Hi, i am very much into my hi-fi and electronic gadgetry but since computers is my specialty i actually mod my computers a bit as well, in the past ive dabbled in watercooling as well and i was just curious as to whether there is anyone else here who is into that

heres a few pictures of some of my older projects, this first one is a watercooled cpu, and i used it like this for around 2 years before i disassembled the watercooling, i still have all those old parts from this and i might just put it together onto an old machine (sorry that many of these are cellphone pictures, ive just purchased a point and click sony cybershot camera around 6 months ago but most of these pictures are from much longer than that)



then here's the first time ive ever put in a case window onto a computer case so that the inside could be viewed



my second project done for a friend was a bit better looking but we did not do much to make the insides look neat



then i purchased this skyhawk case because it looked like a Lian-li case and i learned a bit about cable management - this is a fully working computer with the cabling neatened up to allow the insides to look a bit more visible



heres that skyhawk case



then i got slightly better at the cable management





and heres what i did to the outside of that case, i had this logo laser cut into the side panel and i sprayed the case black to match all my other stuff



this is what the front of the case looked like after i sprayed it, it was initially a decent brushed aluminum but when i was doing the lasercutting i made a mistake and used masking tape on the side panel which got burned and ruined that panels brushed aluminum finish - so i had to do something to make it look decent - and i got some decent primer that works on aluminum and had to sand the entire case down (remove the lacquer) and then paint it



heres what the case looked like at night with all the lighting lit up



and heres the monitor and speakers as well as cordless keyboard and mouse that i was using at that time



since then ive gotten a 22" monitor and also the motherboard i was using died a horrible death when the powersupply blew up during a power surge in my building, so ive now pulled all those parts out of the case and im busy trying to build up one of the older machines into it

i do want to do a new project with a quadcore computer setup and this one will be hopefully far better looking because i have become experienced in using power tools so i hopefully dont need to get things lasercut plus i have many new ideas for a good project, the only thing holding me back right now is the finances to purchase the parts

so anyone else here into case modding and watercooling, i would love to see your efforts and maybe share ideas

[ashwinsid]

I dont know if this is allowed (mentioning other websites) but do google "bestcasescenario".

[GTO]

You talk of computers like we do cars....modifications, DIY, parts et al! I'm amazed at some of your project pictures

i do want to do a new project with a quadcore computer setup

and watercooling,

Out of curiousity, what do you use your computer for? Does it need soupin' up? My standard desktop + laptop do just fine for 12 hours of my kinda work every day.

[pranavt]

All this cable management is fun until you have a fault in some hardware. Just managing the cables will double the time required to remove/replace that piece of hardware. But good work nonetheless. I'll show you my case now. This is my home desktop, running an Athlon X2, 8gigs of ram and 7 HDDs totalling over 2TB. I love naked cabinets!

[aaggoswami]

@ naughty001 and Pranavat :

I wonder what are donor cabintes you people use. I have till now cut the side panel and the base of cabinet to accomodate fans.

@naughtly001 :
I wonder how much you did you overclock your PC. I think with water cooling, atleast 700-800 MHz is possible. I am able to take my X2 5000+ brisbane till 2.8 from 2.6 in stable form.

Will post of pictures of my fan modification but I am getting inferiority complex after having a look at your images.

Originally Posted by aaggoswami

@ naughty001 and Pranavat :

I wonder what are donor cabintes you people use. I have till now cut the side panel and the base of cabinet to accomodate fans.

@naughtly001 :
I wonder how much you did you overclock your PC. I think with water cooling, atleast 700-800 MHz is possible. I am able to take my X2 5000+ brisbane till 2.8 from 2.6 in stable form.

