Scratchbuilt PC: cooling system and water-cooling feature

Water cooling feature

With the majority of the hardware mounted (we still need to attach an SSD and 3.5in hard disk), we turned out attentions to the main bit of eye candy, aside from the case itself. That is the visible lengths of tubing that will run the length of each side of the case, from the radiator and down to the components on either side.


A right angle connector points the tubing in the right direction, to head along the side of the case. To hold it in place we had to design and make two half pipes using acrylic that would hide the crowded internal hardware, but would allow us to illuminate the tubing and provide a centrepiece for the project. We chose 3mm acrylic for the half pipes and used a cardboard tube to bend each section to shape having heated them first with the heat gun.


We didn't want them to be perfectly circular, instead they'd need to fit neatly in the gap between the tubing and the case but not foul the top section.Above you can see roughly what we have in store and how the tubing will be worked into the design.


Once we'd made the half pipes, it was then simply a matter to scoring round the ends of these to create guides to cut some end sections - needed to provide pass-through holes for the tubing and to create the appearance of a sealed section for the tubing.


We also decided to use chrome mirror film to line the half pipes. This will reflect the tubing which will be lit from either end and should look quite cool.

That's it for the fifth instalment of our scratchbuilt PC guide. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with more updates as to how we're doing...