You can run them all in parallel, or a series/parallel combination. Since they are roughly 120mm on each side, and not a huge rectangle, it would probably be a lot easier to fit them AND the collector on the top. You could also rotate them all and such so they look nice aethetically.

Also, with the current design and assuming your 2 radiators could fit up there without the collector (I can't quite tell if they would or not based on the drawings), why couldn't you relocate the collector somewhere else in the chassis, such as between the bottom right crossflow fan and bottom left HD and above the pump (based on your top-view sketchup drawing)?

Once again, I don't have a 3d model to rotate around, so I can only speculate.

One thing is for sure though - you are doing an excellent job and I admire your work. You have obviously put a lot of throught into this, and even if there have been a few problems here and there, you continue to stick with it and improve. If you haven't considered engineering for a profession, maybe you should :). I really want to see this when it is done.

EDIT: After looking further, my first suggestion may not be possible with 4 heater cores. If push comes to shove, and you weren't happy with the placement of the radiators (i.e. covering up "HEX"), you could always change the dimensions of the case, right?
 
Mysterae,
Was just wondering if you had tried puting the 2 pumps in parallel yet. I completely agree with Erasmus354 on how the flow is the problem and even if it does become somewhat of a bottleneck when the loop merges into the radiator, who cares... I say give it a try and then test your temps. Maybe even place the 2 pumps in parallel AFTER the rad.

Give it a try... for your components sake, and my interest :p

I've kept an eye on this and sorry for not saying anything yet but your watercooling loop ideas are awesome and inspiring... keep it up
 
Geo Fry said:
Mysterae,
Was just wondering if you had tried puting the 2 pumps in parallel yet. I completely agree with Erasmus354 on how the flow is the problem and even if it does become somewhat of a bottleneck when the loop merges into the radiator, who cares... I say give it a try and then test your temps. Maybe even place the 2 pumps in parallel AFTER the rad.

Give it a try... for your components sake, and my interest :p

I've kept an eye on this and sorry for not saying anything yet but your watercooling loop ideas are awesome and inspiring... keep it up
Click to expand...

or since Mysterae already successfully drilled a second hole into his Cuplex XT, Mysterae could also try tapping another hole into the header tank in his rad =P
 
Well I don't know if you've thought about this yet, but if you wanted to mount both dual-core radiators on top you could... and then make a false ceiling (from the perspective of inside the case) and suspend the collector below the radiators. Then simply have a tube from the collector up through the false ceiling and between the radiators.

The false ceiling could also have specific routing for tubing etc, or you could get creative and mount the pumps near that location as well (cramped however). This of course might make you have to rethink the design a little and make the project more vertically tall, of course you could spend the time with the measurements, where-as I don't have near as much indepth knowledge of the project.
 
Hi guys, thanks for your ideas!

I've not updated lately because I've not progressed any further sadly. [Enter excuse here] So much for having it done at the end of May. But fear not, I'll have the collector in my possesion this Friday! So looking forward to seeing how it turned out and how well it works.

DarkenReaper57, thanks mate, I am an engineer so it's good that some of those skills rubbed off and come in handy for ones ideas ;). I like your four rad idea, but the things stopping me from that are the added cost and additional tubing. I've almost blown my budget for this build and I still have to have the case made. The case will make this build, so it's gotta be right (one chance only to get it right). I thought about redesigning it around more changes, but I've delayed it too long - I got too used to using the pc sprawled across my table - blame HL2-E1, Far Cry HDR and CoD2!

Geo Fry, comparing the pumps in series and in parallel is top of the list when the collector arrives. It's got pretty warm here in the past week so keeping the temps down in a high ambient is going to be a good test. I'll know at that point if I'll need that extra radiator or not, then I can make a push for the case. Thanks for your comments!

n00btard, it's a bit more difficult to put another connection to the rad! The metals not thick enough and would really require soldering to do properly. The solution is easy - the bottom of the collector already has two outlets; [oringally] one for the pumps and the other for the drain. I just need to make them both go to a pump each and put an equal T fitting and valve on one of the lines for the drain. If I do need another rad, then the outlets of the rads will meet before going to to distributor, which I think will really improve cooling performance. If one rad is sufficient then the two flows from the two pumps will combine before the rads inlet.

UnknownSouljer, another great idea! If the top up of the coolant could be done safely, you may be on to a winner here. And it would look cool. It couldn't be a solid false ceiling, as not to impede the flow of air to the bottom of the rads. The collector could possibly be placed in the centre of the case too. Thanks, I'll have a muck around with Sketchup and see what's possible! However, the ease and safety of topping up with coolant is paramount, and it's going to be tricky with the DD fillport of the collector to be accessible.

