I thought it was about time I posted this here

My raptors were making my ears bleed, so after a couple months of covering my ears with headphones (even if I wasn't listening to anything), I decided something needed to be done.

My first idea was to use a big flat piece of copper with a fan on it, inserted into a big silencing box, with the fan left on the outside. The hard drives would be attached with thermal gunk to the copper plate. I didn't like this idea too much. I thought the drives would get too hot.

So, I looked into water cooling. This "little" project is what got me into water cooling. I never intended to cool anything but the drives with water, but once I had bought all the stuff, and spent all the time putting all the pieces together, I thought it would be a waste to use it for just cooling off a couple of drives.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Initial stages with bare copper pipes

Jumping way ahead to the finished copper tubing structure, mounted in an old external SCSI box's mounting bracket

Soldered copper pipes to the drive brackets - added hose barb connectors - adding some foam

Closer shot - the PSU board is actually mounted vertically right behind that foam

Showing the metal enclosure that will house everything - also the wood faceplate that will show up later

Dynamat ^_^

Closer

Butt shot

Raptors mounted inside using that goop from the koolance '2nd HD kit'

Enlarged the hose entrance/exit area, adeed fan grill and highpoint external SATA bracket

Adding some mousepad for good measure

Sealed up, mousepad installed (they block sound REALLY well), digidoc installed into wood bracket, temp probes affixed to both drive, and other two for internal enclosure temp and water temp

Digidoc epoxied into wood faceplate - the faceplate is held into the metal bracket via three pci slot covers

My old case with the completed HD silencer / cooler next to it

Water tubing and data connections


Took me a few months working on it off and on to complete it, but it was well worth it. My drives are below ambient noise level ("silent") and crispy kool.

I used two four pin firewire cables, which I had to open up and solder so the pinouts would line up. The highpoint brackets are pretty nifty. They make it look nice and clean inside my case. The highpoint brackets convert internal SATA connections to external 4pin firewire. Not actually using firewire signalling mind you, just the physical firewire connection/cable, with SATA data travelling across it.

Pump is a Danner Mag 2, res is an army style 5gal gas can plugged with a 5/8" ID hose barb fitting. I was running the setup passively for a while, but then I picked up a big heatercore for $20 and eventually integrated it into my current case (not pictured).

.

Awesome

Are those drives SMART enabled so you can check their temperatures? Any before/after comparison?

The DigiDoc never reports higher than 30c for either drive's casing. The temp probes are affixed right next to the spindle motor on the bottom of each drive.

I'll try enabling S.M.A.R.T. and see what MBM tells me - do the first gen raptors support it?

Anyone?

Just about all semi-new drives have smart enabled.

i have a 20 gig maxtor 5400 RPM that supports it

so yes

very nicely done. although i don't entirely understand why. my raptors are pretty quiet...

Tell me you're kidding

There's an ultra high-pitched whine that they emit that's quite loud. It's not one of those white noise type sounds your ears can adjust to, like fans moving air.

he probably has the 74gb version - it's much much much quieter.

74gb version definitely doesn't All u need is some isolation mounting to reduce seek noise.

Bump 'cause it's my baby

i have a 36 gig version and with the side of my case on, you know with the big freaking window, i cant hear it

Fixed picture links.

just... beautiful. good job

2 questions:

are u using a totally separate psu to power your drives? if so, i thought that it was dangerous to do this - something to do with voltages. Have u had any problems with your drives?

how have u connected your raptors to your main pc? are u using firewire or usb2? did u try using a SATA connection - 1m cables are available and would be faster than usb2/firwewire.

Dude, that's fuckin' bitchin'! Really creative and completely genius...wow!

Yes, I'm using a separate PSU for the raptors.
I have a Digidoc hooked up to the PSU the raptors are powered by, and it reads the lines at 4.95v and 12.11v at all times. Both the PSU in the raptor enclosure and my computer's PSU are both plugged into the same UPS, so I don't think there should be any grounding issues.

They are connected with SATA.
I modified two 4-pin firewire cables to connect the two Highpoint brackets (which are regular internal SATA <--> 4-pin firewire). Raptors on Firewire or USB2 would be just plain silly

and thank you for the compliments!

This deserves a bump

welcome brother


great work dude, nice to know I'm not the only one with sensitive ears.....