Case Mod - In Progress Project siQalz - Project siQalz - April 1st (Not a joke) REVEAL!!!

I should probably start off with a little introduction, My name is Liam, I'm 21 years of age and live in a small town called Frome in the South West UK.

I have been building my own computers for the past 5-6 years but never really got into the whole "modding" scene until recently.
I have been following the forums and admiring work for a few months now but only recently signed up and started posting to show my love for various projects and try and drop a witty comment where i can

The project is called siQalz due to the fact of my overuse of the word siQ in online games. Thinking of a name for my build was the hardest part and im hoping its going to turn out pretty siQ so the name was appropriate.....

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Obviously the first thing i chose was my case and it was a pretty easy decision for me. As soon as i saw the Obsidian i loved it, Also as i wanted a full tower it was a no brainer some would say.



Personally i was very happy with the case and packaging, Also i believe the price is reasonable compared to its competitors in the market.



I then went on to order my watercooling components! I will be having two loops, One for the CPU only and one for the GPU/Motherboard.

Heres a picture of said kit.



The two pumps i selected were the DDC-1T Pro with the Alphacool clear acrylic tops. I chose the tops with the outlets both coming from the same side rather than one top and one side as i would like to mount them both in the bottom of the case having 4 tubes shooting straight up. Personally i think this is going to look awesome.







I chose XSPC radiators, the RX360 for the CPU cooling and the RX120 for the GPU/Motherboard. The matt black of the radiators works so well with the case.





For the CPU block i went with the EK Supreme Highflow. Ek recently changed their packaging, Vast improvement if i say so myself.





Here's a quick picture of the reservoirs i chose, Simple and sweet. The new not as deep single drive bay clear res'.



As i am going for a light blue/black theme the fans are chose are the Silverstone Siuscool121 120mm. I will be going for the push/pull setup on the 120 rad but not on the 360.




I spent quite a while looking through motherboards but i finally made a decision. I went with the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 as i feel it was the right board for the job. Colour fit, specs fit and finally budget fit.

Here it is in all its glory.



This is it complete with the dreadful standard chipset/mosfet heatsink cooler.



I couldn't be dealing with this so i quickly removed it using a simple pair of wire cutters, easy job if you ask me.



Motherboard now looks a bit better without that heap of junk!



I replaced it with the absolutely incredible EK full-board block. I mean this thing is stunning, check her out for yourself.









That's all for now sadly. Sorry for posting a MASS of pictures with not much modding. I have ordered my PSU along with sleeving from mdpc-x so i shall update as soon as that arrives. Hopefully that post will have slightly more modding in.

Cheers for reading.

Liam

 

Hey there and welcome to the forums.

It looks like you are off to a good start here.
What are your plans for the case itself? Will you be painting it to match your scheme?

 

As a fellow Obsidian owner, I am insta-following this thread

Black and blue, this should look really nice, especially with the clear WB tops.

 

interesting
ill be checking in from time to time

 

SOUNDS LIKE FOUR HUGE LOB ONS!

Sweet start mate.

 

I'm going to be cutting a few holes for my pipes to come through from my pumps in the bottom of the case to start with.
As for painting I think I'm going to leave the case as it is as the finish is real nice and I'm going to have enough blue in the case to balance it out. However i was thinking about painting the radiators, obviously not fins... But i'm not sure how big of a job this is. I'll look into it.

Thanks man, I got to put some work in if i can keep up to the quality of yours

Thanks man means a lot!

ROFL!

 

Sorry i haven't updated in a while.. Been rather busy with various things.

Anyways its only a tiny update.
I simply drilled some rivets and did a bit of pushing and pulling here and there...(maybe a LOT of pushing and pulling due to the Obsidian's build quality) and removed both the Hard Drive cages and the dividing tray.. if thats what you call it.

Anyways heres a picture of the empty shell:



That's it for now. Not going to tell you my plans but just going to say there is going to be a BIG item coming up soon.... I'm pretty excited myself.

Cheers
Liam

 

sweet mother of osmosis its empty
what in the world are you planning

 

You shall have to wait and see I'm afraid!

Anyways here goes for a small update.

Since i cut out the "shelf" i needed something to go in it's place to separate the PSU and HDD's from the mobo etc (plus help hide some cables )
In the end i decided to make something out of mesh. I picked up some pretty good/cheap (in my oppinion) mesh from Homebase and started to get to work....

I started by cutting the mesh to size using some ancient clippers my Step-Dad had lying around..



Once i had the mesh cut to the right size i proceeded to fold it. I went about this by simply clamping it between two bits of wood and simply "shaping" (hitting like hell) the piece that needed to be bent.



After a bend or two it starts to take shape and turns out like this....



