Case Mod Project: Lian Li PC-U6 Nautilus - 4th Feb 2013 (FINAL PICS)

[RebootTech]

Here's the water cooling setup I'm considering. Not quite to scale...the case is a bit difficult to get sized right. Reservoir is about twice as big as what's showing, but I didn't feel like redoing it yet in SketchUp...I'd redrawn enough tubing for the day.

Anyone see any issues? I had originally considered a radiator where intake was on the bottom and output on the top...posted a thread in the modding forum asking for advice. However, think this may just be easier and more fool proof. The hose going to the case up by the small radiator is the fill port. Let me know thoughts...it's my first water cooling setup from scratch and I want to know if I missed anything or if there's anything I should consider.

[RebootTech]

Cable Management - Finished

Well, hopefully no issues with the above WC setup...started ordering parts! Radiators, reservoir, tubing, fill port and pump were all ordered so I could begin working on mounting. Still saving up for fittings and the last parts.

Finished cable management so thought I'd post some pics. Thought about holding off till I get the water cooling stuff in so you could see it better but that could take a while to get here.

Anyway, some pics of finished cable management. I may redo some with some black accents…haven't decided. Have some coming in from MDPC-X.






Haven't zip tied everything yet as I'll need to take it all out for water cooling, but at least made the back panel look nicer:







And with my company logo now on the side (thanks to Karl'z Vinyl Grafix!):




For what it's worth, Karl'z Vinyl Grafix is incredible to work with. He's not a project sponsor or anything (though based on the amount of free samples he included he should be!) but he has been quick to respond to emails, eager to help with ideas, and most understanding as I kept changing my mind. You can find stuff cheaper, but the service was fantastic…I'll be ordering from him again soon!

Till water cooling comes in...

[RebootTech]

Quick update. Some of the watercooling stuff came in and now I'm having fun fitting it. The rear radiator interferes with the built in fan controller...didn't see that one coming, so now looking at moving the fan controller somewhere.

Went ahead and painted the fan for the front radiator red and sleeved it...even though you really won't see it unless you look REALLY close at the front grill.



New:


I know it's not very exciting...but progress is slowly moving forward! Plan to order connectors and CPU waterblock today.

[RebootTech]

Prep for Water Cooling

Rest of my water-cooling parts should be here tomorrow and I plan on building that on Sunday. However, before doing that I had some housekeeping chores to prepare.

For starters, there was a built in fan controller in the top rear of the case that interfered with the small radiator. Time to relocate it. I chose a spot that already had two parallel screw holes holding a Lian Li Special Edition plate on.

Taped it up and drilled the hole for the nob:



Then had to drill and tap two new holes in the fan controller's face to match the case holes:



Mounted:



Took a moment to mount the painted fan to the big radiator too:





Now on to something that was really bugging me: the DVD drive. Notice anything?



Seeing as I could look into the entire case, the silver case of the DVD drive was driving me crazy. So time I took the drive apart and rattle-canned the case:









Ew. Hated the beige back of the drive, and since it was visible if you looked just right in the case, it was time to paint that. Taped off the disassembled drive and sprayed it red, same as the fan:







Ah, much better!




More updates next week…with water-cooling!

[RebootTech]

Water Cooling

My wife was a dear and allowed me to take over the dining room table this weekend to build the water-cooling loop. I could have done it in my shop, but liked the idea of being inside with the family, though made sure all chairs were pulled away from the table to avoid little fingers getting into things. There are some things I'm not happy with and the build is not final, but more on that later.

I started by doing some soldering…lots of it to get the LEDs right. The CPU block came with blue LEDs, so had to switch them out to red. This is where I screwed up for the first time and like a dope forgot that the red wire wire on Molex is 5v and not 12v. Instead of replacing the resistor on the provided cable I just soldered on the LED and promptly blew it out after connecting it to the 12 power line (which is how I intended to eventually power the LEDs)



So I promptly removed the included 100ohm resistors and soldered in my own 470ohm replacements. Luckily, I had spare LEDs. Voila…one converted, one still blue:



Both converted:



And testing them in the CPU water block:



While progress is not pictured, I took this moment to move the power leads on the LED strip to set of connectors on the strip closer to the fan controller and built a small cable to power a red LED on the reservoir:



Next I emptied the case, both to install the water block on the MB and to drill the hole for the fill port, since I've heard metal shavings on electronics can be bad.





