Project : Water Cooled Shuttle ST20G5
Developer : Jon ?Bob The Junkie? Aubrey
Completed : 30th December 2006
Edited by : Jason Hambly, Paul Mercer
You?re not a hard core gamer if you?ve not
been to a Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) Local Area Network (LAN) party.
Whether it?s with a small group of friends at someone?s house, a set of people
at a local cyber caf?, or a full blown organised event half way across the
country, the recipe is always the same. People who want to come and meet other
gamers, show off their computers, and play games against each other on a low
latency network.
If you?re a gamer there is nothing quite
like a LAN party. Being able to laugh at the person you?ve just fragged, face
to face ? or actually pat someone of the back for a good win. Cheating is
generally not an issue at a LAN party either ? as you can literally see over
the shoulder of the person that?s playing.
However getting ready for the LAN party
isn?t always much fun. You spend half an hour disconnecting your 5.1 speakers,
TV Tuner, Ethernet cables and everything else plugged into your machine and
packing up the peripherals you need to take with you. Then you pick up your beautiful
three ton PC case and pack it carefully away in a protective box ? nearly
breaking your back as you do so. You then pack away your monitor and power cables,
put it all in the car and drive or fly to the LAN party.
When you get there you unpack your beast of
a PC ? determined that it?s going to look better than, out perform and
generally thrash, all of the other PC?s there ? and all of the hard work and
money you put into it was worth it. And what do you find when you get there?
Someone has a much cooler PC than yours ? water cooled, flashing lights, and
modded to the max. All of that hard work was for nothing.
Well not anymore ? we?re going to walk you
through how we made a small, powerful, light PC that we?re proud to show off ?
with that added ?wow? factor that will be sure to turn heads ? water cooling.
But water cooling is main stream now, what is so special about this system that
makes it the star of the show? We fitted it all in a Shuttle Small Form Factor
case.
Please note that this project is proof of
concept, and although it works very well and is sure to turn heads, currently
it does have some drawbacks. Read on to find out more.
We should also mention that this project has suffered multiple set-backs time after time, so the components used aren’t quite as new as when we chose them!
{mospagebreak title=Chosing the platform}
Platform
One of the first and most major choices you
will have to make when purchasing a new PC is which processor you will want to
use in it. Before you choose the processor, you will have to choose
which processor manufacturer you wish to buy from.
Currently there are two major desktop
manufacturers on the market ? AMD and Intel. Both offer great processors at
different price points, however when we started this project, AMD was favored
by the gaming and enthusiast market.
When choosing the platform ? we used three
comparisons to decide which platform to use:
- Price
- Power consumption
- Performance when gaming
At the time we were building this system,
AMD on average beat Intel hands down on price/performance. This was generally
why gamers were buying AMD systems.
Intel processors were on average consuming
more than 10% – 15% more powerthan their AMD counterparts. As the system we were building could not have a 500W power supply (as it is hard to get a full sized
power supply in such a small case) we needed a processor that didn?t drain too
much power. We did consider the Pentium ?M? processors but these were too
expensive at the time.
At the time we were choosing processors,
the dual and quad core processors were just coming onto the market. The closest
thing to dual-core processors were Intel processors with their
?Hyper-threading?. However at the time there were virtually no games on the
market that would take advantage of this which made the feature redundant. Head
to head this made AMD processors faster at gaming.
Based on the above comparisons we decided
to choose an AMD platform to build this project around.
{mospagebreak title=Chosing the case}
Case
As this project is based around a Small
Form Factor (SFF) computer we needed a powerful yet small case. Several
manufacturers make SFF PCs including Biostar, Asus, Antec and MSI but we turned
to the grand-daddy of SFF PCs, Shuttle.
Shuttle has been around making SFF PCs
since 1983, so it?s no surprise that they know a thing or two about how a SFF
PC should be put together. As we were intending on choosing the parts for this
project ourselves, we opted for one of Shuttle?s XPC ?barebones? PCs which
contain only the case, motherboard and power supply. The rest of the components
you have to fit yourself.
As we had already previously decided on the
AMD platform for this project, at the time of writing we were left to choose
between five different SFF PCs, the SK83G, SN85G4V3, SN25P, SN95G5V2, and the ST20G5.
We first ruled out the SK83G and the
SN85G4V3 as they use the older Socket 754 platform which is now being phased
out of the ?performance? market and we wanted something that could be upgradeable
in the future.
The remaining three all used the Socket 939
platform which can host both single core and dual core processors.
After looking at all three PCs carefully,
we decided to rule out the SN95G5V2 as it uses the old AGP 8x slot for graphics
cards instead of the newer PCI-Express slot. Although graphics cards using the
AGP interface are still being manufactured, they are slowly being phased out
and replaced and we wanted a machine that would have upgrade potential in the
future. This left the SN25P and the ST20G5.
