The Z Build(s) 3.0 - Go Big and/or Go Home

[Grimlakin]

I may have found a source at current pricing via the Hardforums. Will update once in my hands.



Hehe. His rack is probably a lot nicer than mine. But does he have dual MO-RA 600's?

Disassembled the APC rack (I think that was the brand) chillers and pulled the rads from there. It's like 40% jank.

 

[Zarathustra]

Lesson learned.

Most rack cage nuts are not 1/4" 28TPI. The cage nut machine screw may fit in a 1/4" 28TPI test thread at Home Depot, but once you order (and wait for) your specialty screws of exactly the length you want, they will not fit in the cage nuts.

Apparently the cage nuts are M6x1.0. Worth noting here. An M6x1.0 screw looks almost exactly the same as a 1/4" 28TPI screw, but has an approximately 0.4mm smaller diameter, so the 1/4" screw just won't go in.

Apparently they are close enough that the M6 screw will thread in a 1/4" 28TPI hole (albeit not as tightly as designed, this should have been my hint) but vice versa just won't work.

Can you tell which is which?

 

[Grimlakin]

Can you tell which is which?

After dealing with umpteen bazillion number of cage nuts... and inserts... I can see the thread spacing looks different as well.. but honestly the shorter one because cage nut screws are normally JUST long enough to thread in through a network switch mounting 'ear'.

 

[Zarathustra]

After dealing with umpteen bazillion number of cage nuts... and inserts... I can see the thread spacing looks different as well.. but honestly the shorter one because cage nut screws are normally JUST long enough to thread in through a network switch mounting 'ear'.

It's actually the long one on the left that is M6x1.

The one on the right is the 1/4" 28TPI I special ordered because I needed a shorter screw so it wouldn't protrude too much on the other side and interfere with stuff.

No idea why these are so long. I have no idea what they came with. Might have been included with the rack itself, or were a universal set someone ordered at some point. There were a **** ton of them with the rack when I picked it up on craigslist 5 years ago.

Maybe if they were universal ones they made them extra long just to make sure they would fit whatever you needed to mount.

 

[Brian_B]

Metric vs Standard drives me batty.

I don't really care which one - just pick one and stick with it. Ford used to drive me nuts with this.

 

[Grimlakin]

Metric vs Standard drives me batty.

I don't really care which one - just pick one and stick with it. Ford used to drive me nuts with this.

I'm pretty sure you were the one driving the ford nuts.

 

[Zarathustra]

Metric vs Standard drives me batty.

I don't really care which one - just pick one and stick with it. Ford used to drive me nuts with this.

Honestly, usually this hasn't been a problem for me. But what really threw me off on this one was that I actually brought the screw with me to Home Depot and threaded it into the hole on that fixture they have there in the fastener aisle, it fit, but of course they didn't have 1/4" 28TPI screws, (only 20TPI) so I ordered them online, and they were still the wrong ones

 

[Zarathustra]

So,

Apologies for the extended period of lack of updates.

Between family obligations (travel for my dad's 80th birthday party, bachelor parties, bridal showers, weddings, baby showers, baby "sprinkles", that was a new one for me, mothers day, emergency vet visits, etc.) as well as a lot of casual overtime at work to keep up with a busy preparation for MDR certification, there simply wasn't much time to work on the project.

What little time I did have I spent on actually working on things rather than on documenting them. I intended to post stuff late at night and update with pics, but I was just too **** wiped out.

So this post kicks off some catch-up on that front.

Starting with my realization that I almost made a costly beginner mistake:



The mistake? With the design above I don't have any drain ports low in the loop. It would work well the first time I fill it, and then be an unholy mess to drain it.

I had bought the ball valves I wanted to install for the drain ports, but then I somehow just forgot about them when I started to cut plastic.

The ball valves are going to go between the pump and the inlet at the bottom of each radiator. But that means I need much more space between the pumps and the radiator than with this design. That, and they can't be solid, as I need the space to actually have the outlet there.

So, I went looking for material I could use. The winner became a 1.5" wide and 1" thick 1 foot long ABS bar from McMaster-Carr.

Part of the issue with these pumps is that the ports are very close to the top of the pump top, so if I want any surface to index against, I need to custom shape the bar.

What followed was heavy use of the drill press, bench grinder some drawn blood and a lot of cursing.

ABS has some advantages, but one of the drawbacks is that many tool speeds are too high, and start melting the material which is annoying.

I thought I had taken pictures of all of this, but I can't find them, so I guess I must not have.

