Water Cooling Project - The Parts We Used (Continued): page 3
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Manufacturer: | N/A |
| Product: | Various |
Price: | Varies |
Availability: | NOW |
Reviewed By: | Jim "Justi" Miller |
Review Date: | August 2003 |
Step by Step Water Cooling Project
The Parts We Used (Continued):
Relay Device - An absolute must, at least to us, was a relay device to turn the pump on and off with the system. Basically there are two options available if you rule out designing your own relay circuit, which we definitely ruled out! You could either go with one of the Criticool PCI relay cards like Dan did in his Peltier system, or you could go with a pre-made relay kit, such as the one we used from Swiftech.
To get ahold of the pump relay kit we again turned to SidewinderComputers who came thru again. What the relay does is basically provide power to the water pump and thru a relay connected to a standard four pin molex off of your PSU detect whether the PC is on or off, and power the pump up or down accordingly.
We've shamelessly stolen the pic of the unit from Sidewinder to show you the complete package, and in our two images you can see the actual relay up close. You'll notice from the main pic that it comes with the mounting plate to power the pump and everything needed. At just under USD$22 it's not super cheap, but more than worth it to keep things easier.
Don't Forget to Leak Test:
Possibly the most important part of the entire process is to "leak test" the system BEFORE you place it in your box. What I generally like to do is assemble the water cooling loop and fill it before I mount a single piece of hardware.
I will run it like this for a minimum of 24hrs, usually I let it run for several day before declaring it good. It's a good idea to place something NON-absorbant under the system after your sure that it's not shooting water initially, that way if it leaks the water will remain there so that you can see it. While it's running in loop pay extra attention to the radiator welds and all of your fittings/connections. If it runs leak free in this environment it doesn't guarantee that it'll be perfectly leak proof once you reassemble it in the box, but it's as close as you'll get to a guarantee.
Modifying the Case:
Alright, we now have everything we need and the fun part is here! While this Enermax case was in our mind perfect for the task, there was still a bit of modding necessary to make it happen. We're going to show you the modifications to the case that we made to fit out water cooling kit 100% INSIDE the box...
*** WARNING!! ***
Before you do ANY cutting or drilling in your case make absolutely certain that you've removed EVERY electrical component from it! This means fans, switches, USB ports, power supplies, everything! Drilling and cutting creates tiny metal flakes that get everywhere, needless to say, they do NOT mix with electrical components very well.
Removing the Hard Drive Racks:
The CS-10181 case has two hard drive racks in the front bottom of the case which are stellar for mounting multiple hard drives, but for our water cooling system we needed that real estate to mount our radiator, so they had to go. Here's an image of the racks in the case..
If you did your homework and read our review of this case, you'll remember that one of our negatives about it was that the racks were not removable, there are a total of 18 rivets holding both of these racks in. If you talk to ten people you'll hear ten different ways to remove rivets. We simply took a drill bit and drilled thru the center of them, they popped right out. :)
One we removed all 18 rivets the two hard drive cages slid right out, leaving us with this..
Ahh, open spaces. As you can see there is now more than enough room for our selected radiator and 120mm fan...
Cutting the Fan Opening:
In this Enermax cases original configuration there were two 80mm fans mounted in the front of this case. What we wanted to do was make room for one 120mm fan, this required some help from the Dremel tool. Here's what the front of the case looked like before we started hacking away at it..
There were 4 holes in the center of the front that lined up perfectly with a 120mm fan, so the only thing left to do was to cut out the sheet metal that will make our radiator fan opening.
As you can see we cut out the 80mm fan brackets, and then cut out the rough shape of our fan opening. The last picture on the right shows you how sharp the edges can be. I highly recommend you take a dremel grinding blade and go over all of the edges that you cut to smooth them out.
Next: Modifying the Case (Continued): page 4 >>
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