Rev.2:
The original system was very unstable, I believe this was the result of a poorly manufactured motherboard; the gaming performance was terrible, and the system would lock a few minutes into any 3D application. In addition, the board came with two NIC ports, which were both enabled by default, and were not able to work with one another, they caused endless BSOD's. Finally I disabled one, used only the other one, and still occasionally locked. I disabled both, put a low profile PCI NIC into the PCI bus, and the system was better, but would still occasionally lock.
Finally, I RMA'd, the motherboard and CPU to newegg, and went with something different... I wanted a minimal level of gaming performance with this system, a regular mini ITX was not acceptable (eg EPIA 2GHz), I wanted a full-featured system inside a 1541 floppy drive.
After a few days search, I discovered an industrial computer supply company, iBase, which produces an ITX motherboard (17x17cm) which has a x16 PCI-E slot, intended for driving large LCD banners. I ordered this board, and also found a low profile GeForce 8500GT, produced by Galaxy, which should fit into the floppy. Now the system is being driven by a Dual Core Intel P4 3.4GHz, I tried to use the same shruken cooler as before, but the system would overheat within minutes, air cooling was not going to be an option for this high-heat Pentium D processor, so I opted for watercooling, with a Thermaltake ProWater 850 kit. Once this was configured, the system would auto shut down after approx 30 minutes of prime95, as the northbridge was overheating, so I purchased the thermaltake northbridge waterblock.
Last night, I ran the system for 12 hours of prime95, reaching a max temp of 62C (this system idles at 52C), so everything is done...
I think I have the first watercooled, dual core 3.4GHz, x16 PCI-E GeForce 8500GT, 1.5TB SATA2 Commodore floppy drive
Diskette is an old 5.25" Microsoft "Windows/286" installation disk:
Two 80mm Green LED fans pull hot air away from the dual Samsung 750GB SATA2 drives, mounted on a custom bracket:
Not much room inside, hoses are carefully ziptied, as to not kink and reduce water flow; original floppy bezel and diskette are held in by "Mighty Putty":
The complete setup, 24" Samsung widescreen LCD, Samsung external DVD-RW, the system also has a 15' USB repeater cable going to a desk on the other side of the room, with a Samsung CLP-315 color laserjet, and USB Cd organizer (Ziotek).
The system draws nearly 400W of power, as the Prowater is also powered by the 12V rail of the PSU, and the Pentium D is not the most efficient processor. With an external video card, dual fast HDD's, a power hungry CPU, a water pump, 120mm fan, dual 80mm fans, etc. any kind of low profile PSU was not going to power the system, I tried using a 24A 12V brick with a 200W PicoPSU, and the system wouldn't even post, so I finally opted to use a 460W 1U low profile server PSU, velcroed to the underside of the desk - the system has an ATX extension cable installed, so once on the desk, the extension cable is plugged into the 1U PSU. The radiator for the water cooling kit is also mounted on the back of the desk, using stand offs, to allow for better airflow.