Project: G.E.C.K.

*** OK SO OCAU PIX DOWN AND i CBF RESIZING EVERYTHING, SO CLICK FOR PICS***


Howdy All,

With another fine summer upon us, it's time to break out the power tools, have a couple of beers and make something that didn't exist before!

The idea this time is a watercooled briefcase PC, designed to look like the G.E.C.K. from Fallout, and partly inspired by the briefcase from Pulp fiction (and countless other films...). At first I thought I would be able to buy something off the shelf and just reinforce the shit out of it, but unless I am willing to fork out a grand or so, nothing decent is available in terms of briefcase-type things that is of the quality I am after.

I know you lot are generally more aroused by the visual rather than the textual, so I will keep the comments to a minimum.




On the bottom is a cheap and nasty box from Bunnings, more just for reference ideas than anything...


Good clamps are expensive, MDF offcuts are cheap.


Cutting goes on in the shed, fine work means the kid eats lunches in his room.

***













Top section: DDC Pump, 150 Cyl Res, two Stealth GT 240 Radiators and a few hidden bits of intrigue...


Bottom Section: will be using a ribbon on the GPU (shoutout to mad_mic3 for the inspiration from his magnum opus) the loop obviously passes through the sections, but the ingeniousness of that part of the plan doesn't get revealed until you are strapped to a stainless steel table.


Top external, will be sheet steel with pressed venting covering half of it. Will be trying some painting techniques for the first time on this one also...



I am hoping the end design of this will get anyone carrying it in public arrested immediately. Well, anyone brown anyway...


And a hint of what is to come next...



Tools of the trade...

 

any update poc

 

Yeah, apologies for absenteeism, life has become very interesting of late and this is on the back burner potentially until the new year.

There is another update worth of ... well, update, but I don't have the time to sing and dance at the moment, so figured I would wait until I could be entertaining at least. Cheers for the interest though

 

Just a teaser, and confirmation that this project is indeed happening...


(And apologies, no time to resize and OCAUPix just doesn't like me... )

 

Good to see you back at it
Ocau pix has been playing up since the site update

 

Cheers mate, life can be interesting at times. When asked of what I do for a crust these days, the answer is long.

Another teaser for the sake of comment.




Visit my shitty site so I can start dressing up all classy hooker type for a few cents a click. You know you want to

Spoiler

see me naked.

 

your site link isn't working

 

I didn't link it lol, figured you could work it out from pic url... thought it a bit crass to start linking that shit all over ocow

 

mini update...

There is actually enough for a massive update, in terms of both progress and pics of said progress, but I am fucking tired right now, and tend to have very little 'me-time' these days, so expect an upcoming decent update in the same way you might expect the return of Jesus - even if all the signs indicate it should have been yesterday, it will still most likely be long after you die.

 

Another Sabbath, a little more accomplished, including a new one for me: I managed to burn my actual eyeball. I know, I'm a fucking muppet for using a Dremel without safety goggles (which I sometimes do). But I wear glasses. Like blind without them type thing. So it is not often something that crops up. I have a shit pair of glasses that cop the little breaky-flying bits, and they have done well for many years now. Today, I managed to change the way I look slightly. You see, under the glasses, I have very pretty brown eyes. Like pimming swools full of shit or something, but pretty. Long lashes and all. Well now, I have a brown spot on the white of my eye that I didn't have this morning. I'm thinking about trying to tattoo it into a dragon now, but I'm not sure how I would go flinging hot metal swarth at a distance at my own eyeball, no matter how good I am with a Dremel. Enjoys.













I had already covered blood and sweat in spades up until now. Today brought a few tears. Manly fucking tears, mind you.

 

OK ocow, I think I've realised why the views to comments ratio is so radically out of balance with this thread. I simply have not shown my personal fuckups anywhere near enough along the way, depriving all of you desk-chair experts of opportunity to tell me where I fucked up.

I know, I know, I make every fucking thing I turn my hand to look so effortlessly and flawlessly easy as to dissuade the internet crickets from chirping too loudly while rubbing their legs furiously together in search of the tiny front tails that otherwise occupy them, but really, I am just as human as a small minority of you.

One of my largest constant fuckups is that I work most often bare foot, even when using steel, so I cut myself a lot. I seldom wear safety gear, and I buy cheap yum-cha tools. I know the idea of holding something spinning at 2k+rpm close to vital organs and sexy bits might cause some to recoil in fear, but I throw not only caution but the white flag into the wind and generally try to steady my Dremel with genitalia where possible. I was going to link some photos here, but I thought better of it, particularly as not only the blood rule applies, but I just noticed you *can* actually see my junk in some of them.

