Silent Water Cooled SN25P

[GaBeRuLeS]

That's pretty weird that they would make you pay for the replacement. I know thaat when my motherboard kicked the bucket, it was still under warranty from the 3 year warranty I got, and they sent me a working motherboard for FREE (i'm not sure if it was a new/refurbished/my after fixing motheboard). make sure it's not under warranty, because they might give it  to you free if you ask.

[kenaneu]

I am pretty sure that if you modified it in ANY visible way (watercooling the chipset, for example) you've voided your warranty.  

If you can still put it all back together nice and pretty, then by all means try to RMA it.  Free is always best, and often worth waiting for!

[Ashtefere]

Next time you wanna test a look, disconnect the power cables from everything except the pump, then stick a U shaped piece of wire into the green atx connector plug and the black one next to it. This will turn on the PSU so long as its in there, and will send power only to the pump.
Leave it running over night, and any spills should be dry by then. If you happen to ever use a lga775 beware, as the water loves to mill around the pins, and stay there... and never ever ever evaporate. Instead it just rusts and corrodes the pins and cpu connectors, and you need to take it apart and blowdry it. :/
My 2 creds.
-Ash

[Eric_J]

A 3 year warranty… Shuttle told me it was only 1 year. Maybe it's the difference between buying a “bare-bones” vs a complete system.

For the record… This wasn’t a leak. The fluid came from disconnecting existing hoses to add an additional cooling device. I just didn’t have the patience to dry everything before I tried it.

How did you guys deal with disconnecting a filled system? Do you drain the system before you disconnect any hoses?

On the good news front. The system is now starting for a few seconds. Before it was completely dead. I still haven’t torn it down and removed the motherboard. I’m very optimistic that I can get it running again with a little time. I really like the idea of a 200 degree bake.

[Eric_J]

The system is down but the work goes on  ;-) Here are some pictures:


This is the back side of the face plate. Craig, I took your advice and created a mounting plate for the electronics. You had a good idea about trying to get things lined up.



Here's a close up of the bracket. I used left overs from the LCD Panel hardware.



Here we see a shot of the elusive Hard Drive Cooler.



The cooler in profile. I took the copper pipe and flattened it out in a vice to give it more surface contact with the mounting bracket.



You can also see some thermal paste applied between the mounting bracket and the copper pipe.



Lastly, is a top-down shot of the whole thing installed in the case.

I can't wait to see how well it works! Oops, that's what got me in trouble in the first place.  :bug:

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have better news about my soggy motherboard.

[hugh]

How did you guys deal with disconnecting a filled system? Do you drain the system before you disconnect any hoses?

i had a couple of methods, i would either turn the shuttle upside down, remove one of the blocks and pull a tube, let gravity keep it safe.

alternatively i would unscrew everything and remove the entire loop out of the system and drain over a bucket

[The Brainiac]

Nice work, a shame your mobo died though

[Eric_J]

Red is Good and Blue is BAD.

After removing and thoroughly cleaning the motherboard my system WORKS!  :cheese:

I believe the problem was a soaked north-bridge chip. When I removed the water block the top of the chip was covered in blue liquid. I used Isopropyl Alcohol and Q-tips to remove any blue stains left from the Zalman additive.

The whole thing is reassembled and running reliability tests. So far so good. I feel much safer running red Fluid XP+. Now I can get back to my Mods.

[hugh]

glad to hear

when i had a spillage with my sn26p it wouldn't boot so i stripped it down, took the cpu out to find the entire socket was flooded, this was just standard de-ionised water, moped it up and it worked fine

[kenaneu]

Yay!

Glad to hear your mobo is up and running again!  Nice work on the HD cooler - that pipe is HUGE though LOL.  Hopefully it will be in close enough contact with the aluminum bracket you made to help out nicely with the temps!

[Eric_J]

Thanks!

The “gigantic” copper pipe is in direct contact with the aluminum bracket. I cut the length of the bracket to match the length of flattened pipe to ensure a good bond.

So far the cooling is pretty good. It lowered the temperature of the hard drive 20⁰ f. Now it runs around 105⁰ instead of 125⁰. Not bad considering the drive has no airflow. However, adding the drive to my water circuit raised the CPU and GPU temps 10⁰ f. I guess that means I have reached the capacity of my passive radiator to displace heat. Too bad because I wanted to add the second hard drive to the mix.

Next step is to do something about that obnoxious power supply fan!

[craigbru]

I was a little shocked when I saw your temps... until I realized they weren't in celsius...   :bug:

[Eric_J]

Sorry never made the jump to metric.

FYI – I wrote a code script for my AlphaCool display so everything is shown in Fahrenheit. Happy to send it if you’re interested.

[craigbru]

Are you using AlphaCool's beta software?  If you aren't, give it a try.  It is wonderful!  I was using LCDhype before that, and there is no comparison.

[Eric_J]

No I wasn't even aware of it.  I've been using LCDHype.

