Case Mod - In Progress My Project - The Rise Of The Triad.

Better late than never! That came out great man! I would have loved to see you do a crazy custom loop in there, like 4 small 120 rads or something. Love dat blue!

 

Thanks

I had two 120mm rads in the front when I was running Fury X crossfire but it did not fit so I had to make a plate that moved the two rads apart. It would not work with a custom loop I don't think because there's pretty much nowhere to mount a res.

It's a lot smaller in there than it looks tbh.

 

I haven't been on the forums for quite a while but just read though this one.. Its a fantastic build.

Where did all the cables go? There was 10 million and then there were none

I hate cables

 

They were either chopped off (the rig literally has a plug for everything it needs and the spares were lopped off or not connected to the PSU) or they are in the small box on the floor. It was quite the wedgie haha.

 

Hello Vault-Tec!

Awesome work!

Is there a way to contact you in private? I have quite a few questions.. :/ if u dont mind me asking!

 

Sorry for the incredibly belated reply, I have not been checking the thread. I am guessing you have your PMs disabled?

If you get this message lmk and I will sort something out. Cheers.

 

Great job man.

 

Just a quick note. I am not sure how the red will bode with all of the blue. However, it was a choice of spending £230 total for everything or more than double that for blue stuff.

Apologies for the missing photos. I will do a little to catch up guys. OK, so the last time you guys all saw the Triad it looked like this.



I had not touched it for over a year. I decided to strip and clean it all recently, and then do some upgrades. Upgrade 1, 14 core 28 thread Broadwell E Xeon



It clocks to 3.1ghz on up to four cores (and selects the best) and then clocks to 2.8ghz on all 14. It's pretty bloody impressive for £360. I could have probably ran it in the board I had, but I decided to buy a new MSI X99 SLi Plus for £117.



Far better and much more befitting of the build tbh. I bought this 180gb M.2 drive for another build, but decided to use it on the upgrade.



It's nothing too fancy, cost £30 does about 550 R/W. Any way, then I got this.



And sold the Maxwell Titan X. Here is how the rig looked then, and still does now.



And it was all sort of going OK. Fallout 4 makes the fan spin up every so often, but nothing terrible. So my plan was to basically make my own Hybrid doodah for it and have the GPU AIO cooled. However, last night I met this lovely young woman.



And my GPU went ballistic. Not sure if you guys have played this yet but due to the *incredible* graphics and total lack of cut scenes my Titan XP just went mental and the fan immediately jumped to 100% and stayed there for twenty minutes. Then I touched the back of the card behind the GPU and bugger me, I wish I hadn't. I had to do something drastic and quick.

So it was OCUK to the rescue again.

I'm not quite sure how this is going to look. I want to make it look like a heart with blood and veins, but not sure how well it is going to drop into the blue. However, at the prices I paid I could not help it. I can not afford to spend £18 on each fitting, these were £2.99 each.



10/8. I have ordered 12. Why not at that price eh? OK, so I also ordered this. You'll see why shortly.



As well as this.



And then this.



OK, so that rounded up the OCUK order and it has been sorted and will be here soon. Then I wanted a block. So I decided on this.



And then I looked at back plates. They are £23 for an AC one. However, for £34 you can have this.



And TBH? I have never had a GPU get so hot on the back. So I figured that was a bargain and ordered that too. What you do is remove the edge connector from the block and bolt on the back plate one which then cools both. Pretty sweet.

For the pump I decided to use this again @ £10.



I've already got one cooling my other rig and it's excellent. Ceramic bearing and shaft etc, very strong motor. No point spending £100. Any way, that is what the coupler fitting is for, so I can fit it directly to the bottom of the tank. I also ordered the tubing.



And had two fittings left over from before. I have one of these.



And one of these in white that I need to paint (it's also BP)



I am going to replace any green Orings with black ones (I've got tons because Monsoon give you two in different colours).

Any way, yeah, not sure how the red will fit in but I wasn't spending over double to find out. I will paint the white coupler black with matt model paint and I need to make a weird bracket to hold the pump and tank to the 120 mount.

 

Morning update.

OK so the night before last I made a cardboard template of the pump holder/carrier. I offered it up and immediately there was a problem. It hit the hoses on my AIO. I tried clamping the hoses to move them away, but due to the design (to fit this case one way only) one of the hoses was still very much in the way. So I removed the AIO, turned it around 180' and moved the hoses down. This means the pump is now upside down and so is the rad. And it worked, hurrah. The alien head is now upside down though, but that is easily remedied with some matt black vinyl.

The rad will fit, but in the stock orientation the G 1/4 would be inaccessible. So I am going to have to drop the rad by about 30mm or so. This means I need to mod the rad carrier.

