| NORDSTERN
Nordstern is a new project i’m working on. It came to my mind as kind of a test-project. The idea was to have a L-shaped dirstroplate, having the radiators and the pump connected in the front and the waterblocks connected to the bottom. The bottom also has to have the cable guiding in it. With theese ideas the »NORDSTERN« was born. Using the technology and developments done for Neutronenstern case.
With the predevelopment done in Neutronenstern »NORDSTERN« was designed in a very short time. The first idea was to make it very golden. During manufacturing i decided to reduce the gold to some details. Main colour is now white.
I used an older case as base for the mechanical measurements and a Mainboard that was planed for an another project for checking measures. It now got tripple slot for the GPU due to increasing size.
I also wanted to have it with less mainparts as possible. Theese are the mainparts of the case. In addition it has also some small parts like PSU holder and a braked for PCI mounting.
- Distroplate front
- Distroplate bottom
- Center (Electronics)
- Mainboard and graphics card tray
- Coverplate bottom
- Coverplate cablechannel
- Backpanel
I milled some aluminium parts and brushed them. I made a picture prior to powder coating.
And also the cable cover after plating 🙂
Electronics and Software
I mainly used the electronics based on Neuetronen stern. This time with a new power supply section. There are now two 5V power supplys one for the controller and one for the RGB LEDs. I removed all measurement circuits except of the temperature measurement. The Gui should be as simple as possible so, it has a seven segemnt display for temperature and coolstage and a 8 by 8 matrix for a fan speed histogram – thats it! No CAN, no Ethernet, no Wifi. This time everything is in one PCB located in the Center plate.
As for software i used my Poly|OS in its current version. Not perfect but fine for this project. It just has a P-Controller for the fans and a very light weighted gui for coolstage control. I created a profile where in coolstage 4 out auf 11 the fans are at about 50% at 40°C Water temperature. Setting the coolstage less than 4 is quieter but hotter, where everything above 5 or 6 makes it quite noisy.
I build a fancy new temperature load for testing the watercooling performance and setting up the profile. The Temperature load uses a lot of heating elements for 3D-printers in a big cold-block. Connected to a power supply i can simulated different loads to the watercooling.
The case
For this project I got a fancy new desktop laser able to cut through acryl which is very helpful for my idea to have a very filigree side panel. I tried to laser cut the cover of the Distroplate front and the side panels. The side panels came out well, but the front panel measurements weren’t accurate enough :/ Anyway i mounted everything i had so far 😀
I milled a new cover for the distro plate and mounted the radiators, some of the watercooling parts and the electronics.
Impressions
Here some pictures from the current state of the project 😀
