Rustyy's Project Inspired From Start to Finish

Hello and welcome to my project log!

This project is called "Inspired" not because its divinely inspired or anything like that but because the project will incorporate many ideas/mods I've seen from many truly amazing projects before so a big THANK YOU to all you fellow modders .

The aim of the project is to build a PC that is beautiful to look at, to have high end performance and be very quiet. How hard can it be.
The Colour scheme will be Black and white.

- Mod List -
Cut out window in side panel
Cut out design in case roof for 360 Radiator
Remove HDD cage for 240 Radiator
Paint case
Sleeve PSU (paracord heatshrink-less)
Paint Motherboard
Paint Radiators + Fans
Cut acrylic tubing to suitable lengths
Finalize design for PSU and optical drive bay covers
Build SSD mounts
ETC.....


- Spec List -
Core i7 3930K
ASRock X79 Extreme 9
Radeon HD7950's (x2)
Seasonic Platinum 860W
16GB Samsung Green 1600Mhz CL9
120GB Sandisk Extreme SSD (x2)
Lian Li A17FB
D5 Vario Pump
Alphacool NexXxos Monsta 240 + 360
5 x Gentle Typhoons 1850 RPM
Phoyba 250ml Res
Many, many fittings
Acrylic tubing (solid)


A few sketchup designs:



The typhoons and 240 Radiator need a new look so out with the spray paint and sand paper
Painting the fans and radiator took ages as I didn't want any "orange peel", they're not perfect but I think they look good.



Amazing fans but alittle dull in grey



Much better


The quality of the Monsta isn't great out the box unfortunately, wonky stickers and a bad paint job




White Edition




Still needs alittle buffering but its almost there.
PSU Sleeving time! (My poor fingers!) :/







Sorry for the low quality pics, some of them were taken after work when there's no daylight, I was just to excited to wait!




Beautiful looking case I think




Time to disassemble

Poor case!


Before painting I need to fill in the un-needed holes and dremel out some cable management holes.
The motherboard will tell me exactly where to cut the cable management holes and also exactly how long the cables need to be.



The Accessories

The "Game Blaster", it's an audio and LAN card, Might need to be modded to remove the red LED...




No modder should be without the Official Overclockers UK Elite Gaming Mug!

Some dangerous looking thermal paste

Custom GPU plates, Not sure how I will mount these yet, I may just end up drilling holes in the acrylic and screwing it to the cards, but for now I'll try and think up a more elegant solution.


I decided it made sense to modify the motherboard tray next as when that's completed I can work out my cable lengths and continue sleeving, also I can start painting (sleeving whilst waiting for paint to dry).

I used the motherboard to mark out the cuts for the 24 pin, PCI-E, Sata and also front panel cables, I'll use the CPU bracket cutout for the EPS 8 pin(s).



I filled in the unnecessary holes so that the end result is cleaner, I had to use quite abit of filler and it looks a complete mess at the moment but it'll be fine once its been sanded completely flat.



First hole done:



Smile



I then realised I'm an idiot and didn't measure the cable connector width properly and had made the holes too small by about 1-2mm. So I filed off 2mm and now the connectors fit through the holes, still needs alittle more filing to make it neater (though noone will actually see the holes).



Next is to get sanding! (oh joy )

I got some more sleeving done, so far I've done 2 x 6 Pins (PCI-E), an 8 pin, the molex cables I need and I'm almost finished on the second set of 6 pins, after that all I have left to do is the 24 pin cable and a sata power



I decided that instead of having to either try and sleeve the double wires (two wires going into one pin) or solder the two wires half way up the cable so that the connector ends look neat, I'd instead just remove the +2 pins altogether which looks much neater and I also don't have to try and hide the +2 pin cables around the back of the motherboard tray.
I can always just add the extra ground wires back in at a later date if I ever decide to upgrade the graphics cards to something that requires 8 pin(s).

A cheeky demo shot with my hot assistant, a GTX480



Hours with an electric sander and 120 Grit sand paper produced a smooth(ish) mobo tray with the excess metal filler removed, still have to sand it with 800 Grit in prep for painting.



Top case panel masked up....



And Marked up ready for cutting



But before I take the drill and jigsaw to the panel I've decided to see if I can source a replacement panel from Lian Li if I need to, I'll hear back tomorrow with a quote. If the price is high then I'll likely out source someone to machine cut it for me, but if a replacement panel is cheap then I'll give it a go myself as I would like to do as much of the modding myself.

Argh! what a nightmare the past week has been There was a pretty serious fault in the house electrical circuit which meant getting out an electrician and also meant ripping up the floor boards to try and find the fault, expensive and time consuming.

I wanted to get started on the SSD enclosures which meant using a dremel but with the electrics tripping every few minutes I couldn't progress much

Damn life for getting in the way of my modding progress.

Anyways I did manage to sleeve the 24 pin and I've started painting the case.

The stock 24 pin, this picture was taken so I had a reference for the pin layout.



Some of the thinner wires came straight out of the pin and left the pin still in the connector Nothing a drill and 2mm drill bit couldn't sort out though



Alot of high end PSU's now have double wires, meaning that two wires connect into one pin which makes them really differcult to sleeve and ugly, so to avoid the ugliness at the connector ends (where you'd see it) I cut the wires apart and soldered them back together in the middle of the wire, this part of the wire will be behind the motherboard tray out of sight.





