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Radiical Cubed Projects.

Radiical Tribal Conversion

Date Log: March 27, 2006

Introduction

As we mentioned on our News page in January this year we will be taking a fresh look at companion cooling. The first modification we have carried out was to fit a dual radiator system into a Shuttle case. This proved to be a local success with many people requesting the same modification.

Obviously not everyone has a spare Shuttle case lying around waiting to be pounced on and modified. In an attempt to mainstream the idea of such modifications using existent companion coolers we decided to carry out a more Radiical conversion using a purpose built unit the Thermaltake tribe.

The Radiical Tribal Conversion

For the sake of convention we have used the term companion cooler to reflect the nature of these units being separated from the more traditional internal cooling systems seen in many of today's high performance personal computers.

The Space Performance Dilemma.

Certainly the need for more and more efficient cooling systems has developed in the last few years as a result of hotter and hotter components. Hand in hand with this we have seen the emergence of the need for liquid cooling to be installed into much smaller more compact cases. With only a small amount of case space available for internal fitting of water cooling the performance of some of these systems has often been well.....limited. The commonest solution to the performance issue has been to mount larger and larger radiators to the external surface of the computer case saving the valuable internal space for pumps and the like. For many this has been an adequate solution to the issue of cooling system fitting .

For others, after a more mobile solution, there have been the commercial units from companies like Corsair with their external cooling enclosure like the Hydrocool 200ex and the latest version the "Nautilus 500". Other companies have made similar attempts at companion cooling including Thermaltake with their "Tribe".

Price versus Performance

The one draw back with these companion systems is the "price point dilemma". The price point dilemma starts from the need to develop a good looking, marketable component within a set price range. The limitation being that the price will determine both appearance and performance. Unfortunately, the commonest comment from web reviewers regarding these packages is "nice package but very little performance". Alright, so what happens when the nice package is made to work with high performance components. Simple you end up with your own "Tribal" Unit.

Modification Plan

I like a good plan to go with so lets state our objectives here. What we intend to do in this project is to take the Thermaltake Tribe and improve its internal performance to match the sleek black exterior. Incidentally we chose the Tribe unit over the Corsair Hydrocool 200 because of the mesh cage surround featured in the Tribe design. Plenty of space for components and lots of air flow.

So what's under the hood.

Lots of space internally as you can see. Small low flow pump and reservoir at one end and a 120 mm radiator on the other. Plenty of room for modding here so lets get on with it shall we.

Breakin it Down

Okay so out with the standard bits.

and then its time to add a few mounting brackets in preparation for fitting radiators.

Handy hint;

Do not attempt to completely disassemble this case. Take out one side, do what work you have to do, then replace the mesh, retaining screws and brackets. Do this for the fitting of components. If you don't you will end up with a puzzle trying to fit it all back together.

Radiators are.......Go

With everything out and the radiator mounts painted and re fitted its time to fit radiators into the case.

Yep, three radiators means serious companion cooling. We had thought of taking the final step to include a fourth radiator, which would have fitted quite well, but decided this would not really affect overall performance at these flow rates. Although with a fourth radiator fitted and a second pump it is not hard to imagine a twin loop system featuring independent CPU and GPU loops (for Sli twin card systems) emanating from the one companion cooler box is it.

The Pump.

Using the Evolution series pump, shown above, there would have been enough space available to fit the pump between radiators due to its small footprint. Perhaps this could be a future extension of this project to see if the test results improve using the additional radiator and pump in something like the twin loop system described above.

Pump Fitting.

First we used the small mounting plate, which was supplied with the Thermaltake radiator, to solve the problem of fixing the Evolution pump to the case frame.

Then we measured up the mounting plate against the base of the pump to check the final fit out.

Next, after drilling and tapping several holes in the pump base it was a simple operation to fit screws to the pump body to lock it onto the mounting plate from the underside of the pump.

Tubing

Tubing up our creation was a decision that would take some time. To show off the cooling solution meant using UV fluorescent dyes and clear tubing. The alternative for a more sedate "sleeper" style fitting out would have used black Tygon like the Shuttle mod above. We decided to use clear tubing to show off a bit.

