Scratch Build – In Progress [mITX scratch rig + radbox] Nephilim - Mar 16 Update, Plasti-Dip & Mishaps

So, hi there, all!

I'm a new-comer to Bit-tech. I've read articles here and there for years, and have of course, ogled many of the mods, but I've never gotten involved in the forums - I've mostly hung out at Tom's Hardware. The reason for that is because I'm a college kid who has absolutely no access to tools, even when at home.

While that has slowed me down, I haven't let it discourage me. I've been building computers since I was twelve, but my first year of college was when I began modding, mostly thanks to ManofChalk, over at Tom's Hardware, convincing me to get into watercooling.

Fast forward a year and I had saved up for my own dremel, modded my poor bitfenix prodigy within an inch of its life... and still hadn't taken any of the pictures I had been promising ManofChalk for a year.

A year after that and I'm ready to tackle a bigger project. I'm doing a scratch-build, with some unique twists. (And no, it's totally unrelated to the articles that Bit-Tech is writing up about how to do a scratch-build; that's just awkward timing.) Since I'm doing something a lot more interesting than adding a second PCIe card to a mini itx motherboard through the mSATA port on the bottom of the motherboard, I figured it would be a good time to document the journey... and finally fulfill my promise of taking shiny pictures.

So here's what I'm up to. I'm taking my computer and shrinking it down as small as possible. I've always loved small form factor, and after upgrading a while ago to an mATX rig, I realized that I really don't need it, and will be selling that motherboard, taking my gaming rig and the family HTCP, butchering them both, and coming up with a unique beastie.

Here's what makes it rather odd: its combinations of priorities. First of all, I want it to be as tiny as possible - my goal is to make it under the "official" limit of 20 liters of volume. Second of all, I want it to be quiet... which isn't usually a concern of miniature rigs. Third, it's watercooled. And that watercooling is in the form of an external radbox. (Which, yes, is counted in the total volume.) Oh, and it's going to be totally open, so just a frame, not a case proper. Sound like fun yet?

I'm going to throw some props where they're due, first off: I want to say a huge thank you to the guys over at Tom's Hardware who have been helping me brainstorm this thing before it was even close to the stage where it was ready to be turned into a build log. I also want to thank ALS of overclock.net - his velociraptor build log from '12 gave me a lot of ideas about my layout and got me thinking hard about heat and putting things where they wouldn't normally go.




Finally, I want to give a HUGE thanks to , who actually sponsored me for this build! I was looking around trying to find a good PCIe riser cable, and unfortunately since all the bitcoin miners have realized they can use x1 to x16 cables, the only cheap cables out there have month-long shipping from China, a 30% failure rate, and a chance of taking out your GPU or motherboard with them.

When I was looking for alternatives, I wrote to the good folks at Samtec, and I explained what I was doing, and they donated a custom, ~$100 cable for me that I would not have otherwise been able to afford. They were wonderful to work with, and the cable is head and shoulders above anything else I could have found.

Mods, I'll be updating the rest of this with pictures and proof of work in the next couple hours - I have it all, but I want to take the time to write up a proper build log from my notes over at Tom's Hardware and to put things in chronological order. Thanks!

 

So. When I imagined this thing, I was trying to think about what I already have to work with.

Here are a couple shots of my current rig. I'm not incredibly happy with it, especially when it comes to the watercooling. It's an absolute mess, and horribly cramped:




I'm keeping my i5, and my 670. My hard drives and such are staying, but the case is getting sold, the motherboard is getting sold, and most of the watercooling is getting sold.

I absolutely love the Apogee Drive II when it comes to watercooling in a small space, but it has one fatal flaw... and that is that it's hard-mounted to the motherboard, which means that its vibrations carry throughout the entire case. Combine that with the fact that the internally mounted reservoir causes hideous watercooling loop tangles, and, well... I'd like to do something about it. (In my old prodigy, the reservoir was mounted off the back with lines leading in. I thought I didn't have to do that in the newer, larger case, but, well, things are tight.)

So I'm going to keep the 2x140mm radiator and its fans. That's it of the watercooling. The rest of that is going to get turned into a watercooling kit and sold for a reasonable price to someone who wants to get into basic watercooling of the cpu with great room for expansion.

