Project "Gettin' out of the Ghetto"

[biff]

Thanks for the compliments everyone!

SSWilson, Charlie, yes the NB cooler is passive at this point. It was oriented the way it way to make use of the case flow being from bottom to top as Charlie mentioned but the cooler is a little smaller than what I thought it was going to be and it's blocked by the graphics card too.

I thought that cooler would be fine given that the stock one got barely above room temp with the little bit of air it was getting from the stock Intel HSF. Well the new cooler is quite warm now, 44 degrees C at the base says my IR gun. I'm curious if maybe the stock cooler really didn't have a good interface with the NB... I am amazed at how good this cooler does work though as the top of it isn't much cooler than the base. That tells me the cooler is doing a good job of getting the heat to all the fins I think I just need to get it some more air. Maybe it's good enough as it is for a NB.

The case air flow is almost nonexistent with the current setup. There are so many openings top, back, and front that the negligible bit of static pressure these fans make are lost. I actually shut down the two fans on the top and there was no diff in the CPU temp and only 1 degree increase in the GPU temp (might be a rounding issue too so maybe less than 1 degree diff) so they are obviously doing very little if nothing. I think I'm going to take those fans out and move one to the back to wash air over the NB cooler and the rest of the mobo... well the main parts anyway. That would make 3 fans putting air into the case and none out but like I said with all the gaps I think it somewhat pointless trying to setup a positive or negative pressure in the case. It's something to play with anyway.

P.S. What's a "boutique builder"?

[t0m]

Originally Posted by biff

P.S. What's a "boutique builder"?

someone who professionally builds high end pcs for people. usually lots of custom work involved...and very pricey

[Moneyless]

An example of a boutique builder would be VoodooPC or Falcon Northwest.

Very nice build you've got there, looks very clean & neat. :)

[BALISTX]

Very nice build indeed. Very clean. Did you paint the inside of your case or get it powder coated?

[Cardboard box with DSL]

Holy Crap that looks great!
I am very envious, I can only hope that my try at water cooling turns out even half as well as you.

[biff]

Thanks. I painted it with good ol' flat black Tremclad, great paint but loooooong cure time. Segue to a little story....

I also design and build telescopes so I use flat black a lot. I once made a spider (doesn't matter what it is) and some of the parts were stainless steel. I didn't know if the paint would take to it but I gave it a go. After letting it dry a day or so I could scrape the paint off with my finger nail. I was obviously not satisfied with that so I figured I'd strip it and try a different paint. I didn't get back to working on it for a few weeks and couldn't get the paint off with out marking up the stainless badly, it was really on there. I ended having to chemically strip it and repaint to fix the spots I scraped it up with my finger nail.

If you're gonna use it then you have to be willing to put in the time for curing or at least handle it with kid gloves. It's fine to handle after 24hours but not very durable at all. I gave mine about 2 weeks and wasn't quite fully sured yet so it got a couple nicks during the build. A bonus is that you don't need primer as it's meant to paint straight over rust let alone nicely prepared fresh metal. A little trick someone taught me once that if you can still smell it then there is still a chemical reaction going on, i.e. it's still curing.

Thanks again for the compliments!

[zlojack]

Nice stuff biff!

Good info on the paint. I think I ran into that problem myself on my build, as I've had some chipping ocurring.

[Jack Rabbit]

That is really great!

[stoanee]

That is possibly the cleanest wc setup I have seen. I am sure it will be an inspiration to many aspiring wc'ers (it is to me). On the the Tremclad paint, it takes a loooong time to cure. You can speed it up in an oven if you have enough room ( and permission from you know who ) I have used Tremclad on truck toolboxes and the drying time was an issue as the customer wanted to use them a.s.a.p.

Well done!

[biff]

I never posted a pic of the "ugly" side - the cable management side - of the case and recently had a request for it so I'm posting it here.




... well I HAD to put the wires somewhere!