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Aardils Multi PC H2O and A/C Cooling Desk
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Date Posted: Jan 15 2006
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Author: Aardil
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Index:
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Posting Type: Article
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Category: ProCooling Projects
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Page: 3 of 3
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Article Rank: from 1 Readers
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Aardils Multi PC H2O and A/C Cooling Desk By: Aardil
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Construction:
Step 3 - Priming the system and Moving it to its final location.
Before moving the rig, I primed the system and got it loaded with all the coolant. As you can tell theres a bit of additive in this coolant. The inhibitor used to keep everything nice and happy for a long time is Swiftech's HydrXâ„¢.
Once in place, it was time to build up the rest of the desk and get the machines all running on it.
Inside the PC's the cooling setup uses the hotly debated Swiftech Apogee water block on all the machines. On the video cards I have used Swiftech MCW-55's and MCW-50's for GPU coolers. As we showed you earlier, the hose exit around the front of the machine down into the desk base.
Final setup, and testing of this contraption
Well once all that was done, all that was left to do was put the top of the desk on, and load all the monitors, turn tables (editor: theres gotta be an 8 track there some where), speakers, etc... The final product looks like this:
Running the rig:
I run the A/C unit on high due to the long duct work it has to travel through because of the flow being split between 4 PC’s the velocity is cut way down. I can feel the air at the bottom of my desk with the PC moved out of the way. A best guess at velocity would be a 7 volted 120mm fan blowing into each PC. I know it doesn’t sound like much but I don’t need a lot, I am only trying to keep the air from stagnating because the water cooling does most of the work.
I did put (1) 120mm fan on the exhaust side of the TS Server and Gamer II as they are the farthest away from the A/C unit. It may or may not really be needed but it at least helps push the heated air around to the A/C return.
Below are some temps I gathered from the machines while running. I make no claims that these are accurate, this is just to give you the idea of the average kind of temps I see with these machines with this cooling setup. The air conditioner is a Kenmore 5150 BTU window unit, and its set on position 6 of a knob that goes from 1 - 10 for cooling level.
(all temperatures in the graph are *C)
Some environmental temps at the time these temps were taken:
Current Room Temp: 25*C
Air Temp going into PC cases: 21*C
Air returning to A/C: 27*C
Placing my hand on top of anyone of the 3 working units they are slightly cooler than room temp. The 4th PC is just a case to complete the closed loop and feels much cooler than room temp. I could not get a reading of the air temp before Rads because the base is well sealed at this point.
A breakdown of what cooling hardware is going to which machines is here:
Final Thoughts:
When I started this project, I was using screws to put it together, about half way into the project, I acquired an air brad nail gun. I think the overall finish would have looked better had I started with the brad nail gun.
While the res fill point was a good idea, it didn’t work as planned and I had to rework that part of the project. Once the unit was in place, bleeding the water system became impossible. I thought that by having the res fill as close to the top as possible but on the side it would still bleed. Unfortunately that was not the case with the turbulence of 4 pumps pulling and returning to the small res the air could not escape. I could get one pump bled but as soon as I turned on the 2nd pump, air was reintroduced into the loop and it would get worse with each pump. Lesson learned, From now on the res filler always goes on top of the res, not off to the side.
Thats about all I have to write up on this, if you want to contact me for more info you can PM me on the forums (Here). I hope you enjoyed this write up, and wish you the best of luck water cooling a piece of your furniture!
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