Case Mod - In Progress HEX GEAR R80 Prototype No. 2

Hey guys and girls! Welcome to another ATX worklog before I start do some smaller builds again (size wise)

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This will be a somewhat strange worklog, as this build is already complete. I am showing it now as I have not had time to put it up sooner.
This build was a show-rig I did for the Gigabyte Suite at computex 2016, and some of you might already have seen it on facebook or youtube, but for the ones of you that has not, I will make a full worklog here.

To give you a glimpse of what you are going to be seeing in this worklog, I have posted the final filling video here below:

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For this build I made a complete sidepanel with integrated cable routing and water routing channels. All cables beside the pump cables runs into this plate, and is neatly routed to the PSU.
The side panel is made from a 25 mm thick acrylic plate that has been CNC machined to make room for the watercooilng and cables.

Specs:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X99-ULTRA Gaming
• Graphic cards: Gigabyte 980TI G1 gaming
• CPU: Intel i7 6900K
• SSD: Intel 750 400 gb PCIe ssd
• RAM: 32 gb corsair Vengeance 3000 mhz
• PSU: Corsair HX1200i
• Case: Hex Gear R80
• Watercooling: EK waterblocks
• Fittings: Bitspower
• Tubing: E22 solid tubing

First update will come tonight, and they will then roll steadily over the next few weeks as I have time to put them up!

 

POOOOOOOOOOOPE!
-Now that I did that, I realize it spelled 'poop'.

 

Ohhh you! I bet it was intentional!

I did not have time to edit all the pictures I took of this build before I went off to Computex, so I will upload them here as I get them sorted and edited! Gonna be a quick worklog as the build is already done, but I know that most of you enjoy seeing the WIP of these builds as well! To start off, here is the motherboard and graphic card this entire build is based around. Unreleased at the time I got it, and a proper beast of a board!





















More to come soon!

 

So lets get to the fun part! I wanted to make something like I did for the Engineering station, but I also wanted to incoorporate some cable manegement into the distro plate itself. The finished plate has around 150 screws to seal it all off! These pictures are taken straight after milling, so no polishing or anything yet.

First off a few renders of how everything will be added together. This is not just a simple 2 plates bolted together, but a nightmare of different parts that all has to fit VERY tightly together.





From right to left is:

• 25 mm milled plate - this is the main plate where all the channels for the wires, and the fluid has been milled into. The loop will be a dual loop, so two separate pumps sits and has each their channels.
• 6 mm lasercut clear acrylic - These small bits and pieces where "helping pieces" that gave me the option of securing some of the cables as I went along and put them into the main plate.The cables all sit incredibly tight, so without these, they would simply pop out the moment I let them go. These mounts before the main sealing plate, so that I could put in the cables before putting in o-rings, and covering the hole thing up. Putting in the cables and o-rings on the same time, and get everything to sit as tight as it does here would be near impossible.
• 6 mm lasercut clear acrylic - This is the main cover plate that holes all the fluid channels sealed. This mounts after all the cables has been put in, and helps a little with holding the cables tightly in place.
• 3 mm lasercut white acrylic - This plate is only there to act as a "distancer" between the main acrylic assembly and the case itself. The case has tiny captive nuts that sticks out of the panel a few mm, and the main acrylic plate has been put together with dome head bolts, so if I just bolted the two together, the bolts would scrape up against the case itself. This is also why there is so many somewhat big holes in the white plate.
• 5 mm lasercut red frosted acrylic - This piece is where the pumps are mounted, and again acts as a distancer between the pumps and the acrylic plate, so the pumps does not hit any of the dome head bolts.

All in all a nightmare to put together, and it could have been done way smarter, but that would have meant that it would not have looked just as good.



And this is the main plate. A lot of material was taken off this, and the channels are quite deep.











Finished milling without polishing.





And a test of how the cables would fit. As you can see there is basicly no extra space, so the cables are sitting incredibly tight in the milled slot.

That is it for now, next up will be more cabling!

 

Oh yes! Moar please!

 

As you wish

Time to get some cables into the distro plate, and get it all done. I got quite a few pictures of this progress as it took SO damn long! I also made a mistake in the 3D file for the distro plate that forced me into manually make a tiny tiny acrylic piece. Who needs a cnc or a laser cutte when you are desperate and low on time



Some of the small parts that will help hold everything together.



I went with classic black and red for this project. Normally I really like using the Fusion sleeving from Teleios, but I thought that this would look better trough the distro plate.



This is the lasercut 6 mm plate that will hold all the fluid channels tight, and also keep the cables in place.



Had to manually tap G1/4" holes in them to support standard fittings.



Lots and lots of holes to keep the o-ring channels tight!



Around 150 screws all in all. Glad that I did not have to tap all those holes manually!



The pumps will be mounted directly to the distro plate, with a piece of 5 mm acrylic in between.



The small piece you saw in the first picture holds the 8 pin power wires down so that they slide under the graphic card wires. There is actually 4 layers of cables, the first two is the 24 pin + 8 pin, and the next two is the graphic cards.



The start of the nightmare! I only just made enough room for the cables to be in, so everything has to be squeezed into place!



Graphic cards done. You can see that I made some small acrylic pieces to hold them down until I got the main plate on. Without these it would be impossible to keep the wires in the channels.



Here you can better see how the graphic card cables goes over the 24 and 8 pin cables.



So. Many. Wires! I am actually super glad that I did not go 4 way SLI on this build!



To keep everything down on the top side I needed some help in the form of a couple of clamps.



And here is when I noticed that I messed up... I made the arc in the acrylic bigger than it should have been, so there is a gab between the cables and the acrylic wall. Leaving it like this would make the cables loose, which I did not want.



