Severe memory fault

I forgot to post this when I finished and as I got to talk about this project today thought it would be nice to have some kind of conclusion.

Here's some pics of the project I now declare finished. I managed to heat the water to 80C (forgot to plug the rad fans in...) and that caused a leak destroying the mobo and GFX card. Replaced them and it's now working fine (except for some random blue screens, maybe due to that second broken card i still have in there.

I hoped that the card was still alive and ordered another with a waterblock to have quadfire. Well... it didn't work. Anyhow, here's the picture galore.

I'm going to make a sticker out of this and have it on the window.








Plasma cut sheet metal. I printed the pic on paper, cut it and then draw the outline to the metal. Then I cut it freehand and got lucky.


It's nucular powered!


Lights on



Pics of the water cooling stuff







So here it is. Learned a bunch of things and next time I won't do nearly as many mistakes and I can do many things the easy way. As soon as I get my assistant computer engineers (8 months and 4 years old) away, I pull that bad gfx card away and maybe bake it to see if it will work again.

So, until then....

Thunderwalruses are GO!

After 3 days of leak hunting I finally fixed them all yesterday. The 3 first ones were easy to find and fix but he last one was a sneaky bastard. That one was in the CPU block intake. Took one day to trace it and another to wait and see if I got it fixed. I didn't. Turns out that the tube incoming from the pump was twisted while I connected it to the pump (CPU block was already connected) and it made the inlet barb turn loose. Not much but enough to leak 5cl/8hours. I twisted the tube so that it will tighthen the barb and found all leaks sealed this morning.

So I did a bit of cable management and built the bottom of the case.


Here's the air intake filter. Made of pantyhose.


Today I hooked all the power up and cut the back panel so that I can fit the monitor cable and mouse + keyboard in.


El Jefe is ALIVE!!!


..and has some nice temperatures too. CPU & VGA are ambient temperature, the HDD is water temperature in the tank and CASE is the exhaust air temperature.


Temp sensor in watertank. There was a handy hole in the cap I believe just for this.

Still leaking

After having the pump running all night I found a leak. It was in the CPU block entry. I tightened the clamp and also screwed the barb a bit more. Now I'm leaving it to run for another night. Let's hope that got fixed now.

In addition to that I cut the dampers for the DVD drive. The foam from the PSU packaging was easy to cut and does the job perfectly. I'm going to fasten it with zip ties.


I also tested the fans. The 3 main fans in the radiator and the pump make almost no sound. The 2 small fans at the end of the tubes make more noise but I hope with the front plate installed it will dampen the sound. Anyways the machine sounds more like breeze in the trees than F-22 with afterburner like it used to sound.

I'm not dead and the project is progressing

For the last few weeks I've finally been able to work on El Jefe again. I've cut the holes for windows in the back and side panel. Haven't installed the actual window plates yet, because I need to be able to reach the innards until I'm sure the computer runs as it should.


I also built these ducts to suck hot air from the mosfets.


Last week I got the ducts and fans installed. Trying out the tank and pump position.


Then I put the CPU water block on. I had to use smaller diameter tube to connect the "Fusion Block" but I don't think it matters because everything else is tubed with the larger tubing.


I tried the PSU and motherboard on. At that time I found out the PSU mount was too close to the MoBo mount. So I had to drill new holes for the MoBo mount and modify it a bit on the left side too to fit the cover bolt tips too.


All the tubes connected. Next thing was to add water and hope for the best.


I set some toilet paper in the joints to see if anything leaks and protect the boards. There was 3 leaks. One in the rad exit, one in the tank input, and one in the GFX block exit. I managed to fix all of them and started removing the air from the system.



Having most of the air removed I hooked the PSU up and set the pump running to get rid of the last bubbles. I just connected the leftmost black and green wire together in the clip side.


I leave the pump running for the night and hope there won't be any more sneaky leaks.

A small step forward

I got the exhaust grill mounting holes drilled today. It took 3 broken drills to have the 7 holes made. Because the grills are some kind of stainless steel and I set them on top of each other, the top one bent a little and that was maybe the cause of the drills breaking. I have no pics of that because I forgot my phone at home and I don't carry the camera at work. A little bit of finishing and I'll post you something about the ready grills. someday...

I'm getting too lazy about the project and now as El Jefecito is working perfectly, I don't even have that desire to finish the project like I did in december. Anyhow, I have this thing about unfinished projects. I get very excited about things and after a while I lose interest. Then again I want to finish the things I've started, so this project haunts me every time I start up El Jefecito. There's not THAT much to do, it's just me willing to get down and dirty. Next time when I get a couple days off from family, I'll try to do something.

Nothing happens

I've not been able to do much with the frame lately. I've straightened the grills and finished the radiator mount but that's about it. I still need to cut the holes for the grills, windows and DVD drive. I als oneed to bolt on the handles and the components. I wish I could do it soon, but having El Jefecito up and running does mean that I really don't need to and the's actually a big shame.

I'll try to get something done next weekend maybe.

Frame finishing

It took whole moday evening of work, but I think the El Jefe case is now ready for assembly.

What I did was to drill the mounting holes to the cover panels and the motherboard backplate.

I pre-fitted the fan mount and the backplate.




The fan mount was OK, but I somehow managed to drill the backplate holes somewhere else than where they should have been. So I clamped the plate on the frame and drilled new holes. After that I had to grind the holes so it would look even a bit more decent and remove the sharp edges.


I set the damping plates under the frame and punched holes so that I know where to drill.


I bolted the drilled plates on for measure, so I could cut off the excess and have somewhat straight corners.






With the wheels on, I have this much of ground clearance. I will have more, because the rubber plates are not as long as the damping plates.


I used wood drill to drill the holes in the rubber and it worked very well. I should've started the process doing the back plate first, but unfortunately I made the front panel first. After I did that I realised a better way to measure the places for the holes to have the rubber tight and straight.


So I just might need a new front plate. I'll find that out after I bolt the plates on. I decided to use the original end plates because I got an idea to make the corners look good without decoration lists. I got some nice 40mm wide black plastic tape and I'm going to use that for the corners.

I also polished the grills. I didn't go for mirror finish, but I got all the dark spots and scratches off.

After all the panel work was done I was ready to paint the frame. Unlucky for me that the paint had stuck inside the spray can. I could not hear the rattle when I shook the can and all that was coming out was a colorless spray which didn't even feel sticky. So I had to delay the painting to another day. Yesterday I got to a proper paint shop and got a decent can of red paint. Just after maybe 15 minutes the can was empty and my parts were painted.


Now I'm ready to build the radiator mount and replace the 120mm 230V AC fans with 120mm 12V DC fans which I bought from Tehomylly.net forums. The Scythe fans were a bargain at 12€ each. I'm going to use the packaging foams for the radiator assembly, because they're light, easy to work with and I have plenty of it.





I used the plastic tape to strenghten the foam. I'll be putting the foams, radiator and fans on next time I get to work with the frame.

I should be ready to test the water cooling this weekend later.