Project : The Rock

By: UnaClocker 9/27/01

Plumbing and Finishing the System -

Here was the system just before I installed the reservoir and started running hoses. And yes, that is a blorb on the motherboard without a fan in it. I found that it was too loud, so I removed the fan. It stayed cool enough even without a fan, so I left it like that.

As I mentioned before, the hose running from the bottom of the reservoir and to the pump intake is 1/2". You can also see that I put fan grills on the two lower 92mm fans. This helps keep things out of the fans, and it makes them look a little nicer too. This is the same pump used in Little Stealth 1 and 2. I retired 'Little Stealth' to use the parts in this machine.

This is the line that comes up the back of the system (or the right side, however you choose to see it) and goes into the radiator. The big black line coming out of the power supply is the power cord for the pump. Note how the 90-degree elbow makes the hose look clean and professionally routed; much better than a kink prone curve of the hose would

Once I had run all the hoses, there was nothing left to do but fill the system. I bought this nice little funnel to make filling easier, and it worked like a champ. Words can't explain how NICE it is to fill a system with a reservoir like this when compared to a closed loop system. It's just awesome. You pour some water into the reservoir, and gravity pulls it down into the pump. You pour some more in, and the pump is quickly primed by gravity pulling the water in and forcing the air out. Turn the pump on, (which in my case, is wired into the toggle switch in  my ATX power supply, so I just flip the toggle), and the water level in the reservoir quickly starts to plummet. You quickly pour more into the reservoir as the pump forces the air out of the rest of the system. Once the majority of the air is out of the system, you can fill the reservoir half-way, and look inside at the returning water to see how fast it's flowing. In this case, it wasn't  even strong enough to hit the far side of the reservoir. I could tell just by looking that my 250gph pump was probably pumping about 50gph. I knew it had a lot to do with all my 90's and the extremely restrictive radiator I had used. After checking the flow rate, I topped off the reservoir so that it didn't have that waterfall sound coming from it anymore. Any remaining air in the system automatically rises out of the water when it's returned to the reservoir. It's a dream.

And here's the system assembled, plumbed, wired, and filled. I have the hose routing diagram next to it. As you can see, it's setup exactly as I planned in my final design drawing. 

It's ALIVE! Three different color LED's definitely look better than three blue LED's. Three blue ones would have done the job. But like I said before, it's now a lot easier to see from across the room that my fans are on and running at 12v, and that my hard drive is being accessed. The turbo button fanbus works great too. I had a small worry that the fan would draw too much power and would burn out the switch, which ended up being unfounded. How about a shot with the black light on?

Pretty nice glow. It looks a lot better in person, but this was the best I could  do with the camera. I considered putting a 3rd black light bulb up near the radiator to try and better light up the hose running up that direction. I eventually decided against it and put a white light up there instead as you'll see soon.

After I had this all running, I started working on installing the window. The first thing I needed was window trim. I went to CaseEtc and ordered 6 feet of their Chrome Window Trim. It arrived a few days later, and I put it on. It went on pretty easily. I was really impressed with the look of the stuff. I just wish it didn't cost so much!

As you can see, I roughed up the window so that the glue could get a little better bite. Then I placed large dabs of Plumbers Goop around the window and set it down onto it.

And here we have the finished product! Amazing. I can't recommend PCMods's window appliqués highly enough. They have several standard designs and, for a bit extra, he can make any custom design you ask him to. Keep in mind though that my design was custom made for me. He can't mass produce this design because of the trademark problems he'd have with AMD.

Here's two shots with the light turned on. My camera doesn't do too well in dark lighting, but the case is actually a lot brighter than what you see in that shot. It's enough that I'm able to use it as a desk lamp. Also, to give you an idea of the scale in that second picture, that's a 21" monitor next to the computer. This case is really quite tall.

The Rock Rev2