[Sponsored] PrometheusCU - Page 2

Parts update for the masses:
I recieved a package of watercooling supplies today.
First up - a D-Tek Fuzion rev 2 with quad core nozel insert (insert not installed in below images).



FeserOne Orange non-conductive coolant, I'd have preferred black but since I'll be using black tubing and no reservoir I don't see the difference... and neither will anyone else, hehehe.



20x Bitspower Hig Flow 1/2 barbs - dark nickel plated edition.

Here you can see the difference between the Bitspower fittings and the stock DangerDen and D-Tek ones.


A Black DangerDen Fillport


Last but most certainly not least... 15' of Opaque Black Primochill Primoflex 1/2ID tubing.

I was quite surprised by the width of the wall, I guess I don't have to worry about puncture leaks... too much.


Yet another update for you all, I got a package in the mail form eVGA today. My -free- upgrade from the 9800GTXssc cards.




To go with this will be two of these:

Only they wont be shipping for another 10-days.

Clearly nothing is sacred:

Naked GTX280's, and I must say that I have a new appreciation for nVidia engineering... the heatsink on these babies was nothing short of a work of art - engineering at it's best.




They are considerably lighter now only about 245grams

A small teaser for you all. I took delivery of my secret weapon today:


Don't bother asking where, some of, this will be used... that's a surprise.

A small, bummer, update:
UPS just delivered my Acrylic Copper Colour 2-way Mirror... but I'm totally pissed! The colour is all wrong. It's more of a 'burnt copper' instead of the 'red copper' colour I'm using. I may still find a use for it, but it's 'mystery purpose' will likely be replaced with carbon fiber pieces. (You can't see though the acrylic here because I've not yet removed it's protective backing).

Some great news.

A User by the name of xtreme0915 over at the nVidia SLi-Zone forums has volunteered to donate his old Aquagate Viva Duo Watercooling kit for the benefit or Prometheus. With this comes a cemented decision to watercool the Pico-ITX unit as well as the main system. I'll be purchasing a 40.2 radiator, and using the Aquagate's waterblock/pump to cool the Pico board.

Another big thanks shout-out goes out to xtreme0915!


In anticipation of this new generous, unprovoked, donation. I've started making the necessary modifications to the Pico-ITX heatsink.
Modifications that will allow me to mount the waterblock/pump from the Aquagave Viva unit to the Pico-ITX board.

This is Part-1 and it is still unacceptably rough. when its finished the edges will be square and it'll sport a mirror shine.

Here is what I started with:


Then after a couple hours of Dremel grinding followed by hand filing I came up with this:

Bottom:


Here you can see the amount of material that needed to be removed, because Via had a recessed spot in the middle of the three screw holes where the fan sat. So I had to bring down the whole surface to be flush.

Some more great news!

I've been honored with a nomination for the "Mod Of The Month" competition over at the Bit-tech.net forums! So if it's your prerogative and you have the means - throw me a vote.

Exciting news from AquaComputer... in the form of some one-of-a-kind PrometheusCU special edition parts.

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone again, it's amazing to see how well the community has accepted this project. It started as a passion and has BOOMED into something so much more - sponsors, MOTM nomination, ~430,000 image views. All I can say is WOW.

The excitement has just begun, I still have many plans for this project so stay tuned for more.



Another small update for you all.

I just picked up a dozen BlinkM I2C contolled RGB LEDs - "BlinkM uses a high quality, high power RGB LED and a small AVR microcontroller to allow a user to digitally control an RGB LED over a simple I2C interface"


100 white 3mm LEDs, 100 resistors and 100 Chrome Holders to be copper plated.


and with these comes a USB Arduino Control Board that will allow me to write a control program for the lighting inside the case. I'll have the RGB LEDs change from blue to red depending on the water temperature. The other 100 white LEDs will slowly/randomly fade in and out (Mac style) when they are on.


More coming soon - Thanks for reading.

