Project MiniMe - Smallest (ever?) Watercooled mITX PC

[oliverw92]

Hmm someone on bit-tech gave me a link to a massive thread about this board somewhere, i will go ask there!

I am 99% sure this is the smallest watercooled PC. No one on has told me its not, and this log is on here, OCN, bit-tech and aqua tuning. The smallest one on bit-tech was 8866cm cubed. Mine is 8000 after making it 20cm cubed instead of 20x20x18. And now there is no external power brick, which some people were being annoying about So unless you want to count the volume of the power cable, i think i am winning on size AND performance! *does a little dance*

[format]

Thanks for the comments guys!

@format: It is a Seasonic Mini 1u PSU rated at 250W constant and 350W peak or something like that. People over at bit-tech have been helping me with this. I can get a 200W pico psu, however they advertise the max load as the load on the psu, so the real constant supply is around 130W. This is obviously not enough, the CPU alone draws around 95W. This is the psu: http://www.powersuppliesonline.co.uk...su/default.htm

Have you heard the PSU on yet... how loud is it?

[oliverw92]

No i have not, i need to buy it first I am hoping the fan isn't too loud, if it is, it shall be modded! Scythe do some nice quiet 40mm small fans. I don't think it will be too loud since it is a very deep fan on it compared to the fin size.

Just saw your edit Pob255, i considered watercooling the 4670, but i dont beleive there is room to fit it in. I also don't think the 120 could take it. Would be epic if i did though...

[Will404]

wow, this looks really interesting, gd luck with the building it.

[oliverw92]

THankyou very much will404

Update #7

So i have been talking to radodrill at OCN about fan controllers. He showed me what he did for his Rad GT. So i have designed my own fan controller. It will only be 2 channel, unlike his insane 8 channel one. His was done on a soldering board (one with loads of pre drilled holes). I'm lucky enough to have access to PCB printing facilities at school so i will be making the PCB myself :wheee:



PCB design (to scale). On the right of the big electrolytic capacitors you can see 3 pads. This is where the potentiometers will be attached. Middle-left you can see 2 pads where +12v and negative connects. At the top right of each section you can see a box with 2 pads in, this is where the fans connect.



Real-world drawing of it



The circuit design (this was NOT done by me! This was made by radodrill!)

My layout was done in PCB Wizard 3.50. Great little program!

[oolon]

Seems to be a lot of work to go do, would not some like the mCubed T-Balancer BigNT do the job better? You can program it up so you can have customer cooling patterns based on flow and temperature readings, all of this is done without the OS being live. Of course you can have lots of reading about your system to plot too.

[oliverw92]

Interesting... although i don't think it is for me. It is very expensive, and i also have no where to put it If i was going for a more advanced watercooling loop and had lots of sensors and fans then that would be perfect, since making a PCB for that would be chaos. However this is a very simple circuit i am making. I have made much more complex ones

[oolon]

They do a mini one as well @£29, while it operates completely independently, you need the full one to load custom profile and to communicate with your PC, is you want to record readings which i always felt was a shame they didn't put a USB on it.

[oliverw92]

Hmm. How would i attach a potentiometer to that? All i really need is the ability to turn the fans down when idle and up when gaming/playing 1080p movies.

[oolon]

I think answer is you don't, it only ups the rate when your system needs it. If you really want to do it, a potentiometer is just a variable resistor and a thermocouple also is. I realise now its not for you, just wanted to show some alternatives. I was presuming you were going to do something automagically. Personally I don't like manually controlling things, having a cooling knob on a computer seems strange to me.

[oliverw92]

Hmm you have made me think! Thanks very much for the input. If i wanted to do it automagically, i could connect the fans up to the mobo headers and use some software to control them. I just like the ability to make it them quieter and louder whenever i want. Thanks very much though!

[Zhaoman]

hey your project looks really good. I've always wanted to make a miniITX pc so seeing you do a personal modded build is amazing and is a real help. gives me lots of component ideas as well! i can't wait to see it finished

[oliverw92]

Thankyou very much If you ever need any help with it feel free to ask! I would love to share all my findings.

[Vimeous]

Watching with fascination.
Your sketchup drawing looks stunning. Fingers crossed you can squeeze it all in

[Pob255]

Nice

quick note, I think you only need one C2 capacitor

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2001...n_controller/1

Several channels can be made to make a multi channel fan bus. Only one "C2" is required if all the channels are built on the same board.

Although personally I always perfur to run a cpu fan (in this case the rad fan) off the motherboard with the BIOS regulateing fan speed by tempture.
With manual control, when playing a game, you never know exactly how much load the cpu is under to be able to set the fan correctly to cope.
Personally I'd want some form of external tempture gauge so I could see at a glance what the cpu tempture is and if I need to adjust the fan speed.

[oliverw92]

THanks for pointing out the thing with C2. Can make the PCB smaller

Does anyone know of any internal USB temperature displays? If i could find one i would quite like to mount one on the case. Would look quite nice.

I would like to introduce my 3rd sponsor for this project, MNPCTech!

They will be sponsoring me with 1 of these:



and a set of these:



Thanks very much to Bill