Project Blurple: or how much can you stuff in an M8

[Bartacus]

The Experiment: code name Project Blurple

Goal of the experiment: to cram as much crap as possible into a Case Labs M8, with pedestal, using as many parts as possible that I have collecting dust in boxes. This will include a potentially excessive amount of radiators, fans, flow meters, etc. It may get a bit silly, considering the amount of rads I have laying around.

System Parts:

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X / Gigabye Aorus Xtreme X399 motherboard / Watercool TRX40 CPU block
32GB G.Skill TridentZ (4x8GB 3200mhz CL14)
2TB ADATA SX8200 Pro x 3 / RAID0
Zotac 1080ti AMP Edition x 2 / Watercool Heatkiller GPU blocks
EVGA 1000W Gold PSU

Introducing one of the O.G. cases of serious water cooling, the Case Labs Magnum M8, gettin' nekkid:


For the longest time, the pedestal was set up like this, dual D5 varios in an EK Revo-something sitting between two 88ml thick Alphacool Monsta 360 radiators. As much as I'm not EK's biggest fan, this is pretty much the most space-economical way to have two D5s (notice the plasticizer on those "clear" tubes, ewwwww):


These radiators are utterly ridiculous, LOL!


Pedestal empty for the first time in years. Fun fact, this pedestal is the very one used in builder Snef's very first "big" build, the Xtreme Red Demon, so it has history! :-D


Sign of a clearly organized mind....NOT!


Rules of building: appropriate tunes are a must!


Got the motherboard installed quickly, but deciding how to run the tubes required much pontification. In the end, I came up with this weird half-X thing:


The OCDz are relatively pleased:


Monsta rads re-jigged, EK dual top removed, Sunbeam fan controller and Koolance flow meter display installed in pedestal.


I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do just yet, but this pic contains some clues:


One radiator, of many, with a hidden salute to Red Green (because Canadian). Duct tape FTW!!


A fan or 12, or 15, or 18 may be required:


More to come soon!

 

[Bartacus]

Since I started this build a few days ago (and just forgot to post a thread here, D'OH!), I'll fast forward a little.

One rather expensive piece I had laying around in a box was the Singularity Computers Resonance dual D5 distro plate / pump top thingy. I originally had planned on putting it in a Lian-Li Dynamic O11 XL, but that never worked out as the XL turned out to be smaller than I thought. Oh well, it will be used now, assuming I can fit the bloody thing:


This is going to be one TIGHT and TRICKY setup:


It's tighter than a nun's.....err, clothes:


I also decided to try and use 16mm acrylic hard tube everywhere, even in the unseen places. I already regret this decision, that's going to be PAINFUL:


Happy New Years people!!

 

[Bartacus]

My hands are scratched to hell, my fingers hurt, but headway is being made.


Prepping the Resonance, Duct Tape will be needed.




Duct tape was to help install the RGB / UV LED strip:




Trying to keep it hard tube as much as possible, only exception being around the drain. Small hard tubes are a !@#$%$@&^$!




The "hot" temp sensor, and another pain in the arse piece of tube:




Using a lot of 90s to work around stuff. This is one tightly packed space!




Peek a boo! You can see the tube run I was trying to "dogleg" around in the background:




Putting the Resonance back in place was tricky as F:




Many painful minutes later, the front is finally starting to come together:




Now I need a break and some sustenance! More to come!

 

[sswilson]

Heh.... I thought the basic idea behind using a monster sized case was to make building in it relatively easy... not to provide even more tight spots requiring extra special care with tube routing....

Are you bending/cutting your tubes on the fly?

 

[Bartacus]

Heh.... I thought the basic idea behind using a monster sized case was to make building in it relatively easy... not to provide even more tight spots requiring extra special care with tube routing....

Are you bending/cutting your tubes on the fly?

Working in this case is a breeze, it's only made bad by my own sadomasochism, wanting to pack it with everything I had. I am bending tubes on the fly, yup, using old throwaway tubes / failed bends as measuring pieces.

 

[Bartacus]

Welcome to hell, cable management hell! Good thing I'm not trying to be neat and tidy, as I suspect there IS no way for this to be tidy without custom wiring:


Basement is set up, SPLITTY9 in place for the 6 PWM fans in the pedestal, + 3 PWM fans on the front 360 rad:


Put a Darkside LP240 rad plus 2 more OG 3-pin Gentle Typhoons in the PSU side. Couldn't fit another 360 since I needed access to the pedestal for a pile of wiring and tube:


Putting the case back together, with all the 3-to-1 splitter cables going into that pedestal, as well as the soft tube, was a royal pain in the derriere, but it's back together, currently running some sysprep cleaning mix through it.


12 hours of running the pumps stand-alone, then I'll drain and refill, and attempt to power it up:


One thing I will say, it looks like running both D5s in series with this distro plate, which is actually two separate plates bolted together, will not do. It creates tons of air bubbles in the reservoir compartments, so I might need to run with a single pump. The 'reservoir' space doesn't appear to be large enough to prevent bubbles from re-circulating when both pumps are running. Oh well, more to come when the power up happens tomorrow, hopefully!

 

[clshades]

2 pumps in series increases pressure. PSI
This is how we keep the pressure right on high rise buildings. Or communities on hillsides.

Dial back the pumps to 25% if you can.

2 pumps in parallel increases flow/volume

 

[Bartacus]

Actually it worked out well in the end, got both pumps running at full blast without bubbles now. This was just my first distro plate, and with it being dual sided and dual pumps, it made it a bit more complex to fill. I set up a reservoir to help with the filling / bleeding, and did most of the bleeding with a single pump. I just had to rig this up:


Amazingly, all the fans and lights worked first boot. The digital temp sensor isn't lighting up though, and I think I grabbed the wrong flow meter, since the Barrow digital one isn't reading, which means that most likely, the impeller needs to be flipped (D'OH!). But she runs:


Big boi is big:


Ye olde Koolance flow meter still works fine, and reads the same reading it did for dual D5's back in the day:


Fitment was a touch tight on the 360 below the motherboard:


So in the end, the summary is: seven radiators in total, six 360s, a 240, and 24 fans. Broken down like so:

Above motherboard: Darkside LP360 / 3 x Fractal Design Prisma AL-120 fans (fan controller ch. 1)
Below motherboard: XSPC EX360 / 3 x Gentle Typhoons (fan controller ch. 2)
Front / motherboard compartment: Darkside LP360 / 3 x Darkside Gentle Typhoons 1850RPMs PWM (controlled by SPLITTY9)
Rear fan mount: Fractal Design Prisma AL-120 PWM, set as intake, controlled by mobo CPU fan header
Top mount PSU side: Darkside LP360 / 3 x Gentle Typhoons (fan controller ch. 3)
Bottom mount PSU side: Darkside L240 / 2 x Gentle Typhoons (fan controller ch. 4)
3 x Gentle Typhoons as intake on the PSU side (fan controller ch. 5)
Pedestal: Alphacool Monsta 360 x 2 / 6 x Darkside Gentle Typhoons 1850RPMs PWM (controlled by SPLITTY9)

This loop is a pain in the bottom, cannot be drained effectively without forcing air into it due to the silly rad setup, and is a pain in the butt to fill. DO NOT RECOMMEND!! But the cooling performance is just silly. Thank bloody !@#$ it has wheels!

 

[Bond007]

That is a lot of rads. So is it safe to assume the coolant temp runs at +0.2 deg over ambient? Lol.

nice work!

 

[JD]

It's amazing how even the biggest of cases can end up being small when you jam so much stuff into them, but at least it's space well used