Folding Boxen

Project Date Log; June 19, 2008

The Search

Have you ever looked around your workshop at the number of jettisoned or abandoned parts laying in drawers, on desks or generally just scattered around the place. The number of "Oh! that's were that went.....Didnt know I had that.... good job I remembered to save that, even though you hadn't, comments certainly makes for an amusing sideline for any listener.

So what do you do with all the parts you have collected. You could settle on putting the whole lot away in a cardboard box or boxes and go blissfully on your way knowing at least you had tidied up. You could put the whole lot onto your favorite computer sales forum or ebay and sell them off en masse perhaps making a few bucks in the process. The other alternative and the one we have opted here is to rekindle the power that once resided in your uber CPU or graphics card an rebirth the lot as Folding Boxen.

So what is Folding you ask. Folding is a distributed computing project aka as medical research. Interested,well try here for the full story from Stanford.
http://folding.stanford.edu/ So a Folding Boxen project it is.

This project will provide a good test bed for some new components that need testing out. There is our new 3/8" compression fittings which will be used on the radiators and the pump. Add some 3/8" black Tygon tubing for the look and a Radiical Primer port adapter fitted to a modified Laing D5 pump. Finally the D-Tek Fuzion V1 water block modified to accept 3/8" compression fittings instead of the traditional barbs.

The Case

Okay so on to the build. First problem was to find a case for our folding creation. Unfortunately there were no cases in our used parts bin so we ended using a Thermaltake armour case we had left over from an over order of cases we built in December of last year. No reason I suppose why the Folding Boxen cannot have a bit of style is there.

The Parts Bin

Next an ASRock AM2 motherboard that survived overclocking testing and an old Antec True power for the PSU. The CPU we are using is an Athlon X2 4200+. Graphics are on the ASRock motherboard. The onboard graphics will be more than adequate for our Folding requirements. Should it be necessary we have a used 7900 card available for dual monitor work and a bit of gaming when we get bored. A little 80gig Samsung hard drive provides our storage. Two 1gig sticks of ram to give the beast a bit of an image and we are ready to begin.

The Build

First up we wanted to test out the space available around the rear mounted radiator with the motherboard in place so that we could identify any build problems that were likely to occur. We had already fitted the motherboard previously to check clearances around the IO ports but its better to be safe than sorry.

In this picture the compression fittings have been installed onto the radiator. The clearance of the left compression fitting is seen to be very close to the structural framework of the case.

The second picture shows the extent of the clearance issue. A close up of the left fitting shows the tightness of the installation.

When we measured this gap we found there would be only about 1mm of clearance for the left side compression fitting to tighten down on the tubing. This is enough clearance to fit our tubing. If the compression fitting clearance had been an issue it would have been quite simple to invert the radiator as shown below. This is probably going to happen anyway when we fit the Nvidia GPU card later on to increase our Folding capacity with some water cooled GPU Folding action.

Okay so with that out of the way we can move on to the front radiator placement.

No issues here with any clearances. The compression fittings provide an easy installation option. No need for screw drivers, tubing clamps or the need for extra space around tight fitting parts like the radiator shown here. Simply fit the compression fittings with the radiator in place then fit the tubing and its all finished in a fuss free fashion. Maintenance tightening of the tubing clamps is done away with and should a minor leak occur its simple just to add another bit of a turn to the compression fitting tightening ring. Next step is to modify the D5 pump we will be using so another new part for our Folding boxen.

First we added the ability to fit compression fittings to our D5 pump.

then we fit the Radiical Primer port with the DD Filler port combo to the front end and combined a drainage tap fitting into the primer port .

Now we have the ability to fill, bleed, and drain the system in a compact and usable unit.

Okay so on to modifying the D-Tek FuZion block that we will be using for this build. Fitting our new compression fittings to the FuZion is a bit of an issue. The inlet and outlet ports are very close together. To overcome this we have used some of the smaller compression fittings on our web page. With a little bit of effort we have the fittings in place and we are ready to move on to tubing out.

Tubing out the system is pretty straight forward if you have worked out in your preliminary loop plan where the components will fit. Pump placement can be a lengthy decision making process. Keep in mind that the pump placement should not interfere with access to any of the system components. In our project consideration will have to be given to provide easy access to the drainage tap.

With the FuZion block loosely mounted the tube out can begin. First the tubing run from the pump outlet to the front radiator.

Then FuZion block to rear radiator.

FuZion block to front radiator.

Finally rear radiator to pump inlet via the primer port.

When the loop is finalized the front radiator and pump are still easily accessed.

With the loop completed its final check time and all of the fittings are re checked for position and tightness.

Next filling and bleeding the system and we are ready to start.

With the operating system in place we are able to get our first performance figures for operating temperatures. The overkill of using a triple core system really comes to the fore with delta/t of only 4 degrees at default. We can now experiment with fan speeds and overclocking to find our best fit for quietness and performance. Next its over to Stanford for a new copy of the SMP client so we can max out both CPU cores and off to join our local Folding team. Oh! and by the way if you want to join a world class Ozzy team then you should really look at joining Team 24 OCAU.

Happy Folding.