Drilling hole for fill port and installing:





Now we jump ahead as I got very focused and forgot to take pictures…but the front radiator mounted perfectly. I had to adjust my hose routing once everything was in because it really just got too tight. Unfortunately, this led to a spaghetti mess near the rear radiator. But here it is set up with an external PSU doing a 24 hour leak test:



Final pics as it currently sits, with and without front cover:







Once I fully complete it, I'll be doing an actual photo shoot with someone who has a decent camera setup. But still have some things to do before that.


Things I'm not happy about:

1. Spent a little more money than is in the account to finish
2. The spaghetti mess of hoses by the rear radiator. Need to get some different connectors and clean that up.
3. Empty RAM slots. I really don't need 16GB of RAM, but I don't like the empty slots and RAM is pretty cheap right now.
4. GPU is not yet water cooled, even though the hose goes right past it. Saving up for that water block.
5. LED fan on the back is too bright…ordered a fan with a black shroud and just lit acrylic blades that should help.
6. Red tubing is a little off the color scheme…wondering if I should have gone clear and just dyed the fluid to match. Probably won't change it.
6. Crappy pictures…even with ISO 100, I can't get the pictures to look right with my basic camera. Will remedy that with the semi-professional photo shoot.

Because of the above, I have not yet permanently mounted the res and pump. More to come, but probably some delay as my account recovers. Unfortunately, will make kind of a crappy finale…

Till later...

[coolamasta]

Sort of like that in a funny sort of way, looks much better with the window though and fair play for squeezing some H2O cooling in there

[J-Lyons]

I love that sleeving, what shade is it?

[Scrappy]

Wow.. this is looking very nice! I love the shape of the case and im loving what your doing to it so far .. keep the good, clean work up

[RebootTech]

Thanks for the nice comments

Originally Posted by J-Lyons

I love that sleeving, what shade is it?

Sleeving is Mod/Smart Kobra High Density UV Red (link). The red on the site looks a lot brighter than the deep red that arrived, but I ended up liking the deep red better. And unfortunately, I don't have a black light to test the UV-ness of it

I like MDPC, but this was a little quicker delivery since I'm on this side of the pond and as far as I can tell quality is almost exactly the same. Both tripple strand braded, but MDPC small is actually a little bigger than the 1/8" I bought from FCPU. MDPC would definitely be better for multiple wires as far as hiding color, but for single wires this stuff was great. Even did some double wires (MB connectors, fans, etc) but hard to even tell.

[Gamer666]

Stunning build, i have a cowry 2011 special ed here stock and this has seriously given me some inspiration to mod mine

Cheers,

[RebootTech]

Originally Posted by Gamer666

Stunning build, i have a cowry 2011 special ed here stock and this has seriously given me some inspiration to mod mine

Cheers,

Very cool! Yeah, I couldn't find any other major mods out there, but turns out its more flexible than I expected. Mod away!

[Gamer666]

Hi,

About to attempt this same build myself, can i ask the following:

What radiator did you use and where did you get it from?

Are their two radiators in action?

What are the temps like from it as i worry about 80mm not really performing that well?

What pump did you use?

How did you mount the front fan / radiator?

Cheers,

[RebootTech]

Originally Posted by Gamer666

Hi,

About to attempt this same build myself, can i ask the following:

What radiator did you use and where did you get it from?

Are their two radiators in action?

I used two radiators, an 80mm and a 120mm, both BlackIce. 80mm is the BlackIce Micro, and 120mm I used the BlackIce Pro. Both were ordered from DangerDen, which was the best price on this side of the pond

80mm: http://www.dangerden.com/store/black-ice-micro.html
120mm: http://www.dangerden.com/store/black...-radiator.html

Originally Posted by Gamer666

What are the temps like from it as i worry about 80mm not really performing that well?