All finished and ready to sit in the case. Easy huh? Well apparently not... As i had it cut to fit perfectly it was a bit of a bugger to get in! After 10mins or so of persuading it whilst trying not to bend it out of shape i finally managed to get it in and this is the end result..





I think it looks pretty neat to be honest. But not sure if i should spray it black? All ideas welcomed.

I still need to cut a few wholes in the backside of it for the cable routing etc and shall get round to that when i can.

Next update was going to be braiding the PSU, However my current PSU gave up on me and i had to use my new one for current rig so this has been postponed for now!

I received an order from Aquatuning this week which I'm pretty excited about, But don't want to mention what was in the box until i have my camera back to take photo's for you all to see! lets just say It's big..... holds a lot of water.... and shall be mounted on the outside of the case.

Apologies for the terrible pictures/lack of any cropping at all.
Any comments on my comedy workplace are appreciated!

Thats all for now and catch you again soon hopefully!

 

Spray it black.

At the risk of getting e-slapped for pimping my own build, here's how mesh (similar to what you've done) looks in black, against a black chassis:



Also, what all's going under the mesh? just cables?

 

I think you're right that does look awesome in black!

PSU sits on the left hand side at the bottom. HD cage is bottom right and I'm contemplating putting the pumps bottom center!

 

spot on that is mind.

 

Project siQalz - April 1st (Not a joke) REVEAL!!!

New update!!!

A few things shall be revealed in the following post... So make sure you read it!

First off my CPU and Memory arrived!
Should be powerful enough for everything i can throw at it (when clocked )



Here's the "big" reveal so to speak. Not much I can say just well.. take a look yourself







Well there she is, My "Aquacomputer evo 1080" - Absolutely love it.
It will be mounted on the right hand (if looking at a case from the front) side of the case giving it the effect it is floating.
Not too sure about clearance etc yet for airflow and such but i shall do a few mock ups and see how it goes.

Anyways i needed a fan or two for this thing so i chose the Enermax Clusters.. I don't know what it is that makes me love them so much but i do.



Oh and when i said one or two i might have meant 15.....



Haha! 9 for Radiator for CPU loop, 3 for Radiator for GPU loop and 2 for NB/SB -Mosfet loop OH and one for spare

Couldn't resist stacking them!




I did also get around to doing a little bit of modding believe it or not.

I cut out a whole in the front of the case where the hot-swap cage sat. Planning to remove the door from the front panel of the case, Cover the hole with mesh and mount a 140mm Fan there as an intake.

Queue a DUAL Dremel spark flying pron pic!



!!! And here is how it turned out, Gotta do the filing yet mind and smoothe it down. But it looks alright!



The case might look a little messy but that just dust etc... at least i hope

I also got round to spraying the mesh black... just give it a quick once over and shall do one maybe two more coats however it looks alright.




Thats pretty much all for now.. Shall hopefully get around to doing some more this weekend (<3 Bank Holidays).
Hope you enjoyed this update... and maybe at least one person out the is as excited about the build as me

Oh before i forget had a few more goodies arrive!



New headphones due to me snapping my others
Sound quality on the Arena's is awesome and sound canceling is unreal... can't hear myself type when i have them on.

Since i now have the PSU tools, I finally have to get around to braiding my PSU - Not looking forward to it at all!

Plenty of MX-2 to go around and the Aquatuning mag that came with my radiator....This magazine contains every thing you can think of for cooling a PC. Huge amount of stock, You can check them out at http://www.aquatuning.co.uk/
Also they are currently giving out prizes if you sign up to become a fan of their Facebook page and type "I <3 Enermax" on their wall. Do it people, You know it's the right thing to do.

Cheers for listening, and see you again sometime.

Liam

 

Thanks for the mention there liam!

Great worklog i will stay tuned!

 

Nice mate, loving the flying sparks from you and J rofl!

Will be good to see the thing in person!

 

Nice work Liam.

You and imersa expecting a heatwave in Somerset ?, some extreme cooling going on !

Cheers,

Mark

 

ahahah, bring the heat!

 

interesting

 

How much fluid will the rad take?!?!?!? And isn't it just a tad overkill for a CPU loop...?

 

No problem mate, Good things deserve to be praised.

Haha, I dunno man - The bigger the....more fun

Care to elaborate?

Sadly i don't know how much it holds and i can't find out on the net either... But I'm sure it will be fine. I have around 10 litres of fluid.
If anyone does know then please let me know.

Also if anyone has any ideas of what would be a good pump for this radiator to keep the flow at a good standard then i would appreciate suggestions.

As for overkill, Yes, Definitely... but thats half of the fun

Cheers
Liam