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RADIICAL SRX and Shuttle XPC Project

The Radiical SRX water KIt and the Shuttle XPC Project

Part Two

Build Log Date; February 20, 2005

Project "Barebones"

One of the design decisions made at the commencement of this project centered around cutting into the case to make things fit. The final decision made was not to cut the case. Another decision that was made early on was to get a pair of high quality tweezers. More about this later.

Pump Fitting

Pump Placement

A small retaining bracket was constructed to mount the pump. This was screwed into the already existent cable tie holes in the case side above the power supply. Space was provided so that the vibration absorption pad, included with the pump, could be added later if vibration from the pump was an issue.

Radiator size and placement.

The most common place to mount radiators in small form factor cases like the Shuttle is out the back over what was the original heat sink fan placement on the rear wall of the case. The spacing here matches an 80 mm radiator neatly so that's what many people do when they water cool cases like the Shuttle. The limitations of doing this are that the cooling performance derived from one of these 80 mm radiator fan combinations is pretty unspectacular. In addition to get any sort of reasonable cooling it is almost imperative to use a loud high speed fan. Now I do not believe that I would want to go to the extra expense of water cooling to escape the incessant fan noise of air cooling only to have the fan noise remain in the new water cooling setup. It seems to me that I would want to go to a quieter environment rather than a noisier one. Therefore, the design decision was clear we would go to a 120 mm Radiical Pro radiator with a quiet Papst fan.

Radiator Stand Off Placement

Stainless steel stand offs were cut and the radiator was set back about 50mm to permit access to the service ports for USB,sound etc. The radiator was also moved slightly off center to permit access to the graphics card.

Radiator Chrome Side Reflection

We retained the black and silver theme of the Shuttle xPC and extended it with the use of the Radiical Pro which has chrome plated sides as can be seen by the reflection of the brass barb.

Next we mocked up the original HS fan to the outside of the case in a pull/push configuration so that it could act as a pre charge fan for the normally dead air flow area at the center of the 120mm radiator.

Pre-Charge Fan Placement

The reasoning behind placing the fan here was two fold. The original design decision was to include copper tubing inside the case to carry water to and from the components to be cooled. This pre-charge fan is to be used to provide evacuation of heated air from inside the case and to ensure that the convoluted copper tubing used to carry the water flow will have ample air flow across and around its surface.

Copper Tubing.

The major problem with fitting any form of tubing into the Shuttle case was space. With the constraints of CD-ROM and hardrive cradles cutting space availability to a minimum we were left with an area of approximately 11cm by 11cm by 14cm.

Tubing Space

Given that the tubing has to make several radius turns in the 11 cm trip downwards to the water block and then the same back to the radiator you tend to think of a "mission impossible" scenario. There is simply no way that the 3/8" clearflex here could make the radius turns without kinkage and pressure distortion. Perhaps using very soft thin walled plastic tubing or silicon tubing may be a suitable alternative for this type of space restriction. During the course of fitting the tubing one thing became very clear, the decision to use copper tubing was very sound.

Avoiding the hidden pitfalls of connector placement meant constant re checking and adjustment. As the space available decreased, by virtue of adding parts to the tubing line up, the choices also became less favorable. Adding a fill and empty facility really stretched the imagination but eventually we came up with a working solution. The plan to include water cooling for the GPU had been thwarted by delays at the block machining end and the non arrival of the ATI card so we were left with the prospect of including the tubing to fit a future GPU block into the water flow plan.

What we finally settled for was a compound flow pattern.

A final mock up using all the parts we would be fitting and a quick photo shoot indicates how packed the system would be when finally completed.

Top View

Side View

Now that we had the water and air flow sorted it was time for leak testing. So the system was stripped again.

Final Assembly and Test Results