The choice between these two systems is a
matter of personal taste. With the SN25P you get the much acclaimed Nvidia
Nforce 4 chipset, a 350W power supply, three 3.5? drive bays, a card reader and
the ability to use a dual PCI slot graphics card.
With the ST20G5 you get the ATi Radeon
Xpress 200 chipset, a 240W power supply, two 3.5? drive bays, no card reader or
dual PCI slot cooling, but you do get onboard graphics including a DVI out
connector.
Although it may seem the obvious choice
which one we were going to use at the moment, there are two other fundamental
differences between the two models, the size and the weight.
The SN25P is 1.5cm longer, 2cm wider, 2.5cm
higher and 0.85Kg heavier than the ST20G5. This may not seem like a lot, but
when the case is this small that is nearly 10% larger in some areas. As this
project is to build a LAN machine that will ?wow? other people there, the size
and weight of the machine would make a big difference when transporting it
around, and anyone can build a water cooling kit inside a large case, we wanted
to build one inside the smallest case possible.
For these reasons, we decided to use the Shuttle
ST20G5 as our case of choice.
{mospagebreak title=Power issues}
Power, where are you?
As well as the size of the case, there was
one other problem with choosing the ST20G5 as our ultimate gaming case, it only
has a 240W power supply. Although this is a Shuttle power supply which means
that it has good amperage across the rails and will generally withstand anything
thrown at it, it is still only 240 Watts and so really isn?t designed to cope
with today?s high end hardware. Due to this problem we had to throttle back on
which hardware to choose for this project. This was not a major problem as this
is designed to be a LAN machine for gaming and not as a standard PC, it?s
primary role is for playing games and not word processing while antivirus
scanning, or displaying the desktop on four different screens at once.
If we had needed an added boost of power
later on, for a hard drive, graphics card, processor or other upgrade, Shuttle
make an upgraded power supply that can be fitted in the ST20G5, the PC50 300W
PSU. This is not an official upgrade as it is not officially endorsed by
Shuttle for the ST20G5 but we can confirm that it will fit with no problems. It
does however hang a little lower in the case than the original power supply, so
fitting the memory modules would have been a little trickier.
Although the PC50 only provides 60W more
power than the standard power supply, if only one component was being upgraded
then it may well be plenty.
{mospagebreak title=Choosing the processor}
Processor
A fast gaming machine needs a fast
processor. As we had decided on using the AMD socket 939 platform we had a
choice of three different types of performance processor; the standard family
single core, the X2 family dual core, or the FX family single core.
Unfortunately using the ST20G5 case put a
few restraints on the processor we could choose. As well as it having to be of
the 939 pin platform, it also had to have a low power drain on the system. At
the time this ruled out the X2 family as even the lowest model, the 3800+ drew
over 20 watts more than the top of the range single core, non-fx processor.
This left us with either the 4000+ single
core processor running at 2.4GHz or the FX-55 single core processor running at
2.6GHz, as anything faster than these processors simply drew too much power.
For this project we decided on the 4000+
single core. The reason behind this was simply the price. At the time it was
under half the price of the FX-55, it did not have as many overclocking options
as the FX-55 (you can?t unlock the processor) but as we were limited on the
overclocking potential of this system (overclocking a processor requires more
power than it does at stock speeds) we would probably not be able to overclock
the FX-55 to its full potential anyway.
Now AMD has moved to the 65nm process,
lower voltages can be used in the processors which means cooler processors
drawing less power. If we were to start this project now we could use a much
faster processor.
{mospagebreak title=Choosing the memory}
Memory
A short while ago Corsair published a paper that showed that an increase from 1GB to 2GB of system memory made
noticeable difference in the frame rate of newer games. Microsoft?s newest
operating system,
amount of memory, even without anything else running. As we?re building a
gaming machine, and with future games processing more and larger textures, the
more memory we have the better.
Unfortunately one limitation of our Shuttle
case was that it only had two memory slots. As the ST20G5 requires both slots
to be used in dual channel mode for maximum performance we either had a choice
of fitting two 512MB modules (1GB total) now and throwing them away later for a
set of 1GB modules (2GB total) or fitting 2GB straight away. As we?re not particularly
inclined to waste money, we opted to fit 2GB to the machine.
When it came to choosing the memory there
was no contest as to what we were going to choose. As the Shuttle ST20G5 can over
clock the Front Side Bus frequency to 255MHz but only supply 2.9 volts of power
to the memory, we needed memory modules that could run stably at DDR500 speeds
at low voltage.
At the time we were choosing components there
were very few manufacturers making 2GB kits. One of the manufactures that were
was Crucial, who make the Ballistix Tracer PC4000 DRR 2GB kit. As confirmed by
Crucial on their website, the Ballistix Tracer is compatible with the ST20G5
and is encased in black heat spreaders that look fantastic.
