Project Monolith case mod takes water cooling to unbelievable extremes
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 11th 2009 7:23AM
posted Jan 11th 2009 7:23AM
posted Jan 11th 2009 7:23AM
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Just wait til it leaks.
Even you post shit on Engadget, there are audience, always awaiting for the next update.
Must be fun checking that rig for algae.
That much water, tubes, and plumbing coupled with heat, electronics, condensation, and coupled with Murphy's Law makes this amazingly amazing amount of work and technology an accident waiting to happen. And as my mom would say, it's also a fire hazard.
Hey, but it's letting him run his pentium 4 at 4GHz, so . . .
@Ryan: So ... so what?
You have to remember, this doesn't even come close to a machine in a mineral oil fish tank. A friend of mine built one, liquid coating and cooling the entire computer/mobo/proc/vid card/etc except HDD/DVD. Haha when we built it though, we were lazy and just took a high power thermaltake fan and dunked it to circulate oil. We eventually built a passive radiator system, hot oil go up to radiator, cool oil go down to system. Now, working on said machine... Granted getting mineral oil on your hands is nowhere near as bad as water on your motherboard, but still...
For less then $90 bucks you can just put your overclocked tower in a standalone bar freezer, plug it in and forget about it.
Look alot nicer too.
no you really can't. fridges are designed to keep room temp things cold, not actively heated things sub zero. no commercial fridges could keep a normal computer cold, they'd break (underpowered normally passively cooled speciality computers aside)
trust me, people have tried ;)
How many bar freezers can handle the amount of BTUs the average overclocked tower generates?
Putting it inside of any enclosed space would be a bad idea.
And this guy has WAY too much time on his hands. And it is almost guaranteed to leak at some point.
Anywhere from 1000 to 22,000 BTU. The later will obviously cost more then $200 bucks. How much BTU is needed for this rig?
What will that thing actually do?
it'll play System Shock 2 at incredible frame rates.
As long as he has hyperthreading turned off.
Amazing work, all hand built, this guy is a craftsman of the highest order.
But could he make it worth looking at. I'll totally grant that, after reading the forum, he put in a whole lot of effort and care into this, but it doesn't change the fact that it is hideous.
Yes but if you read what he says he is going to enclose it and it isn't finished yet so he may tidy it up a bit. Anybody who makes there own aluminium brackets that look that good are craftsman to me...
The tubes are run in parallel. It would be very difficult to tell if the flow on one of the paths gets clogged. Even if not, if one path has more bends it will be far less efficient than a straighter path.
Is it just me or did he forget to cool the RAM, but remembered to cool every other chip in the room?
He's going to cut the heatpipes of the ram in half and use that as a channel for the water cooling.
Engadget failed to mention that this project wasn't finished yet, hence why the guy is getting some undeserved crap about this build.
You mod PCs for fun, for the achievement of having built something, this guy has done that pretty much from scratch. Sure it might leak eventually, i'm pretty sure he knows that too.
The guy is obviously very skilled at what he does, so I say to those that are here to pick flaws in his work - 'Don't bother. I'm sure he knows far more about the flaws in his work than you do'.
What. The. Fuck.
I second that.
It looks a fucking mess.
That is...really something.
Heck of a lot of work too.
Best of luck and no leaks!
Default gear of any 21st century cyber plumber.
My favorite part was the "The pump got hot, so I fuckin' slapped a cooler on that too" LOL.
I heard he likes cooling, so he put a cooler on his cooler so his cooler can cool while it cools.
That is the most awesome custom cooled CUP i've ever seen. Follow the read link dudes, it totally amazing. Worth a glimpse (which will take more than 2 mins minimum)
*******Warning for apple fans******
*****Might get a cardiac arrest****
Its a pretty neat idea but with all those push on hoses its def. going to leak at some point. If i had that much time and more importantly desire I would have put it all into a CAD program and designed to have all hard copper lines. It would help prevent leaks and look a heck of alot better. It seems the hose routing wasn't thought of for aesthetics, but who can blame someone for that that isn't getting paid to do it. But if works it works
Could have just used potting material. as long as you didn't want to replace anything.
is that a fleshlight on the floor?
If your Johnson is the size of a 3.5" hard drive... well, I guess there are some out there less fortunate than others.
I saw this a while back... I don't think that system is for extreme cooling. It's just for bragging rights. Why would he use that tubing... It's also so thin and with that long of tubing, any benefit of water over air is negated.
So next year when an upgrade is wanted it will take how long to install?
Nice idea but far too limiting for my liking.
What happens when he wants to upgrade? I predict it'll take a good day just to undo all of that...
...but I see the awesomeness, and the fact that it's just there because.
"but don't expect it to get any easier to comprehend."
Really, engadget? Really? This shit is not hard to comprehend. PC modders have always been an innovative bunch who have been willing to get their hands dirty.
That CPU is a 140w part AND he wanted to OC it to nearly double its native speed. Again, this is not complicated.
Well you don't have to be such a prick about it.
*I feel like Chicken Tonight*.
Wow it is impressive and totally insane but still I like it :)
Makes me want to reach down, grab a bone from the pile around this thing, and pummel a monkey to death.
(Hope you all got the 2001 Space Odessey metaphor)
It would have been tits... had you not have to say what it was from. Although, in the past, movie/show metaphors/quotes have been completely lost on some.
"Steve Jobs, Jack Kilby and Joe the Plumber walk into a bar..."
This is pretty awesome
Why not just run a complete A/C system into the case, using proper refrigerant?
Would be much more effiecient, plus any leaks wouldn't damage the Mobo.
I expect it to spawn necron soldiers and shoot green lightning.
RESTRICTION
I don't think Yoshitoshi ABe ever considered using that title for any of the 13 layers (episodes) that comprise his currently most compelling work of psychological cyberpunk called Serial Experiments Lain.
Struth - there seem to be a few people who have forgotten that this type of mod is for the fun & not the hardware safety. So what if it leaks - it's still cool!
PRESENT DAY. PRESENT TIME. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think I have watched too much Lain.
But this Project Monolith looks like a very serious Serial Experiment in the works. Now it just needs to connect to the Wired. And lure the Knights. And blur the boundary between the Real World and the Wired World...
"I am falling, I am fading, I am drowning, help me please..."
Sorry, it was supposed to be:
"I am falling, I am fading, I am drowning, help me breathe..."