Introduction and the Components

Building the Super Case for a Liquid Cooled Dual Xeon Workstation.

BaDassII - A Unique and Useful Case Mod - Cases and Cooling 52 

 

Why is it, I wondered, that we shove all of our favorite PC components way in the back of our computer cases and then put windows on them that force us to crane our necks to get a peek inside?  It was this very question that gave birth to the design of a new way to build a computer case.  I call the result BaDassII.

 

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The concept used here is really quite simple.  It starts by putting the motherboard and all of its accessories in an isolated area, under a greenhouse style window.  This allows easy viewing of all the ‘must see’ components, without having to look past bulky drives and having to twist and turn for a good look inside.  Instead of in front or on top of the mainboard, the power supply and drives share space with the cooling system’s water pump, behind the motherboard, in a ‘chopped and channeled’ LianLi case.  In the very back, with air flowing across a dedicated portion of the enclosure, is the radiator with its fan and shroud.

 

 

I hope you will find the result to be a fresh approach to building a PC enclosure.  I hope it also shows that gamers aren’t the only ones that can have fun building their boxes.

 

The System

 

Although a little ‘bling-bling’ was an obvious part of this design, the rig was not just built to look at.  It’s a serious workstation that’s put to task, a daily driver if you will, used for architectural design and other kinds of graphical and CAD work.  It was built to accommodate an extended ATX form factor mainboard and full length graphic cards.  It runs three 21′ IBM P260 monitors and serves an HP2500C and HP 1220C printer as well as an HP 5300C scanner.  Following are the system and cooling components used in the rig:

 

·         Mainboard                          Tyan Thunder i7505 (S2665ANF)

·         Processors                         Dual Intel 3.06GHz 533FSB 1MB cache Xeons

·         Memory                             4 x 512MB Corsair PC2100

·         AGP Video Card                 3DLabs Wildcat4 7110 256MB

·         PCI Video Card                   Chaintech FX5200 128MB

·         Hard Drives                        4 x Western Digital 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Raptors

·         RAID Controller                   RAIDCore 4452 133MHz PCI-X

·         Backplane                          Quadra-Pack Q34SA SATA drive enclosure

·         Optical Drive                               LiteOn 52X CD burner

·         Power Supply                     PC Power and Cooling 510AG

·         Cooling Pump                     Eheim 1250

·         CPU Water Blocks              DangerDen RBX

·         Radiator                             Modified DangerDen heater core

·         Thermal Monitor                  Modified DigiDoc5

·         Fan Controller                     Modified Zalman ZM-MFC 1

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