Will post of pictures of my fan modification but I am getting inferiority complex after having a look at your images.

well i was able to take my 4800+ (2.4ghz) also to 2.8ghz

post away with your fan mod, its all part of the fun and every successful overclocker starts from modest beginnings so no need to believe your mod to be inferior

Out of curiousity, what do you use your computer for? Does it need soupin' up? My standard desktop + laptop do just fine for 12 hours of my kinda work every day.

the overclocking and case modding is just a hobby now, initially i was going to use it as demo since after completing my A+ and MCSE i decided not to pursue a career in network administration but opened up a small company geared toward providing small netwoks and modded gaming computers where the graphics cards alone cost as much as the rest of the machine put together with monster hardware

sadly ive had to close that company down, so now i just do it for the kicks and its a hobby i enjoy, just as most petrolheads would enjoy modifying their cars to go faster

Just managing the cables will double the time required to remove/replace that piece of hardware.

not really, because once you know where the cable needs to go it doesnt add any time to route it in a manner that isnt very visible and the trick is to also keep the computer simple, for that rig i was just using a single 150gig western digital raptorX hard drive (the one with the window in it) heres a picture of that hard drive (worked at 10000 RPM instead of the standard 7200RPM but was sadly ony SATA 1)





also for the power supply cable management i actually reached a stage where i could modify the power supply cables to have the molex connectors in exact spots as well as sleeve the power supply wiring so that it looked neat anyway. For this i had some special molex plug removal tools



plus we used to actually remove the standard white molex connectors and use the colour ones that glow in the dark under ultraviolet light, sadly though i havent got any pictures of those since that machine was built for a client who wanted to show it off only to his close friends but did not want pictures of it floating around on the internet

i also normally used to use rounded IDE cables and for SATA cables the easiest way to hide them was to run them flat under the motherboard

[aaggoswami]

The small Fan modification. This is a small modification for cooling of graphic card and later northbridge.
1) In the first three images, the fan is added as front intake fan that directly throws air onto graphics card. There are some slots in the front of my cabinet that allows fan to take in air well.
In the third image, if you look very carefully, on the front side of fan, there a metal panel that is coming out from base of case. This was erected from base with tools and that side of fan is bolted down with this. We had to drill holes here. ( We have drill machine as well as marble cutter at home )

In the images one and two you can see how the fan was installed. This small metal piece was tough to bend, but I did it.

2) In the last two images, you can see the side panel was cut. The cutting job is not professional as we did not have tools at home to do a perfect job. The main intention of this fan was to throw air directly onto the graphic card and some air on the northbridge heatsink.

About fans : Both the fans are industrial grade with proper ball bearings. There is a small circlip that has to be opened to access the internals. Both the fans are 115V and they are connected in series. You can see a small connector sort of thing on near the fan on side panel. That is where the connections are sorted for series connection. That small thing need not be open, but I have not applied insulation tape on it.
Both the fans are very very efficient and throw good amount of cool air. My father is working in power plant since last 25+ years. These fans are used there. As soon as the job of fan is over, they are put in scrap. Some of the fans that are put in scrap are in very good condition. Dad asked for permission to take some fans from scrap home and permission was granted. Dad then brought the fans home and I did cutting job.

When these fans were installed, I had 7300GT from POV that had passive cooling only, not active cooling. Hence all these modifications were done.

[d3mon]

First of all, amazing mods. Really loved the laser cut logo lit up at night.

Originally Posted by aaggoswami

@naughtly001 :
I wonder how much you did you overclock your PC. I think with water cooling, atleast 700-800 MHz is possible. I am able to take my X2 5000+ brisbane till 2.8 from 2.6 in stable form.

Originally Posted by naughty001

well i was able to take my 4800+ (2.4ghz) also to 2.8ghz

I was able to take my 3600+ brisbane on stock cooler from 1.9 to 2.8GHz @1.35v. Temps never exceeded 60 C (During winters). Had full prime95 stability. Ran out of cojones to go any further.

For 24x7 operation, I use crystalcpuid to manage my cpu clock. It automatically switches between 260x5.5=1433Mhz @ 0.9v and 260x9.5=2470Mhz @ 1.2v depending on the load.

So yeah, I have underclocked, overclocked and undervolted my PC, all at the same time

[pranavt]

Originally Posted by d3mon

I was able to take my 3600+ brisbane on stock cooler from 1.9 to 2.8GHz @1.35v. Temps never exceeded 60 C (During winters). Had full prime95 stability. Ran out of cojones to go any further.