A small overdue update for you all.

Unfortunately my hands are still very much tied, due to many delays (mostly shipping), so progress has been minimal.

I have complete a number of little things this week however:
1- I have completed the lighting design.
2- I've modified and uploaded my verison of pfSense to my Alix board, so it's working nicely now.
3- I think I've completed my arduino lighting software, but I haven't yet got my arduino controller delivered so I don't know if it works as planned just yet.
4- I began designing my front end software that will control my watercooling and run on the from 7" touch screen.
5- I've also ordered a new keyboard, I love my apple slim keyboard but I was unable to find black key replacements for it so I've ordered the bluetooth version.
It looks to me that the new macbooks and the slim bluetooth keyboard use the same keys at least I hope so because new replacement keys were about $2.50 a piece, so I ordered a complete set of black keys for the keyboard. I'll then make new copper housing for it to replace the stock apple aluminum. In theory this should make for a very sexy black/copper keyboard.



Some of the items that have arrived in the mail since my last posting:
Some of my lighting accessories:


The 3mm LED housings that I will paint to look Copper Plated:


White 3mm LEDs:


Resistors that will let me run the LEDs from a 12volt source:


And an assembly overview of what the LED holders look like:


I also got my Laptop WIFI antennas, I will be using 2x antennas for each of the antenna outputs on the WiFi card.


Lastly, my 40.2mm radiator has arrived, so once the aquagate gets here I'll be able to assemble my Pico-ITX watercooling system.
This thing is so bloody tiny, sorry for the bad picture, but keep in mind it's only 40mm wide... too cool.

I used the mill and a frighteningly precarious clamping technique to mill down the Pico's heat sink further



I decided to take some pics of my workshop, it's very dirty and the equipment is tired, but it all does the job well enough:

dropsaw

lathe

mill... strongarm style

enerpac press, and sandblaster

surface grinder


I forgot to take pics of the drillpress, but I assume you all know what those look like.

Here's the golden tool - 2.5axis router table



I decided to make an homage to Canadian modding out of some spare carbon panel I had laying around.


If the stars are aligned and my supplies arrive this week, expect HUGE progress over the next little while.

Thanks for reading, and tune in soon.

Another parts update:

My parcel from SparkFun arrived this morning. As did my box from AquaComputer, only I won't be able to pick it up from the post office until later this evening.

So-far we have:
The BlinkM RGB LEDs


The Arduino control board




The Female serial plug that will allow me to convert the USB>Serial adapter from Male to Female.




Again many many thanks to my sponsor AquaComputer for generously providing the following:

For those of you who aren't aware of the power of the AquaComputer components.

is a small demonstration video showing the power of the AquaComputer system (aquaero display, aquastream pump, multiswitch, tubemeter water level sensor, aquasuite software).

Here you will find AquaCopmuter's explanation of the AquaComputer automated "monitoring" hardware.

Aquaero 4.00:




AquaComputer 90degree swivel elbows:


AquaComputer Flow Sensor:



Multiswitch 1.41:



And the center pieces of the system... PrometheusCU Edition G200 waterblocks. Aquacomputer was generous enough to build two of these fore this project. (Note that the Prometheus text appears 'burnt' in the images but this doesn't show up to the naked eye)







More assembly to come soon.

Thanks for reading!

The CoolerMaster Aquagate Duo generously donated by xtreme0915 of the SliZone forums has arrived today!

I will be using the Aquagate's clever little waterblock/pump assembly to cool the pico board.



Here is how the waterblock will be mounted to the Pico-ITX board. Note that I've yet to construct a proper bracket for mounting.



Here is a pic of the board next to the rad that will be cooling it.


Here's a quick glimpse of my desk right now, it's been sitting like this for about a month... I really need to pick up the pace.

My machinist (who is doing all my work for free BTW) called me today declaring that he will work though the night if necessary, I'll have the prototype parts cut tomorrow. It's been a crazy time for him and I can't really hold anything against him considering the predicament, also he just moved his shop to a new building at the beginning of Sept.