Why am I keeping the top radiator, you ask? Because it is going to be part of my new radbox. I'm going pretty ambitious with this thing, considering that I'm trying to get the entire rig to come in under 20 liters in volume. The radiator box is going to be a triangle with the corners cut off. There are going to be a pair of radiators mounted on two sides of this triangle, with a pair of fans as exhaust on top of the power and water ports. On the inside of this thing I'm going to cram a brand new PWM d5 pump (that's going to be decoupled on memory foam - ahh silence) and a slightly larger reservoir. [Having a tiny reservoir makes filling and draining the loop a pain, and since this rig is going to travel a lot...]

As for the computer itself, it's pretty much as crammed as I can make it without using the SFX power supply that I would so dearly love to have. However, since I'm hoping to upgrade to a dual-maxwell "890" in the future, I'm definitely keeping my Seasonic X650.

I spent a LOT of time trying to figure out the best layout for this computer, with designs ranging from the bloody hideous to the incredibly long. (I was trying to replicate the velociraptor design, but the reason he succeeded so well was he was able to shave height by cracking open his power supply. The x650 is pretty well crammed in there, so taking off the casing doesn't really gain me anything.)

Anyways, here are the final* renders of my layouts for the radbox and computer. The reason the hard drives are where they are is because they're going to be isolated as well - I'll talk about that when I get there.

 

The first thing that I did when I was plotting out this project? Well, obsess over it and go crazy teaching myself how to use a cad program so that I could make models and spend several nights in a row getting no sleep trying to figure all this out.

What did I do after that? Why, spend money, of course! xP





That's a Swiftech D5 PWM vario with an EK top, a koolance reservoir (because of how customizable they are), four Swiftech quick disconnects, various fittings including bitspower 90 degree angles, barbs and luxury clamps, a Koolance CPU-380I waterblock, Heatkiller GTX 680 "hole edition" GPU block, and a second Black Ice Stealth radiator with fans.

I want to take a second to talk about the radiators here. They're possibly one of the most important parts of this rig, and I mean that. Without these things, I wouldn't be able to make this setup the way I want to. The reason these things are special is because they're only 30mm thick, but they have an incredibly high FPI. That works fine, however, because the fins themselves are thinner than anything else out there, which gives me the cooling power of a much larger radiator in a much thinner profile. Since these things plus the fans have to still make room in the center of the triangle for the pump and reservoir...

(As a side note, it's been way too long since I took trig. It took me two days to realize that inscribing a square within an equilateral triangle is actually insanely easy. You just make one side of the square be an equilateral triangle, figure out its height, add that to the height of the square, and then you have the height of your overall triangle.)

 

Unfortunately, things kinda stalled out here. Like I said, I'm a college student, and I don't have access to power tools.... that means that even though I was able to buy a couple things, I didn't have any way of working on them. I don't know why I did this, but I ran out to home despot, and bought the lumber I needed... which means that it was just sitting there, taunting me!



I also happened to make a purchase on newegg flash. Pay attention to this one, because it's still got me stumped! You guys know those RGB light strips, right? They come with M5 backing, a little remote, so forth and so on. Cool little things. Well... mine has problems.



These things were something like $26. The lights themselves are the same as every other kit, but the controller and such are, erm... cheap quality. I was playing around with the remote and about half the buttons aren't even soldered correctly. However, that's fine for what I want them for.

My radbox is going to have three molex connections running to it - one of which will only be used to power two fans. It will also have two PWM connections, so here's what I'm thinking. I want to take these lights and make them automatic. They would take power from the molex connection, and do one of two things:

1) Either (the easier option, I think), I would take the PWM signal and piggy back it to the power on the lights - basically they would just be shining white, but the intensity of the light would vary depending on how intense the fans are being run at.

2) I would get a temperature sensor and hook up the RGB lines so that the color goes from blue to red as the temperature increases. The trouble is that I'm pretty sure this option would require an actual PCB in order to control the gradation, wouldn't it? Unless there's a temperature sensor that runs variable amounts of voltage through it.

Anyways, I could use some help with trying to figure out how to wire this up - if you guys have ideas, throw them out there!

 

Now, This update was from just half a week ago, but it was huge for me!

This is when I got a sponsor!

Here's what happened - I had been looking around for PCIe risers. I knew that I wanted to move my graphics card to a place not on my motherboard, but the trouble was, there wasn't anything good out there! The only PCIe x16 cables I could find had month-long shipping from China, a 30% failure rate, and a chance of taking out your GPU or motherboard with them.

