The project is underway!

I finally started putting my watercooling setup together a few days ago. The main features of it will be an Arctic Frezer resivor and Pump, Copper tubing in place of silicone tubing, Danger Den cube radiator, and the big finale: A PAL8045 waterblock. Yes folks, the HSF we have come to know and love has taken on a new form. I scribed a maze pattern onto the copper plate from my plans and proceded to drill my inlet/outlet holes. Once I measured the depth of the plate with my dial calipers, (It turned out to be a lot less than 8mm) I set the depth of the milling machine to about 10 thousandths of an inch from the aluminum and proceded to mill out a maze pattern. Thanks to those that gave me some cutting fluid tips, all went well (unlike the other project I'm working on, a titanium pen, so very many melted drills). It looks like it will work perfectly once I get the 1/8 inch copper plate from onlinemetals.com that I need to solder to it. Also, the radiator, which I recived today, fits perfectly into the drive cage area of my PC-60 and even pop-rivets to the drive cage holder. The resivor/pump is backordered until mid next week, so I think I may need to pick up an $8 coolermaster HSF so I have a computer to use until then. I would really appreciate some feedback on this project, and hope to write an article with all the pictures I am taking.

please put some pics up i gotta see this!!!!

Yes, pics would be very nice when u finish.

yeah, i wanna see some shots of that copperblock/hsf. that'd be cool. also, do you have your own milling machine? what kind?

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Originally posted by mellojoe
yeah, i wanna see some shots of that copperblock/hsf. that'd be cool. also, do you have your own milling machine? what kind?

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Its a little combination Lathe/Milling machine called a Smithy. I can't get pictures up until I'm done though because my computer is in pieces. I may get a cheap HSF just so I can run it until the last few parts come.

How do you plan on getting the fan to turn on?

I'm just using MBM5 with shutdown to protect my cpu. Should that not work, the bios is set to shutdown at 147F.

Do you plan on measuring flow? The cheapest electronic flow meter I found (ones with a hall effect sensor) were $70. Little steep for me.

Temps don't seem to rise too fast. We unplugged the pump on mybrothers duron 750, it rose about 2F per minute. I'm waiting on a compunurse for my xp1700 to see what happens when I unplug the pump. I don't think the MB is giving an accurate reading.

I think that I might just have a hardware temperature alarm that turn it on, or have a box at the top of the system that can tell me if water is flowing by contiunity.

I dunno about the temp alarm. If the CPU is too hot then somethings wrong, pump stopped or pipe broke. In case of the latter, I'd rather have the computer shut itself off, than keep running full of water.

The continuity idea is good, but that only works if the pipe breaks. What happens when the pump stops?

Might have to do a combination of both.

I was thinking of some sort of plactic tube that is inline with the copper that uses continuity across the water to detect flow in the top of the system. Because I am going to use a resivor, water will drain from the top is there is no pressure. This will detect any stoppage in the system.

I do plan to have the system to automatically shutdown when the pump fails because I have modified the 8045 enough that it may not be an effective HSF anymore, but still work in conjuction with the water cooling.

About the copper plate in the PAL8045. The plate is rounded at the very edges, but remains flat to 20 thousandths in the center. The actual copper plate is about 3.5mm thick, with the rest of the thickness being aluminum.

Since my water passages are so small (3.4mm deep x 1/4" wide) hope that the system works correctly. I hope that this just means the water will flow much faster through the waterblock than the pipes which are 3/8 copper tubing.

I'll have pics up by sunday, the CF card they are on is with the parts in the garage and I gotta get a place to host them.

I'll have pics of the water passages

Damn this sounds sweet. You definately have to post pics as soon as you can. I'm eager to see the modded PAL8045 :D.

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Originally posted by JustWhitman
I'm eager to see the modded PAL8045 :D.

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as am I

I'd LOVE to see some pics! Water cooling is a BALLSY adventure if you ask me!

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Originally posted by OCking
I'd LOVE to see some pics! Water cooling is a BALLSY adventure if you ask me!

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Some would say a mouse mod is dangerous :p BTW when are YOU going to post pics of that? I wanna see how it turned out.

I'm just too lazy to make a whole elaborate index page today. You know the kind, with words and all that stuff. Just pull the pics from here http://members.lycos.co.uk/zackbass1/

I already have a page (yes, a WHOLE page of words) written about the whole thing, it'll probably end up being three pages when I'm done.

:eek: That is some nice craftmanship on the channel. It looks factory done. Your setup is going to be pretty cool when you finish it.


PS: You are so lucky to have a milling machine. :mad: :)