About a month ago I decided it was time for a new computer. I don't need anything next level powerful and I've always liked the IDEA of an AIO desktop, but weak hardware always held me back. When lenovo announed the Y910 I picked one up. 380W power supply, full desktop graphics AND standard desktop socket (I thought, more on that later).
FIrst thing first, this bastard was LOUD. Like jet engine loud. You can see below the only fans in this computer were the cpu and gpu blowers.
With all this full desktop hardware, I got the idea that I could being the noise level down a few notches with a watercooling loop. I placed an order with frozencpu and after three separate shipments and about a month of waiting I finally had everything I needed. At least, I thought I did. . . turns out that desktop cpu socket wasn't quite exactly standard.
So a normal waterblock was not going to work here. Luckily the XSPC waterblock I purchased uses a mounting system that allowed me to make this.
With that installed plugged in the R9 nano I picked up off ebay and sorted out the rest of the hardware.
Before
(a very long time) After
The fans have been wired up, along with the pump, to a cable made from a 6 pin extension cable. I also experimented with powering the pump and fans off the SATA port. This worked just fine, but I decided to go this route to allow for storage expansion down the line. And this way the left side of the case is largely unmolested.
I ended up butchering the right side cover badly enough that I decided to leave it off for now and revisit that down the road (read: never).
Overall I'm happy with how it looks, but there is a major shortcoming with this system as it sits now.
My original plan was to use an off the shelf DC motor controller to slow down the pump as there aren't any standard fan headers on this board. I quickly learned that this does not work AT ALL. So with the only PWM controlled fan header belonging to the CPU (and using a very tiny 4 pin connector) I started thinking about how I could use that.
As with most OEM computers this one throws a fit when the cpu fan isn't connected. My idea was that I was going to hook up the blue and green speed control wires from the pump to these pins and 1) utilize the motherboards factory setup to ramp up and down the pump, 2) hopefully do away with the bozzing noise that comes out of a mcp35x at full steam and 3) avoid the need for any complex trickery to get the system to boot without its precious cpu fan.
Unfortunately this didn't play out like I hoped. While the computer will still boot, albeit with a 'fan failure' screen and some ear splitting beeps, the pump is still running at full tilt all the time. Back to the drawing board. *UPDATE* This was resolved in post #6
I've got a 4 channel scope in the mail for an unrelated project, so my next step is to rewire the factory fan and watch the signals speeding through at startup. I'll program a microcontroller to reproduce these signals for me and skip the previously mentioned beeps. Hopefully along the way I'll figure out speed control for the pump as well, If I'm lucky I'll even be able to handle that with the same IC that is working on the cpu fan spoof.
That's all down the road though, for now I'll just turn my headphones up and make ample use of the 'hibernate' feature that I've never had a use for. I have no idea how to do any of the things I described above but it should be interesting to figure it out. I've seen an old thread on another forum that gave me a good starting point so I'm not flying completely blind.
FIrst thing first, this bastard was LOUD. Like jet engine loud. You can see below the only fans in this computer were the cpu and gpu blowers.
With all this full desktop hardware, I got the idea that I could being the noise level down a few notches with a watercooling loop. I placed an order with frozencpu and after three separate shipments and about a month of waiting I finally had everything I needed. At least, I thought I did. . . turns out that desktop cpu socket wasn't quite exactly standard.
So a normal waterblock was not going to work here. Luckily the XSPC waterblock I purchased uses a mounting system that allowed me to make this.
With that installed plugged in the R9 nano I picked up off ebay and sorted out the rest of the hardware.
Before
(a very long time) After
The fans have been wired up, along with the pump, to a cable made from a 6 pin extension cable. I also experimented with powering the pump and fans off the SATA port. This worked just fine, but I decided to go this route to allow for storage expansion down the line. And this way the left side of the case is largely unmolested.
I ended up butchering the right side cover badly enough that I decided to leave it off for now and revisit that down the road (read: never).
Overall I'm happy with how it looks, but there is a major shortcoming with this system as it sits now.
My original plan was to use an off the shelf DC motor controller to slow down the pump as there aren't any standard fan headers on this board. I quickly learned that this does not work AT ALL. So with the only PWM controlled fan header belonging to the CPU (and using a very tiny 4 pin connector) I started thinking about how I could use that.
As with most OEM computers this one throws a fit when the cpu fan isn't connected. My idea was that I was going to hook up the blue and green speed control wires from the pump to these pins and 1) utilize the motherboards factory setup to ramp up and down the pump, 2) hopefully do away with the bozzing noise that comes out of a mcp35x at full steam and 3) avoid the need for any complex trickery to get the system to boot without its precious cpu fan.
Unfortunately this didn't play out like I hoped. While the computer will still boot, albeit with a 'fan failure' screen and some ear splitting beeps, the pump is still running at full tilt all the time. Back to the drawing board. *UPDATE* This was resolved in post #6
I've got a 4 channel scope in the mail for an unrelated project, so my next step is to rewire the factory fan and watch the signals speeding through at startup. I'll program a microcontroller to reproduce these signals for me and skip the previously mentioned beeps. Hopefully along the way I'll figure out speed control for the pump as well, If I'm lucky I'll even be able to handle that with the same IC that is working on the cpu fan spoof.
That's all down the road though, for now I'll just turn my headphones up and make ample use of the 'hibernate' feature that I've never had a use for. I have no idea how to do any of the things I described above but it should be interesting to figure it out. I've seen an old thread on another forum that gave me a good starting point so I'm not flying completely blind.