Hello! My name is Oskar, I'm 21 years old and I currently live alone in a small apartment in Sweden. This project will mark my second custom build, and I can't say how excited I am to share this journey with you. Last year I started planning my first ever custom loop, which then evolved into something else entirely and in the end it resulted in a pretty cool project which ended up getting the name "White Dream". The gallery recently hit 11000 views which is far more than I expected it to reach. With some newfound confidence I am now looking to improve from previous experiences and I've taken all critisism positive and negative with me to learn how to make a build like this better. Anyways, that was a short presentation about me. Now lets talk about my next project. With influences from one of our most iconic superheroes of all time, who also happens to have his 75th anniversary this year, I am looking to create an interesting piece with a couple of nice details to honor the caped crusader himself, more popularily known as Batman. With darker colours, mostly black with some influences of grey I will do my best to make this build as clean as possible. The case used in this build is a Hex Gear R40 with black accent packs, I will also repaint or anodize the silver coloured aluminum profiles black. A list of the hardware used in the build can be seen below: EVGA X99 Micro Socket 2011-3 Intel Core i7 5820K EVGA GTX980Ti SC+ Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 16GB Corsair HX850i Samsung EVO 850 250GB WD Green 1TB Cooling: Coming soon...
Hi everyone, I hope you had a pleasant weekend. As this build progresses, I am looking to improve my photography knowledge, including learning photoshop on a deeper level. Hopefully both you guys and me will be able to see some improvement looking at the first pictures I post here compared to the ones I will conclude the build with. For those interested, I will be using a Canon EOS 70D housing with a Canon EF24-105mm objective, for editing I will use Adobe Photoshop CS6. I appreciate every single bit of critisism, without it I will not improve at my craft. I've been polishing my photography skills by taking some pictures in raw format and then editing them in photoshop to get my own touch to them, please tell me what you think. If you want to see these pictures in higher resolution, please follow this link:http://imgur.com/a/OFmqf Friday night and saturday I put a lot of time into learning how to create my own logo in photoshop which I did succesfully. I feel proud to introduce "BY BMAWN", a short and clean logo which I made to be used as a watermark in my photos and to give my banners and posts an identity true to my goals and personality that is easy to recognize. So in the future you will notice that I have added the logo to all of my photos and if you have any suggestions or opinions they are very welcome because they will help me improve! Here's the logo by its own: It will probably be a while until next update by then I will hopefully have some hardware pictures to upload for you! See you then
Hello people! Sincerely hope that you had a nice week. Yesterday I recieved a package from Mayhems, see pictures below: The clarity of glass is way higher than say, acrylic or PETG, so hopefully this will bring out the best of the Aurora fluid that I will be using. In the package there were two bottles of Mayhems Pastel Black concentrate, one bottle of Mayhems Aurora 2 Silver concentrate and last but not least three 500mm long tubes of Mayhems brand new very own glass tubing. Can't stress how excited I am to try out glass tubing in this build and I can't thank the guys at Mayhems enough for these products. The package from highflow and my fittings will most likely arrive monday or tuesday at the latest, so this week will be hectic with a lot of building and updates (hopefully). So updates will start raining in this coming week,so please feel free to follow the thread Thats all from me today, have a pleasant weekend.
Small update: fittings got stuck in swedish customs, but it should be resolved quickly. If all goes well I should have them by the end of the week! Hope you had a nice weekend
Nice to see some activity here! The glass cutting is still being sorted out as of how I will do it, but you can cut the tubes in a number of ways, one is explained my mayhems in their video which can be found here: [video=youtube;zatHIylk2UQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zatHIylk2UQ[/video] Today I finally recieved my fittings after spending one week at swedish customs. So with that said I will most likely be able to start this build up this coming weekend! I snapped some quick pictures of what will be used in the build and also something else entirely which will make my gaming rig one step closer to being complete. An ASUS Rog Swift PG279Q. Been gaming on this since I came home and man oh man is it a good monitor. The IPS panel looks way better than the TN panel on the PG278Q. Haven't managed to get the 165Hz refresh rate working but I'll get there eventually. Last work day of the week tomorrow and I will probably start moving stuff over to my parents house to prepare for building, but tomorrow night me and some friends are going to see the new bond movie, Spectre. Updates will come more frequently now hopefully, and I'll also set up a better environment for taking pictures. Until next update I hope you'll have a great halloween! Also, a full list of the watercooling parts: Mayhems glass tubing 12MM Mayhems Black Pastel concentrate Mayhems Aurora 2 concentrate Hardwarelabs Black Ice Nemesis Radiator GTS 240 Hardwarelabs Black Ice Nemesis Radiator GTS 360 Aquacomputer Aquatube Black Bitspower CPU Block Summit EF True Black Version Alphacool VPP655 - Single (D5 pump) Bitspower D5 MOD TOP - Black "S" Model Bitspower D5 MOD KIT - Black Fractal Design Venturi HP-12 x5 Barrow fittings Note: I also bought a NZXT GRID+ to control all of the fans. I've used the regular NZXT GRID fan hub before, so I figured I would give the GRID+ a try. This will help me keep the motherboard clean from all of the fan cabling. Everything will be sleeved.
