The Good & Evil DeskCon Project

Quantor · October 5, 2019

As I've already mentioned in the post above it was already christmas-time. So my wife demanded a bit more space in the living-room for her christmas decorations and the christmas tree. So I've thought about getting rid of the temporary PC I was still using. During this time I also had a lot of my regular work to do and only time fragments avaiable for the project, so I decided to install the first hardware without a watercooled loop to have a working system in the room.

My choice then was installing the Ryzen-based PC first and make it temporarily avaiable for upcomming tasks during the holidays.

Quantor · October 6, 2019

Beginning of the holidays not much was going on. I've only installed the switch for the manual lift control under the "bridge":

I've also taken some time for designing some fan covers for my project using SketchUp. As I've only a printer with one extruder I've used two different approaches for realizing "multicolor" prints. Some parts were printed by changing the filament during the print. Others were just printed separate and then glued together:

At his point I was forced to make a break as a lot of bad luck happened to me and also within my closer environment after christmas / new years till far into the beginning of 2019. After a longer stay in a hospital I was able to continue my work on the project sometime back in March 2019.

As the 1st System was still running in temporary mode using airflow cooling I continued by building the 2nd system. As still some more work and modifications were needed on the Desk which could have resulted in some wooden scouts and dirt I decided to use some temporary components during this time and replace them later on.

So I was starting with the installation of some temporary fans and mounted them to an Alphacool XT45 Radiator which was supposed to sit behind the front inlet fans.

I've installed the radiator and the fans in the front hole of the right container and added three more fans to the already mounted Alphacool Eisbrecher Radiator at the side:

Then I've added my custom made fan covers together with some dust filters to the front ones:

Quantor · October 6, 2019

The next step was about assembling the hardware for the 2nd system:

For this system I've used the following hardware:

MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Motherboard

Six core Intel i7-8700k processor

32GB XPG Spectrix D41 DDR4-3200Mhz RGB RAM

480GB Spetrix S11 M.2 PCIe Gen3x4 SSD as a boot drive

Alphacool Eisblock XPX CPU-Cooler with a RGB frame.

Quantor · October 6, 2019

Before I was able to start building the 1st loop I needed to work on a side-project. As announced in my introduction to this thread I wanted to use "sparkling water columns" as additional balancers on the project. So I was in need of finding a way for integrating them into the loop and to prevent these air bubbles from entering the fluid circulation.

But lets start with the columns itself:

First I've carefully drilled a 12mm hole into the bottom section of it which should serve as an outlet:

As I'm using 13/10mm Tubes on this project I needed to widen the hole to 13mm. The tube would later on be "married" to the column by using a water resistent acrylic glue for aquariums.

In the next step I've cutted the total height of the column from 130cm down to 50cm so that it could fit into the bottom containers:

And then drilled another hole into the top section which is supposed to serve as an outlet for the air and also as fillport:

Next I was in need of a holder for reducing the weight/pressure which could influence the stability of the connection between tube and column. So once again I used SketchUp and my 3D printer to construct one:

Into this holder I've inserted a bulkhead fitting from Alphacool so that I was able to integrate the "balancer" into my loop:

For making it impossible for the air to enter the circuit I've cutted and inserted another big tube into the column which is covering the air exhaust till the bubbles reach a specific high within the balancer at which they can't be sucked any longer into the loop. The 13mm tube was then glued and sealed together with the outlet hole and the "cover tube" inside of the column. So it got additional stabillity from the inside. The following pictures are showing the final result in comparison to some Alphacool Eisbecher Helix 250mm balancers:

Quantor · October 6, 2019

Normally I would have liked to build the loop at this point as I was curious if all would fit together and work as planned. But while I was working on the first balancer a long awaited delivery of glass plates were comming in so I was changing my priority list and started to build the deskplate.

First thing to do was measuring and marking the cut-outs on the plate:

Then making the cuts and edges using the circular saw, a multitool, a handsaw and the router:

Quantor · October 6, 2019

For completing the deskplate and finishing the woodworks on the project still something was missing. Two slanted wooden plates needed to be added for completion. These slanted plates were supposed to be the showcase for additional SSDs and HDDs and also housing some 7" touchscreens for displaying system stats.

Originally I've planned to use two touchscreens, one for each side within these plates. But really in the last minute before I started preparing the second plate for housing it I've changed my plans. As one touchscreen already could be connected and used by both systems I've decided to integrate an Elgato Stream Deck as a replacement instead for the second one.

After preparing the slanted plates I've used wooden glue and "biscuits" to connect them to the main deskplate. During the dry-process I've used cable-ties to keep them in place:

Also I've added some top lift hinges to the project for having maintenance access later on:

Quantor · October 6, 2019

As the deskplate now was prepared I was able to sand, crape, prime and paint it:

Again only some pictures from within the whole painting-process:

As a sidenote: Between painting the deskplate and letting it dry I've pimped up the environment for the desk in the living room a bit by adding some Nanoleaf light panels and a holo-projector to the wall:

Quantor · October 6, 2019

After the deskplate was finished a very last thing was missing before I've started with the loops.

The second custom sparkling balancer. So same procedure again:

And some intensive leak-testing:

For working on the loops I first drilled some more holes into the desk:

From the top right container down into the bottom compartment:

And one from the down right compartment into the middle section:

Then I've started building the loop beginning from the custom balancer into the middle compartment:

For connecting the outside compartments with the middle one I've used some Alphacool quick conectors:

Those quick connectors with its integrated waterstop gave me also the abillity to fill this part of the loop with destilled water to test for leaks.

After that I've done builded the same setup again into the left bottom container:

Quantor · October 6, 2019

Next step was working on the "bridge" to connect it to the middle section. As the loop is invisible by traveling through the middle part I've decided to use soft tubes there. This was also for safety reasons as the liftable section with it's cables is going up and down there and I didn't wanted to risk that hard tubes would be damaged and causing a leak.

For making the connection to this section I've used some bulkhead fittings together with regular soft tube ones:

The bridge is not only connecting the left and the right compartment, it's also serving as a housing for the keyboard and some additional balancers. So I've installed some Alphacool Eisbecher Helix 250mm balancers into it and started to hardtube them: