SR-2 Stacker by Paul Edwards

SR-2 Stacker by Paul Edwards

Project Log: Here
Foreword by Antony Leather

Many modders have their own style to which they like to stick, and Paul Edwards, otherwise known as Coolmiester on the bit-tech forums, is well known for his racy-looking projects. Cosmos Skulltrail and ATCS 840 are just two of the sleek, clean and sporty projects Coolmiester has added to his collection over the years.

His projects get better every time, whether they're more complicated or just better-looking. SR-2 Stacker, which he started last year and finished earlier in 2011, is no exception and if you're into water-cooled PCs, you'll definitely want to keep reading. Here's Coolmiester's own words on how SR-2 Stacker came into being.

The Concept and Planning
The project started back in March 2010 at the CeBIT show in Germany, where I first heard about the upcoming EVGA SR-2 motherboard. Having been bitten by the dual CPU bug back in 2005, when I built my first water-cooled Tyan K8WE rig followed by various other dual CPU rigs, I just knew there and then that I had to get my hands on one of these boards at whatever cost. I remember begging the EVGA guys to get me one.

The begging unfortunately didn't pay off, and the SR-2 took an agonisingly slow time to hit Europe. After five long months, which seemed like an eternity, I could wait no longer and ended up getting a friend in the US to buy me one and ship it over. This did prove quite costly with the added shipping costs and duty, but on arrival the wait and cost paled into insignificance as I unwrapped the enormous parcel to reveal, for me, the holy grail of motherboards.

However, those five months of waiting did allow me to ponder various case design ideas. As I intended to water-cool the CPUs, motherboard, RAM and GPUs in three separate loops, it was clear I would need to extend the chosen Cooler Master ATCS 840 case to fit all the cooling equipment. I eventually had the idea of chopping a section from a second 840, and stacking it on top of the other to house two quad 120mm-fan Phobya 480 radiators. This idea also led to a bit of a play on words that referenced the original Cooler Master Stacker case, hence the project name, SR-2 Stacker.


Implementing the Plans
The first step was to take a jigsaw to one of the 840s, and I chopped 7in off the top of it and riveted four struts in each corner, using the original base to create a rectangular box section. This was going to be bolted to the full size 840 later but, even at this stage, just placing it on top enabled me to see that the 840 still looked in proportion, even with the extra height.