I could have gotten a new piece lasercut, but I was low on time, so I had to figure something out.



Lots of sanding, dremeling, and cursing helped me make this thing.



Cutting and sanding acrylic in itself is not really that hard, but when it is pieces this small, that has to be SO precise, it starts to become fun.



A few hours later.



Lots of time, but worth it!



Like a glove!



I had to take the connectors off the cables for the next step as there was not a lot of room to work with.



Down goes the 6 mm plate, and now just to keep everything in place while securing this!



This plate is going to tighten both the o-rings and the cables down, so quite a few things needed to be perfectly in place before putting it down. I could have made it out of multiple small plates, but what is the fun in that.





Everything done!



Now just to mount it on the case itself!

 

MY GOD MAN!!!! You just keep upping the game, REPEATEDLY!! How the F&^$% do you do that!?!?!

 

Holy hell...

 

This man is one of the few that doesn't go insane when dealing with ATX wiring pinouts. I have a headache just imagining sorting those wires.

 

They're not labelled or anything. Maybe he has a sixth sense? or maybe he just uses a continuity tester to find which is which?

Either way my head implodes just even thinking about this.

Ed. Ahhh, just noticed the comb

 

I have come to the conclusion that Pope must be the braveheart of case modding, or something O.O

 

Patience and alcohol

In almost every build I do I at some point sit back and think "why did you have to make it this complicated..."

The cable combs helps to hold them in place, and they are in a 1:1 path in the acrylic plate, so it is actually not as hard as it looks. My PSU tester did break though, so I had to test random wires with a multimeter, and hope that I did not mess it all up.

I most certainly do not hope to loose my head in the end

Thank you man!

I will do my best to get a new update up soon! I am currently a bit busy with a new build, and the it is the GF's birthday today

 

I don't recall popes beheading...Poisoning seems more appropriate...
Everyone confronting spaghetti cables madness from now to eternity will think of your elegant solution and sigh in despair and envy...

 

From idea, to concept, to software, to fabrication, to assembly, to finished project that outclass the OEM's in style, function, and beauty is nothing short of genius! You are in a class of your own making. Stunning work Hans. Need new adjectives to describe your work! You take OCD to a whole new level!

 

Noone would dare to kill a holy man Thanks for the kind words!

Thank you man! I try and up it in each build

This update shows how I mounted the distro plate to the actual case, and also a lot of the cable work needed to make everything just perfect.



No matter how well you plan, there will almost always be manual cutting work involved unless you get everything lasercut and painted elsewhere.



This white piece of 3 mm acrylic has a few different uses. First off, it will make it so that the back of the case with all the cutouts are not visible trough the distro plate, but only white is visible. Secondly, it serves as a standoff for the screws holding the distro plate together, and the rear of the case.



Mounted on top of the distro plate.



The cables runs VERY tightly under the 6 mm plate on top of the distro plate.



With fancy light.



And covered by the last 3 mm plate.



Another fancy pancy shot.



This is why I refered to the white plexi as a distance piece.



24 pin for the motherboard routed to the board itself. I had to tighten each individual wire by pulling it from the "outgoing" end of the distro plate.
This had to be done a tiny bit at a time to make all the cables fit nicely.



GPU's mounted with the chrome backplate on.



Next up is the GPU cables. I really wished this pc was built with 1080's as they only have 1x8 pin power connector, but sadly it was built before those came out.



Putting the cable combs in place, and putting connectors on.



And then routing the cable into place, and repeating the "cable pulling" step as also done to the 24 pin.



all main cables done!



Testing with rear and top radiator panel to see if everything was as it should be.



Pumps also fits in quite nicely.



Next up is making the PSU end of the cables. This will be the "messy" end, but also the least visible one.

until next time!

 

You sir, are a genius! Will this ever see consumer production, or are you just making all horny without the payoff?

 

That's incredible Hans.

 

You keep surprising man. Truly amazing stuff!

 

Just wow....

 

This is a one off build, and there will not be a copy made as it is a pain in the arse to do

Thank you!

Thanks man!

Glad you like it!

Time to get this one finished up, so expect the last couple of updates to come in quickly!



After all the cables had been routed properly from the graphic cards and so on, it was time to get them nicely tucked into the PSU. This is the hardest part, as you have to be very precise when doing so.
I start out by putting cable combs on the cables so they stay in a nice bended line, and I then cut all of the cables off in a straight line, so they have the right length.



After I have put the terminal on the cables, I only need one thing, and that is to connect some of the cables.
This differs from power supply to power supply, but some cables splits out into two cables. So these has to be soldered together, and have heatshrink aplied to them.



This is how they look after soldering, and ready to have heatshrink aplied to cover it up.



And with heatshrink on. As well as a small piece of plastic to protect the rest of the cables from gunk when soldering.



Nice and tidy!



Now this is a classic example on why just cutting a bunch of cables in the same length will not work in complicated builds like this. After all the bends and twists the cables go trough, they variate wildly in length on this end.

So always make one end first, and then cut the other end to length and crimp that end.



All done! This is also one of the processes that takes the longest to do as there is not exactly a lot of space to work with.



I would always reccomend people to either test out their sleeving with a PSU tester, or a multimeter when done. No matter how good you are, we all make mistakes sometimes.



Everything mounted, and up and standing!



I must admit that I am quite proud of this one



Next up is mounting some fittings and tubes!



The GPU cables could not be run with the 180 degree combs that I have used in my previous builds as it would simply be impossible to take the graphic cards out after mounting then, as the cables would be insanely tight.



Just need to sleeve the pump cables now!