No spaghetti here I'm afraid. Clean lines and limited affect on case air flow are the order of the day. With an "all outwards" airflow direction from the fans it seems only logical to keep the air flow into the case at a maximum level by reducing as many drag areas as possible.

At the rear of the case the original exit/entry point for the tubing is shown above.

In our modification of the rear of the case we have removed the two 1/4" through the case wall barbs. We have replaced these with shut off connectors.

To give you some idea of size these are the 5/16" sized tubing connectors alongside a standard 1/2" hose clamp. Pretty small eh!

Fitted they look like this

and a little closer perspective

These connectors can be separated under pressure without leaking or so it is claimed by the manufacturer. The reason for this type of approach to tubing termination is to demonstrate that the transport options of lanning and/or simply moving the computer cooling about is of little concern when both computer and cooling can be easily separated.

Note

There is a performance hit in flow rate using these fittings which we are quite happy to accept just to have the convenience that they provide.

Temperature measurement.

We decided to reduce to a minimum the impact of our measurement by measuring the water temperature in the pump reservoir. To ensure accuracy we will baseline both sides of the cooling loop (hot and cold ) with a standardized RTD to provide us with an adjustment delta to work with during the evaluation phase.

To fit our temperature probe the filler cap of the Evolution pump was drilled to accept a thermister which we had encased in a stainless steel sheath.

Functionally the stainless sheath acted to water proof the delicate thermister while at the same time sealing the filler cap against any fluid loss from the reservoir. The added advantage was that the filler cap could still be used for its primary function of filling the pump reservoir.

The second part of our temperature measurement was to place a temperature probe 12 mm from the fan center on the intake side of the radiator closest to the pump housing to measure air ambient inside the case.

With our temperature measurement in place it was then onto wiring up and testing of the systems electrical's before moving on to CPU block attachment and testing.

Thermaltake have, as usual, been very thorough with the method of tubing entry and exit with the use of a PCI tubing passthrough. The passthrough shown below also incorporates the electrical connection between the companion cooler and the host computer.

Connecting the companion cooler to the computer is simply a matter of fitting the CPU and/or GPU blocks to the motherboard. Then exiting the tubing through the PCI passthrough. In doing so sufficient length of tubing should be left so that the companion cooler can sit comfortably on a spare area of the desk top.

Electrical connection inside the computer case is made using the Molex plugs attached to the PCI passthrough plate.The companion cooler is connected from the 12v In plug at the rear of the Thermaltake case to the PCI passthrough plate using the using the length of plugged cable supplied.

The internal lighting provided by Thermaltake was a 120 mm LED lit fan. We removed the fan and all of the additional wiring so that we could reduce internal air drag. Lighting was limited to the pump housing. We took the following digital picture in daylight with only the pump LED illuminated.

The final internal wiring tidy was carried out with the extra cabling for the fans wrapped around the fan body. This was done so that we had ready access to fan cables for testing purposes. In the final stages the cabling should be sheathed and hidden from view for a true Stealth look.

CPU Block Fitting.

We have decided to use the low flow Evolution Series block for this test period. A review of this blocks performance is to be found here.

http://www.doomedpc.com/?q=node/85

The advantage of the Evolution block over other blocks, apart from its good low flow performance, is its ability to have the mounting plate raised up and over motherboard obstacles with the use of the adding ring.

By fitting the ring between the mounting plate and water block the total height of the block can be raised by an additional 5mm. Very handy indeed to avoid that wayward capacitor and ensure a solid mount of the block base on the CPU face and not a rogue capacitor top.

The other noticeable advantage of the Evolution block is its full tubing compatibility. This block has the capacity to move readily from the 5/16" ID 7/16" OD tubing (this is the tubing size we will be using) up to 3/8" ID and on to 1/2" ID with ease.

With its good "low flow" characteristics there should be no issue in using the smaller pumps for this block in companion coolers. It would be interesting to see how a modified Laing DDC-12v pump functions with this form of cooling with its higher head rates.

Okay so we now have a completed companion cooler and its off to the test bench for some trials. We will run some tests on the die simulator to get our temperature monitoring correct and then hopefully its on to our Hot Prescott for some live testing on the web page in a week or so........................so stay tuned.

Tribal Conversion Results

Copyright of Radiical Pty Ltd 2006