Case Mod Project Thief - Monster Water Cooled Build - March 9th

[stren]

Originally Posted by peteski

man that mobo is sweet as .cant wait to see the ek block on there

P.S thanks for the pics

Hehe np

Originally Posted by KidMod-Southpaw

This is all just, so very insane!
Keep up the overkill!

Will do!

Chip arrived, motherboard and ram blocks don't come until tomorrow though.

SSD is actually for my wife's rig. I don't have an ssd on my gaming rig yet. I only use it for games so I wouldn't see that much benefit from a boot drive. I use my workstation for web browsing etc as it's on all the time. I'd need a 512gb drive or so to cover my games, so I'm waiting for prices to come down more



Batch on the 3930K is 3152B448, we'll see how it clocks soon

[peteski]

i have that same ssd the differenc in boot time's are unreal compared to a normal drive

[stren]

Originally Posted by peteski

i have that same ssd the differenc in boot time's are unreal compared to a normal drive

Yeah I think it should make a huge difference for her.


Some blocks came in



Nickel plexi because I want to run some red dye (on special occasions only for all you dye haters out there)



Finished cleaning the TIM off the south bridge only to find a piece of tin foil with more TIM underneath. Weird.



Pretty easy to install when the block is in two parts, the single piece blocks are much harder:



VRM area:



Full board:



and one more:



That's all for now

[peteski]

again that board is so sweet it make's my asrock look cheap

[stren]

Originally Posted by peteski

again that board is so sweet it make's my asrock look cheap

Thanks peteski - the asrock board itself looks sweet though, they've really improved their designs


With ram blocks now, the fittings aren't the final ones, just more for planning. I'm working with Monsoon free to see if something special will make the tube routing super clean





the ram blocks remind me of battersea power station:



Now adding in the gpu makes it look ugly and busy The copper and green pcb really don't match. I called a nickel plating company to get a quote on plating both copper GPU blocks and it was $175 for both! So that's not going to happen. I may switch to the other acetal/copper block and paint the edge of the copper silver. I have another idea for the PCB



Much better with the gpu off again

[stren]

No comments? Come on bit-tech!


Soo like I mentioned before I really didn't like the green/copper look clashing with the black/red R4E theme:



So I started to paint the GPU with liquid tape - first coat:



So here's how it looks now after two coats on both sides:



You can see some of the texture here, liquid tape is hard to work with - either annoyingly thick, or very thin and see through:



From this angle the texture isn't as bad:



However it would look a lot better with a backplate, I'm thinking something like this, smoked acrylic with an etch and a couple of LEDs to light it from the side:



What do you guys think? Feel free to photoshop up your own suggestions

[peteski]

i like it looks better than the liquid tape. what is that stuff anyway and is it safe

[xXSebaSXx]

Originally Posted by peteski

i like it looks better than the liquid tape. what is that stuff anyway and is it safe

Liquid tape is safe; it is used for insulating electronic components. Think of it as a more flexible from of the black electrical tape you would normally buy in rolls. We use it quite often in the world of sub-zero benching for protection against condensation.

And I agree; a back plate would look 100 times better.

[Burnout21]

love this project!

Q. Linux workstation, and the mention of 20 hour CAD sessions... what app do you use? Ares, VariCAD or Catia V6?

Love to know, i switched to ubuntu a year ago for a native enviroment to run inkscape and gimp in but still require my windows box for solidworks which really ruins my productivity

[avolla]

Love what you've done with this so far. I'm envious of your setup. The gpu waterblock does look out of place but it's not bad enough to really worry about. Can't wait to see how this build progresses.

BTW Can you get a straight on shot from overhead of the board? would love to see how the inlets line up.

[stren]

Originally Posted by Burnout21

love this project!

Q. Linux workstation, and the mention of 20 hour CAD sessions... what app do you use? Ares, VariCAD or Catia V6?

Love to know, i switched to ubuntu a year ago for a native enviroment to run inkscape and gimp in but still require my windows box for solidworks which really ruins my productivity

Thanks - I do chip design, so the layout part of circuit design is similar to CAD, but only really 2D so very different to most traditional CAD tools.

Originally Posted by avolla

Love what you've done with this so far. I'm envious of your setup. The gpu waterblock does look out of place but it's not bad enough to really worry about. Can't wait to see how this build progresses.

BTW Can you get a straight on shot from overhead of the board? would love to see how the inlets line up.