The Ballistix Tracer PC4000 is capable of
DDR 500 speeds at only 2.8 volts. Running at 3-4-4-8 timings it is not the
fastest timings in the world, but to gain the increase in performance from
DDR500 speeds and the guaranteed stability (you don?t want your computer
crashing right in the middle of a tournament match) that Crucial offer, it is
worth the slight performance decrease that using CAS 3 memory brings.
As we?re using the ?Tracer? family of
Crucial memory, we have to say a few words about the special flashing LEDs that
these modules feature. These flash red and green according to the memory usage
on the modules and as well as looking extremely cool they serve as a very handy
diagnostic aid. These are located on the top of each module beneath the heat
spreaders so that they do not increase the overall height of the modules. As
well as the flashing LEDs on the top of the modules, Crucial have also added a
set of LEDs on the bottom of each module that shine blue light onto the memory
pins. According to Crucial, neither of these sets of LED?s require additional
power from the motherboard.
{mospagebreak title=Choosing the graphics card}
Graphics card
As this machine was primarily going to be
used for playing computer games at LAN parties ? we needed a decent graphics card
that wasn?t going to suck up too much power. At the time we were deciding
components, ATi were still in the middle of bringing out their R520 core range
which only left their X850XT PE as a top performing card. Unfortunately the
X850XT PE card runs very hot and so requires two PCI slots brackets for the
card and its cooler. This is a problem in the ST20G5 case as it only has one
single PCI slot bracket for the graphics card itself.
Unfortunately the ST20G5?s multi-monitor
support only works with an ATi card, so we were left with a tough decision. Which
did we prefer, multi-monitor surround view support, or a faster gaming graphics
card? After much debating we decided we wanted the faster graphics card. This
was for a number of reasons:
- The onboard surround view graphics takes up system memory,
which would reduce performance in games - Surround view only supported in very few games, and at a LAN
party we would only have enough room for a single monitor anyway - This is primarily going to be a gaming machine for LAN parties,
where frame rates matter much more than multiple monitors.
So that ruled ATi out for the time being,
but as we are using the PCI-Express slot for graphics, this may mean we will be
able to upgrade to a faster ATi card at a later date.
When we were deciding on components there
were two good GFX cards in this range (as opposed to enterprise cards used for
rendering scenes for artists) NVIDIA?s 7800GT and 7800GTX, and they both come
with single slot coolers.
There are a number of differences between
the cards:
First, they differ in the technology used
in them, including pipelines, core and memory speeds. Second they differ in
price, the 7800GTX is approximately 10% more expensive than the 7800GT. Third
they differ in performance, the 7800GTX is more powerful than the 7800GT. Fourth,
and most importantly for this project, the 7800GTX can consume up to 20W more
than the 7800GT.
After considering all of these options we
decided to go with the slightly slower 7800GT. This is for the following
reasons:
First, although the 7800GT is not as fast
as the 7800GTX we will not be running screen resolutions above 1280×1024
pixels. The simple reason for this is that there is not a lot of space for a
user and their equipment at a BYOC LAN party and currently there are only a few
19 inch TFT monitors (you don?t want to be taking a heavy CRT monitor to a LAN
party if you can help it) that are capable of displaying 1600×1200 pixels or
above. This would mean that you would have to bring a 21 inch monitor or above,
which apart from being a tight fit in the space you have been allocated, is
going to be harder on your eyes (remember you will have to fit fairly close to
the desk, and you?re going to staring at that monitor for a long time) and may
even be refused from some LAN parties (a lot of LAN parties put a limit on the
size of monitor that can be brought, to avoid space problems). The 7800GT can handle
most of today?s games (and probably quite a few of tomorrow?s too) running at
1280×1024 pixels with a fast frame rate. Second, with only a 240W power supply
in the ST20G5, we could not spare the extra 20W as this would put more strain
on the power supply, and we like a little headroom.
After we had decided on the 7800GT we had
to decide on which manufacturer we wanted the card from. There was no contest
here, with many awards under their belt and a reputation for great performance
at good prices we had to go with Leadtek.
With HDTV support and VIVO (Video In ?
Video Out) for time shifting and picture in picture video modes the Leadtek WinFast
PX7800GT TDH MyVIVO graphics card fulfilled everything we were looking for in a
graphics card and more.
As well as coming with some good games
(ours came with Prince of Persia ? Warrior Within and Splinter Cell ? Chaos Theory)
it also comes with dual DVI connectors for high quality monitors, and two
adaptors to convert the DVI ports to VGA ones for use with older monitors. One
other nice little touch it had was a set of RGB connectors for high quality
monitors and devices that support it.
The Leadtek WinFast PX7800GT TDH MyVIVO
uses a single slot cooling solution which comes in an attractive black and
silver finish. The card itself uses green PCB and supports SLI (although we
obviously couldn?t use this feature).
