Introduction

 

So in 2008 as you know I created my first portable. The project was sold, and the money from that was invested into my website (PS3Hax.net) and various other tools. I decided to now tackle a more complicated project and settled on a watercooled revision of my initial project. The project started in 2009, but took nearly ~2+ years to complete. Why so long? Well this is when I started to play with more intricate tools, and venture in areas that I never had before.

This time around, I had a CNC computer cutting machine. I used SINTRA plastic to construct the case. The insides at the time were using the “phat” PS3 guts (SLIM was released shortly after, but it was too late to switch).

The tricky part of this model was obviously the watercooling. I really wanted to cut the height of the case down, so it was very difficult and pricey to find, small compact items to help cool the PS3. I manage to find these components overtime and have them assembled after various trials and errors as seen below . I should add this was my first attempt to watercool anything so many, many hours of trial and error and heat testing were done.

I worked on this project slowly over the span of about 3 years (mainly due to constraints with college).

*Note* The work log posted is copied and pasted from my original writeup, so I was updating this project as I did it

Worklog

Features in this portable include:

• Water cooled with easy accessible reservoir
• HD: 720p/1080i screen (via HDMI)
• 4x USB
• 500 gb HDD
• External PSU
• Built in keyboard
• Built in speakers with volume controls with 2.5mm headphone jack.
• The stock PS3 was a 40gb SKU (there was no PS3 slim when I started the project).
• Dimensions are 16.75”x13”x2.5” (16.75”x13”x3.5”with lid closed)
• Weighs ~15lbs.

The case was all constructed from scratch. It features an aluminum base plate, and the rest of the material used was sintra/komatex. The case was routed via CNC machines with designs created in Adobe Illustrator.
The questions some of you may be asking why water-cool the PS3? The reason for water-cooling the system was to redesign the cooling to fit in a small case (which is significantly thinner than previous portable I made). Water-cooling the PS3 allowed me to get rid of the clunky heatsinks which was responsible for cooling stock PS3s. Only 4x40mm fans were used in cooling the entire system.

A minor issue with the last model was that it was too tall. This time around, I want to raise the bar and aim at making the laptop 2-3″ tall (including LCD screen). I also want to keep the base at a reasnoable size of 15″x10″ or smaller.

I also decided to water cool this version, primarily because it was easier to slim down the PS3, plus it sounded exciting to try

It took me about 2 months to find everything I needed to initially start, I won’t go down and list everything so here is a pic:

 

I just found out today that the reservoir will already need to be tossed out as it does not the fit I would like, I would most likely end up building a custom one once I start to set everything in place.

Keeping slim in mind, I also grabbed the new 65nm/65nm PS3′s, to my disappointment I did not see too much of a radical change compared to the 65nm/95nm PS3′s:

 

Just as a side note, anyone who has their new PS3′s overheating, it is most likely the crappy thermal paste Sony is using. It took a quite large amount of force to rip the heatsyncs out (revealed completely dried out and cracked thermal paste ). I advise to invest $10 in some artic silver thermal paste and save your precious $400 console from frying.

One thing that did please me was that the PSU was noticeably lighter then the old 65/95nm PS3′s. This was with the external casing as well. The lighter the better I suppose.

 

(New PSU to the left)

That’s all that I had time for this morning, most likely I will start connecting everything and going for the first trial run this weekend. I am anticipating that I would most likely need one more radiator and blower fan, but I am hoping I won’t. Designs and case rendering will most likely start once I get the PS3 successfully up and cooled with the watercooling kit.

The current total of the project stands at around $650, including the 40gb PS3. I will be posting updates as I continue my work , suggestions are welcomed

 

Starting to play with watercooling…

Using Fesser One Cooling fluid, this is also non-conductive so if there is a leak the PS3 is NOT fried.

I also took kunglao suggestion and used copper strips to cool the blocks giving me heat issues and rerouted the heat underneath one of the waterblocks and it worked
The PS3 ran for about 3 hours without any issues. Unfortunately I am having issues clamping down the copper strips so they both require some sort of harness to lock them into place.