Here you go:

Originally Posted by xXSebaSXx

Liquid tape is safe; it is used for insulating electronic components. Think of it as a more flexible from of the black electrical tape you would normally buy in rolls. We use it quite often in the world of sub-zero benching for protection against condensation.

And I agree; a back plate would look 100 times better.

Indeed - I got the idea from you subzero guys




The temporary parts came in to see if I could get some clean routing for the motherboard/ram/gpu loop:



However it didn't quite work as expected- I couldn't get the 40mm extensions to work with the 5 way rotary snake, however a SLI connector did fit.



Now I'm not sure whether to:
- get two more sli connectors (I need this one)
- use two compression fittings instead
- get two of the bitspower crystal sli links to match better

What do you guys think?

I should probably go with the cheapest as I'm hoping monsoon free's new design will solve the problem for me.

[peteski]

man that looks tight good work mate

[avolla]

Thanks for the pic. It looks amazing. I'm sorry if i missed it but what are your plans for the cpu? Keep up the great work.

[jakobfrimmel]

<3 the build!!!
execpt only one GPU?! with that mobo i was expecting atleast a couple more
but otherwise an amazing build !! keep up the good work!

[Bladesingerz]

Been following this for a while now, that looks watercooling looks amazing man, especially that last picture! Love the fitting from VRM to RAM block

On your question on the backplate, I would suggest you try to make one! It would look alot better. Couldn't you just get a backplate from EK btw?

[stren]

Originally Posted by avolla

Thanks for the pic. It looks amazing. I'm sorry if i missed it but what are your plans for the cpu? Keep up the great work.

The cpu will be on it's own loop with dual d5 strongs @ 24V and a mora 3 pro 140.9 radiator

Originally Posted by jakobfrimmel

<3 the build!!!
execpt only one GPU?! with that mobo i was expecting atleast a couple more
but otherwise an amazing build !! keep up the good work!

Haha actually the full build has 5 gpu's. The half that I'm currently working on will have 2 8800gt's (workstation), the other half has 4 gtx480's (space heater/gaming)

Originally Posted by Bladesingerz

Been following this for a while now, that looks watercooling looks amazing man, especially that last picture! Love the fitting from VRM to RAM block

On your question on the backplate, I would suggest you try to make one! It would look alot better. Couldn't you just get a backplate from EK btw?

Thanks dude - glad someone likes that fitting - most seem to hate it - let me know what you think of the alternative tubing option below. It looks like I'll have to make the backplate myself, EK doesn't have any on there store, and I can't find any on ebay, so I'll have to do something

Alternative tubing option - gets busy when you add lines for the cpu loop:

[microsoftPerson]

Are you going to try any other pipe colors? I really like the way this looks but I almost think clear or a tinted clear would look better because you could see more of the board through the tubes?

Sorry - just my $.02.

Thanks for sharing your project with us, clearly lots of hard work involved.

[The Alfred]

I think with water cooling the less pipes the better, it'd look so awesome with just fittings!

[Bladesingerz]

I liked the other tubing layout better, maybe use some acryl piping? Some straight lines will make this look amazing.
On the previeus picture you used some SLI connector going from the VRM to RAM block? If you continue somewhere allong those lines it would so badass!

What GPU is that btw? That doesn't look like a GTX480?

[stren]

Originally Posted by microsoftPerson

Are you going to try any other pipe colors? I really like the way this looks but I almost think clear or a tinted clear would look better because you could see more of the board through the tubes?

Sorry - just my $.02.

Thanks for sharing your project with us, clearly lots of hard work involved.

I wanted the red to provide a pop of color, with the case colors I didn't want people to think I was going another monochrome murderbox copy type thing.

Originally Posted by The Alfred

I think with water cooling the less pipes the better, it'd look so awesome with just fittings!

Yeah I agree - just hard to get the right fittings to work. The extender would have been sweet but the rotaries were just too stiff in the wrong places.

Originally Posted by Bladesingerz

I liked the other tubing layout better, maybe use some acryl piping? Some straight lines will make this look amazing.
On the previeus picture you used some SLI connector going from the VRM to RAM block? If you continue somewhere allong those lines it would so badass!

What GPU is that btw? That doesn't look like a GTX480?

The GPU is an 8800GT. This 3930K + rampage iv extreme combo is for the workstation side - the gaming side is a rampage iii extreme + 990x + 3x GTX 480