Zzy's Desk of Pwnography - Big Pics

[Zzyzxx71]

3 Monitors, handmade case, 2 power supplies, hidden laptop.

Rawr.



The Case. Plexi/aluminum, false backplane for hiding cables. Currently 7 120mm fans (2 in, 5 out, installing 3 more in the door eventually). 2x7 port external USB hubs modded and mounted internally. 8 external ports, 5 internal available (1 is for the Xover to connect them). 2 military style switches (1 power, 1 reset), 2 x 3.3v LED's (power, HD activity). More other doodads than you can shake a stock at.



The dual power supplies and drive mounts. 3x500gb 7200RPM drives for OS/apps, 64gb SSD for games (wows run from here).



The Radiators (watercooling the next mobo I get). Top one is for CPU, the rear one is for the vid cards.



The 5.25 bays (theres 8 of them, still need to fabricate a cover for the non used ones).

[Nghtmr9999]

Daymn awesome setup man O.O

[LindlineOLD]

So... its just one giant case :P. Pretty sweet.

[ebony]

wow

[Bubba]

Why two power supplies? Has anyone tried real refrigeration for cooling?

[Zzyzxx71]

Originally Posted by Bubba

Why two power supplies? Has anyone tried real refrigeration for cooling?

The recent availability of 1000+ watt power supplies typically don't inform you that if you plug one into a 120v wall socket, you'll only get a maximum of 1000 watts out of it, no matter what the rating. To use the maximum rated amount, you need a 3 phase plug. Some even require 220v. I can get 2 850w power supplies for the price of a single 1000+w power supply. Probably even less.

Additionally, non-server power supplies have underpowered 5v rails. Hard drives, system fans, a large # of (internal) peripherals are 5v. A quick fix for that? Another power supply - getting them to operate in tandem is easy, you just need to patch 1 wire between them and they both kick off when you hit your power button. Additionally on top of my plans to eventually water cool, I'm considering peltier cooling again as well. I built this...

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..around 2001. It idled at 7f. Peak temps at 100% load was around 50f, this was with an overclock to 1.77ghz.

A second power supply is more or less mandatory for the current peltier coolers available. I've seem some around the 400 watt range. The one I used in 2001 was only a 173watt unit. Even then I used an external power supply (the white thing on top - ran the fans, pump, pelt).

As far as refrigeration, yes people have tried it. Refrigerators are built to keep a finite insulated NON HEAT PRODUCING area cool. The second you give a refrigerator any kind of heat source to fight against, you'll find it's woefully underpowered (as far as it's cooling capacity) to keep up. A CPU puts out more heat(wattage) than any standard home refrigerator can cope with. This is why people who want to get to extreme overclocks typically get into phase exchange cooling systems or peltier (TEC) cooling systems.

For more information on that, google "Phase Exchange Overclock", "Peltier Watercooling" - you can also see some peoples systems here.

http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=101

[Bubba]

Not a refrigerator, but an air conditioning unit. Where the heat exchanger is cooling the coolant medium. I have some window units that might work well. Just a rube goldberg project idea.

[Zzyzxx71]

Absolutely - See this guys post. He's using a window unit for his cooler, and ~22 gallons of fluid as his exchange medium.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1424727

[Bubba]

i was looking more toward a minimal setup using the unit pretty much like it is and using air as the exchange medium. His is more extreme than I want. I remember some experiments with cooking oil in the case as a cooling medium. My knowlege of liquid cooling is years old ejhrn they were still having trouble with moisture in the case. Back around late 90's early 2000.

Most likely this is a pipe dream as I have real projects to do around the house that keep me plenty busy; like putting up fence, roofing and general fixing for a 25 year old house.

[Zzyzxx71]

Originally Posted by Bubba

i was looking more toward a minimal setup using the unit pretty much like it is and using air as the exchange medium. His is more extreme than I want. I remember some experiments with cooking oil in the case as a cooling medium. My knowlege of liquid cooling is years old ejhrn they were still having trouble with moisture in the case. Back around late 90's early 2000.

Most likely this is a pipe dream as I have real projects to do around the house that keep me plenty busy; like putting up fence, roofing and general fixing for a 25 year old house.

Yeah there's nothing simple or minimal about any of these extreme cooling methods. There have been some guys doing submerged systems (using mineral oil as the liquid), but they were more for show than for performance.

Stick with big fans big heat sinks if you want minimal.