{mospagebreak title=Choosing the hard drive}
Hard drive
As any gamer knows, games take up a large
amount of hard drive space. It’s a far leap from games of old that used to fit
on a floppy disk, today’s games with their massive textures and surround sound
usually have to fit on several CDs or DVDs. Being an avid gamer, I did a quick
study to see the average size of today’s games on a hard drive. Although the
size for each game varied, the average came to four gigabytes (4GB), a long way
away from older games such as Half-Life, which took only a quarter of that.
Being an avid gamer, I have a large amount
of games stored on my hard drive. These include games I would play at LAN
parties such as CounterStrike and F.E.A.R, current games I am working through
such as Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas and NFSU:2, and older games that are
still good to load up for a laugh occasionally, such as The Sims 2 and Jedi Academy.
As well as the games, the hard drive needs
to be able to cope with the Operating system and all applications and software
loaded on it (a few Gigabyte), the Page File, and generally a few films and
some music to relax and wind down to when you’re not gaming (on a long gaming
weekend, you can’t play your best if you’re gaming every waking hour).
Due to power restraints with the ST20G5 and
given that it is only a small case with little ventilation, we decided on using
a single hard drive for this project. The simple reason behind this was that a
single large hard drive is cheaper than two small hard drives and a RAID 0
array here would not be much benefit as generally there is very little hard
drive accessing on a games machine, apart from the loading of the Operating
system.
As games are only getting larger and more
complex, and given that ten games on their own will take up roughly 50GB we
needed a fast hard drive with loads of room. The obvious choice for a ?wow?
computer would be a Western Digital Raptor hard drive that runs at 10,000rpm. Unfortunately
the Raptor would not be a good choice for two reasons. The first being the heat
it gives out, and we?ve only got a small case with minimal cooling. The
second is the size of the drive, currently they are only available up to 150GB
models and we would fill that with games and media very quickly.
We asked our friends at Seagate Technology for
their advice. We were going to need a drive that was large enough to cope with
an endless amount of games, music and films, and still be fast enough to load
the Operating system and games quickly so we can start fragging straight away.
Their answer? The largest drive on the market at the time of this project, the Barracuda
7200.9 500GB SATA hard drive.
With a near 11 ms average seek time and a
16MB cache the 7200.9 500GB drive will be more than fast enough to load games
into memory. The massive 500GB will allow loading not only the current games
onto the hard drive for playing, but older games too in case anyone wants a nostalgic
game of Command & Conquer or Halo. It will also allow loading of a large
number of music and video files to the computer for those times when I?m not
gaming and just feel like kicking back and relaxing.
Its 3.2 dB seek noise will be a added bonus
too, even in a noisy LAN environment, someone?s hard drive making a racket can
prove very annoying and distracting.
{mospagebreak title=Choosing the optical drive}
Optical Storage
Usually an
as all of the games are pre-installed onto the computers and file sharing is
done via the network. However it is handy to have a good optical drive for
installing games you haven?t already installed, or burning backups of saved
games.
As an optical drive we opted for the HP
DVD940i DVD Writer drive. This can burn at 18x speed +R and ?R DVD media and
can also burn DVD-RAM and CD disks. It also has ?LightScribe? technology which
can burn images directly to the CD to produce graphics on the disk itself,
which we must say looks really cool.
{mospagebreak title=Choosing the water cooling}
Water cooling
There are several water-cooling
manufacturers out there, many of which we have previously reviewed products
from. For this project we decided to approach Alphacool to help us out.
This was for a number of reasons including:
- Alphacool have excellent technical staff who really know their
stuff, invaluable when you?re building a system that?s not designed to be
modded this way! - The Alphacool website lists the dimensions of all of the
products they stock. This is invaluable when you?re trying to build a water
cooling setup in a tiny space as it means you can have it all measured
before you order the parts. - All of Alphacool?s parts are of high quality and so we won?t
have any worries about them leaking.
For a more detailed review of the Alphacool
parts used in this project, see the ?Components needed? section.