So I was looking for decent alternatives, and I found the website of Samtec. Their website is a little confusing at first, because they cater to large companies that are ordering something exact to custom specifications.

I submitted a quote request for a 14cm PCIe extender; theirs was good looking, obviously good quality, and I had found another modder online which had used their cables to extremely good effect. Unfortunately, I was a little bit crushed when I got my quote back and saw that it was going to be $95 for the parts before shipping... but only $65 per unit if I bought five of them! Woo hoo!

So I wrote back to them, and I explained my circumstances - that I'm trying to build a small form factor computer, which requires a flexible PCIe riser, and that theirs is by far the best on the market, and the only one that's not, well, a huge risk.

They responded, and, to my amazement, said that they were approving me for a sample - meaning they were building the exact cable that I needed and were sending it to me, entirely free!

Two days later, I had a very, very sexy package waiting for me on my doorstep:








The unfortunate part of this is that when I asked about it, I kinda messed up. After a whole bunch of measuring, I thought I had exactly what I needed. Turns out, I had exactly what I needed if the cables just ended in the connections. Unfortunately, I forgot to factor in the height of the PCBs on the cable, so now I have to mull over whether I should go out and buy a new cable that's the right length, or live with having my graphics card seated a little higher than I might prefer.

That, however, was entirely my fault, and the cable works beautifully! There is basically zero difference between having the cable in there and having an uninterrupted connection. I would totally consider that worth the $100 as opposed to a cheap, ugly, $30 connector that has a 30% DOA rate and a chance of frying your motherboard or graphics card.

 

And now I'm actually caught up to, well, yesterday now. xP

I actually managed to do stuff!

So, yesterday. I woke up at a horribly early hour (for me, that is!), in order to get some work done. I had done some jewelry work for my mother's boss as a favor to her, and her husband just happened to be a field architect, so he brought over his skill saw, portable tablesaw, other miscellaneous tools, and most importantly, his ever-so-vast knowledge. I was incredibly grateful to both have him let me use his tools and to have him teach me how to do this - I like woodworking and was quite happy to have the chance to learn more.

Of course... it started out a little boring. We measured. And then we measured some more.





After we measured, we started doing some cuts. That's where things got a little... interesting. Do you guys remember my pretty little diagrams way up at the beginning of this post? I had also done out some diagrams plotting out exactly the cuts I wanted to make - a couple 30 degree cuts off the diagonal, which allowed me to make ninety degree cuts off of those. See the image below for clarification of this brilliant plan.



Yeah, that plan lasted all of, oh, say, thirty seconds. See, my naive little self didn't stop to consider that there ain't a tool in the world that's easily going to make a cut at a thirty degree angle lengthwise through a 4x4. Even an industrial tablesaw would take some finagling to get it to behave. And we had this:



Yeah, that poor little baby saw was struggling so hard it wasn't even funny. My plan got thrown out the window, and we ended up lopping off the tips of the 4x4 and then cutting it diagonally - the plan was to then cut shims to take the 45 degree angle to a 30 degree angle and thus still end up with a face perpendicular to the base.

THAT plan lasted just about until the first moment we tried to cut a 4x4 straight down the diagonal. The blade itself could only barely make it past halfway, but that wasn't the problem... we were asking so much of this poor little $100 tablesaw that it choked and died... twice... on the first cut. I'm really glad that we didn't burn out the motor, since the tool wasn't mine, but for the entire duration of this thing, the motor was inches away from it - it was pouring heavy acrid smoke.

However, by going a couple inches and then waiting a minute for the thing to cool off before cutting again, we eventually made our way through cutting down all three triangles. At that point we looked at our plan for shims and realized that it would be easier to just cut the damn things to the 30 degree angles we needed, so we asked a little bit more of the tablesaw, and ended up with a beautiful design that I couldn't possibly be happier with!

Here are a few glamour shots - ignore the wood under the motherboard tray - that's just there to put it in place for a sense of perspective. On the left is the radiator box, and on the right is the base of the computer with the motherboard tray sitting in place - the graphics card will be sitting on its side in front of it.





So yeah, I'm getting really excited! This was the hold-up, so now all I have to do is sand these beasties down, finish them, and I'll be nearly done with the radbox. The computer itself is going to take some more work, but that's all stuff that me and my dremel can handle.