What the? What kind of a processor was that? You probably got a higher clockspeed proc disguised as a 3600+

[YaeJay]

Liquid cooling is the best! Yes Ive tried it, but nothin as hightech as you, though. Ive wraped my cabinet with a damp cloth . Works like a charm. tested for more than a week, 24/7, 40 Degs hybd summer, without a/c. Cheap and effective if you know your cabinet is not leaky! and the key word is damp not soaking wet. I do run processor intensive High end 3D graphic S/W, and they have to be ON for hours together to render. It does sound kinda insane, but works. ; )

P.S: I take no responsibility what so ever, if you smoke your comp.

[d3mon]

Originally Posted by pranavt

What the? What kind of a processor was that? You probably got a higher clockspeed proc disguised as a 3600+

Hehe. Actually the secret is processor binning. This is the secret stuff that no manufacturer wants you to know about.

Did you know that all processors of the same family are born equal? That's right. So if you have an athlon x2 3600+ from the brisbane family, and an athlon 5600+, again from the brisbane family, both of them went through exactly the same manufacturing process.

After the manufacturing is complete, a few processors are taken (sampled) and put through a testing process. That determines the quality, or the speed grade of the manufactured lot.

Here we come to the 'headroom' in a chip. This is the extra clock speed that you can basically gain for free. Now the base variants of a processor speed grade aren't much worse than the top variants. But market demands force AMD and Intel to introduce the cheap versions too. So, what you are getting really is a chip that is just a little bit worse off than the top of the line chip that costs several times more!

Taking the base variant from 1.9 to 2.8 is easy. But getting the same 50% speed boost in a 2.8Ghz clocked processor is much much more difficult (Infact in the case of athlons, quite frankly impossible). For precisely this reason, the base variant always offers the most value.

PS: I always lament the fact that extracting more performance out of our engines isn't quite easy as overclocking processors! Imagine pressing a couple of buttons, and getting upto 50% more performance! Free of cost !!

Originally Posted by YaeJay

Liquid cooling is the best! Yes Ive tried it, but nothin as hightech as you, though. Ive wraped my cabinet with a damp cloth . Works like a charm. tested for more than a week, 24/7, 40 Degs hybd summer, without a/c. Cheap and effective if you know your cabinet is not leaky! and the key word is damp not soaking wet. I do run processor intensive High end 3D graphic S/W, and they have to be ON for hours together to render. It does sound kinda insane, but works. ; )

P.S: I take no responsibility what so ever, if you smoke your comp.

odds are high that you can smoke your computer with a lowtech method like that, because you are causing water vapour around the area as the cloth dries out and the water evaporates - then you have a fan blowing which is cooling the air around but you have surrounding areas ie motherboard and chipsets etc that are hot, so having cool air blowing around then heat as well as moist water vapour will do two things ie cause condenstaion which will make the computer wet internally (causing shorts) and secondly the computer and internals are more susceptible to rust

trust me ive had to throw away more than one steel case which is why i only use aluminum cases or perspex/plexi cases nowadays, its not only for the look, its also for the fact that they cannot rust, but ive also had moterboards and screws rusting inside machines when ive experimented with extreme cooling

Hehe. Actually the secret is processor binning.

Did you know that all processors of the same family are born equal? That's right. So if you have an athlon x2 3600+ from the brisbane family, and an athlon 5600+, again from the brisbane family, both of them went through exactly the same manufacturing process.