{mospagebreak title=Components Used}
Components Used
System:
1 x Shuttle ST20G5 (With optional PF50
Power supply if you want to add in a more powerful processor or graphics card
later on)
Processor:
1 x AMD Athlon 4000+ (Socket 939)
Memory:
1 x Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000 DRR 2GB
kit
Graphics:
1 x Leadtek WinFast PX7800GT TDH MyVIVO
Storage:
1 x Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA hard drive
Optical Storage:
1 x HP DVD940i DVD RW drive
Water-cooling:
1 x Laing DDC-Pump 12V/2 with
2xG1/4"-external thread (Product No: 13910)
1 x Thermal Compound Arctic Silver 5
(Product No: 12708)
2 x Alphacool NexXxoS Micro 80 radiator
(Product No: 14119)
1 x Cape Coolplex 10 external reservoir:
(Product No: 15700)
2 x Quick coupling 10/8mm connectors (Product
No: 16205)
1 x Tec-Protect-Plus 1L Water additive (Product
No: 17311)
7 x Nickel Plug in angled connectors AG 1/4
on 10mm (Product No: 16331)
1 x Nickel Plug in connector AG 1/4 on 10mm
(Product No: 16328)
1 x Screw connector IG 1/4" on 10/8mm (Product
No: 17904)
1 x Screw angle connector IG 1/4" on
10/8mm (Product No: 17905)
1 x Alphacool NexXxoS NVXP-3 6800/7800 (Product
No: 11205)
1 x Plug in angle connector for 10mm hoses
(Product No: 16311)
1x Teflon band 12mm x 10m (Product No:
17700)
8 x M3 thread screws, 3 ? 6 cm in length
Notes:
If more power is needed, the Shuttle PF50
power supply will fit in the ST20G5. Due to its slight size difference between
the standard PSU and the PF50, Shuttle?s official stance is that they are not
compatible, but our source says they
will fit perfectly together, although there will be less room between the top
of the RAM and the PSU, making installation of the RAM difficult. To get around
this problem, you can either find someone with little nimble fingers, or remove
the PSU before fitting the RAM. Due to the products not being officially compatible
we were a little worried about invalidating the warranty on both of the
products, but Shuttle says that as long as nothing is damaged by yourself
during the installation (you snapping off a power connector for example) then
neither of the products will have their warranty invalidated.
{mospagebreak title=Preparing the components}
Preparing the components
We?d decided on the bits that were needed,
bought the kit and were ready to begin. If you decide to try this yourself following our technique we have some disclaimers
and warnings to hand out.
First, please note this is an un-official
modification to the Shuttle ST20G5. If something went wrong and water was spilled
on the motherboard or the casing was damaged while attempting this project, Shuttle
would not want to help. We also removed existing heat sinks and replaced them
with aftermarket water cooling ones. This instantly voided the warranty on the
processor and graphics card, so if water gets on them or the core gets cracked,
AMD or Leadtek would not want to know.
Second, the parts for this project have
been chosen very carefully to work together, but we did experience some heat and
noise issues when intensively testing for extended periods of time. This may be
alleviated by more modern, cooler components, but we do not guarantee that this
machine will work correctly when hammered for a long period of time.
Finally, all tubing measurements in this
project have been taken from our own build. This should be used as a rough
guide only to help you cut your tubing, and you should double check the length
of tubing needed yourself before cutting it.
Right, with that out of the way, lets get
onto the fun bit!
{mospagebreak title=Dismantling the Shuttle}
Dismantling the Shuttle
After taking the nice shiny Shuttle out of
the packaging and unwrapping it, it was time to disassemble it ready for the
water cooling to go in. Around the back of the Shuttle are three thumbscrews,
one on each side and one on the top. With these removed the top of the case
slides back by roughly two centimetres. The top of the case now lifts off. After
making sure we were earthed to prevent static electricity on our body from
damaging any components, we unscrewed the top of the drive cage and slid it
backwards and upwards to remove it, and placed it somewhere safe.
We now held onto the inside of the main
fan?s casing and unscrewed the remaining four thumbscrews on the back of the unit. With the four
thumbscrews removed we could pull the fan casing off, disconnecting the fan
from the motherboard as we did so. The fan could then be removed from the case
and put aside as we wouldn?t need it again for this project.
We then removed the heat sink from the
motherboard, by pressing firmly on the two clips on each end of the retention
clip that was holding the heat sink in place. With both clips disengaged we
pushed the retention mechanism gently towards the other side of the motherboard
(towards the RAM slots) and unhooked it from the black plastic mounting frame.
The heat sink and retention mechanism were now removed from the case and put
aside as they weren?t needed for the project anymore.
We now removed the PCI blanking plates from
the case. This was done by simply unscrewing both screws from the outside of
the case and then flipping the metal piece up. The plates then slid out from the
inside of the case.
The final thing that was left to do was to
remove the power supply. This was an optional task as we could have completed
the project with it still in, but removing it made it easier to see if there
were any drips and if the tubing was connected correctly to the pump and
processor heat sink. We did find though that the 20pin motherboard connector
was very stiff and really should be unclipped carefully to avoid damaging
either the power supply or the motherboard.
The Shuttle was now prepared for water
cooling.
{mospagebreak title=Cutting the tubing}
Cutting the tubing to length
Below are the measurements we used for
cutting the tubing to fit in the Shuttle. Please note that these measurements
worked for us, but you should double check our measurements if you decide to do
this project for yourself.
Pump to CPU tubing ? 10.0 cm
CPU to internal radiator (rad1) ? 12.2 cm
Internal radiator (rad1) to quick
connectors ? 24.1 cm
Quick connectors to external radiator
(rad2) ? 4.5 cm
External radiator (rad2) to graphics card ?