You can see them flapping up a bit here:

All in all everything so far looks good and I don’t think I will be needing another radiator for the cooling which is a plus for me. I might need a small fan to draw heat out from those small chips however but we will see once I get those clamps made. I just ordered a CNC machine so it should be on its way here sometimes this week/next week so I look foreward in working with that.

I used dabs of superglue to hold down the copper strips this time (a drop on each corner), and applied AS5 on both chips. Unfortunately the PS3 only ran for about 10 minutes and overheated.

Not sure what the problem was (was it GPU/RSX overheating?), or was it still the chips overheating. Getting frustrated, I just slopped everything together, and flipped the entire motherboard (bluray attached), and stuck a 80mm fan (powered by PS3), over the two chips.

Two my suprise, that was the problem, the PS3 ran flawlessly (in XMB) for about 10 hours (stopped it at that point), and ran (still running) for about 3-4 hours today in-game.

Nasty chips indeed, I am going to try later this week to use the ram sinks that orignally came in the PS3 (missed these suckers completly) and try to see what I can do without the need of having another fan. Worse case senario is that I would need a seperate waterblock.

I also had time to rip open the PS3 eye, not much work was done on this yet, but it seems the PS3 eye would need some work to tone down in size and will see what I can get done with that.
Alrighty so I have procrastinated in posting an update for this project for quite some time and decided that I will finally keep you guys up to date on what I have done up to date. Now I know its been about 2 years since I started this project, but I think I finally am coming close to a finish . I worked on this as time allowed, throughout the months, bits at a time.

So I guess I will start off with where I left off, and that was the initial testing, and cooling redesign. While I was working through this, the PS3 slim was released in the middle so I am not using the new slim boards, still using the older 40gb SKU’s. The design for this however is that the PSU will be external, but the height of the base will be no bigger than 2″, and overall smaller in LxW than my previous build.

Closing in on the cooling design…

It failed pretty badly, I was using a very small radiator too so I thought that it may be a problem so I added another one (no pics ) but that also failed.

Eventually I fell upon a more simple configuration and less tubes and
elbows, maximizing waterflow as best I could (I had to keep in mind that this had to fit in the case):

However this build also failed after some hours of running which left me fairly bummed out. After some research I decided to attempt a push/pull configuration with the fans:

I also had to add two fans to keep certain chips cool on the PS3 that I could not with the blocks (due to room problems), however once inside the case I will probably cut it to one.

And that seemed to do the trick – The PS3 was running with no problems, and I applied various different stress tests, games, and all yielded excellent results.

I also had to add two fans to keep certain chips cool on the PS3 that I could not with the blocks (due to room problems), however once inside the case I will probably cut it to one.

Case routing…

Now comes the fun stuff (finally). I recently ordered a Zenbot CNC machine, and being new to the world of CNC and routing my first priority was to learn how to use the software, and understand the system. This actually was the thing that delayed the project termendously as I spent many months learning how to use the machine and practicing on foam/cardboard before actually cutting into the actual material I was planning to use (sintra).

The actual planning of walls is pretty important, I really wanted to minimize the work I had to (meaning cutting with dremel) after routing, so I wanted to make sure I had everything properly measured and aligned up. After many hours of work I finally had the layouts of the four wall designs for the base. Here was the first routing attempt I had with sintra (I think I had to re do these parts as the USB slots were off):

After sanding, measuring, gluing together, and more sanding, I finally started to setup the walls:

The whole in the center between bluray slot and USB ports will be another LED PS light – I was thinking of actually using a red theme this time around, but more on that when I actually start planning the color in depth.

I also added a top ring/frame ontop of the wall to hold everything in place and serve as frame to hold the keyboard/speakers/top vents etc..

More sanding sanding followed, the brown stuff was automotive material called bondo which was excellent for smoothing out the surface and filling in gaps/roughness.

Recently I had time to also work on the LCD (top portion).

I used a 720p gateway LCD monitor:

Thats pretty much what I have done so far. I have started on the keyboard/top frame section, and managed to scan in a keyboard and rout out the holes (note that this was just a practice run on cardboard):

END OF WORKLOG