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.

Finally Did Work

FINALLY...well more like I finally got the the nerve to start putting together the box portion of my project.  I guess I must've been a little nervous having never done anything like this before, and only having one chance.  Anyways, here goes.

Ready to go

Wow is that angle deceiving...It's 90 degrees trust me

Starting to take shape

Have to let it set for 20 minutes before moving anything.

The four sides together.  

Some small air bubbles...that's what happens with less than perfectly flat and smooth edges.  Oh well, should work I hope.

And done.

So I will let this bad boy continue to set for about 24-36 hours, then I'll try filling her up with water to see how it fairs.

In other news, my other package should be coming in tomorrow, which contains a pump, tubing, and some clamps for the tubing.  After that, all I need to wait on is getting oil, which also is on its way.

I'm excited.

Quick Update

So I ordered the rest of the parts I need to finish this project.  I will be getting the first part of the order Monday hopefully, which will include the radiator, fans, and fittings.  The other part still has to ship, but includes the pump, tubing, and tubing clamps.

I'm going to start assembling the box portion tonight.

(Most busy weekend of the year coming up...)

Finally ordered acrylic...

Well, I finally got around to ordering acrylic.  It should (if UPS can up their game) get to me by this weekend.

It's shipping to me from California, so we'll have to see about that.

In other news, my presentation is scheduled for the 14th of June, at 9am.  I really hope I'll figure out how I can bring this thing into Mr. Creagan's room that day, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Next major hurdle: locating about 6 more gallons of mineral oil ...

Slow Goings

Well, its been a while since I last posted, but here's a quick update on what I've been working on the last few days:

I'm going to build the most recent iteration of my design, the one in the post below.  I found a company, TAP Plastics, that sells cut-to-size acrylic sheets; perfect for my project.

Another thing I've been working on is applying for an IPEI grant. Hopefully that will come through, as it would be a huge help to my project.

So my goal is to order acrylic tonight, and start working on the build this weekend. We'll see how it goes.

Rev. 2 - More detailed CAD model

Well, I spent some time working on rev 2 of my case design.  I am pretty sure I want to build this design, as I think it will look great and function really well.  anyways, here it is:

So the main part of the case will be a fairly simple box shape, with some rails for feet on the bottom of the tank.   I've made the tank as small as I could, in order to minimize the volume of oil I would need to buy.  This tank should hold around 6 or 7 gallons when its full.

While I was working, I realized that there were probably some better part files I could get off the interwebs to use in my design.  I found the radiator, in the foreground, as well as the attached fans, and the black pump sitting on the floor of the case.

I met with Mr Sauve today, we went over the mid marking period assessment, and we both felt like I was in a good position.  We also started talking about my presentation, for which I would like to bring in the finished product to show off.  Transporting this thing however, will not be easy, but it would be worth it to have as a prop for my presentation.

So in the coming days, I plan to order acrylic sheets and actually get building this beast.  I found a company that will cut acrylic whatever size you want, and whatever thickness you want.

I'm really excited to get this thing off the proverbial ground.

Oil PC hardware all ready to go

A few days ago, I started running a very intensive stress-testing program on the bench computer that will eventually be submerged.  94 hours of running later I am pleased to report that it ran fine with zero issues.  (The main part of this picture is just the part where it says it completed 1800 tests in 94 hours with zero errors.)

On another note, I just contacted Laird plastics in Syracuse to see if they had any suggestions about which specific type of acrylic would be best for my project.  Hopefully they can get back to me in the next little while so I can actually order up some materials.

Tomorrow I'll be working a lot on my CAD model, and will hopefully finalize my design.

Up and running - secondary PC

So, a couple of days ago, I installed the last few pieces of this computer, and have had it up and running for a while now.

Initial test run

During the process of putting this together, I encountered a few issues that needed addressing....

First off, the power supply I am using is a budget-oriented model, so it comes with fairly short cables.  This was fine for the computer it was originally in, and fine for bench testing.  However, the 8-pin CPU power cable was too short to reach the connector at the top left of the motherboard, so I needed an extension.

The extension cable came in with an adapter for my smaller hard drive. (the black part)

Another issue I encountered with this particular motherboard is that the front audio, the headphone port and microphone port, has its header on the sound card.  So I had to run a cable directly across the middle of the motherboard ... grumble grumble... not as clean of a routing job as I wanted, but there was nothing else to do sooooo....