Either way, here are the results of the new design:



The top block has cut-outs for the Tee-fitting and ball valve for the drain port, as well as a second cutout for the stopper fitting to cap off the secondary unused pump inlet.

 

[Zarathustra]

Then I remembered something else.

Someone I was having a discussion about DDC pumps with reminded me that DDC pumps can have rather short lifespans if they are allowed to run too hot.

The Freezemod pumps I bought have heatsinks on the bottom, but I decided to add a little more cooling.



The screw holes on the bottom of the heatsink are - however - rectangular rather than square, and don't line up with any common fan sizing.

So, it was time to make another set of brackets...

For better airflow, I was able to pry off the FreezeMod Logo plate:



Then I decided to create a flat brackets that cover the entire bottom except for round holes where I will mount the fans

The fans will have to be 40mm. I also don't have a lot of clearance to the next radiator, so I am going to have to go for the narrow 10mm thick fans.

The intent is for the air to be forced through over the fins and exit out the sides. There aren't too many good 40mm fans out there that aren't high rpm Deltas used in enterprise rackmountable enterprise switches or 1U servers, and sound like vacuum cleaners. It will have to be Noctua again. The NF-A4x10 PWM I hope the 1.95 mm H2O static pressure is sufficient to actually press a useful amount of air through there:



My experience has taught me - however - that convection is a pretty weak force, so it doesn't take much in the way of forced air to perform many times better.




Judging by the finger-tip feel-o-meter, there is a t least a little air coming out the sides of the heatsink gaps at full speed.

At lower speeds, I really cant tell, but there must be something.

I think it works. But ****. The Noctua color scheme is going to bother me

Unfortunately they didn't have the Redux or Chroma series in black available in this size.

I might just have to do something about that.

My builds are usually all about performance. The aesthetics are secondary, but man this is going to bother me too much if I don't.

 

[Zarathustra]

So, this is where things get a little silly.

I looked into options to do away with the Noctua "Napoleon Dynamite" "Tan on Taupe" look.



My first thought was to use automotive vinyl dye, as I have used that on plastics in the past with good results, but some searches revealed less than favorable results. Vinyl dye may be better than paint, but it still - apparently - cakes on the outside and can cause problems.

Then I found this crazy guy on Youtube who used fabric dye for synthetic fibers to dye his fans purple.

Downside? It involves boiling the item to be dyed

He did it. He said it worked for him. I was fully prepared for this to be some sort of prank, but you know what? If I wreck my fans, I can just replace them, so why the hell not?

So we are doing it.

The key is to get the "Synthetic" version, or it does not work.



Unfortunately they do not make a "black" version of the Synthetic dye, only Graphite, but the instructions also say that to achieve a darker color, you can just add more of the dye, and what is black if not a darker graphite?

The instructions also said that to conceal underlying colors you may want to mix in a counter-balancing color. For brown, they recommended using their "Midnight Navy" color mixed in, but that one was out of sock everywhere locally, so I decided to go ahead with just the Graphite.

The instructions gave me the proper amount of dye to use based on the weight of the fabric, but I was not dying fabric, and I wanted to get it as dark as possible, so I filled a 3 gallon stock pot up about half way with distilled water (I figured that would work better, but that was not in the instructions), put a drop of dish soap in it as per instructions (presumably to act as a surfactant) and then just dumped the entire bottle in there.

This was many times the required amount of dye per the instructions, but I did want it dark, and I figured I was never going to use the bottle again anyway, so there was no reason to save it for later.

I figured I didn't want the fans to sit on the bottom of the pot or they might melt, so I hung them by the cable from a wire hanger I got from the dry cleaners some time ago...



The instructions say to keep the put with the fabric to be dyed in it at a near boil, stirring occasionally for at least 30 minutes, and to add more time for a darker color. I wanted it dark, and I also presumed that plastic parts might take more time than fabrics, so I left it for an hour.

This second (possibly illegal) kitchen in the finished basement presumably installed by a previous owner of the house as some sort of in-law apartment came in handy.

Then the fans came out and I hung them to dry in front of one of the mini-split heat pump heads blowing cool dry air at them for a couple of days.



Once dry, the fans looked a little bit like there was excess dye stuck to the outside, so I wiped them down thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol, and they turned out looking great!



Hindsight being 20-20, I probably should have rinsed them off with clean water before drying them, and I wouldn't have had to do this cleaning step, but this worked.

I'm pretty impressed with the results. Everything looks black. Even the rubber vibration pads and the label on the back of the fan turned out nice, which is a bit surprising considering they started out looking like this:

They actually look like they could have come that way, which beat all of my expectations.



