Ozymandias was not as thrilled as I was.
Monday: A knock on the door, an excited bulldog, and some arguing over who was going through the door first finally resulted in me retrieving--to my surprise--the pump I didn't expect until Wednesday. I was elated. I could finally get the miners all up and running and overclocked again.
The BFP, which I would later discover needed a BFW, which I did not have...
Getting the BFP (Big Friggin' Pump) out of the package made it feel like Christmas. I was so excited to get this thing hooked up to the tank and the radiator that I forgot one very important thing; My largest adjustable wrench was inadequate. I needed a BFW (Big Friggin' Wrench), so I improvised a little.
Not the most professional thing I've done, but certainly not the least.
I burned through some lunch-time and managed to get all the tubing cut, the fittings PTFE-taped and installed, and assembled the water blocking oil filter. I also installed the massive bulkhead fittings in the tank. After I went back to my day-job for a bit, I decided it was finally time to remove the miners and start putting together the immersion system.
I'd say they look so beautiful when they're sleeping, but... They don't! They're not mining anything and it's nervewracking!
Later that evening, I pulled most of the panels off of the air box and started mounting. I don't have the housing for the fan and radiator yet, so I used ducting straps to hold the radiator onto the fan, and this should suffice for the remainder of testing the system until I need to get the heat out of the house again--I'll only be running this rig in bursts at first to measure temperatures before I might need to make any adjustments.
I was not disappointed in this at all.
Next came the pour. Fifteen gallons of 100% pure mineral oil fill the four-foot cooling tank, fifty-foot tubing, and two-foot by one-foot radiator. It took a while to open and pour them, but everything went very well. The bulkhead fittings did not leak anywhere around the seals to the tank; However, there was a minor leak in three of them where the hose-barbs screwed into the bulkheads themselves, but it didn't leak fast enough to be a major concern at the time.
Well, it's loud, a little leaky, and the air won't purge, so... Perfect job!
You may notice in the video that the pump is very loud. The pump will be a little loud, but it should calm down once it pushes all of the air out of the system through the inlets on the tank. This was not happening. An investigation ensued.
Well, crap...
So, it turns out the seal on the filter-bowl is either not seated quite tight enough or it's just a piece of junk--either way, I'm going to have to reseat it, which meant draining the whole system through the little wing-nut valve on the filter-bowl (I have a better way being shipped, but I'm impatient). After opening the drain, I decided to call it a night.
Today: I pulled all of the tubing apart, managed to remove most of the particles from the initial start-up by letting them settle as I slowly drained then cleaned the tank, and started installing o-rings and PTFE-tape on the bulkhead fittings. That was when disaster finally struck hard.
While trying to fix this...
... this happened...
Breath... Just, breath...
Ok, so that was really, really disappointing. My heart sank as I heard the crack of the thermoplastic snapping; Although, given how much has gone so wonderfully to-plan, I think I'm still well ahead of the game on this one. The miners will be down until I get the replacement part--I bought four, just in case--but after seeing where my aeration issue was coming from and knowing I have to fix the filter-bowl seal anyway, I'm not too worried about waiting a couple more days to be running at full-speed.
Stay tuned for more updates in the next couple of days. By Friday, I think I'll have a fully-functional immersion cooling system so I can start cranking the miners' speed up--of course, the next thing I'll need to do to up my speeds is start replacing PSUs.
