Unfinished Proje

So I have this old CPU water cooler and my laptop still throttles from some AI workloads on the GPU due to thermals. There is a nearly flat spot directly above the GPU heat pipes. So I'm making a way to connect the water cooler block.

After cutting a hole in the laptop enclosure cover, I need a way to attach the water cooler block securely. I have come up with a ring that can use the enclosure hole as the mount for the water block. I still need to design this mount. However, I needed to test and iterate the inner enclosure mounting ring before creating a mechanical mount for the cooling block, so I decided to design a cover for the hole when the laptop is not on my bedside stand, (physically disabled/laptop is for ergonomic needs/never actually leaves the bedside stand).

I went with a bit of a Dune theme with some asymmetric implied symbolism that harkens the Arab undertones of Arrakis and House Atreides.

I was also working on dialing in the finest details I can achieve with a 0.25mm nozzle and polycarbonate. I need to lower the first layer z a few thousandths as this came out with too many visible layer lines, but overall it is okay. I'm working on ways of adding infill like patterns in the slicer but making them appear nicer. I still haven't nailed that one yet as this print has minor deviations between the geometric art pattern and the infill like screen. I did this one by brute force in FreeCAD but I think I can do better infill like mesh patterns after watching some tutorials on the Lattice 2 workbench.

I am going to create an insert of another color or texture for the House Atreides symbol.

I had to build my printer enclosure to print these in PC too.

Working on the 3d print designs to hold the water block, radiator/fan, and a little alignment connector and cover for the hole in the laptop enclosure at the GPU. I already did grizzly extreme thermal grease, and modified the enclosure in several places to allow better fan airflow. The water block will hopefully stop the throttling with CNNs and keep the GPU from going offline when under sudden loads like loading a new model.

I had the water block from an old comp I was given, so why not try to use it. This is a 16 GB 3080Ti, so it gets pretty hot with a CNN. I won't even use Flux models because they run so hot.

IIRC that NTE chip is a classic LM386 amp. This was one of my first electronics projects. Other than the chip and a few passives, it is all junk. I was building a center divider so that a small cord could be kept in the other half of the case and to mount the battery holder, switch, and barrel jack for using a DC wall wart instead of batteries, but never got that far.

Overhead LED strips wired and lots more junk shuffled. The critical test of whether the corset would alter my mobility substantially seems to be passing so far. I can still sleep after being upright most of the day. I still need to wire the strips under the bottom desk-shelf, and have a ton of junk to sort and organize properly. Does anyone else here treat a bedroom like a tiny house lab?

Early wannabe EE aspires to stuff too much into too little and gets carried away. I actually got sidetracked with a dumb idea of making complex animations on a character display, called the thing "Juice Box," set it up to play the Mario theme song on a piezo and did a whole intro thing that kinda took away my motivation to program the voltage monitoring and digital potentiometer, or something like that. I forget what the hiccup was exactly. This was back when I was still willing and naively going through massive physical ups and downs with disability from my broken neck/back. I probably put it away in one of the 3-6 week stretches without much sleep at all and never managed to come back to it. It is the same story with most of my hardware projects, and why I may seem quite capable, but will readily admit I'm pretty much useless in my physical shape overall.

I never did fit it into the final enclosure despite ridiculous plans that were almost as overcomplicated as my etch mask art.

Printed button details for good engagement and function are hard. Didn't have an ideal wiring multi conductor available. Solid proje is maturing well with 2 years of dust.