Good news. The Bitspower Z Multi 80 tank I ordered arrived in clear. Wasn't happy at first, but eventually came around. It looks like this (this is the 100mm though)



I have refined the mount a little too, though this may be subject to change when I get the time to measure the res etc (I was building flat packed furniture all day yesterday)



The rad and fittings arrived too, but I have two other fittings coming also. A 45' and a couple of other bits and bob fittings I may or may not need. I've also decided to change things up a little this time and instead of using XSPC EC6 I have been a bit more daring.



Which is part of the reason why I was happier with the clear res. I may change the hosing to clear too (I should have that kicking around already).

Just want to say an enormous thanks to Overclockers. Every time I do water cooling I always order from them, but their customer service guys are the stuff of legend. They really are awesome.

 

Quick update. Not much done really because I am working on the flat. Any way, here is the 90 deg fitting with the extender (that was white). It's (the extender) been painted black and clear coated.



And I began mapping out the area where I want the rad to fit to the bracket.



Nothing terribly exciting to see, but something

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OK so I finalised the design for the res and pump bracket.



Dug out some leftover vinyl and cut my template. I use my plotter more for that than cutting actual graphics lol.



That will meet the rotary tool this evening (got deliveries coming so can't make noise).

The rad and fan I am using (red LED) are now mounted.





It needs some tidying/refining but the important part is it works and it fits. And I can access the ports.

 

Some time later...



Holes started with soldering iron.



And.

 

Just a quick note on OCUK's customer service. As you guys know I got a clear res instead of a red one. I was perfectly happy about it as I am using pastel red coolant. Any way, yesterday I noticed the chrome filler cap. I wasn't very happy with that given every other fitting will be black or red. So I popped a note on OCUK's customer support forum and within about an hour they had dispatched me one of these via DPD.



It's the little things like that which make such a big difference these days. Just awesome.

 

Got enough headphones bro?

 

That's about half of them. Clearly need another rail...

OK so today I started refining things a little. First up I milled out some thumb nuts to use as spacers.



Much cleaner than three silver washers.. I will paint the bolts as well. I also added some graphics to the res mount.



Which has also been edge polished too.

 

And then the hype train crashed into a wall at 140mph

Last night I fitted the complete unit.



And then it dawned on me. Can you spot it? (be honest, did you?) because I didn't. The problem is the area where the pump is going to be. See, for some reason I stupidly thought that once this thing was in the pump would have acres of space. I blissfully forgot about the god damn GPU that sits right in its path. And to compound matters even more check out the f*****g back plate I bought.



Yup, it's got a lovely "sticky out" part right where the pump goes, making it even worse.

And then, just when you think life has done kicking you in the nuts and you can breathe you have a sickening feeling come over you about the res. And then this happens.



Once again for the second time I totally forgot to allow for hose and fittings. Which has dropped the res down by 20mm. Oh goody !

I was starting to panic now. Like complete blind panic. I can easily make two new holes for the upper res bracket (and I will) but that does not fix the massive pump issue. All 80+ mm. To explain how bad it is before I dropped the res as the closest point from that space to the GPU it was 65mm. So I was already 15mm short before at least 5mm from that cooling plate on the new back plate and the 20mm drop I had to do to the res.

The answer lies in this video.



If you skip to 2 minutes you can see how my prayers have been answered. I already have one of these pumps (2400) and it's kinda noisy but I never really dialled it in. I've ordered the better model (the 2600) on sale for less than the 2400 and I've ordered the near on microscopic pump top too.



Not a bad price for a life saver. So today at some point I need to break it all down (ignore the clear hose that's just a size guide tube) and drill in two new res holes then reprint the GPU logo (in alien glyphs) and drop that down and also make two more hexagons and cover up the original holes.

 

Well the res holder etc has all been adjusted now and sorted.

 

Block and plate came.





And I cleaned/flushed the rad and it's now assembled.



Just got those bolts to paint.

 

Work continues. Today my hose clamps arrived and I set to work.



Comes out where I wanted it to.



And a cover panel.



Which hopefully will light up from the fan

 

Not much to report because I have been doing the tedious stuff. Pump is processed whatever that means and should ship soon.

In the mean time I got cracking on a 5v and 7v pump cable (red is 7v black is 5v) and three LEDs (two for the res plate and one for the pump)



So now it's back to the waiting game

 

Block and plate were fitted last night.





Apologies for the image quality. It's literally dark here today on the south coast

Block and plate were horrible to fit tbh. You have to prepare the card for the block, then press it onto the card but not put a single screw in. Then you have to put small round pieces of plastic into holes in the inside of the back plate and then somehow get that onto the card with them all in place. The heatpipe is a pain, you need to rotate it but then it becomes a bloody weapon. Took me about an hour all told.

Pump is coming tomorrow, as should my last order from OCUK (the rotaries).