The V5500 has had a full recap and is since then outputting excellent video. Pre recap it did have some artifacting in the form of jittery horizontal lines and generally looked quite soft and blurred. That is now all fixed and it's crisp and flawless!

I just recently fitted the Watercool/Heatkiller blocks together with two Enzotech chipset cooler "backplates" on the back. Completely overkill, but I like how it complements the mounting screws that overwise look a bit lonely and out of place. I'm also a bit partial to the look of big chonky chunks of copper on old hardware. 😁 I plan to tie it into a bit of a theme with Enzotech VRM coolers on the motherboard. Possibly a northbridge cooler as well. There are 2 mm thermal pads under the Enzotech coolers to provide electrical insulation and heat transfer. The springs and thumbscrews will probably have to sit on the back like this as they'd interfere with the plumbing on the front.

I'm still waiting for '90s green heatsinks for the RAM and a batch of retro fittings. Hopefully they'll arrive within the next few weeks.

As free breathing as a Dragon chassis is going to get.

Front panel still fits!
The 240x60 mm Bykski radiator takes up quite a bit of room in the front, but still less than the drive cages used to. The brackets for the FDD may only look hot glued from this angle, but they are double riveted to the 5.1/4" cage with 4.7 mm blind rivets and very sturdy. The hot clue was for finding the positioning and keeping them in place for drilling and riveting.
I'll only be able to use one 3.5" bay as the radiator is blocking the other, and even then it's a tight fit for the radiator. There is only a single millimeter of space between it and the bottom, and about three towards the FDD.

Awesome project, following!

period correct case modding get 5 out of 5 points from me 😀

This is quite the fun project I can't wait to see it finished!!

Watercooled V5... interesting 😀
Posting here for updates

Fittings and sinks have arrived!

I did a quick mockup just to see how it will turn out. I'm not sure I'm sold on how the red motherboard goes with the V5500, visually. It worked out better in my head. The case fan, however, is a Yate-Loon with quite strong blue LED lighting that I'm still hoping will take the edge out of the contrasting colours once the system is turned on. What do you guys think?

I'm more and more warming up to plan B...

But, in the mean time!

This system is going to turn out awesome. Do you have a cpu block for the Slot A cpu?

Not as such, but I have enough blocks laying around that I could surely find something that can be adapted to fit Slot1 with a bit of work. The block pictured for the s462 system is actually a s775 block, originally.

I wouldn't trust that water cooler setup - you have absolutely no control whatsoever over the flow - you may only have flow in one block with the other totally stale. I would definetly have the flow serial, to ensure equal and adequate flow in both.

Parallel flow is no problem at all and even used to be the most common way of connecting SLI setups. The water is flowing under pressure and will always slow down/lower pressure if possible. Meaning, that if there are multiple paths of equal flow resistance the water flow (and pressure) will be divided equally between the two paths.
You can even use this to your advantage if, for some reason, you want lower flow through part of your loop, adjusting flow rate by matching tubing size to the block flow resistance in each branch to get the desired ratio. It can be very helpful in loops including small, restrictive blocks like VRM/VRAM/SSD blocks that you definitely do not want limiting the flow rate of the entire loop and where cooling requirements are lower.

Think of the blocks as resistors in an electrical circuit if that makes more sense. You wouldn't ever have current through only one of two resistors connected in parallel.

nolimitsoya wrote on 2023-12-20, 10:41:

Parallel flow is no problem at all and even used to be the most common way of connecting SLI setups. The water is flowing under pressure and will always slow down/lower pressure if possible. Meaning, that if there are multiple paths of equal flow resistance the water flow (and pressure) will be divided equally between the two paths.
You can even use this to your advantage if, for some reason, you want lower flow through part of your loop, adjusting flow rate by matching tubing size to the block flow resistance in each branch to get the desired ratio. It can be very helpful in loops including small, restrictive blocks like VRM/VRAM/SSD blocks that you definitely do not want limiting the flow rate of the entire loop and where cooling requirements are lower.

Think of the blocks as resistors in an electrical circuit if that makes more sense. You wouldn't ever have current through only one of two resistors connected in parallel.

Agreed, but in the electrical circuit, I would know the two resistances, I would never trust those t-junctions TBH 🤣

Some bogus assumptions here-
Temp along the way will drastically alter flow. The parallel circuits assumed equal will never be. A single hot spot could totally stall flow in a branch.

Jay from Jayztwocents has proven multiple times over the years that there basically no difference between serial or parallel flow in a water loop. He's also shown that loop order doesn't matter as well. My experience with custom loops over the years mirrors his

CwF wrote on 2023-12-20, 16:00:

Some bogus assumptions here-
Temp along the way will drastically alter flow. The parallel circuits assumed equal will never be. A single hot spot could totally stall flow in a branch.

Respectfully, no.

nolimitsoya wrote on 2023-12-20, 17:53:

CwF wrote on 2023-12-20, 16:00:

Some bogus assumptions here-
Temp along the way will drastically alter flow. The parallel circuits assumed equal will never be. A single hot spot could totally stall flow in a branch.

Respectfully, no.

Practically, you're right. Overwhelming flow volume means you may never hit the condition. But that doesn't mean your not leaving the possibility open to see 'vapor lock'. Technically, 'never equal' doesn't mean 'not good enough'.

If a V5, or any other components for that matter, is ever close to boiling the water and creating a "vapor lock" its long gone. This is not a condition relevant to computer cooling and I have no interest in debating hypothetical bro-science. Thank you.

nolimitsoya wrote on 2023-12-20, 19:20:

If a V5, or any other components for that matter,

You mean on a low wattage V5 it won't matter. Plenty of chips hit 100C, so generally...

IIRC the coolant in a custom loop wont boil at 100C in any case, pretty sure modern coolants have a much higher boiling point than plain distilled water. Anyone using just distilled water is either mad or has enough knowledge of their components and setup to never have a situation where vapour lock can occur. This aside if the VSA100 ever hits 100c its pretty much toast well before that and the OP has much bigger issues than a Vapour lock.

-Edit Yes I know most AIOs use distilled water but we are not discussing a CLC where its one component being cooled.

The setup OP is using looks perfectly fine for a Voodoo 5 and would have been a ballin setup back in the day.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-21, 03:39:

IIRC the coolant in a custom loop wont boil at 100C in any case, pretty sure modern coolants have a much higher boiling point than plain distilled water.

Marginally at best. The additives are for reducing corrosion and growth, not to do with temperature. The main mistake i think is made here, is that just because some minor part of a modern chip is above a 100°C it does not mean that the coolant will be subjected to anything near that. Your single gram, or cubic millimeter, or whatever small unit of silicon transfers that heat (J, not C!) to copper that is not only tens or hundreds the mass and volume, but has a higher molar heat capacity as well. Again, energy is transferred - not temperature!
The coolant in a reasonably well circulated and cooled modern loop is not above 30-35°C and the side of the blocks in contact with the coolant is not much hotter than this. Then it's a gradient through the layers of copper, interfaces, heatspreaders and silicon towards that chipset hotspot.