A quick look at the 24 pin connected to the mobo, most of the 24 pin wont be visible as it'll go straight under the mobo and behind the mobo tray



I've been priming the case bits with etching primer....My ghetto 'washing line' to hang my case parts for painting using clamps and paracord.



I've decided to have the roof panel machine cut for a price of £25 rather than cut it myself as it's cheaper than a replacement panel and I know it'll look awesome. My design has been sent off I'm pretty excited! just hope I measured everything correctly...

I'm buying PC bits as and when I can, here's a small selection I received yesturday and today.

2 x 120GB Sandisk Extreme SSD's
The first HD7950
16GB (4 x 4GB) Samsung Green 1600Mhz DDR3
Arctic Cooling MX-4 for the GPU's



The first HD7950 I ordered was a HIS reference card, but unfortunately it has a green PCB and although the backplate covers most of it you can still see some of the PCB near the crossfire fingers. I'll be returning it under DSR.

The HIS card:



The MSI Card: (Brown PCB will have to do )



A look at how the card looks with the backplate, I like it



This Samsung green RAM is TINY!:



I also bought a Antec PSU tester to make sure I didn't mess up the wire layout or soldering, all seems good



I've not just been shopping I've also been painting, all the priming is done, I will need to sand everything before the gloss black goes on, it's going quite well so far



I've given my GTX480 to a friend as he was using a HD5450 so now I'm using the MSI HD7950. I couldn't resist a little overclocking
Turns out its pretty good, 1100Mhz with 1.060V Unigine Heaven stable, I'll continue testing tomorrow.
Top panel has arrived! I'm very happy with the results, Obviously massive thanks to Tom at Pulsemodding who's done an excellent job I'm sure you'll agree.
I was very relieved to find that my dimensions were correct and the radiator fits (tested with my 240 rad).

Pic's:





I've now completed paintng the case gloss black, I must applogise for the lack of photo's...
Anyway I used 6mm M3 black allen key screws with black washers and bolts to re-assemble the case rather than rivets as it'll be easier to disassemble the case at a later date if needed.


After assembling the case it was then time to start installing the hardware...

PC starting to come together now.

I decided against installing the res on the 120.3 rad fans as per the original sketchup designs as I felt it would block too much of the motherboard from view.

Here's another project I did awhile back with the res mounted horizontally just so you can see what it looks like:




The new res position and other hardware installed, time to figure out tubing runs.





I used a hacksaw to cut the acrylic tubing, the dremel spins too fast and just melts the tubing.
Bending the tubing is actually quite easy, all you need is a rubber insert that goes inside the tubing to stop it kinking and a heat gun, you apply heat evenly over the acrylic until it becomes soft enough to bend, then bend the tubing by hand and wait for it to cool and harden again.

The rubber insert and tubing...



With the tubing route finalized I could begin leak testing, for anyone that's interested the loop order is as follows:

Res>Pump>GPU2>GPU1>120.2>CPU>120.3>Res

See that massive airlock going from the 120.3 rad to the res(!)



Unfortunately I had a leak... I tried tightening the fitting, I tried different fittings, replaced the O-ring.... Turns out the waterblock is faulty and so has to be replaced.



I had to drain the loop and then completely dismantle the entire PC just to remove the CPU waterblock retention screws as the motherboard tray CPU cut out wasn't designed for 2011 boards. Real PITA.

Anyway I thought I'd take the opportunity to show you the Liquid pro thermal paste, it's a liquid metal alloy.

little balls of it just roll around on the CPU's IHS, VERY odd!! Reminds me of those liquid metal terminators





I chose the EK Supremacy Clean as a replacement for the Phoyba, an upgrade in all regards (Build quality, performance, aesthetics...)



100 points if you can spot what's wrong in the picture above....




And the answer is.... the terminator (Liquid pro) leaked on the CPU to RAM motherboard traces and on one of the caps!

Sorry for the low quality picture, I was in abit of a hurry to clean it off...



I'm still not sure how it got there, maybe some rolled off the CPU when I was spreading it or perhaps some squirted out when I was installing the block.
It cleaned up alright though and it didn't kill anything. Phew!!

The new CPU block installed and the loop filled, Woohoo!






Something soon wiped the smile off my face though My seasonic PSU went "POP" apon booting the PC. No idea why, no sign of any leaks and the cables where all tested with a PSU tester before installation.
Thankfully I received a replacement unit from Seasonic, may I just say that their service is outstanding, I received a replacement unit in less than a week!

The new PSU is actually a new revision of the previous PSU and so I didn't want to use my current braided cables as the pin layout may be slightly different.

I decided to go for an all black look for the cables this time, I wanted the cables to be as stealthy as possible. Still no heatshrink, and I used paracord again.



I will follow this up on Thursday with some final pictures, you'll get to see the side panel design then and i'll include my overclocking and temp results aswell.

A few thoughts about this project:

1) Design and planning are very important but there are just some things that you cannot anticipate with a google sketchup design and so the project changed alittle from the original design, you'll note that there isn't a PSU cover with the SSD mounts, well it's actually pretty differcult to build yourself with just a dremel and some acrylic and to get it professionally done would be very costly, so for now atleast the SSD's reside in the 5.25" bay.

2) Quite alot of hardware failed, The PSU, the motherboard (first one was DOA), the CPU block and most recently the Lamptron FC5 V3 fan controller, all of this set me back time and money so the project went on for much longer than intended.

3)Over all though I'm happy with the results, I think I achieved my initial goals set out at the start of the project.

Toms community, Thanks for reading!

Update to follow on Thursday.

Cheers Rustyy117