What's new
  • Please do not post any links until you have 3 posts as they will automatically be rejected to prevent SPAM. Many words are also blocked due to being used in SPAM Messages. Thanks!

Work in progress MercII.1 - Pump / GPU Update

bjcsoln

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2013
Messages
452
Location
Vancouver
And finally the changing of the guard (so to speak) - the left is the coaster that came with my last mobo. It held out pretty well, now time to switch to the new one I guess..

1598841645800.png
 

Lysrin

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
7,804
Location
Nova Scotia
Turned out very nice @bjcsoln Nice work! Not an easy one but satisfying I'm guessing to see it come together. I really like the extra LCD panel set up.
 

bjcsoln

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2013
Messages
452
Location
Vancouver
Thanks Sugar, Lysrin. And with regards to the panel, I like how that turned out. Really glad I saw that on a few other builds (as I was toying with the design ideas for this one).

Still need to sort out the whole power thing, but I think moving the USB power input to one of the molex connectors should sort that out.
 

bjcsoln

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2013
Messages
452
Location
Vancouver
Sooo....Some people might've noticed from some other threads that as part of this build, I made a few (rookie) mistakes. First I didn't clean the edge of one of the tubes properly, which resulted in me accidentally shaving a small piece off of an o-ring that ended up in my GPU block. The second mistake was just thinking distilled water was fine (it wasn't).

So - plan was to take off GPU block, remove sliver, and then re-fill with mystic fog (basically something with a biocide to kill the algea that was building up on the blocks).

For the GPU block, EK confirmed that I could remove the top cover by only accessing screws from the front of the block - this was preferred as I made a custom mount that actually makes it a real pain to take off the GPU (will explain later). So with this knowledge was quite happy and tried to take off the front of the GPU block to remove that pesky sliver. Aaaand turns out EK wasn't quite right - there was one small screw that needed to be removed from the back, so I proceeded to field strip my system, take off the front panel of the GPU block, pull out sliver, and put it all back together.

Somewhere in the process I borked my 2080ti...#*@&$^@#*$...This was a rather costly mistake, although I guess to date I have been lucky as this is the first failure I have ever had....But still, that was the most costly bit. Borrowed a friends GPU to test to make sure everything else was working fine, and it turns out it looked like it was just the GPU.

And this all happened around Sept-Oct timeframe when new GPUs were far and few between. So starting with a bit of research, I decided on trying for a 3080 Strix - I needed the longer card and back-plate to work with my mount. And then after 3 weeks of trying to purchase one, I managed to lock in a 3090 off of New Egg while in line for the ferry. And in my haste, I did forget to select air shipping so I had to wait another 10 days for it to make it across the country, and finally it arrived!!!

tbc...
 

bjcsoln

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2013
Messages
452
Location
Vancouver
Now - I have the GPU, but I don't have the block. EK was scheduled to deliver the first ones in November, and I didn't want to wait that long with only my little MS Surface to use. Sooo...and this is rather embarrassing, but here was the temp. solution to get my by while I was waiting for the EK block to come in (please don't judge me too much!)

3-dontlook.jpg
 

bjcsoln

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2013
Messages
452
Location
Vancouver
I ran a soft-tube bypass from the second rad to the CPU, and then cough cough...zapp strapped the 3090 to my custom mount. This at least got the rig up and running again, and back to gaming while I waited for the new block.

In parallel to all of this, I had been thinking a lot about the process for filling / draining loops, and how much of a pain it can be. So I tried to be a little fancy and planned out a few extra things for the rework when I introduced the new GPU.

I added a few extra drain valves, and another input for the pump to allow me to fill directly from an external source (instead of having to slowely fill up the res bits at a time. This was the first cut of what I came up with - it gave me a few extra draining places, but more importantly, it allowed me to run some temp lines to a (in this case) bowl to easily fill / test the loop.

alphaclustermess.jpg

Its a bit hard to see, but basically the res has 2 drain points, and there are 2 drain points at the very bottom (one on either side of the pump).

And then depending on how I set the valves, the pump could either take fluid from the res, or from an external (filling) source.
 

bjcsoln

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2013
Messages
452
Location
Vancouver
This is what it looks like - from a concept perspective, it worked very well. Really easy to drain, and filling was also a breeze. Took a bit of work to get the pump primed, but once that was done, it would draw and drain from the bowl where I started with distilled water, and then slowely added the EK fog. And when the loop was full, I could manipulate the top plug on the res to fill the res up, and then turn off the input from the bowl and switch over to the res.

Loopfill_alpha.jpg

Here is a close up when I was just running 95% distilled water - I have to admit on some levels it was kind've cool, but I did realize all of those extra (and unnecessary) bends both impacted the flow rate, but also added noise (not much, but for the first time I could actually hear my rig).

Alphainplay.jpg
 

Latest posts

Top