[Skidd]

Coldon, mate I see you having some fun. I hope everyone around here takes this as an example of someone willing to try even after he has failed so much, big up to you man. Well done on resolving the issue and keeping on it to do so!

Your stuff is looking good too! You have done your homework, I cant wait to see what its going to be when its done and Im happy to be helping you out on this project of yours :-) So yeah. Saturday the 1st of March we will be starting on the case work and Im sure all this prep work is going to make life so much easier :-). Looking forward to it mate!

[Coldon]

Just a really small update: Okay so the 1st of march came: so i got everything ready and laoded to go over to skidd's place to start with the hard work


My boot Oh, you see all that perspex? yeh, there are two sheets there, 1.2m squared of perspex! when i ordered it i wasn't really thinking and only when they came to load it into my car was i like : 0_0 !!!!


Our workspace









So we masked up the bottom of the case and marked out the rough dimensions of the radiator, in hind sight i made several mistakes marking it out, and i should have made a proper template before going through to skidd's place. Luckily everything turned out perfectly at the end







so we did a test mount of the radiator. So far so good...

[DAE_JA_VOO]

Cool stuff. Looking good. Have you got a clearer shot of the cuts? I love seeing good cuts

I have yet to meet Sean.

[Coldon]

We then started on the mobo tray, the one support would get in the way of the radiator when trying to lide the tray back it so we had to remove it.





I realize i've left some of the photos of the other work we did on the mobo tray so i'll bring them tomorrow.

So far the bulk of the cutting work has been done. The next steps are to do a test build of all the components and work out how i'm going to route the cables and see if there are any final cuts that need to be made. Then we'll start with the plexi work. Once all the cuts are done, the case skeleton is going in for powder coating and then the final build will take place!

Thanks a ton to Skidd for donating his workshop, tools and time to help me get this done!

This post has been edited by Coldon: 04 March 2008 - 10:00 AM

[Coldon]

@ DAE_JA_VOO: hey, i'll take some clearer photo's of the cuts and mobo tray tonight and put them up

If i can source a CPU today i might even be able to do a test install tonight! My GTX is gonna look sexy with that heatsink

[Skidd]

hehe I had fun cutting up another stacker, that cut we did at the bottom of the case came out really nice, just need to do some sanding work and the one side needs some filling down.

[shogan85]

Awesome stuff guys. Can't wait to get my own customised wc setup. I hate my all in one aquagate lol

[Coldon]

Okay the next step was to cool my 8800GTX. When i bought the mcw60 i didnt have enough ramsinks for my 8800gtx.

After a bit of looking around I went out and bought a zalman RHS-88 heatsink:



pretty sexy, no?



I then placed it on top of my mwc60 and measured out the areas that needed to be cut.



Now we prepared for cutting.



The end result.





Some pics of it mounted, did a brief test last night and with that setup i managed to get my 8800gtx up to 685 / 1620 / 1165, i can probably squeeze more from it but i got bored

PS. i apologise for the crappy pics, the only camera i have is a k800 phone cam.

This post has been edited by Coldon: 04 March 2008 - 10:07 AM

[Coldon]

Last night i got a bit bored and figured i might as well do an initial test build just to check that everything is working and so on...







Bleeding the system took around 30 minutes... mainly due to the crappy masterkleer tubing and the fact that the t-line wasnt the highest point in the system.

My temps with a 3.4ghz prescott (temporary) and an overclocked 8800gtx (685, 1620, 1165) :

IDLE: CPU 22 / GPU 45
LOAD (RTHDRIL + prime95) : CPU 30 / GPU 49

Color me IMPRESSED!!!!

[Takumi]

coldon: did u throw the unit on its side? that should make the top of the T-line the highest point.

[Coldon]

Takumi, on 04 Mar 2008, 10:56 AM, said:

coldon: did u throw the unit on its side? that should make the top of the T-line the highest point.

To be honest i was a bit tired and connected everythig up and then realised i'd left out the t-line so putting it in was more of an afterthought.

What i need to do is actually move the t-line closer to the CPU block and rotate it so it looks like this -| , it will help with the routing of the tubing too and make it the highest point.

The thick tubing i got from the states is very loose on the barbs and tends to trap little bubbles around the barbs, the local stuff is beautiful tho, i think that was also a factor in why it took so long to bleed
Another problem with the masterkleer stuff is that its just too thick! using it on the cpu block, the inlet tubing presses against the outlet tubing and you cannot get any kinda of clamps in there, i have no idea how guys can use that thick tubing with the d-tek fuzion block!

This post has been edited by Coldon: 04 March 2008 - 11:13 AM

[Takumi]

Quote

The thick tubing i got from the states is very loose on the barbs and tends to trap little bubbles around the barbs, the local stuff is beautiful tho, i think that was also a factor in why it took so long to bleed tongue.gif

ahem...

Takumi, on 17 Feb 2008, 11:07 AM, said:

ANother thing i've noted, is that if u are struggling for a long time to vent your system, it might indicate a very very small air leak INTO your system from one of the joints. Its hard to see if u dont have some sort of colorant in the system, and its normally a very fine line of small air bubbles that you will be looking for.

Takumi, on 17 Feb 2008, 11:18 AM, said:

hmm. u using those nylon hose clamps? hmmmmMMMMMMM. careful with small air leaks from those things.

[Coldon]

small update finally got my case parts back from the post office (grr...) so i started reassembling... The powder coating is awesome but it has its problems as well as you'll see later on...

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[Coldon]

just a couple more basic assembly pics all the fan & lighting power and electronics are going to stored in the bottom 5.25 bay, i'll be building a plexi cover for it soon... first things first, i want to install my machine into the cash mount everything properly and then i'll worry about shrouds and so on...

only planning on having 4 120mm fans in the cash...

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[Skidd]

Wow that is looking good. The powdercoating rocks!

[Coldon]

finally had some time to work on my case, it's nearing completion now. The major steps were creating custom USB cables and Front panel audio cables. I searched high and wide for 6 core insulated cabling and couldn't find anything similar anywhere so i just used the next best thing: cat 5 cable









final results for the 4 front panel usb cables, the control/led headers and the front panel audio connector:



I think they came out pretty nicely...

[Coldon]

I now added the lighting to the case: one ccfl tube on either side of the motherboard (you can barely make the tube out of the rear, sorry about the bad photo:





on tuesday i'm getting a plexi shield laser cut (thanks ettiene) and another VGA ramsink modified since i had rip my old one off to put the stock cooling back on the card: once that is finished then i can start the reassembly, hopefully by the end of next week my machine will be finsihed.

[Coldon]

Okay did a test build and had some major issues! firstly the gap between the radiator and the motherboard is to narrow for the USB header cables to plug in properly, so i had to take the cbales apart and slice the black header block in half, so the pins are half sticking out and then had to bend the cable like mad to get it in, in the process i've broken one of the pins off and now i'm going to have to redo the cable ends. I'm not sure how i'm going to fix it, i somehow dont think moving the radiator is an option at this point? At least the audio cable worked like a charm!!!

Here are some pics of the test build, water cooling build coming later this week. still need to get some new sata cables and some more cable sleeving. Not really sure how i'm gonna route and hide my cables just yet but i'll think of something:


with the flash


no flash


again no flash (funky colors eh?)

[Skidd]

I might have a solution for you on those connectors bobby. Just let me see if I can find it again. LOL But besides that its looking good hey!

[Beefcake]

Pretty damn cool man, pretty cool