Hello everyone, I cincerely hope that you've had a great week! Before you keep on reading I'll just quickly say that this will be a text only update, since I've disassembled my main rig. Tomorrow (friday) or during the weekend I should be able to get set up with photoshop and other tools to be able to get some better content uploaded as well using my dads workstation, this update is being written on a slow laptop. Anyways, my week has been really hecic, starting sunday with packing stuff to bring to my parents home, couldn't move the stuff monday so I did it tuesday. Finally came home very late so I only had time to get set up in the workshop. Wednesday and thursday (today) though I got a lot of stuff done on the build. More on that when I can post an update with pics (probably tomorrow). I know I said that updates would be more frequent as soon as I started building but I just haven't been able to get time off to write here on the forum. So yeah, I'm sorry for not keeping my word. I will try my best to make it up to you! So for all of you who doesn't go clubbing fridays, expect a more content filled update tomorrow night. Just felt I needed to update the log. If you are really curious as of what is happening as I do it, follow my facebook page. I upload content there as soon as I work on the project.
Alright, hello again. I've managed to get some time to get set up and edit here in the "workshop". So this update I'll show you a bit of what I've been up to these last few days, I'll talk about the next steps after I explain what I did. As mentioned earlier I've disassembled the rig, tried out the custom cables I recieved from Icemodz (they worked ). Efter doing this I was able to get started on the various "case mods" that I had planned. Test mounting the radiators I found out the 'murica screws used with Hardwarelabs radiators didn't fit the brackets in the R40 so I had to do some filing but it fits fine now. Originally I had not planned to repaint the radiators, but inspecting them I made the decision the original paint finish just wouldn't fit the build. So tonight/tomorrow I will repaint them using a new technique I think will look unique and awesome, more on this when I have some results. I've also drilled the holes for the pump bracket which can be seen among these pictures. The hex gear R40 comes with an aluminum piece/plate which is intented for these kinds of "mods". It was very easy to work with, although I am very far from an expert working with metal I think I managed to get it done pretty well. The mounting plate will be repainted so it fits with the radiators. Anyways, enough talking. I need to get to work testing the pump and painting radiators and plate. Here are some pics: NSFW below :3 Obligatory GPU close-up. The bitspower summit EF CPU block. I used a M3 tap to tap the holes for the pump bracket. Screws fit like a glove! I'm going to repaint most screws as well. (I know anodizing would be better, but I can't afford it right now.) Just felt the need to snap a pic of my dads awesome trackball explorer mouse. It's very comfortable for things like editing and browsing, although the sensitivity of the ball is a bit dull. I'm spending my night here, where did you spend yours? Hope to see you tomorrow! EDIT: by demand I've resized my photos, if you want to see them uncompressed I'll upload them and post a link here later.
Hello again! Feels good being able to finally be able to keep my word regarding more frequent updates. Tools have been going hot down in the cellar and I've managed to progress a lot the last couple of days. I stayed up til half past four in the night yesterday (friday to saturday) to finish up the paint on the radiators and pump mounting plate. One thing I did not tell you yesterday is that when I went to the hardware store to shop paint cans something caught my eye. That something was Hagmans granit, a granite texturizing (is that a word?) spray paint which I thought could look awesome if I combined it with matte black paint. And yeah, needless to say the results were spectacular in my opinion. I'd love to hear yours as well! I will definately abuse this in future projects lol. In between coats (paint coats, that is) I tested the pump and after confirming that it worked I went on with re-doing the cables for the pump. The process went like this: removed lid revealing the wiring and the electronics in the pump. Soldered off the cables to be able to cut and sleeve. Cut cables and soldered them onto shortened atx cables (I didn't have a crimping tool or wire), sleeved the cables with black sleeving acquired from icemodz, soldered the cables back into the pump, drilled the hole for the cables on the lid to fit the larger sleeved cables, put on lid and mounted the pump in my bitspower modkit. And god damn I love the all black look of this build. My sleeving work isn't the best, but I managed to shorten the cable and change the connector from molex to 6-pin atx to enable direct connection to the PSU. I also spray painted some of the screws, a small detail that at least I think does magical things. After this I mounted everything back into the case to be able to plan the tube routing. I am planning on finishing up tubing runs for the build tomorrow (sunday) and hopefully I'll be able to perform a leak test on the full loop as well. Anyways, I apologize if there was too much text to read, but I feel it is a crucial part of any build log to explain the process. It's also nice to be able to recap what I did to be able learn and become better at what I do. Enjoy the pics: Tested the pump with an external power supply. First time using one of these, pretty interesting. As always I appreciate every little bit of critisism, be it photography tips or tips on how to write project logs correctly, I am all ears. If you think this project log is exactly how it should be, please let me know. If you want to lurk this thread without saying anything at all, well, you are more than welcome to do so. Until next time!
