Scratch Build – In Progress The case that needs a cool name....

Thank you I am glad someone likes it!

 

Looks great already! You'll have your psu tomorrow; )
Looking forward to the rest

 

PSU arrived this today, awesome thank you, I'll be fitting it and making other adjustments as soon as I get half a day free.

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A reflection on the build.

This was one of the hardest builds I've ever done, partly because scratchbuilds are alot of work, partly because I was doing some things I've not done before, and partly because so very much went wrong!

The Case (inner)
If I was building a case like this again, I would have used a different material for the main back panel, either a sheet of aluminium or more likely 6mm perspex.
I'd also make the frame differently, those pieces of aluminium angle just failed horribly and although the end result is functional and hidden, I'm not happy with it, I'd have liked it to look as good without the outer case on as it does with it. I will probably leave this as it is as it'd be a very big job to replace anything or rebuild it, so unless I encounter any problems then it's done.

The Case (outer)
My original intention for the outer was to be back-painted clear perspex (in black), which did work really well except for the tabs holding the front panel to the outer, the solvent didn't give as perfectly clear attachment to it was too visible from the outside. My solution was black 4d carbon fibre vinyl and I'm very happy with the end result. everyone who has seen it thinks it is carbon fibre and I love the clean look it gives. I thought it may be too much as I also used it extensively inside but it looks so different with the UV lighting that it's a success.

Motherboard, CPU & RAM
At some point in the future I'll be upgrading to an intel system, probably on an Asus board with x99 chipset and capability for 64GB of RAM, so I'll be choosing a board that EK make waterblocks for as well as cooling all 64GB of ram which will allow for fuller overclocking. At the moment the passively cooled motherboard is a limiting factor in my overclocks, and I ended up running out of money to watercool the RAM, which would have been mostly aesthetic due to the overclocking limitations.
Currently I'm using 16GB of RAM, my board will take 32GB but funds are preventing upgrade, with the use my computer gets it would make full use of all 64GB so thats incrementally part of the plan. The core is at 4.1GHz and now it's all had a chance to bed-in I'll re-do the overclocking (there is more cooling available now as well as better thermal paste) and I expect to equal and possibly exceed the previous 4.5GHz clock speed.

Graphics Cards
Also both of the graphics cards I have seem to be without full-cover waterblocks, although my upgrade path is to buy one new card and the current main is demoted to secondary it'll take two generations of upgrades to be using full-cover waterblocks, at least the next one will have full-coverage which will allow more overclocking. At the moment both are using GPU Core only blocks with some pure copper heatsinks on the memory chips, which also limits overclocking, the cores can take alot but not the memory clocks. I'm running three monitors, 2x 4:3 19" monitors in portrait rotation closely run of the second card and closely match the height of my main 27" widescreen which runs off the main graphics card, this is the one that has the games on it so it'd benefit from more cooling and more overclocking.

Other problems
This was my first build bending rigid acrylic tubing and I wasted more than I used but I'm quite happy with the result, I will be redoing most or all of it when I upgrade the major components though.
One of the little problems I had with that was the two waterblocks on the GPU's didn't line-up exactly so the joining pipe needed a little kink in it, which is quite obvious. I thought about different layouts as I could have used either ports and made an S shape but it's so tight I just went with the almost straight piece, I may explore that again when I replace the pipework.
Another problem was a persistent leak coming from behind the main res/pump, it's tight and blind behind there so I was removing it and redoing the flexible hose between the inlet and the radiator several times and redoing the rigid pipe from the outlet to the second pump, it turned out to be a faulty 90 degree fitting, one of a pair I was using on the back, so I replaced it with a larger one which just fit that I had in my parts box and that solved that.

My previous build was cooled by 1x140mm and 1x280mm radiators (with mostly the same components) and powered only by the bay pump/res combo, as I was increasing my radiators to 2x560mm and as I intend to add more blocks in the future I added a second DDC pump, I bought a used one from the forums here but it turned out to be faulty and I couldn't repair it, I really should have tested it as I didn't find out until the loop was full! C&Ccentral fixed me up with a replacement overnight and all went perfectly, and I guess I can use the res that came with the used pump in something in the future.

The radiators are using push and pull fans, the outer fans are Aerocool Lightening which pull 3w each. each bank of 4 radiator fans are running on their own channel on my NZXT Sentry LXE which is rated at 10w per channel, so two of those channels are running at 12w and I think that is causing a problem. To fix that I'm going to firstly replace the cables from the fan controller board to the fans with heavier wire which will give it the best chance and also fix any possible problems with the modifications I'd made in the previous build. If that doesn't fix it I'm going to separate the top fan from each of those banks and run it directly at 7v (maybe 12v). The other fans are rated lower and are running fine.

Another problem I discovered when transferring components was that my power supply was only rated to 550w, I knew it was the loudest thing in my system but as it was encased in a thick layer of silicone I'd long forgotten it's rating. This build is rated to peak ~720w at load (before overclocking) so I bought a Corsair ax1200i from the forum here and thats plenty overhead. However it didn't come with the Corsair Link wire and USB box but I opened a support ticket with Corsair to see about replacing them and they just sent them out right away! Top Marks for Corsair! though amusingly the two small parts came in their own boxes measuring around 12x12x6 inches, which was amusing.

 

Looking back at the poll for the names. I would have called it labour of love, because thats what it's turned in to. It's been a good learning curve for you and over all it's turn out pretty good.

 

Came out pretty good in the end, I like it .

Congrats on the scratch build man

 

Thanks! I've not had much feedback on this.... considering the compromised I had to make in very happy with the result.

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Scratch builds are always alot more work but this was a long way ahead of my previous comfort zone, I did learn alot!
Thanks!

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Another update will be coming soon as I've had to buy a new motherboard!
The board in this build is a few years old now and came from my previous build along with most of the core parts, but the board is the oldest.

A couple of days ago I started getting random blue screens, add usual the errors don't help much but the usually referred to the RAM so I reseated it, which didn't help do I ran a windows memory test and got errors, around the time I was getting blue screens pointing towards hard drive failure, Windows corruption and memory. I re-ran Windies memory test with different combinations if my for memory sticks and then all four and it passed all tests, but now I can't get into windows...

With the randomness of the errors and having checked all connections and the power supply I figure it's most likely the motherboard, as much as I'd have liked to take this opportunity to upgrade which means switching to Intel, I just can't afford it, so an requirement AMD board is on it's way and I'll try and fit it this week and upload done photos as soon as I have time, hopefully it's going to solve the problem. In considering a clean Windows installation too as I've been having a java-based error nightmare!

On the plus side the new board had 8 sata headers so I don't have to use a pic card for two if my drives!

More soon...

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