I see, do you have to remove the motherboard to get behind it at all?

A mod moved another thread into this one, so that statement is somewhat confusing now.

By the way...prepare yourselves. I FINALLY got around to taking some pictures.

Ok well I know a few of you have wanted to see how I did my watercooling in my case, so here's some pics. I'm using a Lian-Li V2000 that has been slightly modded. Don't mind the dust...







A couple interior shots of the motherboard, gpu, etc...





Water pump and PSU...hope she never leaks...

Radiator fans, set inside the top of my case to reduce height somewhat. 3x120mm Vantec Stealths that are very quiet. You can barely feel air moving through the top but it sucks quite a bit through...



4x80mm fans cooling ram and mosfets...



And now some of the accompanying sound system, first we've got a Harman/Kardon Citation 16 power amp from the 70's...



And a NAD 7225PE preamp...with a 7800GTX 512MB card just hangin out...



And altogether now...

Here is my new toy.

Thats very orange, is that gonna be available to everyone?

By the way, how much success have you guys has with those new Ati waterblocks, I might have to throw one into my system soon. Damn fan is loud as hell and doesn't cool worth a damn.

Choke, gag, cough, aaacckk,... lol.

Very nice system. You have my same exact problem -- too much gear inside of the case. Wow, you're using 1/2" ID tubing. What are your temps?

cjoe

Nice!!! Very clean and colorful.

cjoe

Generally around 17C (ish, room temperature varies a lot depending on wind...) and around 24-26C load. If I open my window it'll drop damn fast, If I'm folding or priming for a long time I'll generally leave it open.

I really like the 1/2" tubing, just looks like it should work better than 1/4" tiny tubes.

And yeah, definitely have too much stuff, routed things pretty well though so airflow gets to where it needs to be.

The colored UV acrylic will be avalable for all soon. Just need to add it onto the site (it also cost more....)

If you have been overclocking with the ATI cards (x1800, x1900) you won't belive how much further you can go with the DD waterblocks installed. You will luv it!!

technodanvan.. You have enough hard drives ?..hehe

@ Rokk.. that looks sweet dude !

The larger bore tubing definately allows greater waterflow for the newer highly restrictive but higher performance waterblocks. I thought of using 1/2" ID but it was very difficult to work with. I settled on 3/8" ID tubing instead. My Expert mobo reports temps of ~24C/31C (Idle/Load) but I'm sure the mobo is reporting incorrectly. So, I have MBM compensate by adding 9C to the CPU temp.

My loop: Pump -> Rad -> CPU -> Rad -> Vid -> Chipset -> Res -> back to pump.

BTW: Since you have 6hd, have you considered a back plane? I don't use 9hd simultaneously all the time, I like being able to easily turn on/off the drives independently. I'm probably going to get a 2nd back plane which will allow me to turn on/off all my drives.

cjoe

Back plane? Anyways 4 of my drives are raid 0 and I'm usually doing something on the others. All my music is stored on one and the other contains movies and whatnot for video editing.



I'll have to pick up one soon, probably stay with the clear acrylic though, looks better to me anyways. Not like I don't have enough room for it...

Here are a couple from Newegg.

Back Planes

I keep my 2 Raid0 Sets in my CM Stacker 830 4-in-3 frame and 4 single sata drives in the Back Plane. Although I do video editing between the two raid0 sets, I don't use both of them concurrently all the time. When I get my second back plane, I can turn the Raid0 sets on/off as needed. The Back Plane allows for hotswap while the NF4 chipset sees sata drives as removable devices. Now the drives stay cooler and are more reliable in the long run.

cjoe

Does this back plane increase your HDD capacity, or do you still have to hook each one up independently?

No. Its just a box that holds removable trays that your hard drives sit in. The Sata cables still have to connect to the back of the Back Plane. Look at post #429. You can see the Back Plane in pic #2. It holds 4 Sata trays that can be independently turned on/off and hot-swapped. In pic #4, there are 4 sata cables attached to the back plane. The bottom 2 are yellow and the top 2 are grey -- the grey ones are hard to see (ran out of UV yellow cables).

Stacker 830 Pictures

I would recommend this to anyone who has lots of drives or uses Raid5.

cjoe

lol i haven;t really done wmuch with the design for cabling since its a closed case but ill try and i ll take pics

oh thats just sexy..........

hmmm i was just going to pick up an intro kit.......... maybe i should wait until u got the UV acrylic?