The question is, after boiling Noctua fans in black sludgy water for an hour, do they still work?

I've heard that Noctua fans have very good seals around their bearings, which is likely what resulted in this working without gumming up. I wouldn't count on this working with all fans.



Ahh, much better!

So, if you haven't boiled your fans, do you even enthusiast, bro?

 

[Zarathustra]

While on the topic of things that are uncharacteristic for me, lets talk about RGB LED lighting.

You may all recall that the MORA radiators have these white plastic light diffusers:

View attachment 3481 View attachment 3482

I wasn't originally going to do anything with these, but it bothered me that the white plastic diffusers are kind of loose in there, and can fall off. So I felt the need to secure them in place, but then I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have some sort of temperature indicator here, maybe using brightness? And before you know it we went down the slippery slope to colorful disco lighting.

Watercool obviously sells their own proprietary solution that is designed to go in here and interface with their controller, but I am not using Watercools controller. I am using my own Aquaero's, so that complicates things.

At first I was considering just using a standard 12v single color LED light, and hooking it up to a fan output on the Aquaero, and controlling the brightness by adjusting the voltage in fan voltage mode like a traditional voltage fan controller.

It turns out - however - that my Aquaero control units can be hooked up to a Farbwerk RBG controller, and one of those controllers was just two days away courtesy of Amazon Prime, so it was just easier to go that route. So, like RGB lighting or not, it's going to get it. I'll decide later how I use it.

Maybe I have it transition from blue when cold, to red when hot, or something like that? That gives me a quick sanity check as to how things are working by just glancing at it.

Anyway, this was going to require some custom work.

First I bought some white plastic cutting boards to serve as reflectors/diffusers on the inside. I cut and scored folding points in order to create a holder for the LED lighting. And then added some foil tape I had laying around for better reflection.

In my first attempt I added some strips Aquacomputer sells. I knew next to nothing about LED strips and thus decided to just order what they sold, but these strips were very short, and cost a surprising amount. They also did not come with the connectors I needed, so I had to order those separately:


I also got a bunch of splitters so I could power both sides.
Then when trying to insert it I mashed one of the LED strips and it stopped working. I needed to both adjust the dimensions of the insert, and buy more LED strips. I went with these from Amazon.

For less money than I paid for two short strips from Aquacomputer, I got two entire reels. I didn't need that much, but I figured it couldn't hurt to have extra.

It was a blessing in disguise, as the first attempt was lopsided with different lengths on each side.

Attempt number 2 was much nicer:



But it turns out it didn't fit either, and mashed the top row of LED's breaking them.


After this, I forgot to take pictures of the final design, but essentially, I removed the top and bottom led rows, and went back to a "one on each side" design. This resulted in less interference, and now everything fit.

I needed to get LED extension cables in order to reach the control box.

It turns out LED connectors are pretty wimpy, and don't hold together well, so I had to use some tape and zip ties to make sure connectors didn't come loose:




Anyway, it seems to have worked out quite nicely:

 

[Zarathustra]

And then it was time to mount the fan brackets and covers.

The whole 3x3 bracket is designed with two prongs on the bottom (which are just screws with a nylon washer underneath), that stick into matching holes on the radiator, and then it is just supposed to snap in place at the top:



...but neither of mine did.

It turns out there were some tolerance issues. In my radiators, the bracket sits too low, so the spring loaded ball catches on top don't catch.

Easy solution though. Unscrew the screws at the bottom, stick in a couple more washers and that tightens it up and it works. Doesn't look bad either.



Aren't 18x 200mm fans a gorgeous sight?



The covers went on much easier. They used the same push-pin style screws as the pump bracket earlier in the thread.

Just remove existing case screws, replace them with pushpin screws, and pop the covers right on, and the spring-loaded catch on the cover does its thing.

With a standard thickness fan, they are snug. They come with spacers though, if you use extra thick fans.


So we are getting pretty close to mounting the reservoirs and pumps and routing tubing.

The next step will be to rewire the pumps so they work on only a 4 pin connector from my Aquaeros, and then we should be off to the races.

Right now, I am being slightly slowed down - however - as my better half went out and bought a battery electric vehicle, so now I have a side quest that involves installing a level 2 EVSE charger.

This past weekend I got started on making holes and installing conduit...



Fun times.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

It turns out LED connectors are pretty wimpy, and don't hold together well

I think they flat out suck. Nice job on the zip ties/tape. I seriously could not believe the type connector manufacturers use for PC LED stuff the first time I got an AIO with them. Some of the ones I've used come with covers that'll snap in place to hold them together but still, ridiculous.