DIY Over Kill Water Cooled System need your opinion of my system

this_is_me

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Feb 12, 2014
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10,510
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Hi needing your opinion of this system vs. a commercial type. I’ll have to tell you my whole story.
I’m an American Living in the Philippines. I wanted more power, but couldn’t find anything here that I thought would really cool it. It’s hot here most the time so air-cooling wasn’t in the equation. The other problem so few water systems are available here. Most I checked into were very loud or didn’t have much water flow.
While I was doing some research on cooling systems my wife was complaining on the air-con was set to low, she was getting cold. I started looking at it, you know the fan isn’t very loud and puts out lots of air. Plus it has nice cooling coils, one in the front and one in the back.
Soooooooo I put my thinking cap on and decided to go for it. Told my wife about it and she didn’t fully understand what I was going to do. She did go with me looking for junk window air-cons. Not that easy here they sell everything for scrap very fast. We hunted all over the city checking out all the air-con shops. Finally after a day searching we stumbled on a shop that repaired refrigerators for sodas that had one. We did a little haggling and I ended up with it.
I took the prize home and started tearing it apart. Oh forgot to say the project has been finished for a while now and I’m super happy with it. Not loud and it super cools I’ll post the results later from overclocking and temps that stay at ambient temps.
I started studying the front and back coils and wasn’t happy about all the ¼” tubing was just looping around, I wanted more water flow! So I got the hack saw out and started cutting the ends of the front coils both sides. The back one I just needed to cut off one side. I bought some ½ “copper tubing and drilled ¼” holes in it for each tube, I had some scrap round rod that fit perfect inside the copper tubing so I drilled into both of them to keep from messing up the tubing. I had to take my time using a hand drill. I knew a shop that did silver soldering so he did the soldering for me. Now I ended up with a manifold that the water would go from the back to front with no restriction. The front coils on one side I had to use tubing like you’d use for fuel lines because it was too close to solder. But the bend was too tight and would kink. I solved that problem by making some springs from ss leader wire for shark fishing. Then inserting them inside the tubing problem solved! After I did a leak test for 3 days steady with no leaks using an aquarium pump, plus flushing out the system with dish soap and rubbing alcohol removing left over oil.
Next problem I needed a water block, but nothing here available. I rummaged through some old computer junk I had. Found an old AMD heat sink hmmmmmm think I can make a water block out of this. First I did lots of measuring from my new mobo and found out it would work I just had to use the old hold down brackets on the new mobo. I looked around the house and found this aluminum baking pan that wasn’t too thick so it would bend easy great for covering the heat sink. I got the drill out and drilled two holes all the way through the heat sink. Then I slid the tubing in and cut notches between each fin. Putting cardboard between each fin (wish I thought about doing that sooner drilling) the holes would have done a much better job. Rigging up a little jig with some scrap metal and clamps so that the hacksaw would follow it. I cut it down to where the hold down bracket hit.
Covering this thing up. I made a pattern from a piece of poster board and taped it to the baking pan and started cutting with a pair of scissors after cutting I sanded both sides with some 80 grit I wanted it really roughed up. Started looking at the bottom of the heat sink, not a very good finish. I started wet sanding it on glass and got down to 1200 grit then used rubbing compound on glass for the finish. Looked good took a while though. Now comes the hard part folding and gluing, had to take my time with this. Cleaned the sheet metal with lacquer thinner and did the first fold that was easy. Now the gluing I coated the fins and the sheet metal using liquid steel and clamping it for 24 hours then then next fold. Cleaning with thinner each time. When I was to the little end folds and the bottom folds I did a suction test with my mouth it held a vacuum the other folds are just safety folds. A little paint now it looks great. Another problem when I go to clamp it down on the mobo the bracket wanted the bend sideways. Needed something to hold the sides and the center. Got an old mobo out and took off the bridge heat sink and hacksawed off a chunk worked perfect and was very tight couldn’t pull it off after I locked it down.

Now time to work on the front end. Cleaned the old plastic part that holds the fan, front rad and motor. Looking at the motor, it wasn’t very pretty kinda rusty. Took it apart and found a bolt that fit where the shaft was and clucked it up to my hand drill. Sanding it like a lathe when I got done it looked like chrome put a few coats of paint looked like new. Now I have to move the air backwards into the case. A friend gave me this old case for a donor it even had a good Sata DVD burner. Took my hand grinder with a cut blade and cut out what I needed for the mobo. The rest I cut up to make an air defector.

Making the new case. Drew up what I wanted and bought a piece of sheet metal 3’ x 8’ pretty heavy gaged. Cut it out then took it to a sheet metal shop and they bent it for me using a hand bender. Only took them a few minutes.

The top was a little flimsy so I made a couple of brackets and added some ½ “aluminum channel. I was worried it would flex the mobo. The old donor case had a window I wanted to incorporate, but it had a fan mount, a knife did the job. I cut the power and reset buttons out and the usb and did a little mod work. A shop cut a new Plexiglas window for me.
Now for the electrical used a 12 volt relay rated at 20 amps 220 volts this was to control the air-con fan and water pump using the 12 volts from the psu. I added a couple of busses too. I made a 1 inch riser for the psu for safety just in case it should leak.
Need a water tank found what I needed at the store. The lid screwed down no water or air leakage. I heated up a piece of ½ “tubing and melted the holes in the top very tight fit with no leaks.
I covered the case in black vinyl leather to hide all the rivets.
Putting things together I used an old mobo for leak tests. Ran it for 4 days no leaks tested the water flow after it came out of the water block it filled up 5 and a half one liter Coke bottles in one minute. Decided to add 6 low speed 120mm fans to the back rad they are super quite.
Installing all the new stuff.
CPU AMD FX 8320
Ripjaws X 1866 4gig x4
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 v 4
PSU Seasonic M12II 850W
Sapphire Dual-X R9 270X
Booted up everything worked fine the only thing the air-con fan blows lots of air even though I set it up on low speed. My pant legs kinda move in the breeze LOL . So I mostly run it on just the back fans good thing they have leds I don’t hear anything and things stay about 34c to 37c. The air-con fan cools things down about 10c more to ambient temps. Here the ambient temp is mostly around 32c in the day time and 26c at night. With the air-con turned the system stays around 20c to 21c. But this is way I built this system so I wouldn’t need to have the air-con on all the time.
I did some overclocking got up to 4600 then I stopped didn’t want to fry my new cpu. Temps stayed at 26c. Little new at overclocking used prime95 to stress it at 4600 for about an hour. The temp was stable.



 
only thing i should warn you about is humidty and condensation. this is why anything cooler than your actual room temp in your system can become very problematic and damaging. really just put some of those silica anti moisture things in your computer and you should be fine though.