[Build Log] - The Big Budget Boomer Box (aka, the "BBBB") - Page 327

The one's I show above are similar, and are also made by Hitlights....but they are for the high density strips. The ones you are showing are for the normal density strips.


Blacklight might be a cool alternative lighting scenario. Have both kinds of lights hooked up and be able to switch between the two looks. Hmmmm.....


The multi-switch felt like an abandoned product back when I was doing my decion making on components. And I agree, that the AQ5 is pretty limited on ports if you were going to run lights from it. But a $75 PA2 being used to power my $3 strip of LED's? A tad excessive I think.

Plus...other than the reservoir lighting changing with temperature...I don't really want any of the sensor values to adjust my normal case lighting. I'll want it on sometimes, and I'll want it off sometimes. A knob is the easiest way to accomplish this. I"m going to run all of my LED strip lighting to the FC8.

I've finished up the wiring and sleeving of the new pumps and have them installed. Pictures soon.....

The connectors you show are for the normal density (300 lights per roll) Hitlights. The ones I'm using are for the high density (600 lights per roll) Hitlights. There is much less spacing between the lights for the high density roll, so the connector has to be much shorter. Your lights would not work in my connectors, and my lights would not work in your connectors.

As far as current draw, I would probably trust the information on the Hitlights website. They show the normal density 3528 rolls as 2 amps for the entire 16 feet on the roll....or about 0.125 amps per foot when you cut it up. The high density ones are double this amount. They also make the larger LED 5050 strip lights, which draws even more current.

Finishing up everything in the pedestal, so I can reassemble this thing. Couple of last minute nits.

I'm not a big believer in the impact that sealing radiators has on temps, but I found this white weather striping at Lowes that matches the white powder coat of the case almost exactly. So....why not?





It has a sticky side, so I cut some strips and put it on the radiator/fan gaps down in the pedestal. If you look closely, you'll see two strips running along the top of this 480 rad. It blends in pretty well.





I didn't bother to try and do anything on the sides, or between the fans...but I guess any little bit might help. This did quickly and easily seal up the largest gaps between the rads and the fans.

So now everything in the pedestal is done. Lighting, check. Wiring, check. Blue-ray stealth drive, check. Card reader, check. Rads/pumps/fans, check. So.....lets put this case back on for the last time during initial build.

This is the bottom of the case....that will sit on top of the pedestal.





But before I reattach it to the pedestal...I bought this AcouticPack soundproofing material....





I've never used this stuff, but read good things about it online. For those of you who haven't seen/felt it in person....this stuff is heavy. It's 7mm thick and has three layers of dense foam and rubbery type material. One side has sticky glue on it so you can cut it and stick it right on. I covered up the areas of the bottom that make sense. This sits right above the 2x pumps that are located in the pedestal. The idea here is to limit the amount of noise escaping the inside of the pedestal.





So....case is back on the pedestal now. I'm starting to work on tidying up all the temp sensors. In this last mini-revision of the loop, I finalized where I will have the coolant temp sensors...so I'm ready to work on the wiring for these. Right now, I have 10x temp sensors. For each of my two AQ5's, I'm using 2x ambient air sensors (to have an average), a rad-in coolant temp sensor, and a rad-out coolant temp sensor. I also have a temp sensor running to the memory sticks, and one that measures the temp of the air inside the case (as opposed to the ambient air sensors located outside the case).

To calibrate them, I got them all plugged into the spots on the AQ5's that they were going to permanently reside in...and then taped all of the sensors together. Then I monitored their values inside of Aquasuite, and made offset adjustments to bring all of the readings to the same amount. 7 of the 10 sensors needed no adjustments. The remaining 3 had to have offsets to make them match the others....but nothing larger than 0.4 degrees. So...they were all pretty close to begin with.





If you'll click this picture to zoom-in, you should be able to see the little labels I made for the connector sides of the temp sensors. I don't want to have to remember where to plug these back in if I ever need to unplug them.....so they now have a number that corresponds to the slot on the AQ5 that they should be plugged into.





And here are a few shots of what the dual AQ5 section is looking like with all of the wires.





I've tried hard to keep everything as neat as possible here....but there are a whole bunch of connections all terminating here. In addition to the two waterblocks and fittings that connect them, there are:

- 2x molex power for AQ5's
- 1x molex power for FC8
- 10x temp sensors
- 2x Aquabus
- 2x USB
- 2x PWM for pump
- 1x fan harness

Plus...I still have the RGB LED's, and some strip lighting going into the FC8, to finish up.

That's a lot of stuff! This area becomes kind of the central place for all connections in the case. And even though I'm going to try and keep it neat and pretty, the best part about it is that the case side door just covers this section perfectly.







I'll have an update on some things I was trying with the pumps later tonight. More to come!

