Welcome to my new project! I've been planning and preparing this build since the beginning of this year and now i can finally start. But first, i want to thank my sponsors: ASUS ROG Deutschland CaseLabs Blacknoise CoolForce / Nanoxia Aquacomputer Without you this project would not be possible! Let's start with the components of this build: Case: CaseLabs SMA8 black Hardware: Intel i7 5820k (MB tba) (RAM tba) 2x GTX 1080 Silverstone ST1000-G Evolution 2x WD Red 3TB SSDs: Samsung, Crucial Watercooling: EK Supremacy Evo (EK GPU Blocks) 2x EK XRES DDC incl. TUBE 250 Aquacomputer airplex 2/420 Aquacomputer airplex modularity system 280 2x Aquacomputer airplex modularity system 280 incl. connector Fittings by CoolForce / Nanoxia Aquaero 6 PRO incl. passive cooler 2x Temperature Sensor Noiseblocker NB-eLoop B12-PS NoiseBlocker NB-BlackSilent Pro PK-PS Other: MDPC-X Sleeve I will take over some aspects of my "white99" build, such as the linear tubing, two sLights, etc. Nevertheless, everything will be completely different. Now i want to show you some photos of the assembly of the SMA8. And of course some of the complete case That's it for today, i need to work on some other things. I'll post some photos of the other components the next days.
It's... Just a load of photos of yet another Case Labs, it's not even a different colour or anything. Should have just waited until you had the other photos you mention at the end of the post.
Update Yesterday 2 large packages arrived with lots of stuff. Most of it were watercooling parts. Let's start with the radiators. I know.. these boys are more than enough, but i want to use the given space and bigger rads mean less noise At the top is the Aquacomputer airplex 2/420, below are the three airplex modularity system 280. Two of them are connected via a bridge. Since there are no 560mm airplex rads this is the only solution. Unfortunately this results in a little gap between the middle fans and the radiator is longer than 560mm, but that shouldn't be a problem. Back inside i started working on the Pump/Res Combos. First: the easy part, changing the res tubes. After that i disassembled the Laing DDC. This is the thermal pad which comes with the metal housing. Putting everything together again. done! Couldn't resist to fill it with some blue CoolForce liquid Since we'll have two loops we need two pump/res combos. I won't use the blue in the finished build, it was just the only liquid i had at home at the moment.
....still looks like just a load of parts. This is a modding section, meaning it requires actual modding. The rules state that you need to show modding in your first post.
The problem is, that most of the parts are not here yet. Of course the actual modding will follow. At the moment i do the small things which will be part of the log anyway. (assembling pumps/res, sleeving cables, etc. )
Update The U-Profiles which will be used as the frames of both sLights finally arrived. Since they were 1500mm long i had to cut them. I love to take these photos After cutting i put the profiles into the case to check if they fit.. well, they didn't Dremel time! After sanding the edges the profiles now fit perfectly. Next step is to drill holes so i can attach them to the case. When this is done i'm going to send them to my friend @nubcustoms.com who will powdercoat it. I also received two other packages from my sponsors. The first one is from Blacknoise / Noiseblocker who sent me a lot of fans. The NB-BlackSilentPro will be used in the bottom part of the case where the GPU loop radiators are. The NB-eLoop are going to be used as case fans and the CPU radiator in the top. The other one comes from ASUS and contains something special. The new ROG X99 Strix Gaming A big thanks! I already swapped the orange Strix/ROG Stickers with the silver ones and i really love the all black look. Can't wait to boot it up for the first time. So, this is how it looks right now. Acrylic will be ordered next week.
