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Watercooled PC Desk Mod with Built In Car Audio System!

natr0n said:
nice build.

Are those hd coolers cooling the bottom/logic boards of the drives or just the tops ?
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Its cooling the main chip part =)
 
Vario said:
Why use a car audio amp? Could have run a pro audio amp and ran it on 120 volt AC instead of 12 volt DC, but keeping the head unit on 12vdc as the preamp. That would be a lot easier on the second PSU. Car audio amps don't really run that great on PC DC power supplies.
Not to mention you can run a lot more wattage:
http://www.parts-express.com/behringer-ep4000-europower-power-amplifier-2-x-1400w--248-748

http://www.parts-express.com/behringer-ep2000-europower-power-amplifier-2-x-750w--248-746 (what I run,EP1500)

Very nice build. Nice work for a first time too!
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Thanks mate appreciate it
 
That looks great, have fun with it.
 
absolutelly amazing! i want one like yours (@_@) liked pink/green color combo very much
 
Sweet Mod, Subbed.
 
O.O
 
EPIC BUILD IS EPIC!!!!!!!!! :toast:
 
Thank you everyone for your support. More progress will be up tomorrow.
 
So, i have received my last parcel in the mail and i have put the PC inside the desk and wired everything up. I am so happy with how it looks. I still have to wait till tomorrow for the glass top of the desk and i will also be putting the UV green Mayhem's dye in, so hopefully i can post some more progress shots within the next few days. After all of that is done i can get the monitors going and turn the computer on after 24 hours of leak testing. Once 100% complete i will post a load of images on here for all to see, cheers

Progress shots:

These two shots are of how messy the cables were before i put the elevated platform in the desk.

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These pictures are of the desk as it stands today. Iv also taken some pictures under the different lighting options and i am very happy with the look of the desk. Dont mind the mess under the desk, that will be cleaned tomorrow before the glass guys get here.

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So.. I managed to fill the loop yesterday and ran into some problems. I filled the loop and had it running for around 2 hours when i noticed liquid all over the motherboard.
Straight away i turned the pumps off and had to take everything apart to clean the motherboard and dry it off. I drained the loop to do just that.

When everything was taken out of the desk i took apart the Asus maximus VI formula motherboard to dry it out and observe where the source of the leak had occurred. This is what i found..

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As you can see in the image above, the motherboard water block looks as if the coolant has leaked through the seal,
so i decided instead of returning the product for a new one, i might try tighten the seal and dry out the motherboard.

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The picture above is of the motherboard with the back plate and thermal armor removed as well as all of the thermal blocks and the CPU.
It was essential that all of the liquid was dried and removed so it was necessary to remove all of these components to prevent a short circuit when i powered the PC on.
I wired up a fan to a small 12v power adapter and placed it over the CPU and RAM slots to dry out any liquid that found its way into the gaps. I also borrowed my sisters hair drier to speed up the drying process.

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Above is testing the components to see if they all still work after letting everything dry for 8 hours or so. I had removed the CPU water block to let the CPU slot dry so when it came to testing whether the components worked or not i had to reinstall some thermal grease on my delidded CPU and on the thermal copper plate and use the stock air cooler.

The PC powered up fine and everything worked. While i had the computer on i decided to check the CPU temperatures because i had delidded the CPU and put my own thermal grease on.
Previous core temperatures ranged from 34-37 degrees Celsius, the new temperatures ranged from 18-21 degrees Celsius with the stock cooler, so i was very happy with them results.

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The picture above is of the refill and previous leak area, so far so good. Another possible cause of the leakage around that area is where the fittings screw into the motherboard water block.
I have since installed some extender fittings into the motherboard and then screwed the compression fittings into those.
The reason for this is the compression fittings are a lot wider and i believe that the design of the motherboard water block was preventing them from screwing down all the way, therefore creating a leakage area.
I have highlighted the problem areas below. These areas are sticking up preventing the compression fitting from screwing in all the way.

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As of this moment i have put everything back into the desk and i am leak testing overnight, so far the problem areas have been fixed. I will be uploading more progress very shortly


 
looks like sex.
 
XSI said:
absolutelly amazing! i want one like yours (@_@) liked pink/green color combo very much
Click to expand...
Thanks mate yea it turned out well. =)
 
More updates up tomorrow or the day after.
 
The first computer I built on my own... did not look like this. :(

:toast:
 
More updates today or tomorrow
 
So, progress has been made with the desk.

So a few days have past, i have my 24 hour leak test complete and so far no dramas. Next phase of the build is to put the three 27 inch monitors up on the monitor stand i purchased from USA.

I open the monitor stand box only to find that the wrong stand had been sent out to me. Instead of a free standing stand that i ordered, i received a stand with a clamp screw to hold the monitor mount onto the desk, which is a bit of a problem...

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The clamp cannot open wide enough to fit the thickness of my desk due to the desk being a hollow box roughly 200mm thick. Thoughts....

I came up with a solution that only Albert Einstein himself would think of, okay that's a lie it didn't take much to come up with the idea.
I had to create a wooden stand that the monitor mounting stand could clamp onto and the stand had to screw into the back section of the desk, pretty simple...

Went to Bunnings warehouse and scored myself three 1m lengths of wood for free (who would have thought..).
I cut each length down to 800x150mm and cut a small piece to screw on top of the three side pieces. This top piece acted as the base for which the monitor mount would clamp on to.

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By creating the stand it also relieves the desk of all weight and prevents any possible bowing of the wood. The stand turned out well as you can see.
I covered it in some left over carbon fibre wrap and now i can attach all three of my monitors and run either a nvidia surround setup or run with the 3 seperate screens with the two gtx 780 ti GPU's in SLI mode.
Also by having only the 3 sides and an open back it acts as a place to hide cables which makes everything look neater and well managed.

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My desk is up and running now so updates will be posted very shortly within the next few days.

Again, please help me out by liking my Facebook page, subscribe to my YouTube where i will be posting regular videos of game footage and desk mods. It would really help me out, i appreciate the support Cheers.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ImfacerollPCGaming
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Imfacerollgaming


 
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Reactions: xvi
technically the barb should be enough to prevent leaks without the compression. also you only need the compression fittings hand tight. the most common cause of leaks arround the fittings is the pipes werent cut flush enough.
but the maximus dosent come with barbs attached so could have also been the fitting was over tightend or under tightend when installed.
glad to see no permanent damage happened.
 
Shambles1980 said:
technically the barb should be enough to prevent leaks without the compression. also you only need the compression fittings hand tight. the most common cause of leaks arround the fittings is the pipes werent cut flush enough.
but the maximus dosent come with barbs attached so could have also been the fitting was over tightend or under tightend when installed.
glad to see no permanent damage happened.
Click to expand...
Yea what happened was the fitting was screwed in but not all the way due to the thermal armor on the motherboard. So because it was not in all the way, the o ring between the fitting and motherboard block was not stopping anything from seeping out due to the pressure in the loop with the pumps running.
 
Looks awesome! I need to do something like this one of these days. Did you find a design for the desk, or just whip up something yourself?

Bumping to sub.
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xvi said:
Looks awesome! I need to do something like this one of these days. Did you find a design for the desk, or just whip up something yourself?

Bumping to sub.
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Click to expand...
A desk called the cross desk by redharbinger inspired the design. Its a professionally made desk which they sell in mass production but I wanted to make my own and I made my own dimensions to suit what I needed
 
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Thanks all for the support
 
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