Thanks from the original concept in my head, I wanted to have an extreme amount of cooling potential. Thanks. I am almost all done with the cutting the case up so I hope by September I should have colour and lights on the case. I am working on an update. Should be ready in the next couple of days. Preview Stay tuned.
Front Panel I first want to thank all the people who are subbed and like the thread. You're good vibes help push me harder. Thanks Guys. The Laser HiveI have to give a very special shout out to David from www.thelaserhive.com . David and I have been working on a totally custom motherboard tray, i/o shield and backplate. When I saw his products I just had to have them in my case and ever since then we have been designing the pieces that were needed to make this happen. The new motherboard tray is be made as you read this, it will be made from clear neon green 5 mm acrylic. The Laser hive not only the first place any apple modder should check out first but also does custom designing, cnc, and fabrication. Its a really neat company it you have a cool idea but don't have the specials tool to make it happen. Front Panel part one and two So for this part I did all my designing on the computer and tried my ideas a couple of times before I had a working templates. I screwed it up the first time I tried. I was feeding to fast and to large of bit.
Front Panel part two (backplate) For the back plate I used the Lain-Li case I had for scrap metal. http://mi-pcs.com/uploads/3/2/3/1/3231892/1324345.png[/IMG [IMG]http://mi-pcs.com/uploads/3/2/3/1/3231892/9822030.jpg For my next update I will cut the holes in the case to allow the fan controller and the switches through the front. Here is a preview of something I am also working on for the next update. Preview
So I finished mounting it to the front. No matter how many times I measure, I still find my self endlessly filling down. I think I have issues, just saying. I am planing on painting the back of the acrylic silver to match the rest of the build and to hide the cuts in the case.The fours screws holding the front mounted to the case will be replaced with sockets cap screws with my next batch of ordering. What do you guys think of the front.
I am working on getting the pics back on-line till then here is a little video. Enjoy For anybody using a browser that does not show the video click here.
State of things So its has been a long time since I last did an update. But I have allots of goodies to show you now. First is the custom motherboard tray, custom I/O shield and backplate. Oh I forgot to mansion Sponsored. The Laser Hive Laser Design, Cutting and Engraving at an affordable price First mod was to cut the original exhaust fan bracket and shape it to fit with the I/O shield. Two holes where drilled to allow the two bulk head fittings through. Here is what its looks like right now. Short video update. till next time
I have a lot of stuff coming. I need to finish editing couple videos and have some hardware for you guys. Also just finished bending more acrylic for the top rad shroud. If you check out the you tube channel I have an unboxing and overview of the mother board that will be going into this build. Mother board Spoiler.
There is a sniper in the building. To be more clear, its a Gigabyte G1 Sniper M5. In the past few weeks I have been getting ready to purchase the mother board, cpu and ram. Since all of these parts affect each other, I took a long time deciding if I was going Intel or AMD, which in turn set the stage at which combination of parts where going into this build. There are a few big reasons I picked Intel and most of those revolve around the G1 Sniper M5. The mATX board is loaded with features for enthusiasts. The colour scheme of the G1 Sniper M5 closly matches Umbra Aqua also. The last reason I picked this board is because of the great audio capabilities over other boards in the same price range. Umbra Aqua is very tight on space and I needed hardware that not only would work great but also do many different things without sacrificing space. On the other hand once I decided I was going with Intel chipset its was very clear early on in this build I would need a quad core CPU or more. Intel realeased there Z87 platform four months ago and with that came one very special CPU. The i7 4770K not only is it the king of the hill on the Z87 chipset but comes with a range of new technology. First of all its built on a 22nm fabrication, shrinking the die even more then 3770k. The Haswell line-up also comes with a wide array of RAID support and supports up to 6, SATA 3 (6Gbps) drives. What makes the 4770k so special to me is that it still supports Hyper Threading, thus with four cores outs puts eight threads. Todays games might not all take advantage of eight threads but some games currently do and future titles seem to be leaning towards more and more cores. That said choosing the 4770K was a no brainier. Choosing RAM for this build was much harder. When I started this build many moons ago, RAM prices where at an all time low. Now a days the price for 8GB of performance grade ram is easily over $120. So picking RAM was hard, but in the end one company really stood out. Kingston has been pumping out great hardware for years, and last year they introduced there new Hyper X Beast. With an aggrisive heat spreader and 8 layer PCB, there Hyper X Beast kits where made for pure overclockers in mind. Not only does Kingston have great products but an amazing warranty also. *forgot to add this to the update, enjoy.
Full throttle modding It is time to get back to some good old fashion modding. So now that I have a motherboard and the custom motherboard tray, I lined up where the I/O shield and back-plate where going to go. I also started bending acrylic for a shroud to cover up the rad on top part of the case. This shroud I had to be very careful, with because I was dealing with two bends plus lining up all the mounting and air flow cut outs. It was not easy, buts its done now. I still have to sand down the edges and cut end caps. The end caps will then be fused to the bent piece. At this current time I am on the fence about painting the shroud to match the case or leaving bare acrylic. I have designed the shroud to hold anther set of fans so the top rad will be able to do a push pull configuration. Enough with the explanations check out the pictures. There is still a little more to be cut from the back of the case. The project is really coming together now thank god. I am not sure how much more of this my fiancee can take.
Quick update before the case goes out for powder coating. The picture update will be up before the end of the week.
Here is a massive update. There had been some work done last couple of months but I have not had to time to upload the pictures and update the work log till now. Rear I/O Panel I had finish mounting the rear I/O. I marked where I needed to cut then started cutting. I then placed the rear I/O on and had to make a few more cuts to fit the original fan duct. Mounting Rear Fan To mount the 120 mm fan to the rear I used the original Mac Pro fan duct. I lined up where I wanted the fan to sit then used a wire fan grill to mark the holes. I used 4 rubber grommets and heavy duty fan screws to mount the fan. The end result is a fan mounted from the back side making it look really stealthy. Rad / Fan Shroud I went back to work on the rad shroud. I first started by sanding down the edge which was not flat yet. Then I traced the two ends of the shroud on acrylic. I cut the two pieces out and tried to get them as close to perfect as I could for now. I then made a jig to hold all three pieces together while I fused them together. After letting it cure for a few days I then sanded the end piece down til it was seamless to the touch. I have started sleeving the wires. I used neon green sleeving with UV green connectors. What I am hoping to be the last order arrived. Package contained, Gental Typhoon high speed fans, R9 290 water block, 90 degree fittings and some wiring stuff to hide the cables.
I'll make sure to add more pic of the sleeving in the next update. Unfortunately the ATX wires will not be sleeved because the there is not enough room. But the all fans and PCI-E will be.