I hope they work for you, but if they have the same LED spacing that the double density Hitlights do.....I think you may have the same problem with those lights also. They look almost identical to Hitlights. I also have the same normal density Hitlight connectors as you do, as well as the Hitlight connectors made for the high density LED strips that I showed earlier. The connectors you have will not work with the high density Hitlight strips....it's because of how deep into the connector the high density strips can (or in this case can't) be pushed. These pictures are of my trying to put the high density strips, into the normal density connectors that you have.




Not sure how clear these pictures are, but because there are twice as many LED's on the high density strip...there is MUCH less distance between the contact spots on the strip and the LED. So...when using the high density strips, you can't push the strip far enough down into the connector to make contact with the contact spots. The LED keeps it from going in deeper. There is more distance on the normal density strips....and they slide down further into the connector. The only way the normal density connectors could be used with the high density strips....is either to cut out some of the plastic lid that snaps down on the connector (so that LED clears), or to remove the first LED light on the strip closest to the connector.

I'd be interested to know if you get them to work. Good luck!

Finishing the new pumps!

I showed this AcoutiPack material in my last post. Since the only thing I can actually hear in my build is the pumps...I thought....why not try some of this stuff on the pumps? So....





....here is one of my two new PWM pumps. You'll recall I got one of these a couple of weeks ago....liked it....but the rpm sensor was broken. FrozenCPU stepped up and sent a new one...and I ordered one additional PWM pump at the same time. The plan is to replace both of the pumps in the main case compartment with these PWM versions.





...and since it's going in this Bitspower mod kit....why not line the inside of the mod kit with the soundproofing material? There is not a lot of space between the mod kit and the pump...but there is a little. Lets try.





So I cut a 33mm wide strip of the AcoutiPack soundproofing material.







Removed the sticky side cover...and wrapped it around the pump. Nice fit!





But....when I tried to put the mod kit cover back on the pump....it would not fit. This stuff is the 7mm version of their product, and that is pretty thick. It does compress some....but try as I might....I could not get the mod kit to fit all the way onto the pump. AcoutiPack also sells a 4mm version of their soundproofing that is just two layers instead of three....but I can only work with what I have. The 7mm stuff will not fit. It's close. But won't fit. Fail.

Next idea. I don't have the 2 layer 4mm version....but what if I created it? So...I cut another 33mm strip, and then used an exacto knife to scrape off the top layer of foam.





Here you can see we are down to one layer of foam, and one layer of the rubbery type stuff.







I removed the sticky side cover, and wrapped it around the pump again. Nice fit! I have high hopes that this will fit inside the mod kit.







Fail! It was real close to fitting...but the rubbery type layer on the soundproofing just doesn't have a lot of slide to it. It creates a lot of friction and just bunched up the soundproofing material inside the mod kit. No bueno.





Ok....don't laugh...but I tried a final and third time to get it to fit. I cut another 33mm strip, scraped off one layer of foam....and this time....coated the outside layer with vaseline. I thought this might help it slide into the mod kit.







Fail....once again. It's real close to fitting, and I imagine someone might be able to get this to work...but I couldn't. I think encasing the pump with soundproofing material and then enclosing it in one of these mod kits holds some promise for making these already quiet pumps even quieter. I might try again with some of the 4mm thick Acoustipack next time I have the pumps disassembled. But for now...I give up.

But I did go ahead and cut a circle of the soundproofing material and apply it to the back disk of the mod kit. This may help some with absorbing some of the sound frequencies. We'll see. But it was easy to do....and can't hurt anything....so why not?







And finally I sleeved the wires. I took a different approach this time than I did with the last pump. For my last pump in the main case, I removed the molex connector and extended the wires all the way to PSU and put a connector on so that the pump plugged directly into the PSU. While this approach is real clean looking....what I didn't like about it was that it makes it more difficult to power up the pump with a different PSU while filling your case. It's not uncommon to find a small unexpected leak if you have made some loop layout changes. So...I like to fill the loop and bleed it without any power being plugged in for the main board. If the pump power is tied directly to a PSU connector, not only will you not have much slack in the cable to reach an external power supply...but if the pinout of that PSU's 6-pin connector is different than the one in your case...you couldn't do it anyway. So...there are difficulties in powering the pump up with an external power supply.

I'm hoping to be working in this case for years to come...so one of my goals is to make it as painless as possible to disassemble and reassemble stuff. For me...that requires just having a standard molex connector on the pump...so that ANY PSU could be used externally to power it up when filling/bleeding the loop. That's the route I took with these two.

I also extended the rpm and PWM wires so that they would reach the Aquaero's, and sleeved everything in MDPC-X.





Now...lets return it to an operational state, filled up, leak tested and running. More soon!