 

So, that leaves me with just a couple questions and my game plan from this point forward:

1) Those dang lights. How in the world am I going to wire them so that they behave themselves?

2) Grounding. I'm a little worried because I'll be using a wooden case, rather than a metal one. I can't find anything definitive - is this going to be an issue, or will the power supply keep everything grounded?

3) Color scheme. So far I'm thinking the main colors are silver and black. The SATA cables that I'm going to be using, however, are a kind of metallic light blue. I can also get Plasti-Dip in what I believe should be this exact color, that I can do little accents here and there in, and I can use a little bit of blue die in my loop just to get that beautiful glass marble effect. What do you guys think? I know it's not a particularly inspired color scheme, but I think that with a functionalist design like this that it'll work.

4) My build log! What do you guys think? This is the first time I've done anything like this, so I have no idea if I'm not including enough pictures, not describing things in enough detail... any advice you have on this angle would be much appreciated.


There are my questions, so, here's my plan from this point forward. The first thing on my list is obviously to sand down those pieces, as they're incredibly rough right now. Then I need to mount them to each other, and figure out a way to mount the radiators. (I'm thinking metal L-brackets. I'll explain after my next trip to the home despot.)

Do you guys remember that stuff back from 2009 that basically became the thing to mod with for a period of several months, and then disappeared entirely? It's called Plasti-Dip, and it's basically a spray-on rubber. What I'm thinking is after I sand my wood down to a rough finish, I use the primer for that stuff, which will act like a sealant, and then use the plasti-dip. That will make the wood pretty much waterproof in case something goes wrong, it will protect it since it's soft wood, it'll give me a nice surface (think the soft-touch material on bitfenix cases), and it'll tie into the build way better than finished wood would.

After I get ahold of that and coat the basic build, I have a few long-term projects:

a) Mounting the hard drives quietly. I'm thinking I coat them in plasti-dip, since it'll help with noise, and then mount them in rubber bands - I'm hoping I can take advantage of this solution, that's apparently one of the best out there with a little tweaks, but adjusted for small form factor. You can buy a replacement pack that's just the rubber bits, which I think is perfect - it'll let me make my own posts to connect the bands to.

b) mounting the graphics card. The replacement bands I bought for the hard drive come in packs of three, so I'll have two left over. I think if I have hooks on the front and back of the graphics card, I can use those two bands to hold the graphics card in place. No idea if that's going to work until I try it, though.

 

First of all I've got to give some feedback on your log. Post bigger pictures man! Yours are maybe half the size limit.

Also take pictures more frequently so you can actually see the individual steps of your build process. I'm on my first build log myself and I know it's easy to forget taking pictures. Or maybe you have and just didn't post them?

For example a few pictures of that saw in action would have been interesting.

I like the hexagonal radiator box, looks really interesting! But after reading you're thread I'm left with a few questions regarding the design.

How do the 'radiator box' and the PC fit together? are they supposed to be separate or do they stack?
Are the components supposed to stay in the open or is there going to be an enclosure?
How are the components going to be mounted?

I don't know about you, but when I designed my case there was always a tendency of thinking "eh, I'll figure out the details like hard drive mounts and so on when I'll get there". But as I found out that way of thinking is kind of dangerous because the saying "the devil is in the details" really is true.

If the screenshots in your second post are all you have in terms of plans then you should probably figure out in detail how to mount everything before you start building. As of now those renders look more like a layout concept than a drawing that is suitable for manufacturing.

I hope my criticism doesn't come of as too harsh, because I'm not trying to be. I do think there is a lot of potential in your design and you definitely seem passionate abut it.

Looking forward to future updates and good luck with your project!

 

Bigger pictures I can do - I was scaling them down drastically to try to not make the thing too much of a wall of pictures. I'll come back through later today and update them. One thing, I found conflicting info in a couple places - is the size limit 800x800?

From here on out I'll have a lot more pictures, but for the woodworking in particular, it was hard, because I was actively doing the work, but all the tools and guidance were from this guy doing me a favor, so I didn't want to annoy him by constantly stopping to take photos.

Glad it piqued your interest!

They're supposed to be separate - basically what's going to happen is the radbox is going to have two radiators mounted on two of its faces, blowing air in. The pump and reservoir will be sitting on the inside, and on the third face, there will be two fans below it. Below those fans will be quick disconnects for the power and PWM cables, along with the watertubing - basically the only watercooling parts on the computer itself will be the waterblocks and connections between them, and then it will lead out the back of the computer to the radbox where the pump and cooling is.