28.0 cm
Graphics card to angled connector ? 11.0 cm
Angled connector to pump ? 4.0 cm
{mospagebreak title=Preparing the graphics card}
Preparing the graphics card
As the Leadtek 7800GT in our system was
going to be water cooled as well, it needed to be fitted with a water cooled heat
sink. To fit this we first needed to remove the existing heat sink on the card.
This is a very easy process.
First step was to turn the card over so the
five screws on the back could be seen. Next step was to unscrew the black
screws, unscrewing each one a little and then moving onto the next and repeating,
so the pressure came off of the card evenly. Once the black screws had been
removed, the same was done for the four silver screws. We then carefully lifted
the card up by its edges. The card came away easily from the heat sink. The
heat sink and screws were then discarded.
Fitting the Alphacool NexXxoS NVXP-3
6800/7800 heat sink was basically the reverse of removing the stock heat sink.
The core and the memory were cleaned and then a small amount of Arctic Silver 5
was added to each of the RAM chips and the core. We then placed the heat sink
on the work surface with the screw holes facing upwards and carefully laid the
graphics card back on top of it, making sure the screw holes align up. From
there we added the screws and tighten them evenly. Correct fitting instructions
(and some very helpful diagrams) were on the leaflet that came with the heat
sink.
{mospagebreak title=Preparing the pump}
Preparing the pump
The pump is the component in the system
that is most likely to leak, so we reserved a lot of time for it. First a large
amount of Teflon tape was wrapped around each input/output pipe. All of the
pipes were covered from end to end with a fairly thick layer to prevent leaks
(we used five or six wraps). As the connectors that attach onto the pump will
not be screwed on tightly to it, the tape was the only thing from preventing
water from leaking into the system.
To avoid problems later on, we connected
the tubing to the pump?s connectors now. To do this we simply unscrewed the nut
on the connector and removed it, and pushed the tubing onto the connector until
it was firmly on (it should slide over the little notch in it) and then slid the
nut back over the tubing. This nut was then tightly screwed back onto the
connector. The angled connector to pump tubing was connected to the angled
connector (part number 17905) and the pump to CPU tubing was connected to the
straight connector (part number 17904).
We then screwed the connectors to the pump.
The angled connector was connected to the output pipe of the pump and the
straight connector was connected to the input pipe of the pump. Due to the way
the pump is made, we had to connect the output connector first, and then the
input connector.
Testing for leaks
At this point we connected everything up
outside the case. It did not really matter which order the components went in
as we were mainly testing to see if there were any holes in the tubing or
components, however we did connect them in the correct order in case there were
any problems with pressure in the system.
After the system was pressure tested with
no leaks, we drained the system and disassembled it.
{mospagebreak title=Equipping the Shuttle – Part1}
Pump
? with the two pipes pointing at the opposite of the case from the power
supply. The angled connector was pointed at the back of the case. The pump
should was mounted so that the bottom of the pump (where the screws are
located) was sat at the bottom of the case. This was rested upon the heat sinks
there without any problems.
Please note that in most of our photos, the pump is mounted incorrectly upside-down. This was because after we had taken the photos we asked AlphaCool to have a look at the project and to let us know what they thought. They commented that although the pump would work correctly upside-down with water in it, if it is run without any water in it (such as for filling the system) the pump could be damaged by running it this way. So the pump should have been installed the other way around.
Fan
We placed the radiator to be used on the
outside of the case, face down on a flat surface (with the two holes for
connectors facing away from us, towards the surface). The fan was then placed on
top of the radiator, facing so that air is going to be blown through the
radiator. The fan was then screwed to the radiator using the screw holes in the
fan that were closest to the radiator using four M3 thread screws.
Radiators
Fitting the radiators was probably the most
complicated part of this system.
First step was to add the connectors to
connect them. Angled connectors were fitted to each hole. Next the internal
radiator (rad1) was lowered into the case with the connectors facing into the
case and at the top. The external radiator (rad2) was lowered opposite rad1
outside of the case with the connectors facing away from the case and at the
top.
Holding the two radiators flat against each
other we now screwed them together through the back of the Shuttle using the
remaining holes in the fan from the outside in with the remaining M3 screws. We
used the grill holes that were diagonal to the original ICE fan holes to do
this so they evenly matched up. We found it useful at this point to have
someone helping to hold the radiators.
CPU water block
The processor was placed in the socket and
secured with the lever. A blob of thermal paste was then added to the middle of
the CPU.
We then screwed in an angled connector into
the ?in? hole and a straight connector into the ?out? hole of the water block. The
water block was placed on top of the processor with the straight connector
being next to the power supply (right hand side of the case if looking at it
from the front). We secured the water block by using the supplied retention
mechanism to the existing processor bracket on the motherboard. This simply
slipped over the top of the bracket and then the water block was secured to the
processor by inserting the supplied screw into the middle of the retention
mechanism and screwing down into the processor until a reasonable amount of
resistance was felt.