I have a new dilemma however.

Corsair has been kind enough to provide 8GB(4x2gb) of Dominator 1066mhz RAM with no heat spreaders attached, only they've expressed a little caveat which has me thinking.

With these MIPS Computer GmbH has been very kind and has sponsored me with a RAM Freezer 4 memory waterblock:


However since Dominator ram has additional PCB height to aid in heat dissipation:

I'm concerned that the Dominator RAM may not work with the RAM Freezer 4.

Of course I could ask Corsair to provide a RAM from the XPS series that does not have the extra height, but I'm waiting for MIPS Computer to get back to me with measurement specifications.

I've also taken delivery of a couple other aesthetic items this week, I'll have pics up tomorrow or early weekend.

Sorry for the delays folks, but my metal is still not cut (don't get me started... I'm pissed) and until it's installed I cant really do a whole lot else.

I decided to try my hand at fabricating panels from my fabric. These were soaked in resin and pressed at an obesene pressure of several thousand tonnes.

You don't get this look from carbon decal!




The next one is the closest thing to a definition of "indestructible" as you'll ever find. I don't know how many layers there are in this - but it's about a 1/2" thick. It will be used for a few structural components.




I've also got a few yards of copper mesh, I have a few plans for this stuff it looks really cool when wrapped tightly around wires and cables.



Another generous donated product courtesy of Mach over at TheBestCaseScanario's forums. Some braided copper sleeve.


Lastly we've got 100' of 18gage copper flat wire to be wrapped around the black tubing for aesthetic reasons.



Also the metallic copper paint I ordered on July 27th is still not even shipped yet which is holding up some of my smaller mods.

I'm just playing the waiting game from now until when my metal is cut. I've done a few little things like lapping my GPU's and CPU, other than that noting big.

Thanks for reading... and waiting... see you all soon.

I've got Watercool Germany on-board now. They've generously offered to provide some waterblocks from their new 'Heatkiller' V3.0 lineup coming at the end of October. With this addition I'll be removing the D-Tek Fuzion and perhaps cooling the motherboard as well.... which calls for another Aquastream XT pump IMO.

I'm very very excited about this - I have to give some credit to ModSquad as I've never heard of the Watercool Heatkiller before he posted the image of one of their blocks in his CopperHead mod. Suffice to say I fell in love and had to have them.

For those of you not familiar with the HeatKiller blocks, here's a tase:







More to come, thanks for reading.
Edited by Langer - 10/28/08 at 8:24pm

I spent two days learning Rhino/Visual Mill/ToolPath then I spent the last day cutting (actually I'd call it 'watching the machine cut').

I admittedly went though a couple of 1/8 bits but I expected to break a few. The machine took just over 10hrs to cut the parts out (damn grills!). I've not yet started cleaning the edges of these prototypes but I'm doing that soon.

I'll let these teaser pics speak for themselves.

HERE are the aluminum prototypes that once filed/bent/installed will be replaced with finely machined copper.

I started with some 1/2ply wood and a scrap 40"x40"x1/8" hunk of aluminum.


I then booted up rhino and prepared the parts for cutting.


Holes were drilled for screws to hold the aluminum down.


10 long boring hours later:
rad grill:


MatrixOrbital Typhoon enclosure/PSU mount/and Right side drive bay enclosure.


Left side drive bay enclosure:


Bottom rad housing - lower tray.


Top fan grill:


Front face plate:



Some of the cuts look a little wonky in the pics but all the cuts are straight and clean - they just have quite a bit of burrs that need filing down - which I should be done by this weekend.

Here is the keyboard - pre-modding:



A quick and dirty test fit, everything looks to be really well measured. They fit perfectly.




The CASE




The MESS! (parts everywhere - on an under the desk)


Thanks for reading - tune in soon.