So... It turns out glass tubing is a real and true pain to handle. At least for me. I broke pretty much 70% of the pipes I tried to cut and when I did succeed in cutting them they were one or two millimetres too short or long. So, I've ordered for some more tubing and then I'll probably measure the tubing then ask my local glazier for help to get more exact cuts. Corrections and cutting smaller pieces is apparently easier if you have a diamond disc dremel bit but I don't have one and I can't afford one either right now. So I'll have to do with the tile cutter I bought today I also tried out the cables and set them as they most likely will sit when I'm finished and I really love the look of them. Mundi at Icemodz did an amazing job making custom cables for me. So yeah, today wasn't as productive as the other days. But thats just a regular sunday for you I guess. Oh, and I've applied to the Dreamhack Casemod Championship which I am really hoping to be able to participate in. Here are some pics: I hope you had an amazing weekend
Hi people. I haven't been able to progress very much on the build since I ran out of glass tubing pretty quickly. But more is one the way from Mayhems along with some more cable combs and some LED strips from Icemodz. What I did do though is that I went to the store and bought some matte black vinyl, which I wrapped the profiles with. I was thinking that the vinyl wrap would just be an extra little detail but I think it did a lot of difference. See it for yourself and tell me what you think: Not sure when I will update next, we will see when I have time to work on the build and when the new tubes arrive. Until then I wish you a pleasant week
While waiting for a care package from Mayhems with more glass tubing I decided to prepare basically most of the stuff I had planned. I "repainted" the transistors on the motherboard with a sharpie pen because they were mostly light grey+red and that just doesn't fit with the theme. So all of them are black now, some were very hard to reach so I only coloured the top. I also put vinyl on a couple places where I thought it was needed. This stuff probably won't be able to be seen when everything is mounted in the case but small details like these are important to make the build great as a whole in my opinion. What do you think? I sleeved the start button almost melting the cabling straight off with my lighter while putting on heatshrink... Hopefully it still works lol. I also eradicated my warranty for the HX850i by opening it up and repainting the fan blades. They had a grey, very dull colour with and ugly corsair sticker so the PSU got the black treatment as with everything else... I asked corsair and it did not come in black I will probably either create another fan grill or just skip the current grill completely because as it is now I don't like it. I also went to buy copper tubing to get the tubing lengths right for when I get the glass tubing. Almost makes me want to switch to copper tubes because they are beautiful and very easy to work with. But no sir, this built is meant to have glass tubing and nothing else! I drilled two out of what will be three holes in total. The two holes I drilled are for the return line to the reservoir and the other hole is for a fill port, for this I will need to get a passthrough fitting most likely. What do you think so far? Please tell me! I appreciate every little bit of feedback you've got. Here are some pics: I'll be back tomorrow with more hopefully
Glad you like it! So today I finished up the tube routing, only to find out I was two fittings short... But I've ordered them so they should arrive along with the glass tubing. As some people have told me, yes, chrome tubing looks awesome in this build. But I've got my mind set on the glass tubing and it will look even more amazing with some black dye combined with aurora. So a lot of pressure is lifted at the moment, since I've made the most difficult runs already I just have to cut the glass tubing to size when it arrives. I was really worried about the three holes at the top but I think it turned out pretty OK. In the pictures below you'll notice I didn't finish the rad->GPU and GPU->CPU. Those two are the ones I need fittings for, so I'll be able to finish those when fittings arrive. Was really hoping to be able to perform a test of the loop today but oh well, I'll just have to have patience. Enjoy the pics, not so many and not very good today though: In the picture above you can see the three holes I made, from the far left: CPU->radiator, radiator->res and lastly the one that I will use as a fillport. I probably wont use this passthrough fitting seen but I used it to test how it worked and I think it looks fine. Filling the loop will be very easy as well. Here's the "hidden" res->cpu constellation I managed to pull off. Really happy with this one as the fluid will "magically" flow to the pump when looking into the case from a front view. I probably wont update tomorrow since I wont be able to progress without the fittings but we'll see if I figure something out.
