A glue down trick I've seen reported, but not tried is to blend AS thermal epoxy 50/50 with AS3 (I'd bet AS5 or Ceramique would probably work just as well) and then glue. The result is a glue bond that is still quite effective, but which can be removed with a bit of force if need be.

Gooserider

Beware th hazards of PSU overheating if you block the airflow off with foam. You may end up getting a new PSU sooner than you planned. I would suggest getting a tube of silicone compound (something that won't attack electronics) and rubbing a bit into / over all the coils in the PSU, then let it cur...

The pic didn't come through, but judging by the other comments, I think what you want are officially known as "IDC" or "Insulation Displacement Connectors". That might help you in looking them up, and I agree that Digikey should have them.

ART

Why is everyone so determined to feed the troll???

Gooserider

Most people would call them "Bulkhead Fittings" and they come in a great variety of ends, sizes, etc. The one Chyld shows is a bit unusual in that it has screw on parts on each side. More typicallly you will have one side that is fixed as either a molded in nut or flange, and the other side will hav...

Single or dual pass type rad? (Single pass has one I/O on each tank, dual has both I/O's on the same tank) Singles are lower restriction, but both offer similiar cooling potential. However a dual 120 rad should be able to handle any reasonable heat load without any trouble.

Gooserider

1. IMHO an external case is a turn off. I would rather have a box with everything built in, even if that makes the box need to be bigger... If I were designing something from scratch, I'd maybe put the rad flat (or maybe angled) on the bottom with air sucking in from the bottom back, getting pulled ...

Koolance doesn't have a good reputation... They use Al for their components, which isn't good w/ Cu blocks. Their plumbing is small bore and restrictive, and they (at least in stock form) tend to be loud. Or so I've seen reported. I would also be unhappy with a box that put the rad where it was 'coo...

In terms of hard drive spinup voltage, keep in mind that on SCSI drives it is possible to do a 'delayed spinup' that will avoid most of the major power draw problem. Typically there is a jumper on the drive that will delay the spinup by 'n' seconds times the drive ID. (n usually = 6 - 10 seconds) IM...

Well, in general terminology, most would call that a HEAT SINK, not a radiator. Radiator is generally used to refer to the cooling element in a water cooled system. As a copper heat sink, it would probably be pretty effective, especially with a fan sucking through the fins, but I'm not sure just wha...

There's been lots of discussion of this type of enclosure, search around the forums for more info. General concensus seems to be that it doesn't do well enough to justify the hassles of using it as an enclosure for a case. It might work OK as a case, but there are probably better designs talked abou...

Just as a comment on pump selection, the DD pump is reportedly loud and obnoxious. The Swifty pump is not silent, but is reportedly not to bad, probably well within your comfort zone.

Gooserider

Putting the pump inline is better as the heat will cause less of an issue for the case than it will for the loop. How much of a problem this is depends in part on your rad, if it's overkill for the existing hardware then adding the pump heat probably won't hurt that much. If it's on the small side, ...

Any sheet metal or machine shop should be able to drill holes for you, but the cost may really be a problem. (shop time is NOT cheap!) You can drill them yourself with the right tools for probably much less. See the cutting sheet metal sticky in one of the forums for more advice. If you are just aft...

Should be possible, just make sure you have SOME airflow through the case, probably just the PSU fan would be all you need. Pay attention to keeping your cables neat and out of the airflow. It MIGHT be helpful to consider some sort of ducting from the HS to the PSU to ensure you had some airflow thr...

1) Mess == Death to CPU/GPU/Motherboard/PSU/Etc. This is probably my biggest fear. I've sunk a lot of money into my system and I'd rather not see it go up in smoke due to a squirt of water. My observation of reported failures is that nearly all can be accounted for in terms of "user error" in eithe...

There has been discussion of this in the past. IIRC, it *MAY* be possible depending on the exact type of controller. If it's a PWM controller, it won't work, as the mobo won't know how to handle the intermittent fan pulses produced as a result of the interaction between the RPM circuitry and the PWM...

Well, I've looked at the spec sheet and users guide for the Butterfly, and found it a mixed bag. 1. The LCD is very poor, it's like 1 x 6 characters :( and the unit's size is just wider than that of a 5.25" bay cover. However the LCD does look detachable, so it might be possible to hack the display ...

General recomendation seems to be to block off the side fans, and concentrate on on having good exhaust out the back, with unobstructed intake on te front pulling past the hard drives.
Gooserider

I haven't done it, but I don't think it's a good idea. If you do something like that you will be adding another layer of metal, and an extra TIM joint to the top of your CPU. This will do NASTY things to your temps due to the added thermal resistance. If you can re-machine the base (while maintainin...

What happens will depend on the fans. Assuming that both start (not guaranteed) the likely effect will be that they will have some difference in voltages between them, with resulting difference in speed. The total voltage of the two fans will be 12 volts though (ie you might get 8V & 4V for instance...

Thanks again for the pointers, I have some docs downloading in the background, and will be looking at AVR freaks soon.

Gooserider

Yeah, My GF has this crazy delusional notion that one is supposed to keep CARS in a garage. She does not understand that the function of a garage is to serve as workspace for those projects that won't fit on the kitchen table or living room floor, or as power tool storage areas and general junk catc...

Rusty, you may be right on the transformer oil, though it may also depend on the transformer. I didn't read the label, but at least some of the stuff I've seen was pretty thin looking, about like cooking oil. Might also depend on the grade of oil - some of the synonyms that Mpteach came up with soun...

Hard to tell much from the website, but the hardware didn't look to bad, other than the bling bling window... However I wouldn't be interested since they don't believe in giving you a choice in operating systems.... I'm not interested in buying a defective, OS and that was the only set of options th...

Actually it's a mixed bag. A mostly 1/2" system w/ some 3/8" will flow better than an all 3/8" setup, but not as well as an all 1/2" system. (assuming other components are the same, same tubing lengths, etc. of course) ALL tubing, blocks, etc. has a certain amount of flow resistance, which is a func...

I don't think you'd get enough convection off the pipes to make a big difference, so I don't think it would be very cost effective. OTOH, having the water flow through the pipes would probably be quite effective, especially if you can get pipe with fins of some sort on it (perhaps take apart an old ...

Thanks for the link, Cpemma, I'll be checking out the parts ASAP. Well, the catalog pointer is just a link to a pdf download of the catalog page, which didn't have much more info than what BTG already gave. However I've requested datasheets and appnotes (or pointers to same) that hopefully will tell...

Correct, the Digidoc is mostly a temp and RPM monitoring device, which does not have the ability to change fan speeds. It does have the ability to turn fans on and off depending on the temps, but I've heard that the resulting fan cycling is more annoying than even a fairly loud constant fan. I would...

Note that if you do this, you can only monitor RPM on one of the fans, and it should be the one that has the GROUND wire connected to the system.

Gooserider