Finally posting again, massive update, current troubles

Well, looking back on my blog these past couple of days, I realized I never truly finished posting here.  I finished the computer the night of June 18th, which was after school ended, and after my presentation, so I guess this blog fell by the wayside.  Anyways, I'll pick this right back up from my last update, when I had received my cooling parts and had leak-tested the enclosure.

Here's the motherboard mounted to the HSPC tray, using standoffs from my old case as well as rubber spacers where standoffs didn't fit properly.

Power supply in the finished box for scale.  I forgot how much the wire mess would be amplified in the smaller space.  Need to change this somehow...

Received 8 gallons of mineral oil from tractor supply, should be more than enough

My mentor, Mr. Sauve, was kind enough to let me into school during finals week to make some cuts in my acrylic using the band saw in his room.  The pieces I cut went towards my motherboard mounting design, and also the hard drive cage that will go on the backside of the enclosure.

Here's my motherboard mounting design: there is a 'slot', formed by the two long pieces cemented to the side of the box.  This provides a way for me to slide the tray assembly in and out, and will also securely hold the whole assembly in place very snugly (well actually because I accidentally glued the two pieces too close together, it still worked like a charm though).

Here it is with the tray installed into it. The tray can easily be lifted vertically out of the enclosure.

This little piece of acrylic under the tray at the bottom of the tank was a very important addition.  It allows cables to pass from the main area of the case back around to the back, which is where the hard drive will be mounted.

Here's the other side slot, had to use pieces of acrylic that extended further out from the end of the tank to accommodate the dimensions of the tray.

Here is the holder for my hard drive.  It will be glued onto the back, outside face of the tank.

Board + tray assembly in final position

Computer set up for a test boot, power supply in place, video card installed, everything ready to go

And it boots just fine.  Good sign: means nothing on the board is being shorted out, and that the mounting system for the board is adequate.

Another shot of the video card

Here is my hard drive mounting.  The box from earlier is attached to the backside of the tank, and is positioned so that the power and data cables can come directly off the motherboard, loop around the back of the tray, and plug directly into the drive without turning weird ways.

It looks SSOOO much better without the silly blue plastic. (check out that messy table...)

During the test boot, with everything in its final position, I came across a rather large problem.  All of the extra cables from the power supply were taking up all the rest of the room in the case, leaving no room for the pump and tubing.  So, I modified it a bit, removing the unnecessary cables, and heat-shrinking the ends to keep them from shorting together, possibly ruining the power supply.

A quick test boot to make sure the power supply still works, which it does.

Anndd... that's pretty much a wrap for the pre-presentation build.  There still is much more to do, like iron out the cooling system, but I couldn't install all of that yet.  I was limited by the oil computer's natural enemy: transportation.  An oil computer can easily weigh more than 100lbs when fully filled and operational.  Seeing as I wanted to bring my system down to the high school to use as a prop during my presentation, I left it empty for the journey down.  For my actual presentation, I went very, very bold.  Using this computer for my power point, I opened the presentation by dumping 2 gallons of oil over everything, never having tested the case with mineral oil, and not fully understanding the full effects it would have on the components.  Luckily for me, everything went swimmingly during my presentation, and the computer on demo left my evaluators nearly speechless.  Next came the extra fun task of getting this half full behemoth back to my car, and back to my house.  I ended up emptying out about a gallon of the oil back into it's container, and just went with it about a quarter full with oil.  It made the journey home just fine, luckily, as a spill in the car would've been catastrophic .

After finishing up the school year, I finally got time again to wrap this project up.  I moved it down into my basement, from which it will probably never leave, and began the task of setting up the cooling system, and finishing out this project.

Unfortunately, pictures were a little less frequent during this phase of the project, as my hands were constantly in the oil.  Not wanting to ruin my phone, pictures were taken at main milestones.

Getting ready for the big fill up, spill precautions in place

My initial desired pump, tubing and radiator configuration.  However, after trial and much, much error (and some spillage) I remembered a very important fact about water cooling components: the pump needs to be gravity fed from the reservoir of fluid.  Like a silly man, I put the pump well above the level of the fluid, so the fluid wouldn't circulate through the radiator.  So, I plunged the pump into the oil.

Here's the first shot of the completed build.  The cooling system is set up in a cross-flow pattern, with the pump drawing oil in from the bottom front corner, and the cooler oil is returned from the radiator in the opposite corner.  This ensures the oil cannot build up in one section of the tank, and simply heat up next to a component.

The wiring job that was necessary to run the radiator fans and hard drive was very...bootlegged.  I realized too late that I could've used one of the power connectors I cut off, but it ended up working anyways.

Cool shot of the refraction from the oil, video card lookin good.

Oh yes, it plays Crysis.

 Some higher quality pictures, courtesy of my brother Matt and his fancy camera.

And that's pretty much a wrap on this project.  I ran this computer pretty much 24/7 over the summer, and it worked like a dream.  I turned it off in mid August when I left for school.

However, when I returned home for fall break in October, I was very surprised and disappointed to discover that it no longer booted.  I have no idea what went wrong with it, but over the long break from school in a few weeks, I am planning on pulling all the hardware out of the oil, and letting it drip dry for a few weeks.  Then I'll work towards diagnosing the problem.

I will most likely have to strain the oil, as there is a fair amount of dust that had floated into the open top of the tank.  I really should've designed a top cover for this thing, maybe a Version 2 update coming next summer...

More updates coming in the future, whenever I get time to work on this thing.

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If you've been following this project from the beginning, I hope you've enjoyed the ride.  It's been a fun, eye-opening project, and I hope to continue this blog with more updates as they come(hopefully I can get it working again).  This concludes my WISE english project.