...maybe not..... i dont have a UV cathode lol

looks pretty tho'... does it comes in red?

umm that was supposed to be the "red" color... but it looks very orange to me. I will see about the red. But don't hold your breath. getting read Acrylic in 3/8" thick sheets cost about as much as my rig....

i've got the same case as you killer, how does that rad at the bottom work? very nice looking case BTW.

i've tried setting my Dual BIX down there (i'm still building my system) and it seemed to kill the airflow to the point that i thought it would be worthless setting in at the bottom.

what i ended up doing is suspending my dual BIX in the fron air intake path with zip ties. it's 100% stable and since it's suspended i can run my 4 120's at full speed and there's no vibrational sounds.

TGM

Danger Den make a "Stacker Adapter" to replace the grill on the bottom of the Stacker case. Then the BIX2 rads mounts to that. Very simple mod, remove a couple of screws that hold the grill down, and replace with adapter....

simple, clean, no case cutting.


I get excellent air flow, or I wouldn't have kept the loop the was it is.

oh 5w33t, i didn't realize there was a mod adaptor in there. i'll have to check it out. thanx

TGM

hmmm, i looked all over your site and there is no fan shroud type adapter or anything, i looked thru every catagory.

could you point me to the correct page?

ty, TGM


EDIT: NVM i just found it in a subcatagory of BIX rads.

Hey geeky girl.. your pm box is full and I cant respond.. :tooth:

got it now... sorry didn't know it was full. lol

new pics of new toyz that came today courtasy of ebay

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/nis...er/100_0108.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/nis...er/100_0106.jpg

it's all about the Cooler Master Aurora, too bad they don't make uv ones

Nice rig!

OMG i'm on that too!!! my bigwater rad still doesn't fit perfectly even on a stacker. god i hate that kit, atleast the block is cool looking..... (i have issues w/ lights, you'll see this in my next pic w/ upgraded sb)




TY TY much. it's a constant work in progress, soon to have a crossflow, sidewindow, and better yet some 64 bit action

I'll link to it (too lazy to resize lol)

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y40/akai-...ei/IMG_1418.jpg

I took out the fan that was sitting in the upper 3.5" drive bay. I plugged the double-sided molex from the fan in the lower drive bay into my PATA HDD and the SLI molex into that, rather than having the wire from that fan go all the way into my case. I've got one 3-molex/1-FDD wire going into the heart of my case, and that one I routed behind the motherboard. It comes out the bottom, and the molex furthest up the cable can be seen sticking out from behind the board (since the connector's a little too big to fit behind there). Where it come out of the board I plugged my two exhaust and the lowest intake fan into the second molex, and plugged the last molex along with the FDD into the mobo itself. I still haven't gotten the $$ I need to make that order (for the round cables and some lights), but with my guitar audition over I'll be getting a job soon, and I'll hopefully make the order in the next couple of months.

I've also done extensive modification on the fans themselves, specifically the wiring. Originally the fans came with a molex and a 3-pin connector, but I found that all the extra wire was getting in the way, so I shortened the wires according to their placement, removed the yellow wire, and reconnected the molex only. In two instances, two fans were in very close proximity (the exhaust fans, and the two intake fans in the 5.25" array), so what I did was solder the two fans together leaving about an inch of wire from each fan, and this way have only one wire going to two fans.

i bought my Stacker with the Crossflow fan and that thing really makes a difference over my vid card, altho my ram blocks the flow for my upper portion components, like my mosfets. it does really c00l off the SB too.

as for my dual BIX rad, i just used zip ties to suspend the rad in the front of my case under my 4-in-1 hdd box. works well for case air flow to the rear 120. another c00l side effect of the rad suspension is there's completely no case vibration noise from my 4 90CFM 120's i've got bolted to the rad. :cool:

i'll have pix of my setup in a few weeks; i've still got to purchase some elbows for my SB water block and a high quality Y adapter and the Mobile 4000 Newark. i've been patiently waiting for this month and now i have the funds to do it

TGM

ah, you have one of those Chenming clone cases. my friend Mazon, on these forums, has one and i've helped in assembling his components. they're good strong thick material cases, but they're a bit too small if you're looking at doing a lot of mod, IMHO. specially if you have raid0 and a spare hdd since the 80mm hdd fans force the hdd themselves outwards toward the mobo. i really doutb you could run a 7800GTX or X1900XT in that case. it's just doesn't have the depth for it. nice case fit for yesterdays hardware tho

i love my CM Stacker. before i got this case i was using my YY Cube and b4 that i had the Lite-On FS020 server case, that thing was huge! lol

TGM

It's bigger than a Dell

But I'm planning on building my own out of acrylic like that guy in the mod forum is. Plus this thing is about 6 years old (not that cases wear out but it's just old lol)

