New Watercooling with an Aquagate R120

[roobarb]

Hi everyone,

Spent some time yesterday making a few changes to my watercooling, after feeling a bit jealous of Steve's fancy new dual radiator setup. I've started to do a lot more audio work on my Mac, so making the thing more peaceful was the main aim. I'm going to do a proper write-up on roobarb.dfpx.co.uk when I get time, but for the moment here are some preliminary shots. They're on Flickr because they're big - just click on 'All Sizes' for a close-up. :o)

www.flickr.com/photos/roo/sets/72157594146094144/

As you can see, it's not quite the same as Steve's dual setup. From the specs on the Coolermaster site, I figured that if you can get two 80mm ones in there, you should be able to get a single 120mm in - and you can!

The added bonus is that instead of 80mm fans, of which I only have some fairly whiny ones here, you can stick a big 120mm one on there. I didn't think a full size 38mm thick one would go on - but it does, with a little clearance to spare! It is very much quieter than before - the 9800 Pro fan is now the loudest thing in there! Oh, and the noisy Papst is on a permanent 5V, so I can't hear it. :o)

Big thanks to Steve for being on hand to field my esoteric questions!

Andy.

[aquamac]

Andy,

It really looks the business, well done! Did you use one of these rotary tools like I did for cutting the 120 hole?

[roobarb]

Hey Steve,

No - I do have some hole saws, but when they came up against the surprisingly thick and dense G4 case metal there was no way they were going to make it through. Particularly as I only have a 12V cordless drill that just ain't powerful enough.

In the end I used the 102mm hole saw to scratch the circle outline onto the case, then cut the hole out with a rotary tool. It ate eight cutting discs before I was through. xo)

I chose 102mm rather than a larger size as it covers practically all of the radiator core, but leaves enough room for the rubber gasket that I've got between the rad and the case. The only bit I forgot to do was put rubber between the screws and the case on the other side, but I'll get that done before putting the cover back on.

I used it for a while yesterday and while giving it quite a bit of hammer the temps varied between 42-56 degrees - which means that the fans didn't speed up once! At 57 degrees (with the default Info.plist in AppleFan.kext) the fans ramp up quite rapidly, but I've not got there with nap mode on yet. :o)

Andy.