Case Mod - In Progress [Build Log] Project Blueberry Apple G4

Sponsored by:

Alphacool


Aquatuning


Parts used:

Pump and reservoir:
Alphacool VPP655 + Alphacool Eisbecher D5 150mm plexi

Fittings:
Alphacool Eiszapfen 13mm HardTube compression fitting G1/4 for plexi- brass tubes (rigid or hard tubes) - knurled - deep black
Alphacool Eiszapfen screw plug G1/4 - deep black
Alphacool Eiszapfen L-connector rotatable G1/4 outer thread to G1/4 inner thread - deep black

GPU waterblock:
Alphacool NexXxoS GPX - Nvidia Geforce GTX 970 M03 - incl. backplate - black

CPU waterblock:
Alphacool NexXxoS XP³ Light - Acetal - Intel/AMD

Hard tubing:
Alphacool HardTube 13/10mm plexi clear 60cm - 4pcs

Radiators:
Alphacool NexXxoS ST30 Full Copper 240mm

Fans:
Alphacool Susurro Fan - 120 - Black / Blue Edition - 1700rpm ( 120x120x25mm )


Parts already owned:

Motherboard: Asus ROG z170 Maximus VIII Gene mATX
SSD: 256Gb Toshiba m.2 Sata
Processor: Intel Core i5-6600K
Ram: Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000MHz 16GB
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 G1[/QUOTE]

First pictures:

 

Until there are any pictures of work in progress (any pictures at all really) I'll just move this to Modding Just drop me a PM or report the post when it is ready to be moved back.

 

I realised that the top of the case isn't completely free/ usable since the locking mechanism is in the way :/. I'm thinking of a way to trim the mechanism but still keep it working.

On a sidenote, I ordered these standoffs:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/20pc...d-Standoffs-for-Motherboards/32615518501.html

Last thing I did is change the motherboard that I'm testing with, since I have the IO plate for that one. Good news, it fits . I just have to "clean it up"

 

I got something done over the weekend: I installed the waterblock on the GPU. It looks so much better now







And I'm so excited now that this fellow has arrived too ^^

 

So the standoffs arrived from china



I took off the motherboard heatsinks because I wanted to paint them black / blue.



I ordered Full Dip, a liquid vinyl solution which I thought was similar to Plasti Dip. The result was terrible. The only good thing is that it was easy to peel off. In other paint jobs I've always needed to use a primer, which wasn't the case here. There appeared to be some kind of chemical reaction which resulted in small air bubbles and an overall "dirty, unclean" look. I spent 3 hours peeling it off and eventually resorting to sand paper to really get in the small parts.

That's how I got the idea to just sand away the red ROG paint and to take out the plastic ROG logo.




And to solve the hole in the south bridge heatsink



And I installed the CPU block today

 

My new parts arrived today ^^



I then installed the pump on the reservoir:







The most important part, does it fit?




Well, it looks like it does ^^

 

So now that I've got all the necessary parts, time to prep the case



First I took of the side panel to make my life a bit easier. I bought a rivet gun so it should be no problem attaching it again afterwards .



I marked with a sharpie where I need to cut away a part of the locking mechanism. I need this to allow the upper radiator to sit there:



Saftey first ;-)





This is what it looks like so far^^.

I stripped off a little of the original standoffs to make them 8mm to see if everything would fit better now.

 

Yay! The summer holidays have started so finally some more time to post some updates ^^.

First things first: I had ordered some more parts that have arrived. A huge amount of Phobya stuff for the custom sleeving (heatshink, pins, pin removal tool, ...).
I also received an antistatic work mat. It makes your workplace look so much more professional .









The Eiszapfen quick release connector: I will use this for the drain and the fill port.



And of course there has to be some light ;-). Notice in the background that there's a mosfet cooler. Unfortunately it doen't fit my motherboard.





Drilling the holes for the 240mm radiators. So much easier with a template!
https://mnpctech.com/images/companies/3/mnpctech_rad_template_15mm.pdf





It fits!







Well, these don't seem to fit that well, I'll have to adjust the holes a bit here...



The 8mm motherboard standoffs have arrived from China^^.





Driling out the holes for the motherboard.

 

Cutting out the intake for the radiators





With the radiators and the fans installed









It closes!!



There is still about 2cm of space between the bottom radiator and the GPU

 

I finally received my new power supply and I had the time to continue on this project. I will let the pictures speak for themselves




















I'm glad to have found a way to fit everything the way it does. However, I'm concerned with the way the cables will be routed. I guess that I'll find out soon enough .

