Finished the Radiator and Hood Buttons

The radiator is good-to-go and I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. As planned the fans are controlled (3 at a time in 3 rows) by a 3 channel controller that can handle 30 watts per channel. The on/off lights are visible from the front and left side, and the knobs/buttons are easy to control. I wish there was a better way to hide the controller, but a 5.25 bay is too big and they don't make a small, finished-looking 3.5 enclosure.



The buttons were difficult because one of them didn't come with a wiring diagram. I think I have it wired correctly. They both work. I'm sure of the wiring for the power button, but the reset button didn't work until I switched some wires. Power button is illuminated at all times with an amber LED to match the temp sensors. The reset button's LED flashes with the drives to show activity. The LED in the reset button doesn't glow as bright. I think the power leads were connected wrong, damaging the LED. I wasn't sure which was + and which was -... Still don't... But they work...

Avoid Scratching The Acylic

ORIGINALLY I POSTED THE BELOW, BUT I DON'T RECOMMEND THIS IN THE PUGET TANKS. IT WILL WORK FOR SCUFFS AND SCRATCHES THAT BUG YOU, BUT IT MAY BE BETTER TO BUY A NEW TANK AS IT LEAVES SMALL SWIRL MARKS AND CLOUDS THE PLASTIC. IT IS A GREAT IDEA TO REFURBISH A BACKUP TANK. IF THE TANK MAKER WOULD USE ACRYLIC, THIS WOULD LIKELY WORK

Building this thing and getting everything just how I wanted it has created a lot of smudges. Being that my original tank couldn't even arrive without a scratch left me VERY paranoid about making any attempt to clean this thing.

Looking into the care of acrylic tanks, I've found some warnings and suggestions:
1) Use Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser to clean it. Apparently, it is chemical free and acts like 3000 grit sandpaper. Click here to check out what folks in the aquarium world have said about this. Obviously, you don't want to trap more abrasive objects in the Magic Eraser that could do damage. They also recommend that you wet it with water. I'm not really sure how this works yet, but I will report back.
2) Don't use cleaning products that contain alcohol or ammonia. No further explanation was given. So what do you use? Just water? This would have to leave smudges and streaks...

I will report back.

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Need the tank, a few more cables and I'm ready

Not sure about having the SSD's in the oil... Going to research it, but I've got everything else just about how I wanted it.

Progress

Did some wiring today. There seems to be plenty of room (maybe a little too much) in the front of the tank, but there is very little space, even for wires, behind the tank. An inch back there would make clean wiring a snap.

It would also be amazing if there was a hole just beneath the power supply on the motherboard tray an also just behind the power supply on the top, so power chords could be hidden en route to devices kept out of the oil.

I also had to engineer a way to mount fans. I wish There were some threaded holes on the side brackets, 120 and 80 mm apart for fan mounting. I'm sure there is a better solution than the one I came up with.

Another little mod I did was the addition of a copper oil return that pulls the oil from the top, over the CPU.

Overall, I'm still very please. I need to know how to safely clean all the smudges off the system tray, for fear that I might damage some circuitry or the acrylic.

Arrival

The kit arrived last night, and I got after it. The packaging was great, and UPS got it here without any obvious damage being done to the box.

It was well organized, and fairly easy to unbox, minus the peanuts.

There were no missing parts, and in no time I was ready to get rolling.

The acrylic parts were wrapped in a foam sheet and protected on one side by a film. The unprotected side appeared to be fine. To avoid scratches, I laid a towel out.

The directions were straight forward, and seemed to flow through logically ordered steps. The color-coded baggies were a blessing.

I was fearful about over-tightening, so I did everything finger-tight, meaning I considered screws set when I couldn't tighten them any more using just my fingers turning the screwdriver.

Some of the holes didn't line up with the non-Puget parts, but something tells me this is due to lax standards by their vendors rather than their laser-cut parts.

I did a little cleaning up of the cabling by heat shrinking the pump's wires. I wish I would have done this BEFORE installing it.

All the barbs and connectors were provided and seem to be of high quality.

Prepping the radiator was easy. I just removed a little residual protective film and installed the included feet.

Installing the fans wasn't difficult, but was time consuming. Be sure to plan this out it terms of flow direction, fan position, wiring, etc.

I decided the have the fans push air through the radiator.

Then, after dropping in the standoffs (hand-tight, no tool), on went the motherboard.

And then I got the tank out. I'm not happy with the tank. As opposed to the Puget acrylic, the Eclipse plastic feels thin and potentially brittle. What do I mean by potentially brittle? When you tap the Puget acrylic, it feels solid and heavy. Tap the tank plastic and it feels like it may be thin and light. It may also be easy to scratch, because it came out of the box with a scuff in the upper right corner, and long half-moon scratch on the inside, front-facing wall.

These flaws were easy to notice, but impossible to photograph. Amazingly, Puget has already resolved this issue for me by initiating an RMA. While I wait for the resolution to arrive, I will keep working on this:

I'm still excited, but anxious about the next tank.

Bubbles, yes. Noisy pump, no.

Ok, so I want some bubbles... It's a fish tank, right? I had a tank as a kid and the pump was out of this world loud. One of the appealing things about the Aquarium PC to me was the relative silence. This pump operates submerged. There is a problem though. It makes LOTS AND LOTS of bubbles, and they are super tiny. So small, in fact, that they have a hard time surfacing in the thick oil. Not sure at this point... Pro's are underwater, quiet operation. Cons are small bubbles that cloud the oil... Well, I'm not sure about that last part. This was less than a gallon of oil, and in a 12 gallon tank with circulation, the clouding problem may not exist. Anyone know of a pump as quiet as this?