-
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
Very nice start, thanks for sharing! The leg idea is awesome, and they look great so far too!
Can't wait to see how this turns out in the end! -
Re: Project: Aquarius
Okay! We have the Reservoir and doors cut out and plexi in place. Some fine tuning left to do so don't start tripping thinking it's done. Just wanted to get you guys some updates so you can see the progress.
Here is door BEFORE:
Then we cut the sides for the reservoir. We stuck sand paper down on the table so we had a flat surface to sand them on to ensure they were flat. After all they will be used to hold in water!
We went ahead and got all the holes drilled for the upper doors and lower doors.
Then went back to finishing the reservoir.
With that almost done we mounted the plexi in the doors.
Then we cut it out for one of our features. We are mounting a 120MM radiator in the middle of the door opening. So the doors will close AROUND the Radiator.
So our end result was this: (with the doors closed)
Hope you guys like it. If you have ideas we're all ears.Comment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
wow this sure is coming along and always admire guys that have the vision, talents and skills to do such excellent work such as this. ThanksComment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
Nice, thanks for the update, can't wait to see how this finishes up!Comment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
Huge Update guys. I hope you like it.
We finished the reservoir on the left door. We also finished the right doors. Take a look...
Oh we finished the Upper door also.
Then we finished off the left door with the reservoir.
In this image you can see our diffuser. It will disperse the water the full length of the reservoir.
And here we are with it finished. Hope you guys like it. It will be the reservoir for the video card cooling loop.
Take care guys, thanks.Comment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
wow nice..
looking forward for finished build
Comment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
Nice update for you guys. This is really starting to come together.
We decided to lift the top of the case, as if it isn't tall enough, but we wanted MORE ROOM!
So we cut a strip of aluminum and bent it to shape of the rest of the top.
This turned out quite well and will suit our needs.
We moved into the front in which we removed the stock 2 fans and decided to put in a Hardware Labs X-Flow 240mm Radiator.
We permanently attached some DangerDen Delrin fittings
We cut out the vent in the lower area, not only to make room for the tubing, but for some other things we have planned which you will see later.
Huge thanks to Dremel for making that easy to do
We just got in our servos and some other things so we'll begin automation real soon. Stay tuned!Comment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
Wanted to let everyone know that the project is still alive. We have made a lot of progress on it. We were delayed by the company move, which took almost 2 months.
This is more of a teaser as a "proof of life" thing. I'll get more detailed soon.
As you can see there is a TON of sleeving to do still. We're finishing up the Electronics part which will control the servos and remote control system. Then we have to sleeve all of the temperature monitor wires once we get most of the components in place.
Here's to praying that all of these wires will fit in.
Comment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
Ok here we go with some more substantial updates and news. Finally.
We have started assembly and have gotten pretty far. We got all the fans painted and back together.
This was just the second coat. You can notice the different types of fans. This was intentional. Some of the positions of particular fans required different specs of fan. some PWM, some 800 RPM, etc. All besides 2 fans in the entire system will be controlled by Crystalfontz's CFA735
Once those dried we got them in place on the top Black Ice GTX 480 HardwareLabs Radiator
We also got 2 more fans put in the front radiator, a HardwareLabs Pro II XFLOW
If you notice on the bottom right of the 240, we crafted a custom manifold so we could route the flexible tubing through the front with enough slack to allow the door to be functional while the system was in use.
I temporarily placed the only 2 hotswap drive bays for the upper system, once we crafted a protective and decorative plate over the back of it. These 2 bays will be the only open bays for the upper system. Rest is taken up by monitor, the 735 controller and water pump behind them.
Dennie is busy making some really fancy Fan Header manifolds so we can run each "sector" as one fan, then control it with the CFA735. I'll have some shots of those later this week.
So I got started on the fan grill that I'll be cutting our with a design. We're not 100% set on the design yet, but we do know it has to flow well with the design and be able to match one the 120mm and 240mm radiators.
The radiator in this picture is of course HardwareLabs GTX120 Gen 2 XTREME slightly marred from me sliding rough sheets of aluminum across it for fit testing. Both this one and the 240 are set up for Push/Pull configuration. The 480 is just set up for Pull. Mostly due to space restraints. I would have liked to have added 4 more fans to the 480 but we are flat out of room in this giant case.
Here is a glory (or not) shot of the front. Mostly for preservation as a before and after shot later when we're done.
We're still trying to source three NVIDIA 670 waterblocks, with them being so new and i guess not that popular among enthusiasts, there are only a couple people crafting them at the moment. We have time though as we still have another 50 feet or so of sleeving to do on top of everything else.
I think we were a bit too rambunctious in the beginning and are trying to put too much inside what we thought was a big enough case. Which in reality, the Fusion 4000, as good as it is, is more than enough for most people. We just wanted to push this one way over the top. Let us know if you think we are... over the top that is.
On a side note, stop by our place, Device Unknown and register. We are almost always giving away these product samples we get in for reviews either in our forums or on Facebook and would like to strengthen our community on the US side.
Thanks guys we'll talk to you again soon.Comment
-
Re: Project: Aquarius
Well gang, another update. We're moving rather slowly on this. Definitely slower than we would have liked. Part of the delay was a promise by Gigabyte to provide motherboards for this ,then after jerking us around for weeks (after committing to it) changed their minds. The sponsorship really was no big deal, it was the waiting for weeks and having to resend a bunch of irrelevant information to several people. I can see why marketing positions are such high turnover. Seems every month we work with someone new in each company. Anyway, on to what we have gotten so far.
EKWB hooked us up on the blocks for the Zotac 670's we're using. We were apprehensive about the new "CSQ" design but once we had it in place, it actually flowed quite well with our design. Their circles are hardly noticeable.
As you can see we did NOT go with Gigabyte. Even if the color would have matched.
We did make some changed with the upper system. Our thought for the top system would be more of a NAS device, or low power server. So we went with the G630T Processor which is only 35 watts but more than enough performance to push what we need. I also decided to air cool it as adding a water cooling loops to such a basic system would have only increased the complexity of an already overblown system. I found the best CPU cooler to use too. REEVEN's ARCZIEL 12. I have no intentions of overclocking this upper system as it's more than powerful enough to run a Small Business server type setup. All while keeping the wattage under control. But.. With this cooler I am allowed the flexibility of upgrading to a larger processor down the road, especially since the board is 1155. The Arcziel is a fantastic CPU cooler to boot. Shame it's not available in the US yet (that i know of).
We did make one change to the CPU cooler though. We changed to a low profile 1200 RPM fan so that it would fit. We also changed the orientation so that it pulled up. Initial testing has shown us that it made little to no difference in cooling efficiency. We'll look more into it later.
We are using an external 120 watt PSU to power the upper system.
We ran into an issue needing some more internal USB headers and even some External USB headers Inside the case. Primairly for the USB Monitor we are using for the top system, which uses 2 external USB plugs. Plus we wanted to fit both systems with as much connectivity as possible. So we built our own USB "hubs" which includes several internal 4 pin plugs, and some external plugs.
Sorry for the fuzzy image. We are making more of them so I will have you some better pictures soon. Plus we intend to release the tutorial on our website for those who are not sure how to do it.
Now, I'm sorry this is such a small update. This mod really is not my priority in life right now but we know it needs to be done as we have other things to get started on. So hang in there. We should have more updates coming in faster now that we are in the assembly phase.
Thanks again for reading.Comment
Tweet
Comment