So anyhow, look at this photo instead:



As the observant among you may notice, the previous pictures had a 'shelf' of sorts that was to function as a passthrough plate, through which I intended to displace the energy caused by the movement of opening and closing the case. Here is the thing: copper tubing and fittings are great and all, but they function on one and one only principle of physics: friction. The copper pipe is so sturdy and reliable *because* it is made of copper and doesn't fucking move. You throw the mechanical whims of a briefcase-type orchestration into the mix and you have a fair bit of kinetic energy that needs to be displaced, otherwise it will compromise the friction holding the copper pipes in.

If you scroll back through pics you can come across the one with the two halves joined temporarily, and the plumbing fittings I was intending to use (and the expensive as fuck brass adapters I had to have made because the off the shelf ones are just so terribly yum-cha). Well, they no longer work. I either need to find some that are 3+ times longer, or come up with some other solution. As the retarded younger brother of reddit, I open myself up to you, ocow, for suggestions. No, I am not intending to just suck it up and use soft tubing on those two connecting runs. Call me old fashioned, or just rude and belligerent like everyone else does, but I would like to keep as close to my original conception as possible. That said, it *has* already changed quite a bit since inception: the ribbon on the GPU didn't work in the confined space without moving selected I/O inputs to one side or the other; the twin 240 rads had to be subbed for 240/120 due to similar space limitations with the bending of copper; the PSU had to be spun around meaning I have to figure out a method of air intake underneath it while open; and Jennifer Connelly has still never given me a blowjob. Life is hard.

 

Looks awesome! I did a briefcase PC years ago for LANs and every event for years people would comment on it.

Seems like these kind of projects always have a mix of serendipity and zemblanity during construction. I haven't worked with water cooling so I'm not sure what qualifies as soft/flexible tubing - are the clear and sheathed tubes in your picture flexible at all? I'd try for something as close to the hinge line as possible.

Behold my MSPaint prowess:


Less likely to work is a rotational joint (can watercooling have those?) because the centre of the tube might need to be centred inside the hinge line. A combination of joints might overcome this but cause space problems and more potential points of failure. That's all I can think of without a few tubes in my hands. I expect a semi-circle piston tube on the side is not possible.

How is your eye? I was cutting some metal for a case project recently and I forgot to drop my face shield. A spark of hot aluminium landed in the crease of my lower eyelid. Gives me shudders how close that was.

 

Cheers for the interest man. And apologies widely for not updating anything, in the last few months my life has changed dramatically, including moving for the first time in five years or so. A while back I managed to magic smoke the PSU I had in the build (an AX 850 if anyone has one for sale, still needed) before the move, so I had to just shelve the whole project for a month or so while working out the move etc. I recently pulled the PSU out of our backup server/ spare room guest PC to test that I hadn't managed to fuck up any other components with my unholy bang (which was due to a mounting screw somehow arcing inside the PSU from about 12mm away, live and learn) and have been using it as my PC for a few weeks now.








The project is very much only half finished, and I've had to 'mount' a cage of drives loosely as you can see in the pic. As you can also see, it is all in soft tube, but that is only a temporary measure, but it indeed worked for the move and the loop has held up without a problem through many openings and closings of the case. We are still partly living out of boxes and though my workshop area has quadrupled, I haven't really had time to properly sort it out yet, so tools are still stacked away in milk crates and the like. It will eventually be rebuilt (with the alu on the inside as well) with the copper loop and plumbing fittings I have, but for now it is something of a transitional enterprise, think Caitlyn Jenner/Michael Obama.
The eye seems to be marked for life now, but wear your scars with pride, I say: they are your map to yourself. I had to get my passport renewed the day after it happened, when it looked like a large bloodspot, so with that picture to compare it to you can see it has mellowed quite a bit since. Lesson learned on that anyway: cut blind, wildly with abandon. Get the tool up to max, shut your eyes and swing like it was a fucking light saber!

 

hows the eye going

 

Cheers man, a small brownish dot now, all good. And I may have today finally secured a TIG welder (potentially), so the project could be expected to advance at some point in coming weeks. I am still down a PSU, but in terms of priorities it has been admittedly low. In other news, I managed to become a doctor before I managed to finish the build, so there's that.

 

what size tig
the brown spot will diso after a while, most tradies have been there at some stage
what type of Dr, ive got this rash, any ideas

 

It's the small TIGs that seem impossible to find, but I found a neighbour with an old one, still need to test it though. Not a medical doctor, Doctor of Philosophy (Biosemiotics). Send any pics to my phone