Running an i5-2500k OC'd at 4.6, temps idle right around 30-32, and under load jump to 48 in an ambient temp of 25 or so. Over time, the temps do slowly increase up to low to mid 60's after about 15 minutes and hold there, which I believe is a result of limitations in my design. I'm hoping to add a GPU waterblock, but would have to adjust the overclocks and play with it a bit. Also used the thermal compound that came with the CPU waterblock instead of AS5 as I'd just run out, so next time I'm redoing things I'll probably reseat it and see if it drops a few degrees.

Originally Posted by Gamer666

What pump did you use?

DD-CPX1 from DangerDen...and decision was based almost solely on price as it's not a very crazy WC setup. Link: http://www.dangerden.com/store/dd-cpx1-12v_pump.html

Originally Posted by Gamer666

How did you mount the front fan / radiator?

Cheers,

This is where it got interesting. There is a dual 120mm fan mount that mounts on the side in stock form, blowing directly onto the MB. It's a great design for air cooling, and could even possibly hold a 120.2 radiator. However, I wanted an unobstructed view, so I knew that had to go.



I took the metal frame that held the two fans and cut it in half, right in between the two fans. The top mounting bracket (IIRC) was bent to be able to hang the piece with the fan in it from a bottom facing hole:



That is the half-bracket with top bent, holding one of the original 120mm fans from the original bracket (blades painted red) and the 120mm radiator. I then removed the dust filter from the front of the case and mounted this whole unit using the same screw that held the dust filter in place:



The 80mm rad was just mounted on the rear 80mm fan port, but this did mean having to move the stock fan controller, which I moved to the bottom:





So that's how it was done. Feel free to post more questions...more than happy to help!

[RebootTech]

Originally Posted by Gamer666

Hi,

About to attempt this same build myself...

Post-Mortem thoughts on the build:

One suggestion I have is to add a few angle connectors. With 2 45 degree connectors, you should be able to go from the CPU out to the back port on the 80mm radiator. Then you could go from the front port (furthest from MB) to a Y that joins the fill port to the line and sends a single tube down to the reservoir. Like my original sketchup a few posts back that ended up not being to scale

For the 120mm front radiator, I had to swap the hoses from original design because of clearance on the RAM. My G.Skill RipJaws has a small heatsink that just barely gets in the way. With shorter RAM, you could go straight from the back port on the radiator to a right angle on the CPU. Could be possible anyway, but would be a major PITA to add or remove RAM.

Finally, the XSPC RayStorm CPU waterblock is fantastic (link). In fact, it just got great reviews in CustomPC's latest issue, which I got right after I finished my build (nothing like feeling good about a purchase!). If you swap out the blue LEDs that come with it with red, it matches the PC-U6 included red LEDs great.

[tp148]

bloody ace build!!!
Beautiful cabling job, from the braiding right down to the tidyness!!
Interesting case shape too!!!

[RebootTech]

By the way, if anyone is interested (US only I imagine), NewEgg is having their end of summer sale on Lian Li cases...free shipping and 20% off select cases, and THIS case is included. Promocode LianLi0913. Just be sure you're an e-blast subscriber before you try to use it ;-) Would put this case at a somewhat more affordable $160. And puts many of their other cases at a smokin' price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ion=LianLi0913

[RebootTech]

This is a little late in coming, but I finally have some nice final pics to share. It will at least round out the thread and officially make it finished!











INTERNAL SHOTS:

[Mankz]

YGPM

[Hukkel]

Looking really nice. I never see anyone using this case. So that is a plus already.

I would advise you to make a backplate for the gpu though. It is sticking out as a sore thumb atm.

[RebootTech]

Yes, totally agree...I hate how the GPU looks...it's pretty bad. Even if I'd used a GPU with a black PCB it would look better, but as it stands that has got to be the ugliest part of the build. Wonder if some of my leftover smoked acrylic would cover it enough...