As for the case, I'm still working on a few of the issues - mostly where to find an M4 tap for the motherboard standoffs. The case itself are going to stay in the open; since there aren't going to be any fans on the computer itself, there's no need for a case to protect it, and the looks should be all fancy.

The motherboard is on that top plate that you see in the pictures, which will have the center cut out of it. The power supply will be directly below it, and to the side of the power supply (at the front end of the motherboard), the hard drives will be mounted with the rubber bands, which I'll take pictures of and talk more about in one or two updates.

The devil definitely is in the details, and you're right, I do have a little bit of that thinking, but the trouble is that most of the parts that are going to be used in this mod are still in my current computer! I would definitely otherwise have a full plan drawn up, but I'm comfortable enough with what I have that I'll be able to make it work. I have a plan for pretty much every part, it's just not drawn up.

The trouble, again, is that I don't have full access to the parts being used, and I also don't have the woodworking skills or tools. The plans you see are two out of god knows how many dozens that I've hashed out and tried to make work over the past month, talking with my grandfather about what would and wouldn't work and what cuts are possible to make and so forth.

If you want to see more of my planning, go look at the link to my posts on Tom's Hardware - I used that thread to hash out a LOT of the build kinks while I was waiting to be able to cut wood, since I didn't want to post here without having work done, since that's against this site's terms.

No worries on the criticism, I absolutely appreciate it - and trust me, I'm used to grading English papers; criticism is no stranger to me.

Thanks for the post and the support, and more importantly for the advice!

 

No problem, glad you found it useful.

Why do you need a tap for the standoffs?

 

There we go, everything is all updated now with the right resolution pictures. (You're right, that looks way, way better!)

Sorry it took me so long - had some drama this weekend in the form of an unexpected reappearance of an estranged family member.

I need a tap for the standoffs in order to mount the motherboard to the wooden tray I'm making for it, don't I? Or is there a better way around this that I'm not thinking of?


Anyways, I'm off to go do some sanding now. I haven't heard back from the guy I emailed with a few questions about Plasti Dip, so I might just go down to the hardware store and see if they've got any of it, along with the primer. You know, just for experimental purposes.

 

The next wave of updates hearkens!

Hey guys!

Alright, so, here comes the next round of updates. It's been a busy week, both in real life and in modder's life. I've started going to a couple meetings, I've had classes, I've gotten a lot of work done outside and breathed in more sawdust than I thought I had lung space.

Anyways, what you guys want are the pictures! Now, I have some unfortunate news. The first thing I started with this week was cable modification - cutting everything to size, sleeving it, praying that it all works. The cabling is going to be what holds the black and silver theme together, but I'm not sure how exactly to make it behave in terms of keeping its pattern straight. Any of you guys have thoughts on this?

Here are some glam pics. First, the 24 pin power, the 8 pin CPU power, and the back end of the PCI connectors:







It's not amazing, but I'm hoping that it will look pretty good once everything is up and finished.

Anyways, I'd like to take a second to apologize to you guys. I don't have any photos of the cable work in progress, because my... helper... decided to commit suicide.

That's right. This mod had casualties.





My dear Nexus 5 took one for the team and is now down for the running until I can get a new screen set and figure out what's preventing it from turning on. (Side note? It's really hard to take a photo of cracks in black mirrored glass. xP )

EDIT: Hey, how do you make links to a specific SPOT in a thread? I can figure out the URL of just a single post, but what do you to to make it be a link to the thread that jumps you to the right place and lets you keep reading from there?

 

Anyways, moving on, I'm now using a cheap little DSLR camera to take my photos. The resolution is far better and I would almost argue that the color is better, but there's something to be said for the image stabilization in the Nexus's camera - that thing does an incredible job of giving a clear photo.

But anyways, after doing up all the power cables, I took the plunge (pun intended) and took my graphics card out of the computer to throw a waterblock on it. This is the first time I've included a graphics card in the loop, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I've got an EVGA GTX 670 Cheesecake, though, so I knew compatibility would be easy - just buy a GTX 680 waterblock! xP

(I'm wishing now I had also bought a backplate. At the time I didn't because I wanted as few things saying '680' as possible, but I wasn't really able to remove the stickers as easily as I was hoping, and I don't want to take sticker remover to the PCB just in case...)