On another note, I'm also wondering how I should go about with my loop realistically with the limited space that I have.

This is what I wanted to do originally: Reservoir --> Top radiator --> CPU --> Mosfet --> bottom radiator --> GPU
That would unfortunately mean a lot of tubing next to each other and a lot of surface to cover.

To make this easier I thought about doing it this way:
Reservoir --> Top radiator --> CPU --> Mosfet --> GPU --> bottom radiator.

Do you guys think that temps will be majorly affected by this? :/

 

Updates!

I installed the PSU and cut out the necessary space to route the cables. Had to open the case of it, so warranty is void, oh well.

I'm thinking of removing the little metal strip that is left over between the cutout for the bottom radiator and the PSU cables, don't know.

I also found out that I will have to put the case on 4 feet to allow the cables to run under the case.



















I have been playing with the acrylic tubes to get my bending skills right, but so far I haven't been very lucky...

I have cut out some holes with my dremel around the motherboard for cable management. I also cut out some holes behind the radiators to hide the 3pin connectors behind the case and between the plastic panels.

I'm currently still waiting for wires to start sleeving with paracord.



Here you can see that I had to cut in the the rubber around my fans to be able to have the Alphacool logo in the same sense as on the radiator ;-).



Here you can see that with the rubbers around the fans, there really isn't a lot of space left for the fittings. It's a tight fit, but it works ;-).








I guess that the kinks I have are because I haven't heated it enough in some spots and because I didn't use gloves, I couldn't exactly touch where I had to... I will get some gloves and fiddle some more with to get my technique down

Here's the result after some more playing around with the heat gun and using gloves:







Here's a little concept in MS Paint of what the front panel could look like

1. I started off with the idea of using the lid of the cd-drive as a template of what I want the bottom half to look like. Basically the lid fits 5x under the power button. If I laser cut this out of acrylic, I can hide some black mesh behind that.

2. Add a Phobya anti-vandal switch

3. Add a 3.5mm headphone jack under the on/off switch

4. Have a USB 3.0 hub instead of the floppy drive. Fun fact: the way the reservoir is now mounted, the brackets actually fit perfectly to support the USB hub at the same time! I'm just unsure right now if the open lid is wide enough for the USB interface.



I would do the same step 1 for the top panel with the acrylic and the mesh.

I installed Alphacool's M.2 SSD cooler on my 256Gb Toshiba SSD and it looks pretty friggin' awesome!







I also played around a little with the 2 mainboard coolers that I received.:
http://www.aquatuning.de/water-cool...oling-plate-asus-z87-pro-mosfet-1-black?c=508
http://www.aquatuning.de/water-cool...oling-plate-asus-z87-pro-mosfet-2-black?c=508

Since no specific Mosfet coolers exist for my motherboard, I just chose something that was at least Asus, hoping that they would they fit. Obviously they didn't. After studying them a little more, I realised that they are both pure copper plates. I could therefore adjust them a little so they would fit on my motherboard after all!






I wonder if temps would be affected if I paint them?

 

It depends what you mean by paint them. You mean paint the copper that you can see in the bottom pic? I can't see that hurting too much so long as you don't paint them where they connect to the water part or the underneath. All they are is heat transfer plates, so long as everything to do with the cooling touches copper and thus transfers the heat you should be OK.

 

That's exactly what I wanted to see Thanks for the tip!
I believe they will look much sicker with some paint on them ;-)

 

i love apple case mods, especially g4 mods
with that said, i like looking, glad i'm not the modder

 

Lol, I don't mind making my hands dirty . It's always fun to have a challenge

 

I received a front panel kit to suit my needs with the front panel mod that I plan to do here.

This is the victim:
http://www.aquatuning.de/cases-und-...o-panel-kit-usb-3.0-und-audio-inkl.-schrauben



I figured that I didn't need the whole circuit board, so I decided to cut away as much excess material as possible. I tested it with my headphones afterwards and it's still alive!
I'm even concidering soldering the wires straight to the terminals and hotgluing them in place. No rush.

 







Since I cut away the 2 USB ports, I could scavenge the USB 3.0 connector, which came in really handy after I settled on using this usb hub where the zip drive used to be. That way it can be connected straight to the motherboard with enough cable length to hide the mess...