[Eric_J]

Oh my gosh!

This AlphaCool software is amazing. To think I learned German for nothing.  :lol:

[craigbru]

Lol, don't feel bad.  I learned German as well.  I had some awesome scripts that I wrote for LCDhype that took me a week to make.  With the AlphaCool software, it took me no more than half an hour!

[Eric_J]

Ok time for some more pictures!


Not too exciting, but here's my motherboard while I was cleaning it. The revival went fine. The air cooled video card is an old one I used while testing outside the case.



This is the water circuit in tact without the motherboard and power supply. I learned my lesson last time. Do Not disconnect water lines inside the computer!



Here's another shot from a different angle.



This is my next project for this box. Replacing the power supply fan. This is just a test so far. I really haven’t made too many permanent changes to my case or power supply. I have removed the internal P/S fan and attached an 80mm to 120mm adaptor to the back of the case and using a 120mm fan.



Here is a good shot of the adaptor.



There are several issues with putting such a big fan on the back. Clearance of the plug and cables! I’m going to have to move the P/S power socket a little to the right in order to clear the fan. I’ve taken a good look at the inside of the P/S and I think it can be done without too much trouble.



This is another clearance issue. I have to use thumb screws to attach the P/S to the back of the case.


Well that's all for now. Back to the grind  :lol:

[craigbru]

I like where you are going with this Eric.  Keep up the good work!

[Eric_J]

Thank you so much

In fact I have been a busy boy today. I took the day off and ended up working on my SFF mods most of the day. So, more pictures!


I just love this shot of the big gaping hole. This is looking from the inside, out through the P/S fan hole. You can see the 120mm fan blades.



One good hole deserves another… This is the back of the P/S after I removed the fan and cut off the fan guard.



This shows the moved P/S power plug (actually a socket). It was really easy. I just enlarged the slot to the side and slid the plug over. No wires or anything else to get in the way.



To keep the plug from moving around I cut a piece of aluminum and riveted it in place. I’m getting a lot of miles out of the AlphaCool LCD bracket.



Another GIANT gaping hole! This is where the 120mm fan mounts. You can see the moved P/S socket. I had to grind a little on the case, but the cable fits perfectly. I put a silicone gasket between the fan and the adaptor, the adaptor and the case and the case and the power supply.

The ugly looking clear tape is a test. I think I want the air to be drawn in from the front of the case and blown out the back. So I taped all the vents including the ones on the cover. Right now the only way for air to enter the case is via the modder mesh opening on the front panel.  That forces air over the hard drive under the DVD drive. I was going to water cool it too, but I think I am at the limit of my radiator to displace heat. So I went old school and used flowing air. What a concept!


The Fan… It will run up to 2,700 rpm. When it does you can hear the small vents in the front of the case whistle. Hee Hee. Using SpeedFan to control it, I can run it at 20% or 725 rpm to keep everything cool. At that speed it’s very quite.


A close up of the relocated P/S socket. I wish all the issues were this easy to deal with.


One more shot of the inside. Looking kind of empty in there…


And another from the top.

At this point I only have a few more things to do. I need to custom splice an internal USB cable for the front panel LCD. Then finalize the airflow issues and replace the tape with something more permanent.

[craigbru]

Damn, I love pictures!

[synexpl0it]

Lookin good! 120mm fans are great aren't they, heh. Looking forward to more pictures and the final product. Keep up the good work!

[Ashtefere]

Yeah nice job man. Keep it up!
-Ash

[kenaneu]

Nice!

The red FluidXP really does look like blood LOL!  I like it!!!

How are your PSU temps now vs before the fan mod?

[Eric_J]

Thanks to all!

The PSU temps are about the same as before. It really depends on how loud I want the fan to be. Currently I am trying the CPU fan connector and letting the computer regulate the speed. The 120mm fan is a 4 pin so it works great with the motherboard.  


Here’s a shot of the temps after running 13 hours, mostly at idle. The only temp not shown is the external one I added to the PSU. It reads 105.5 °F. Before the fan change it usually read just below 100 °F. I’m running the fan at 655 rpm. As the computer heats up under load the fan speeds up accordingly.
The only temp that seems to be a little high is the motherboard. I might need to pinch a little hole in the foam covering the case cover side vent hole. I know the CPU looks high, but the CPU temp (120 °F) is being read from a sensor on the motherboard inside the CPU socket. I only depend on the Core temperatures. These are coming from the AMD internal diodes.


I added foam to the inside of my case cover. It really “deadened” the misc noise like the hard drives.


Here is another angle. You might notice, I covered all the vent holes with the foam. I did this on purpose to force the air to come in through the face plate and over hard drive in the lower drive bay.


The black cable on the left is a custom USB cable I made for the LCD panel.


This is one of my favorite pictures. It shows most of the stuff I have removed from the computer by adding water cooling. The only thing missing is the power supply fan. Guess I can take another one later.