Anyways, here's what took me a couple hours. If I were to try it again, I'm sure it would be a lot faster, but... heck, just the sheer number of screws involved is a pain.



So I get all the ones on the back unscrewed, go to lift up the shroud... wait no, I forgot that one in the upper right corner that's holding the PCI slot on. Take that off, and let's try again. Damn, missed these tiny black guys on the side of the shroud:



After a couple more rounds of that, I finally get the shroud off, and take a look at how the heatsink is made. It's quite interesting, actually - that top half is just the plastic cover and the GPU heatsink. The bottom half is a metal cover... apparently that provides enough dissipation with the airflow of the fan that there don't even need to be fins or ridges over the voltage regulators and such.



But anyways, I get the shroud off, and then it's time to clean!



I'd say that's pretty clean, what do you guys think?



Now it comes time to get it ready for the waterblock with thermal paste and thermal pads. Again, first time dealing with a GPU block, so it was my first encounter with thermal pads as such. Their texture and consistency is nothing like what I was expecting!

The stock pads on the air cooler were almost rubbery, and these thermal pads were a lot more sticky... and thin enough that getting the plastic off one side was easy (just bend the thing and the pad will go with the bent strip letting you snag the closer side), but then getting the second plastic strip off was absolute hell! I eventually ended up cheating and bending both strips before removing either one:



I also noticed that the thermal pad picked up dust and trace oils pretty quickly. (Even though I had doused my fingertips in 99% isopropyl alcohol to help keep that from happening.) It seemed pretty much unavoidable, so I'm assuming that's factored into things?

I also ran up against another issue - in order to screw the waterblock on, you have to turn the card upside down, but as soon as you do, the DVI and power connectors raise the card off level, and the block just falls to the tabletop. That was solved after a few minutes of frustration by creative use of the hard foam that the waterblock came shipped on to protect it.



Finally, everything was finished and I had a water-ready graphics card! (Though I forgot to flush the waterblock first - I'm hoping that it's machined well and not going to be full of gunk like radiators are. Rads are usually the problem anyways.)



Isn't it purdy?

 

A few days ago, I began to work on the wood again - this is getting exciting! Aside from one or two pieces, it's now ready for the plasti dip and final assembly!

The same guy who let me borrow his tools and skills to do the original cuts also let me borrow his sander - a funny little thing that you'll get to see in "action" later. It's a pretty inexpensive tool, and I was preparing to buy one for myself, but it ended up being pretty underwhelming. I'm used to working with a standing belt sander, and with a fraction of the power of that and a fraction of the mobility of a dremel attachment, well...

It's still a useful tool, but it fills a middle ground I don't know I have much need for. If it's something you need, for pretty much anything that a belt sander wouldn't work for, it's lovely.



I dedicated a day that I had free from work to just go outside and work on this thing, so I set things up pretty nicely, with all my tools laid out to bear:



The dremel is hung up safely with an extension tip, just like they tell you to:



Safety is important, folks! No out-of-control dremels lopping of fingertips allowed!

...tripping hazards, possible electric fires, and brutal murders of phones, however, are an absolute possibility. I kind of failed when it came to safe wiring. In case you can't tell, that's hanging off the ground at about waist height.



Unfortunately, that wasn't the only thing that caused me issues during that day - take a look at this thing. That's kinda not supposed to be on the outside of this extension:





Yeah, that's what I found when I wondered why my dremel was running but the bit wasn't spinning. I take off the extension to have a look at it, and this thing just falls right out. I made do without it, but it means that my work was a lot less clean than it should have been.

Oh, and for those of you who were wondering, the bit I have on my dremel there is a specific wood cutting bit. I cannot be enthusiastic enough about this dang thing; it lasts forever and chews through wood like it were mildly firm brie.

 

So, now we get to the actual, you know, modding.

First thing that I did was take the vibrating sander to the wood pillars that I had cut out last update. Remember these guys?



Also, it turns out that this was not a rotating sander like I was expecting, it's an oscillatory sander. That makes it rather hard to catch in action, as vibrating bits aren't very exciting. (Well, at least not when wood and power tools are involved.)



