Hi everyone. I have a project running alongside of Rivalry. At some point between Xmas and new years 2014 I was contacted by Jens from Antec Germany. He asked me to do a project for them on their new P380 case. Getting asked to do something like this is an honour for me and after looking up the new P380 case I was more than happy to say yes. Especially since it is planned to be their demo build. It will be shown at CeBIT 2015 in Hannover at the Antec boot and after that they will use it as a demo build when going to LAN parties etc. Sounds like a great plan to me! So basically in exactly 1 month from today (februari 16th 2015) the project needs to be finished and in Hannover. Challenging allright Jens and I talked over the ideas for a build and Jens wanted a full custom loop watercooled system and would feature 2 360mm radiators as it has room for that out of the box. So that is what I am going for. We have a couple of partners in the project. They will be announced later on when I receive their hardware and show them in here. I like to thank each of them individually that way. This project is different from my regular projects in that it will feature a lot of brand logos of partners in it. It is a demo build so needs to express the brand names and logos as well to the public. But let’s first start with the organizing brand for this project: Antec. First of all I received their hardware that will be used in this project. This way I could measure about, get ideas, etc etc. I received their new P380 full tower case, an EDGE 750 80Plus gold rated power supply (fully modular w00t) and 10 TrueQuiet Pro 120 fans. I chose this fan out of all of their fans because of the shape. I have never seen a fan like this. The fanblade is part of the case itself and fitted to a backplate. The shape kind of reminds me of an Nvidia reference cooler fan. But that is probably just me Here are some pictures: I want to thank Antec for this great opportunity and especially Jens. Needless to say when it arrived I instantly started unboxing and looking at the case from various angles. Getting a feel for the size and placements. And then started tearing it apart I needed to test fit fans and radiators to see how much room there was left for other parts. I got me 2 360mm radiators that are about 45mm thick. As you can see the fans have soft pads on the corners to make the fans quiet, also they all have a switch on each fan to lower the rpm from 1.200 rpm to 600 rpm. As I was looking for ways to mod the case and make it ready for some customizing I started by cutting out the rear grills. I have made a cover for it to go over the rear panel. It is shown here in sand blasted plexiglass, but it will be painted black. From the panel you can probably already guess one of the partners. See you all at the next update
Thanks Colin! Hey buddy, good to see you here. Thank you Martijn, DHL should have the package underway to me now with the hardware. I can't wait!
Welcome aboard! ------------------------------------------------------------ Before we go to more building and modding I want to show the hardware that some partners have gathered for this project. Forst of them is GeIL. They have a long relationship with the Antec rep whos project this is. It was unthinkable for him to not have them on board. So there they are. Donating 2 240GB SSDs and 2 120GB SSDs and two dual channel sets of their Evo Potenza DDR3 ram. It is rated at 2400 Mhz. So defenitely not too shabby. One set in black and one set in white. Why? Check out in a next update. Here are some pictures of the package and unpacking. Thank you very much for joining in on this project GeIL http://www.geil.com.tw/home
Love the detailing on those ssd's, they'd be awesome for Nvidia Battlebox or similar. Great list of sponsors, congrats it makes it so much easier and cheaper
Thanks Colin This time it is not so much my sponsor though. I have no idea who to contact and thank for this at GeIL It is a partner of my Antec rep. Not complaining or anything. This is how they work amongst eachother and get demo builds done. They basically trade hardware and favours. I am really happy it happens for this project as well. Because you are right, it makes it much less expensive to create something.
I am trowing in a bit of modding stuff before I show more hardware. I was cutting out holes in the rear of the case in the previous update. I did this to get rid of those odd grills. I drew a cover to replace it. I never took a photo of it apart from with my phone so here is a picture of it fitted to the case. I also wanted to do something different with the SSDs that GeIL sent for the project. The Antec rep. realy wanted to use orange in the build. Preferably UV orange. So I bought UV orange plexiglass and designed some covers for the SSDs. They are actually shaped like the Evo Potenza heatsinks (2 sticks together). I wanted to make it look like something GeIL related. I also made 2 360 grills for the fans on the rads. Also UV orange. They will be partially covered later on. Of course like always I sleeved some cables (as I was waiting for hardware to arrive). Chose to work with extensions this time. See you at the next update
Thanks. There aren't many Antec projects around anymore. Hopefully with new cases coming out there will be more in the future Thank you Mark!
I would like to introduce the other partner for this project that are good contacts of Antec themselves. It is the brand MSI. They have decided to join in on the project with a black and white Z97S SLI Krait motherboard and two GTX 970 Gaming gfx cards. I am very happy to have these in the project. Sounds like a powerfull combination to me. Especially paired with the GeIL superfast ram and an Intel i7 CPU. Here are some photos of the splendid hardware. I want to thank MSI for being a partner in this project with such beautiful hardware. Next update modding again