Squishy

System Details

Component Type Brand Product

Notes

Squishy is pretty much a dedicated 24 x 7 folding machine.

This is my first water cooled build so I spent many hours reading forums, selecting parts and planning because I was concerned about everything fitting in a Cooler Master HAF X case (I really didn't want a giant case like a cosmos). I made a few test mounts of the motherboard and radiator with the fans to work out how everything would fit. I was able to use flat "L" brackets between the fans and the top of the case to hold the radiator in place without having to drill any holes in the case.

I first built it to run air cooled just to make sure all the parts worked ok. After letting it run over night I rebuilt it to run water cooled.

Once I had the water loop primed and most of the air out of it there were still some stubborn air bubbles in the radiator. With the system running I sat in a chair with it on my lap and randomly tilted and shook it for a few minutes and it quieted right down. Over the next few days the really tiny bubbles (mostly stuck to the side of the reservoir) disappeared. I topped off the reservoir a few times over the next couple of days and that was it.

I rewired the stock front fan in the Cooler Master case to have blue LEDs (to match my blue tubing) and separate out the LED power and switch leads. I then made a small board with a 12V DPST relay which is controlled by the LED switch on the case. One side of the relay is 5V and the other side is 12V. I wired each to a row of 5 sets of header pins. The end result is the LED switch on the case controls the LEDs in the CPU water block and in the reservoir (both 5V) and the LEDs in the front fan and the UV CFL tubes (both 12V). There are leftover headers for future stuff.

There was a very funny thing that happened. One day I decided it would be handy to have a syringe to keep the reservoir full so I went to my local pharmacy to get one and had the following conversation with the pharmacist:

Hi I need a syringe, the biggest one you have.
Oh really??!! What do you need that for?
I need to put water in my computer.

Then there was one of those awkward silent moments, you know the kind that are only a few seconds but seem to last forever. I am sure glad they know me. I sure didn't want to try to explain it to the cops.

When running at full power (all cores at 100% at 4.5 GHz and the GTX 680 at 130%) it folds 45K-55K PPD. The CPU hovers around 65-75c. That kind of CPU temp is hard to get used to but seems to be typical for an overclocked 3770K. The GPU hovers around 35-45c. This is with an ambient room temp of around 23c.

The total power draw from the wall is about 360 watts (about 3.1A at 118V) as measured by a kill-a-watt meter. I figure it costs about $25.00 USD per month to run it. The low power draw leaves lots of head room in the PSU for a second GTX 680 which I will add as soon as I get the $1,000 from winning the EVGA sponsorship! ;-)

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