The tubing from the ?out? port on the pump
was now connected to the ?in? port on the CPU water block.
The CPU to internal radiator (rad1) tubing
was now connected from the ?out? port on the CPU to the internal radiator
(rad1).
{mospagebreak title=Equipping the Shuttle – Part2}
Connecting the radiators and the quick-release connectors
We now connected the two radiators
together. To do this we used the internal radiator (rad1) to quick connectors
tubing. The tubing was ran out through the spare PCI port and then connected to
the ?female? of the two quick-connectors. Quick connectors to external radiator
(rad2) tubing was then connected to the ?right? connector (as looking from the
front of the Shuttle towards the back). The ?male? of the two quick-connectors
was then connected to this tubing. The quick-connectors were left unattached
for now as these were going to be used for filling the water cooling system
later.
Fitting the graphics card
The graphics card was now installed in the
system. We screwed two angled connectors to the top of the water block and
pointed one towards the front of the Shuttle and one towards the back. The
external radiator (rad2) to graphics card tubing was now connected from
radiator two, through the PCI slot to the connector on the graphics card
nearest to the back of the Shuttle.
We now fitted the final piece of tubing in
the system. This involved attaching an angled plastic connector to the tubing
attached to the ?in? pipe of the pump. The graphics card to angled connector tubing
was now attached from this connector to the graphics card water block.
The Shuttle was now prepared for water
cooling. The next step was to fill it and test for leaks.
Filling the Shuttle
Due to its size and compactness, filling
the Shuttle with water was more difficult than filling a standard water cooling
system. Normally you would attach a reservoir just before the pump in the loop
and allow the pump to suck the water in and pump it around the system. However
there is no enough space inside the Shuttle for a reservoir, and not enough
tubing space before the pump to place a ?T? junction piece to fill it from
either.
To get around this problem we fitted the
?Quick-connect? connectors we mentioned earlier. These allow a disconnecting
point in the system to stop water flow, but prevent water leaking out.
To fill the system we connected a second
set of ?Quick-connectors? to two short pieces of tubing. These tubing pieces
were then connected to the reservoir, and the reservoir was filled.
As there was no pump to suck the water into
the system, we tilted the Shuttle back and forth to force the water into the
system and to force the air out. When the Shuttle was sufficiently full of
water, strips of paper towel were laid throughout the base of the system to
catch any drips (and to identify if anything was leaking easily) and the pump
was turned on to force any remaining air out of the system.
The reservoir was then disconnected and the
?Quick-Connect? connectors on the Shuttle were connected together to form a
loop.
We ran the system for six hours watching
for leaks.
Fitting the rest of the components
Once all of the water cooling had been
fitted and filled in the Shuttle, we installed the remaining equipment. The
hard drive and Optical drive were screwed into the drive cage. The memory was
fitted into the slots and then the power supply was reconnected to the case.
{mospagebreak title=Benchmarking}
Benchmarking
As we were using a 64 bit capable processor
we decided to benchmark the system in a 64 bit operating system. At the time we
were planning this project, Microsoft was in the process of releasing XP64, and
We originally benchmarked the system in XP
and XP64 beta, but since XP64 has been released and
is due to be released at the end of January 2007 we decided to benchmark the
project again.
As we designed this system to be a gaming
machine for LAN parties, we split the benchmarks into just two categories,
system and gaming. System tests were included purely for comparative purposes,
as we weren?t going to use this system for encoding DivX movies or finding the
next E.T signal. What we were interested in was how our system coped with
gaming.
How the tests were ran
The Shuttle was built and a copy of
Microsoft Vista Ultimate Edition Operating System, build 6000 (OS) installed on
it. The OS was un-optimised, no services were disabled and no boot-time
programs were disabled. A game or benchmark was run twice and the second score
recorded. This was done to ensure that any games that loaded their textures
into memory (such as Doom 3) could benefit from the additional resources. The
Shuttle was then rebooted and another test was run.
We used Nvidia’s forceware drivers version 96.85 for the graphics card and Realtek drivers version R152 for sound. The system was running Aero with full Glass turned on and the start up memory usage was 600MB.
{mospagebreak title=System Tests}
System Tests
PCMark05
Futuremark?s PCMark is an all in one benchmarking
tool. It combines graphics, CPU, memory and hard drive tests to form an overall
score which can be compared to other machines.
While it is a synthetic benchmark, PCMark
05 still gives a good overall idea of how powerful a computer is at performing
a variety of different tasks.
SANDRA
SANDRA is a benchmarking and system
diagnostic tool, designed to let the user find out detailed information about
the workings of their computer. SANDRA also has several benchmarking tools for
different areas of the computer, including memory, processor, hard drive, networking
and internet connection.
