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Re: OCTower

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:29 pm
by radiant
my god, please continue working on this, need to see the final render. And please post pictures when you have assembled it all in real life and if you feel comfortable please tell the price on the whole assembly

Re: OCTower

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:41 pm
by t_3
radiant wrote:my god, please continue working on this, need to see the final render. And please post pictures when you have assembled it all in real life and if you feel comfortable please tell the price on the whole assembly
... gladly looking forward to post updates here, but you need to be a little patient. this is set to be a half-year-going project :)

ps: i wasn't yet going all to deep into modeling the components, because i'll plan to grab some of the parts first, to get accurate measurements and a few extra textures; 'am already eagerly awaiting the availability of the msi card, but the date of delivery is set back every few weeks :?

Re: OCTower

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:53 pm
by Jaberwocky
Two problems I see with this design:

1) If the case is made of clear Perspex or Polycarbonate / Mackralon. The thermal impact may leave it distorted or worse.Plastics are none to stable when it comes to heat build ups.

2) Heat rises.Therefore the total effects of the heat as it rises from the bottom cards moving upwards, will cook the cards above it and the heat generated will become cumulative by the time it reaches the top card.

A Better suggestion would be to lay the case on its side with the top being made from aluminium Mesh to let the heat rise straight out of the case.Also place the two power supplies outside the case in a separate compartment as these will generate some heat as well.

If you want additional cooling then place the case on feet with Aluminium mesh on the bottom and the top and a set of 120mm case fans along the top to drag the air through from the bottom of the case and up, past the cards and extract it through the top.The cards fans should also help with this as they are usually designed to blow through the rear of cases rather then heat up the insides of PC cases.

Re: OCTower

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:31 pm
by tehfailsafe
If you're really interested in keeping the temps down and aren't concered with cost you could look at using Flourinert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert

In this application you could basically fill the plastic case with the liquid and put a pump at the bottom with a radiater like in normal water cooling setups.

I was looking into it at one point but the cost of the flourinert turned me off, $500 per gallon, I believe. Maybe though if you are custom building the case you can squeeze down the volume of the overall shape so that you require far less liquid, then it might only cost $100 or so. Though if you have the cash for 8 590s I think the $500 wouldn't be an issue... :lol:

The good news is you wont need fans since it's all under "water" anyway so you can put parts right next to other parts, rather than trying to make a bigger case the way we do for airflow support. Additionally you can remove all those fans on the GPUs saving more space.

Re: OCTower

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:37 pm
by t_3
Jaberwocky wrote:Two problems I see with this design:

1) If the case is made of clear Perspex or Polycarbonate / Mackralon. The thermal impact may leave it distorted or worse.Plastics are none to stable when it comes to heat build ups.

2) Heat rises.Therefore the total effects of the heat as it rises from the bottom cards moving upwards, will cook the cards above it and the heat generated will become cumulative by the time it reaches the top card.

A Better suggestion would be to lay the case on its side with the top being made from aluminium Mesh to let the heat rise straight out of the case.Also place the two power supplies outside the case in a separate compartment as these will generate some heat as well.

If you want additional cooling then place the case on feet with Aluminium mesh on the bottom and the top and a set of 120mm case fans along the top to drag the air through from the bottom of the case and up, past the cards and extract it through the top.The cards fans should also help with this as they are usually designed to blow through the rear of cases rather then heat up the insides of PC cases.
hm, lets see... i'm aware of what you are saying here; and these are some important points.

what i thought was: by placing the cards with the board downside (and in a 45 degree angle), the heat that normally comes from the backside of the card (which is placed _upwards_ in a standard pc setup) will spread nicely up to the same cards cooler, so much of the heat of each card could be blown to the left & esp. right of it; there will be breaks in both side panels to allow the warmth air floating sideways out, while maintaining very good access to the outside - hopefully cool - air (& there is no front panel); so the ammount of rising heat should be very limited.

the placement of the psus allow them to draw cold air form the back and release the warm air to the back again; like in a btx case, where the psu is mounted at the bottom and releases only the self-generated warm air to the back - so there won't be much (if any) heat distribution to the "inside". if you you know btx cases, you maybe have already noticed, that a psu there won't get even near to those temps that a psu develops, if mounted on top in an atx case (and therefore needs not only to get rid of its own heat, but all the heat that rises from the other stuff inside a pc too). imo they hardly ever get lukewarm in btx cases.

there will also be some cuts in the bottom and top panels, to allow some inner airflow. in fact the whole thing should be not much more than an open cage with a little structural stability. from my experience, even high power pc components won't get any close to the temps they get, while not mounted inside a closed case with limited airflow and especially limited entrance for fresh air.

but thanks anyway for your thoughts, i will for sure do some testing before finalising the design...

Re: OCTower

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:38 pm
by t_3
tehfailsafe wrote:If you're really interested in keeping the temps down and aren't concered with cost you could look at using Flourinert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert

In this application you could basically fill the plastic case with the liquid and put a pump at the bottom with a radiater like in normal water cooling setups.

I was looking into it at one point but the cost of the flourinert turned me off, $500 per gallon, I believe. Maybe though if you are custom building the case you can squeeze down the volume of the overall shape so that you require far less liquid, then it might only cost $100 or so. Though if you have the cash for 8 590s I think the $500 wouldn't be an issue... :lol:

The good news is you wont need fans since it's all under "water" anyway so you can put parts right next to other parts, rather than trying to make a bigger case the way we do for airflow support. Additionally you can remove all those fans on the GPUs saving more space.
... like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ8L1Prl6tk :lol:

Re: OCTower

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:52 pm
by tehfailsafe

Re: OCTower

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:12 am
by ello
wow... i dont want to pay your energy costs. are you planning to create an octane renderfarm?

Re: OCTower

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:25 am
by Jaberwocky
T_3

Have you considered 2 way PCIE Splitter cables and rack mounting 16 no GTX590's in the case on the Big Bang board. :shock:

If your going for it.No sense in half measures. :lol:

That would be about 16,384 Cuda cores to play with !!!!! :o

Re: OCTower

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:56 am
by dhamoeba
COOOOL!!! are you really going to make a real render farm like this way? you need strong chassis structure and a lot of 1000W power supplier and best with a water cooling system, looking forward to the real machine :D