A clear Cube with a few differences.....

[minihack]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

Well, today has been not a laser day but a day to check if I can get passive cooling working in the orignal manner.

As I write this I have my CPU (a C2D E7400 2.8GHz chip) of my Zotac fixed to the Cube heatsink and I am running a handbrake encode of a movie while carefully watching iStat Pro to see what happens. This is very scary, I am about 20 minutes into the encode and the temps have risen slowly but steadily and are now at 62 and 60 for the two cores. The G5 heatsink is warm to the touch.

Here are some photos of the experimental heatsink rig:

Base of cooler.jpg

Contact plate.jpg

On the cube.jpg

The first photo is part of a kit from HFX that is usually used with heatpipes etc. I figured I had not enough room to twist heat pipes around so instead I looked at the gap between the top of the 40mm aluminium block and bought a chunk of 12mm alu plate and machine that as in the second pic. then I measured out where I would drill the G4 heatsink.

So the set up is:

40mm cube of alu is attached to CPU via acrylic "spring" until the acrylic only just bows a little. Then attach the 12mm plate to that. Then turn the motherboard upside down and attach the plate to the Cube heatsink using the three processor screws that the G4 had on the original. Next, very carefully becasue you do not want the whole weight of the G4 heatsink stressing the CPU or mobo put everything into the outer cage and then tighten all the screws a little. If the balance is right then the weight of the G4 heatsink is taken by the cage, and not by the CPU.......the pressure on the CPU is from the acrylic plate.

Temp.s now at 73 degrees and I'm about to throw in a geekbench run at the same time. Gulp. Will report back....

 

[minihack]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

So, the CPUs, are running at 98% activity right now and have been for a good long time. The G4 heatsink is nice and hot (a good thing I hope!) and iStat has topped out at 78 degrees and seems not to want to climb higher whether I throw Geekbench or watch TV at the same time or not.

And it is silent here.

53 minutes of Handbrake encoding to go and I'll see what happens when the CPUs go back down to idle. It's gone 11pm here in the UK and I should be off to bed right now but want to see this through.

Update: So, I continued for another 20 minutes or so and temp.s did stick at 78 degrees as reported by iStat. Now for an E7400 that is pretty much at the top of how high you want to go....even though thermal shutdown is not supposed to be until 100 the temp.s are pretty toasty.

Once I turned off Handbrake the temp.s instantly fell 10 degrees and continued to drop down to 60 a couple of minutes later and in the space of writing this it's down more to 55.

I think I'll call the experiment a success.

 

[minihack]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

Update on the cooling.

Today I stuck a Noctua 92mm case fan at the base (actually have room for a 100mm fan there) and with it running at slow speed with the extra low noise resistor, idle temp is 31 and the temp under 90% CPU load is as shown in the screen shot after some two and a half hours loaded work.

Untitled.png

The fan blows air up through the case through the fins of the heatsink and into bpth top and bottom halves. Makes an enormous difference to the temps and I can only hear it if I put my ear to the case.

 

[minihack]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

some more pic.s:

PC210220.jpg

PC210221.jpg

PC210222.jpg

PC210223.jpg

PC210224.jpg

PC210225.jpg


The green/white flying lead is my temporary ON button.

 

[eelhead]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

You know I actually thought about making a custom plate with high temp non-conductive ABS plastic as well. I still might after I have some spare time when done with other projects. I feel a new custom back plate would be more beneficial for all the after market stuff I am wadding into is lol

 

[veng58]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

I find this thread brilliant ,i bid on one in the uk ,because of this lol,but with that laser machine i think there is potential for a business in cube lookalikes for the pc not only hacks make it slightly bigger so it has more room and the intel board with the psu onboard only needs a brick ,just been looking at the specs of the xbox 210 watts and 10amps would do fine with a rewire

 

[tviolation]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

This looks fantastic so far! Resisting urge to start looking for another Cube (can't gut my working one!) and tackle something like this myself. I'm curious how the core attaches/releases from the outer shell, as it looks like you've removed the handle mechanism that was on the original Cube.

 

[minihack]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

This looks fantastic so far! Resisting urge to start looking for another Cube (can't gut my working one!) and tackle something like this myself. I'm curious how the core attaches/releases from the outer shell, as it looks like you've removed the handle mechanism that was on the original Cube.

Thanks for the nice comments!

I am going down lots of routes at the same time - this thread is if you like documenting my R and D a little bit. The latest back is a departure from the Apple Cube really and is a little bigger all around to give some more strength to the unit.

With this variant I am going to be making something similar to the PowerLogix enclosure I showed a piccie of earlier in the thread. That also got rid of the handle (well in that case it stayed inside the machine but was non-functional) and had the core attached to the plexi by an extension of the four top bolts of the metal cage......I'm not quite going to do it that way but it is going to be similar and this allows me to grab back a bit more space for everything inside the Cube. For instance, I'm using the interior space of the heatsink (where the handle went) as a cable guide to allow me to tidy up the wiring.

 

[61mg73]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

Great build !!!! That laser cutter has to be an amazing R&D tool!!! Been away for a while . life got in the way of hacks , glad you picked up on your passive cooling concept .

 

[minihack]

Re: Yep, another Cube!

Great build !!!! That laser cutter has to be an amazing R&D tool!!! Been away for a while . life got in the way of hacks , glad you picked up on your passive cooling concept .

Thanks!

BTW, I have just now gone through and edited the first post to make it up to date to save reading all the thread.

All best,