The case is like 17" wide minus the front panel, and about 20" tall. I'm planning on building something considerably larger, and getting that heavy PSU on the bottom of the case too.

who mentioned a dell?

anywho, i meant the depth of the case as in from the front facia to the rear exhuast fan.

yah, that acrylic case he built is wikkid awesome aye.

here's a pic of my old Lite-On FS020 with my P4 1.6a to 2.9GHz OC on the stock HSF! this is the largest case i have ever owned. it could hold a Quad Xeon 8gig ram and quad raid 0+1 with an AGP PRO slot card. it was too big for me, so i sold it and got my YY Cube. but i have several computers sitting around, prolly about 5 that would be considered still usable with todays software enviroment.

Lite-On FS020


TGM

Nobody mentioned a Dell lol, I was just saying it was tight but not tiny. But I do agree that it's extremely tight, and I can't really even remove the bottom 3.5" drive bay with the HDDs in it, without bending the graphics card down slightly. The depth is what I meant by 17". How deep is that case? And how deep would you reccomend minimum when I build my acrylic? I'm redesigning my desk too so it's a good thing to take into consideration, lol

Here are the fans I spliced together:





Here's a shot of the entire inside:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y40/akai-...ei/IMG_1425.jpg

well, i don't have the Lite-On case anymore, it was waaay to big, so i sold it and used the money for my YY Cube.

but i just measured two of my cases. one is the shortest depth i like in a case, and the other is my Cooller Master Stacker. so the measurements are 18"~22" in depth. i believe this basically runs the gaumet of new case design demensions. personally, i love the 22" depth of my CM Stacker. it's also a 120mm rear exhuast case so it's got nice width of 8" but 9" would be nice too.

TGM

I see, how tall is your stacker?

it's 21" ...but i believe the acrylic case that guy *wish i could recall his name* made is taller. his design is totally prrfect. i totally love what he made.

TGM

*checks* You're right, his is 23". Also his name is Dragoe

If you're considering putting fans wherever you can fit them in your case even if they're just sitting in drive bays...



...don't.

hehe, for about a year i had this fan afliction. everytime i'd touch one, it'd break! lol

It's not nearly as clean or nice as some of yours, and the cable management (or lack thereof) will likely give some people mild aneurisms, but here's my rig:

i just wish i had the time and money to set up something like that.....i have had the idea of putting a lcd inside....rather on side of box, but have never seen it done b4....looks good and clean.......2 thumbs up here

Post a side pic with the window side off and the lights off ...

Has anyone built a case in which the drives ount on the side? I mean rather than out the front. You can see how I have my computer on my desk:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y40/akai-...ei/IMG_1466.jpg

it makes it slightly difficult to access the front of my disk drives. But if I built my case with the drives coming off of the side, then it'd work better. Has anyone done this? How deep (from my perspective, that is, it's width on front access towers) would I have to make it?

Are you referring to cases that rotate the drives 90 degrees so the front faces the left panel? If so, there are many examples here in this thread.

I believe ExRoadie or THunDA have examples as well.

I have built a few computers using cases with that mounting. Such as the following:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16811170026

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16811133142

From my perspective, drives are easily accessible but cabling can be a chore to run if the manufacturer does not allow for enough room at the back of the drive cage.

Depending upon the manufacturer's design of the drive cage, airflow over the drives may be reduced to a great degree. This is mainly present in cases which use a thick drive rail design which leaves little room for air to pass through.

If you are thinking having access to the CD/DVD drives from the side, I haven't seen it. Some have HD mountings from the side like the Antec P160 but that's 3 1/2" with the side panel off.

If you want access to a CD/DVD, the simplest thing is to buy one that's external and put it anywhere on your desk ...

Well, I'm planning on building an acrylic case like Dragoe. But yes, having access to the CD/DVD/FDD drives from the side panel is what I have in mind. I'm also probably going to use backplanes so I'll want to have a lot of 5.25" bays. I also haven't decided if I'm going to mount them in a single column on the right or have three or four horizontal rows at the top, but that's just design.

IMO the best design, especially if you are going to have the computer sitting on your desk, is with all drives at the bottom of the case.

Optical drives on the bottom layer. Hard drives on the 2nd bottom layer.

This may be a job for Super AutoCAD! lol

Ooh, there's an idea

Optical drives on the bottom layer though? I would think it'd be better to have them up at least a few inches so that desk clutter doesn't interfere with the drive bays, is there a particular reason why you prefer the HDDs above the opticals?