100% spot-on, sometimes you can also know from the stepping of the CPU whether it was from a batch that overclocks well or not

After the manufacturing is complete, a few processors are taken (sampled) and put through a testing process. That determines the quality, or the speed grade of the manufactured lot.

sometimes though the binning also happens because a cpu that should have been graded higher fails the testing due to lack of stabilty, but this is when good cooling can allow it to easily work at that higher speed which is why even if i dont watercool i also use very good thermal pastes and also very good cooling fans

some of my cooling pastes



that thin syringe toward the bottom is the best heatsink thermal interface material ever, its the collaboratory pro paste - and that syringe is only good for 10 applications - but contrast the arctic silver ceramique 33 gram syringe above it will probably work for around 70/100 applications if used for cpu's

an example of decent cpu heatsink/fans that ive got





some of the waterblocks that i havent used yet



but these are for out dated sockets ie AMD socket 939 or they even work with the old socket 478 P4 cpu's, so im just keeping these as part of my collection because i cant even sell them unless someone wants to watercool an old machine. Then again if i do start watercooling again i suppose i can use this cos all my old amd rigs are just socket 939, since when AM2 was released the intel core2 duo was just a better bet but i havent bought any parts recently so i want a quadcore cpu to add to my collection

[aaggoswami]

Nice stuff Naughty001.

Originally Posted by d3mon

Did you know that all processors of the same family are born equal? That's right. So if you have an athlon x2 3600+ from the brisbane family, and an athlon 5600+, again from the brisbane family, both of them went through exactly the same manufacturing process.

Taking the base variant from 1.9 to 2.8 is easy. But getting the same 50% speed boost in a 2.8Ghz clocked processor is much much more difficult (Infact in the case of athlons, quite frankly impossible). For precisely this reason, the base variant always offers the most value.

Correct. Brisbane cores have approximately 224 million transistors. This is true whether its X2 5000+ or X2 5600+.
Also what we get is processors with locked multipliers. X2 5000+ Black Edition ( known as BE ) came with unlocked multipliers and that 2.6Ghz stock went to 3.2 without overheating on K9N neo.

Intel Extreme editions and Black Editions from AMD are processors with unlocked multipliers.

[kbk_75]

I've been making my own PCs for almost 20 years now and my previous build was fully modded with CCFL lights, case windows, careful cable management, round cables, the works.

My current rig doesn't have a case window, but there are some lit fans in my case.

BTW, that cable job you did was brilliant Naughty. Well done!

Current Rig:
2.4GHz E6600 Core2 Duo @ 3.5GHz | Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme + 120mm Scythe | Asus Striker Extreme | 4x2GB Mushkin DDR2-800 | 2xPNY Factory OC'd Geforce 8800GTX SLI 621 Core, 2000 Mem | 3xSamsung Spinrite 500GB SATA RAID 0 | 1 Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB | 6X LG Blu-ray Burner / HD-DVD Reader | 18X Asus Lightscribe DVD DL Burner | Sound Blaster Fatal1ty Extreme Gamer | 24" Dell 2407WFP-HC | Razer Lycosa Mirror Edition Keyboard | Logitech MX Revolution Mouse | Logitech Quickcam Orbit | Coolermaster CM Stacker 830 + 1200W Thermaltake Toughpower PSU | 4xScythe 120mm + 2 Coolermaster 120mm LED case fans | Vista Ultimate 64bit

Other Rig:
2.4C SL6Z3 M0 P4 @ 3.2 | Thermalright SLK-900U + 92mm Vantec Tornado | Asus P4C800-E Deluxe BIOS 1023 | 2x512MB OCZ PC4200 EL 3-4-4-8-4 1:1 | 512MB Gainward 7800GS+ @ 600/1460 | 2xWD 73GB Raptor ICH5R SATA RAID 0 | 1xSeagate 7200.7 160GB onboard Promise SATA RAID | 1xHitachi 7K500 500GB onboard Promise SATA RAID | 16X Asus DVD-ROM | 8X Plextor 708A DVD/RW | Sound Blaster Audigy 2 | 20.1" Viewsonic VP-201b | Logitech MX 3000 Keyboard + Mouse | Logitech Quickcam Orbit | Thermaltake Xaser III V2000A + 850W Coolermaster PSU

BTW, that cable job you did was brilliant Naughty. Well done!

thank you - will see if i can improve upon it since my AMD stuff in that rig has just died - so im planning on just using the case up with an old socket 478 intel board and 3.4ghz prescott P4

will do a new project with a quad core CPU of some kind soon as well

your rigs seem tasty as well - i need to get myself some more modern equipment now