I just received the newest Alphacool Eispumpe VPP755 and installed it under my Eisbecher 150. It's got a PWM connector instead of the previous gen pumps with a molex and a 3pin fan header.




I also managed to attach the mosfet coolers to the motherboard and it isn't really noticeable that I drilled in them etc. I just had to use longer screws, because my motherboard also has a backplate under the motherboard, which I wanted to keep

 

I have been playing with the different fittings that I have to see how I can connect the cpu block to the mosfet blocks to the gpu. It was a perfect fit with 2 connectors in between, since there was not enough room for some tubing.

Now I just need a 90° bend between the mosfet and the gpu and then I can consider the motherboard part done .

 

Today I continued working on the loop and I have to say that I’m really pleased with the results

First off I was playing around with the different kinds of fittings to see how I could get from the GPU to the lower radiator. Originally I wanted to have a piece of hard tube on the GPU and then through an adapter fitting continue to flexible tubing, so the door can close.







This (obviously) did not work, but did force me to look further. I ended up finding a solution by using double rotatable 45° fittings. Now the door closes without a problem, because the flexible tubing and the rotatable fittings twist themselves in the right position when it opens and closes.








Today I also came up with a solution as to how I can connect the upper radiator to the CPU. There’s a flexible tube that runs all the way down, underneath the connectors of the lower radiator, all the way to the door, where it ends in a quick release fitting. This will also be where I will drain the loop, without any leaks ;-). On the other end of the quick release connector, I added my flow meter (I honestly had no idea where else to put it). It’s actually a perfect spot: it can be mounted from the bottom and so it holds the tubing in place! I then added a piece of hard tube between the flow meter and the CPU block. The best part is that this is actually the tube that I had initially intended to use between the GPU and the flexible tube. I seem to be extremely lucky with the dimensions. Note that I will use black quick release connector for the finishing touch, this was just the one I had lying around to test fit












For the finishing touch I will most certainly have to invest in better hard tubing tools like mandrels, as was already mentioned before. For now I am pleased with the results, but those who have an eye for detail will notice that it could always be better .

I tried Alphacool’s double bending tool for the first time and ended up melting it. Which is weird because the vendor video said that it would withstand heat… I used their heatgun and it wasn’t even on the hottest setting.




I figured out the final part of the loop: between the reservoir, the upper radiator and the bottom radiator. I was being very enthusiastic and had closed the loop when I realised that the way that I had installed the pump with the fittings pointed towards the inside of the case wouldn't work since the waterblock of the GPU couldn't fit anymore.

So I changed the direction of the radiator 90° so the fittings now point to the door. That way it's even simpler to close the loop and now nothing blocks anything for the door to close!





Now that the waterloop is out of the way, I continued to focus on the backpanel which I had been ignoring until now. I salvaged a back panel from an old case that a friend of mine had given me last week. Actually I also used its front audio panel since I wasn't too happy with my previous audio front panel hack.

I had to cut out the bar between the motherboard IO shield and the pci slots. It fit perfectly and now the result looks much cleaner!












Here is a little preview of the front IO solution that I came up with ^^

 

I painted the mosfet coolers to make them fit better next to the matte black cpu block







I am really impressed with the quality of my el cheapo spraypaint . I am still in doubt whether I should paint the inside of the case matte black or dark grey... Suggestions are welcome

Typing hurts because I have finally begun sleeving my cables. Although my fingertips have suffered, I am very happy with the results so far! The cpu cable is done, now for the real challenge; the 24 pin cable which has double cables and connects with 28 pins to the psu and the 8pin pci connector which also has a double wire... Well, so far I followed Lutroo's guides and all went well, so I hope it'll continue like that :')

I also received a rubber band to cover the cutouts where the cables will be routed to protect them (and my fingers). You can see this underneath the first sleeved cable that I have routed.

 

Here is the latest update to this build. I've been extremely busy with school work and the fact that we're moving in a new house, but I still managed to get some work done.

I modded the G4's front panel so I have a working Power switch, Reset switch and Power LED . I sleeved all of it to make it look nicer. My soldering skills are an abomination though. Oh well, it works ;-).

Here are the lastest pictures:

Some more bending. This time it's PETG, to replace my Acrylic ones:



Who uses DVDs anyway?





Cable mods:















This is the paint that I'm using;



Modding the flow indicator because the yellow, just no way I'm leaving it like that!







The case is ready to be painted ^^. Should it be grey or black?