That reminds me of the other reason why I really don't care for the sander - in order to use it, the power button has to be held down the entire time; it has no toggle. It was obviously meant to be used two handed, but when dealing with something like this, without any clamps, I was kind of doomed.

After an interminable 20 minutes and very well vibrated arms, however, the result isn't half bad:



Everything went smoothly for all three pillars, except one of them gave me an issue. I think this was the first one we cut, and the tablesaw slipped significantly halfway through the cut, which gave me a rather awful ridge to try to deal with. I attempted to sand it down as well as I could, and I'll use hole-filler to fix it if it needs it and isn't just hidden by the plastidip. (I don't know what that goop's actual name is - it's what you use to fill the holes left by nails in the wall when you're painting.)



So, after I took care of that, I went to town with the top of the radbox. Remember how I was going to have the reservoir stick up out of the top for far easier filling? And how it's an 80mm diameter circle exactly? Yeah, I should have waited and done the smart thing and bought a hole saw to make it work exactly.

Unfortunately, I tried to do it with a pilot hole and a dremel, which turned out... poorly.





So yeah, that's going to cause me some trouble. I think my best plan of action is to get some air-drying foam clay, line the circle with that, and mould it to give me an even, tight-fitting seal on the reservoir. *fingers crossed.*

 

But wait, there's more! This was a busy day for me.

The next thing that I started on was the motherboard tray - this is the piece that's going to sit above the power supply and support the motherboard / provide half the support for the graphics card.

Here's what the poor thing looked like before I let my dremel get at it. Note that this is all freeform, as I'm going entirely without tools, so I was just trying to get as close to right angles as I could with nothing but a straight edge.

I figured that sanding was going to mess it up a little anyways, and hoping that it was all going to be taken care of when it was coated in rubber and in place.



After I drilled the first three holes, I went back inside and made triple sure that I wasn't about to cut out a part that I was going to be needing. Oh, and sneak peek at the motherboard I'm going to be using!



Unfortunately, this 'hole' process was just about the most frustrating I had that day. Because of a combination of a thick center drill, small hole drill, and the pressboard, the holesaw would get clogged after going but halfway through the wood, and when it made it through, would be nearly impossible to unclog.



I ended up having to wait for the drill to cool down again, unscrew the hole bit, and then take a few minutes pushing and prying and leveraging the plug of wood out of there, then taking a sharp blade to scrape out the inside so that the particulate that was stuck there would come free. And I had to do that every hole I drilled.

Eventually, though, I got a nice cut-out and sanded it down so that it's pretty decent looking, if I do say so myself:





After that, I got started on a small, but important part - the insert that will go under the fans on the exhaust side and provide ports for the water and power lines. It should have been an incredibly easy piece - just cut it down to size, drill the water line holes, and cut out a slot for the cables. Unfortunately, it turned into an absolute cluster... and did so after I invested a lot of time in making it work.

The first issue was that the pressboard I'm using is too thick. I'm using Swiftech quick disconnects, which are incredibly modular - I removed the female G 1/4 heads and replaced them with bulkheads. The problem is that they're not very thick bulkheads, so I have to make the wood thinner. With a dremel. That was a bit of a process:







Eventually, though, it worked perfectly! I'm really happy with how this turned out, and think it's going to look great after painting - it's going to slide into the bottom of the radbox and just disappear.



Here's what the front will look like:



Anyways, I'm incredibly happy with this bit, except for one thing. When I went to make the cutout for the wires on the other side of the holes, I wasn't sure if I just wanted to have the wires run under a slot in the wood, or (which I would prefer) have the molex and PWM connectors actually mounted in the wood somehow. I was going to go with the slot method because it was easier, and would only require the sacrifice of being able to remove the cables from both the radbox AND the computer, but I messed up and made the slot WAY too thick:



I'm brainstorming about ways to fix this, and I'm thinking since I'm already going to be using air drying foam clay, I'll expand this hole and use the clay and hot glue to actually mount the molex and pwm connections flush with the plate.

 

Anyways, I'm going to finish up this update with some news about what I'm going to be doing in the future and a couple questions.

First, I've ordered a bunch of plasti dip, which is set to get here on thursday. Can't wait to play around with this stuff.

Second, I ran to the hardware store yesterday. I picked up a lot of what I needed at Lowe's, and then as it turned out, Harbor Freight was having a blowout sale, so I picked up a lot more. A lot of it wasn't needed, but I think I now have all the bits and pieces I needed in order to make everything work; especially the mounting of the hard drives and GPU.