Update Finally found some time to update my worklogs. It's been some stressful weeks since i had to work on different projects and the deadline on both ended last week. I also had exams so there was no extra time to keep my worklogs up to date. I hope you all understand. But let's start where i ended last time, the sLights. The U-profiles came back from powder coating so i compared them to the rest of the case. Still a little difference but nearly unnoticeable. For the different layers of the sLights i'm using three kinds of acrylic. The first one is the PLEXIGLAS® LED (truLED) Weiss WH14 GT 3mm. This ist the top one which will be visible later. Right underneath comes the PLEXIGLAS® LED (EndLighten T) Farblos 0E012 XL 8mm. This is used to direct the light coming from the LED Strips up and down through the other plates. The last one is not really necessary. It's just PLEXIGLAS® GS (allround) Farblos 0F00 GT 4mm to fill the space between the U-profiles. I also put chrome foil onto it so it reflects the incoming light even better. Since the plates are ready i went to the profiles to install the LED Strips. But first i had to cut 3mm acrylic stripes which will be used as standoff and hold everything in place. I drilled holes and painted them black to prevent light bleeding. Time to prepare the LED strips, starting with the UV LEDs for the bottom sLight. This is pretty simple, cut the strips, solder cables to it and of course sleeve them, even if you won't see them. Everything ready, time to install both sLights! This was a pain in the a**, had to disassemble the case and the help of my brother to put these acrylic sandwiches together. A little view from the inside: And outside: As you can see i left a little space above the upper sLight frame. I did this on purpose since you won't see the gap once you install the side window panel. This gap helped me to leak test the CPU radiator in the top when i filled the loop. And since this was my very first UV sLight i want to show you how it looks. Really hard to take a photo of it, this seems to be pretty close to what it looks in real life. sLights: Done! Next: GPUs and Watercooling Part 1
Amazing, looking great! Where did you source the sLights and what was the total cost, top and bottom?
Update Thanks Atomicus, i build sLights like these in my "white99" project last year. I order the LEDs from ebay and the acrylic from Evonik. Total cost of both was about 225-250€. To start with the watercooling i had to wait for the last parts of hardware to arrive. I'm talking about the GPUs which were kindly supported by ASUS. I'm so in love with the new Strix cooler and the RGB features, but we want to keep them cool, right? Time to put some fancy waterblocks onto them Looks massive compared to the FE PCB. I like what EK did there, they just put Strix on the block and the backplate so you can install these on your Strix 1070 without a disruptive "1080" on your watercooling parts. Looks amazing! Let's go back to the case and start preparing the loop. With the reservoirs mounted to the mounting plate i wanted to show the tubing go down and then through the middle plate. I also could've just turn the res/pumps 180° and make the tubing "invisible" but this would be to easy, right? First thing was to measure where the pass through fittings are going to sit. Then i took a countersink and a step drill to make the holes big enough for the fittings. (20mm diameter) Since i wanted to keep the CPU and GPU tubing horizontal i needed another pass through. These fittings will be attached to the res mounting plate. So i had to make a big whole into the middle plate. It took some time and the multitool got pretty hot but after some cool down pauses i managed to get a pretty clean hole. Of course not clean enough, still had to sand the edges. And to end this update i took a little photo with some of the hardware already installed.
Update First of all i want to show the new black/white TridentZ RAM kindly provided by G.Skill. I'm really happy i was able to use these since they match the Strix board perfectly. So, this is where we stopped last time: To begin with the loop i had to measure the exact positions for the pass through fittings. Since i didn't want to waste the acrylic tubing i used PETG. The pass through fittings will be attached to the res mount plate. First i drill small holes and use the step drill afterwards. Last thing before we finish the res mount are the pump/res combos. Of course these cables must be sleeved. The pass through fittings are attached and the res mount is ready. So let's move on the next part, the tubing! After measuring out every single tube i replicated every single one of them in acrylic. This is all the hard tubing i'm going to use in this build. At this point the photos are a little bit out of focus, i was really tired after 3 hours sleep. Also, please don't mind the SLI bridge, i just used it to keep both cards in place. This is the one i used in my "Reinforced" build. And after a few minutes the hard tubing part of the loop was completed. At this point all i wanted to do was fill these loops But i still had to move to the back and finish the rest of the loops. I use soft tubing to be more flexible when installing radiators etc. and you won't see it anyway. This is the temperature sensor for the CPU loop. CPU loop complete! Time to fill it up When running @ full power, the DDC are insane, look at the water level. The result of the leak test: 100% leak-proof! The next update will take a few days since i had to remove one of the graphics cards. I'll try to post it asap.
After ESL One Cologne i had some trouble with the second 1080 so i had to RMA it. But it came back today and i was finally able to finish the GPU loop. Just a teaser pic for you. Even though it looks like this build is ready for final pics i still have to do some little things. For example sleeve these ugly SATA cables in the background. I'm so in love with the black/violet coolant! Of course i overclocked these boys and got 10.139 points in Fire Strike Ultra 1.1, amazing! Still hope to achieve better scores in future. http://www.3dmark.com/fs/9787381