Some more pictures...

 The front panel connectors (power switch, power LED, reset switch)

PCI-express cables for the video card

Finished insides

Finished outside.

I may end up cutting a window in this case, but that is probably a summer project.

Onto my oil project.  I have a good report that the test piece of acrylic seems unchanged, even after about three weeks being submerged in the mineral oil.  This is good.  This means to me that the same type of acrylic that the tech department has lots of will work just fine for my project, but I will need a thicker size.  I'll be calling Laird plastics tomorrow if I can find the time.

New Case + Monster Update (What I've Been Working On)

Well, I got my case on Tuesday, and spent some time building inside of it.  (tons of pictures start now...)

[Alot of writing at the bottom of this post way down there]

Box...

Case + packing removed

Better than I expected for a cheap case.

 Opened up

Installing motherboard standoffs (Isolate the motherboard's PCB from the metal case)

Board installed

Needed to change the orientation of my heatsink, so...

I needed some alcohol to clean the old paste off.

Nice and clean.

Routed and connected the front panel USB and audio cables

Interior

Powersupply mounted

Graphics card installed, as well as cable management.

And cable management around the back.  Looks pretty messy, but I'll clean it up later probably.

I am still waiting on two more parts to come before I can call this computer finished.  I needed an adapter to let me mount the smaller laptop hard drive I am using.  Because the case is a 'value' oriented case, it didn't have the correct mounts for that drive.  Also, I needed an extension cable for one of the power supply cables.  These two things should get to me tomorrow.

One other thing I did was to move the computer I am actually going to submerge onto the test bench.  This will give me a place to test and validate all of the hardware while I go about designing and building the acrylic parts.  One more thing, I traded 9600 GSOs with a friend.  They are basically the same card, just with different coolers.  This one has a slight problem where the fan will go at 100% speed all the time, even though the card isn't really hot.  The one I had was much quieter.  Anyways, I traded him so he could shut his computer up (this thing gets pretty dang loud - very annoying after a while).  The fan issue won't matter to me as this will eventually be oil cooled, and the fan will barely be spinning anyways.

I also added a much bigger fan to the test bench.  This fan was in the roof of my new build, but it makes a really annoying rattling sound when it is mounted horizontally, which it was in my other case.  Anywho, I took it out, and turns out the spacing on the fan mounts of the tech station were exactly correct for this fan as well, so I mounted it.  I love how ridiculous it looks.  So I'll be testing this computer over the next little while, and giving it some TLC.  After all, I replaced it about five months ago and it's just been collecting dust ever since.

Brings me to my next topic.  I need to figure out a way to get every little bit of dust off each component.  I really want the oil to stay clean, so I need to get all the dust off.  A little blast of compressed air usually does the trick, but this graphics card has some serious dust build up inside of the heatsink and under the plastic shroud.  I may have to disassemble it to clean it.  The rest of the parts should be fine with some air blasts from the old compressor.

Actual things I will be doing to the computer will be minimal, I'm thinking.  It works fine as it is.  But I may wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows 7 which should make hard drive performance much better.  (I can't believe I was using something this darn slow for my main computer...)

Another thing I though of today is that I can apply for a Red $ Gold Grant from IPEI to help fund some parts of my project.  This could potentially include a small SSD for this system to run off of if I can swing it, but that is still a LONG way off.  If I was awarded the grant, it would go toward paying for things like oil and acrylic.

So today I met with Mr. Sauve, and he was able to look up the purchase order from when he ordered acrylic last summer for the school's supply.  He ordered the acrylic from Laird Plastics in Syracuse.  I went to their website, and they have literally 30 different types of acrylic.  I'll call them tomorrow and see if they have any recommendations on specific type to use for my project.

Mr. Sauve also mentioned that the maximum size of acrylic sheet that the tech department's laser cutter can accommodate is 2 ft x 1 ft.  This could mean I need to change my design, although I was thinking about changing it anyways.  Think of the last design I posted as like a 'first revision'.  2nd revision coming soon.

Another thing I need to keep in mind for this 2nd revision is the volume of oil I would need to fill it up to the proper level.  Too much oil and I will be spending a lot more on oil.  Too little oil and it could have a negative impact on cooling performance.

Anywho, that's all for now.  I hope you enjoyed this monster of a post.