I'll give you guys a teaser of this stuff either tomorrow or tuesday, and include it and the plastidip and a bunch more in my next big update next weekend.

Anyways, that's what my plans are so far, so lemme ask you guys some questions.

1) Still looking for some answers on that dang RGB light strip. At some point here I'll be dismantling my current computer in its entirety. (which I'm loathe to do because even though I can't game on it, I'm still writing my updates with it, and would have to switch to using the netbook that only exists for taking notes at school.) When I do that, however, I'm going to play around with how to power this dang thing... but any pointers in the right direction would be absolutely valuable.

2) Do the Bit-Tech forums have a 'sales' listing sub-section anywhere? I can't seem to find it, and it would be valuable, since this project is going to leave me with a very high end case, high end motherboard, full watercooling loop, and extremely nice monitor that I'll be looking to sell to recoup some of the costs of the mod from.

3) Any thoughts on the best material to use as filler would be lovely. Heck, any thoughts at all would be lovely, or things you're interested in, want to know more about, or think I'm doing wrong. I would absolutely love to get an actual discussion going in here - as it is, it feels rather lonely, with it mostly just being build log.

4) What exactly does it take to get your mod nominated as a MOTM? I'm still a little unclear on that - does it require a finished mod, or an in-progress one? Is it something that I should be filling an application for myself, or something someone else nominates me for? I know I'm going up against the best of the best, but I have to give it a shot, and would love to make it.

Oh, and you know how the cable guys sponsored me? I have to give another, even HUGER thanks to . When I emailed them and told thme that I had been a dummy who forgot that PCBs add length and I needed a cable that was 4mm longer, I asked them if I could send my cable back and pay the difference, and if that was a no-go after already giving me a free cable, if I could just buy the correct one.

They replied within a few hours and said that since it was friday and they were in a good mood, as soon as I sent the wrong cable to them, they would send me the right one... for free still.

I owe them a HUGE thank you!

(I'll also be looking for a cheap-o cable of the standard sort that hopefully won't fry my motherboard or GPU and will let me do a comparison between the two and review them. I can tell you right now that I've tried out the Samtech cable and it gives me pretty much the exact same performance as being connected to my PCIe slot directly.)

 

I can at the very least help you with one of those questions..

Yes, there's the Marketplace. IIRC, you have to reach 75 posts before you get access to it. Go and have some fun, I recommend this thread, but also look around.

 

Ahh, fair enough. I've poked my nose around the general forums, but haven't run across the Marketplace yet. Oh well - by the time I have my build log completed I should have gotten there.

Thanks!

 

Hello once again, boys and girls!

First off, I'd like to apologize straight away about my absence this week. I was planning on putting up teasing pictures of what was supposed to be in the update this weekend, but, well... it kind of didn't work, so I didn't have any teasing pictures.

Which brings me to the update... this isn't going to be nearly as exciting of an update as the past several have been - mostly because I've been running into problem after problem after problem.

However, I still have some fanciness for you guys, so here goes!

The first thing that I tried to do this week was work on the hard drive and graphics card mounting system. Here's a pretty shot of everything all laid out, ready to be played with:



Unfortunately, I ran into issues almost immediately - the eye bolts which I was hoping to turn into my rubber-band retention system were way, way too tough to be cut. I couldn't even barely dent them!



That was okay, though, because as it turned out, the white hooks which I bought as a "just in case they work" ended up fitting almost perfectly! So I got some scrap pieces of wood, and set about trying to figure things out.



The reason there are so many holes in that thing is because I was trying to figure out exactly where the posts needed to be in order to stretch the rubber bands the right amount to mount the hard drives with.

Unfortunately, I still haven't figured that out. See, the problem is that those posts were just held up by screws from the bottom... meaning that as soon as the rubber bands were put on there, they would turn, or even just straight up fall over. It was bad.

So then I figured that I needed some more structure to this thing. I went out and cut a couple more posts, and will use these in between the supports to keep them straight and upright. (The picture isn't quite accurate - the posts will be going in between the uprights, not on top of them.)



I'll be trying that this upcoming week and seeing if it works any better. If that still doesn't work, my next option is aluminium - I have a guy who will work with me to make it work correctly, and at this point I'm thinking it might be my only option.