{Sandra results in here}
As you can see from the benchmarks, the
Athlon 4000+ still performs quite well compared to a lot of CPUs on the market,
but it just can?t keep up with the power houses of today such as the Athlon
FX62 or the Intel Quad-core QX6700.
Super PI
Super PI is a program designed to benchmark
how fast a computer can calculate the value of PI to a number of digits. Although
it cannot give a direct comparison on how fast a processor is (as it is singled
threaded and so can?t really be compared against dual-core/quad-core
processors) it is still used as a general comparison against different CPUs.
HD-TACH
HD-Tach is a benchmarking tool for storage
devices. It can test sequential read, random access and burst speeds. Although
we will not be doing lots of file access at a LAN party (unlike file sharing
for example) the games needed to be loaded from the hard drive, and the faster
the drive, the quicker the games can be played.
{mospagebreak title=Gaming tests}
Gaming Tests
F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon)
You?re not a gamer if you?ve not heard of
F.E.A.R. Released in 2005 it took the gaming world by storm with its scary
horror theme and plot. However it wasn?t the plot that had gamers talking, it
was the requirements. F.E.A.R was a system killer.
As F.E.A.R is such a system killer (and it?s
played a lot at LAN parties) we decided to use its performance test to
benchmark our Shuttle.
DOOM 3
Although DOOM 3 itself isn?t usually played
at LAN parties, the graphics engine it uses has been used in countless games
that are, including Quake 4 and Prey. As Doom 3 has a very convenient benchmark
system in it, we decided to use this for testing a variety of games that use
the same engine.
Half-life 2
Although the Half-life 2 engine is now a
few years old, Half-life 2 and it?s spin-off Counter Strike Source and still
heavily played at LAN parties. We used Hardware OC?s timedemo to benchmark
with.
Unreal Tournament 2004
Although it is a very old game now, UT 2004
is still widely played. This is due to its excellent multiplayer game play and
because it can be played with excellent frame rates on older systems.
3DMark 06
Although technically not a game in itself,
3Dmark has been used for years by gamers to benchmark and compare their
systems. 3Dmark uses several heavily intensive graphical scenes for the PC to
display, and then times how long it takes to display them. 3Dmark also tests
the CPU.
Audio tests
Audio testing is very subjective as we?re
all sensitive to different levels and frequencies of sounds. Audio testing on
this project is particularly difficult as at a LAN party everyone wears
headphones, speakers are not allowed.
To test the audio quality we performed two
types of test. The first was listening to a range of MP3 music files, including
heavy bass and opera. The second was to listen to the audio sounds when playing
games, such as in-game music and game sounds, such as gun fire and monster
screams.
As an output device we used a pair of Icemat
Siberia headphones connected to the front headphone port. To test the surround
sound of the Shuttle we connected a set of 5.1 speakers as we didn?t have any
5.1 headphones to hand.
The Shuttle performed well in MP3 testing.
Sounds were loud and clear using both the headphones and the speakers. In-game
music was clear and positioning sounds were easy to make out. As the Icemat
Headphones are only stereo, positioning was hard to make out, and to gain the
full gaming experience with this system a set of 5.1 headphones should be used.
{mospagebreak title=Going to a LAN party}
Taking the project to a LAN party
After we?d completed the project we decided
to take it to a LAN party to find out what people thought of it. Loading it up
into car was so much easier than unplugging a normal rig. We decided not to
drain the system before transporting it due to the amount of time and
complications it takes when draining and filling the system.
While waiting in the queue to get into the
event we had to chuckle at the other people waiting to enter with their massive
rigs, struggling to lift them and maneuver them through doors.
Once setup and powered on we had a few
people come up and ask what type of machine we were using. Unfortunately this
was because the Shuttle was so loud people wanted to know why the fan in it was
going full-pelt. We took the casing off of the Shuttle and everyone we spoke to
was impressed.
After a mornings gaming we asked the gamers
around us if the noise of the Shuttle was interfering with their gaming. Unsurprisingly
all of the gamers replied that they couldn?t hear it over the sound of the
other machines in the event and the in-game sounds so it didn?t bother them one
bit.
{mospagebreak title=Conclusion and thanks}
Conclusion
We had some great fun trying to build this
project, although it was anything but easy! We had a few problems but in the end
it was well worth it, everyone we spoke to was impressed with the system, not
just because it played games well, but because it was one of those things you
normally wouldn?t expect to see at a LAN party. It certainly turns heads when
we set it up.
We?d like to thank all of the manufacturers
that provided us hardware to use in this project including Shuttle, Crucial,
AMD, Seagate and Leadtek. We?d like to give out a special thank you to Alpha
Cool as well for supplying endless amounts of water cooling products for us to
test with when the ones we’d ordered from them didn’t work quite as well in the project as we thought they would.
Discuss this project in our forums here