All being well I'll have an update for you on Friday!
 
Mysterae said:
Hi guys, thanks for your ideas!
*snip*
n00btard, it's a bit more difficult to put another connection to the rad! The metals not thick enough and would really require soldering to do properly. The solution is easy - the bottom of the collector already has two outlets; [oringally] one for the pumps and the other for the drain. I just need to make them both go to a pump each and put an equal T fitting and valve on one of the lines for the drain. If I do need another rad, then the outlets of the rads will meet before going to to distributor, which I think will really improve cooling performance. If one rad is sufficient then the two flows from the two pumps will combine before the rads inlet.

*snip*
Click to expand...

I thought the pumps were between the collectors with no rad in between until I looked at your first couple posts, then dumped the idea of having two outlets from both collectors... but looks like you found your way around it! Good job on what you've got so far, and good luck on the future of this work.
 
Mysterae said:
Hi guys, thanks for your ideas!

...

UnknownSouljer, another great idea! If the top up of the coolant could be done safely, you may be on to a winner here. And it would look cool. It couldn't be a solid false ceiling, as not to impede the flow of air to the bottom of the rads. The collector could possibly be placed in the centre of the case too. Thanks, I'll have a muck around with Sketchup and see what's possible! However, the ease and safety of topping up with coolant is paramount, and it's going to be tricky with the DD fillport of the collector to be accessible.

All being well I'll have an update for you on Friday!
Click to expand...

Yeah I assumed that the false ceiling wouldn't be solid for the afforementioned reasons, but it got the point accross so that's good. :)
As far as the coolent issue, if you suspended the radiators slightly on the inside of the case instead of having them directly pressed up against the ceiling, and had the fill port extend all the way to the top, it might alleviate some problems with bubbles. Hope this helps.

Anyway, this project looks excellent, and I hope you get it all figured out soon, so we can see this damn thing in action!
 
On the bubbles issue, you could possibly create a "still chamber" as TribalOverkill did here. See post 15 and 16. Even though you fill from the top and he fills from the bottom, as long as you keep the disc below the water surface, I would think it will still work.

Also out of curiosity, what does the missus (if applicable) think of you having your computer splayed across the entire table, naked for so long?

 
..............the Collector is complete................gulp!

collector_01a.jpg


collector_02a.jpg


collector_03a.jpg


collector_04a.jpg


collector_05a.jpg


Pros:
- Looks better IRL than the Sketchup model!
- The DD Fillport at the top fits nicely, and will make topping up a doddle.
- The ball valve at the bottom is for the drain circuit or for the seconday pump if set up with the pumps in parallel.
- The o-rings at the top and bottom provide an excellent seal, and the nuts and threaded rod ensure the o-rings are sufficiently compressed.
- Bonded washers throughout to ensure completely leak free.
- I can change the length of the unit by replacing the tube and threaded rod.
- Look closely at the bottom (2nd image) and you can see 3 x 3mm holes for LED placement (2x UV blue, 1x red for Tagan PSU >20A current load.
- The surface where the coolant will sit (floor if you like) is kinda frosted to provide good light diffusion from the LEDs.

Cons:
- It was expensive because it was a one-off.
- It's quite heavy, even without water, so it's a good thing there are six mounting threads at the top.
- I had to spend a good bit of time sanding and polishing out the machining marks.

It was well worth it imo. Now I need to do some testing and get on with the case. I'll post some pics with coolant in it and without the flash.
 
uzor, TribalOverkill makes some awesome reserviors that's for sure! I'm going to see how this pans out to see if I need something in there to limit turbulence, I have a few ideas, like putting a striped ping pong ball inside - it may even rotate around with the turbulence!

As for the missus, that's sadly not applicable at the moment, but I'm sure I'd be able to talk her round..... :eek:
 
Wow, that thing is amazing, I think you should mass-produce them and sell them.
 
For some reason I had double posted and lost the text with the pictures, I'll edit that post with some info.

Bbq, if there was enough interest, I certainly would. Although that's the finished article, it was a prototype and prototypes are expensive. The first prototype was really the Sprite bottle which was cheap! If the 'economy of scale' was sorted it would be feasible.

Since it can be completely dissassembled it can be easily cleaned and the options could be length, fitting threads etc. I'll post over at the Water Cooling forum, see what I can stir. The only issue I see is who would want one?!
 
/applause

very very nice, and the idea itself is still very nice in any case so awesome to see it done. keep up the EXCELLENT work sir
 
Wow very nice. Once you get this whole mod project done, you should defenetely win case mod of the year!!
 
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