Scratch Build – In Progress Project Quintessence - 29Jun-She's Live- CPU Magazine!

The more that I look at your work, the more I want to do a woody. That radio mod looks so good. Maybe I'll just sling an ITX board in a full size 50's Werlitzer. Take the easy way out.lol

 

WOW....


just wow.

 

Still one of my favourite builds of all time
Can't wait to see this finished Voigts!

 

That would be waaay too easy.

Thanks Editor22. I'm trying to get this thing wrapped up in the next week or so.

It actually is hard for me to take my stuff out of the Zenith build. I still really like it.

 

Looks good

Looking forward to see the finished result

 

I fell in love with this build from day 1... can't wait to see it finished

 

Another masterpiece nearing completion .

 

Thanks guys. I worked more today and got the LED strips mounted and wires sleeved. I've got to work on getting power cables set up and managed before I can hit the tubing. I'm still a bit on the fence as to whether I'm going to go with copper hard line or not. It depends on me figuring out how to run a bit of vinyl tubing to the hard line going in and out of the pump. I've found out the hard way before that running hard line directly connected to a pump transfers too much vibration to the case.

 

I'm not surprised man, Zenith is still an awesome build... so classy

 

Looking mighty cool

 

Putting in Parts, Lighting, Watercooling, etc. Part 2

I've been chipping away at this just about every day since the last update, mainly working on wiring and the like. I spent 4 hours a couple of nights ago just sanding scrollwork by hand. I had to use small folded up pieces of 500 grit to sand all of the scrollwork as bits and pieces of material fibers were stuck in the lacquer all throughout the scrollwork.

I made a set of fan mounts to hold the fans onto the side panel. They are held to the side panel by #2 x 1/4” screws.





I managed to get all of the wiring hidden in the area in front of the PSU and underneath the case. This really took some doing trying to figure out how to route everything and get it all to fit in that tight space. Being able to tie wiring up underneath made all of the difference.



I had to come up with a way to mount a 4 port USB panel to the case. There isn't enough clearance behind the top rad and the PCI backpanel to mount it, and I like having the extra internal USB ports for the printer/scanner, etc as some items don't like USB hubs. I decided to mount it to the rear of the case. I marked the holes off using the PCI bracket that comes with the 4 ports. I drilled holes, used a carbide Dremel bit to ream out as much as possible, and then filed the rest. I had my shop vac on the entire time so that I wouldn't shoot bits of metal all over the case interior.





Here is a shot of the interior of the MB side of the case. I have bits of paper towel stuffed into the water blocks and rads to keep stuff out of them. I haven't mounted the fan controller yet as I need to get the watercooling in place first as it will be easier without the controller being in the way.



I'm at the point that I'm ready to start running tubing for the watercooling. I'm planning on going with copper tubing, with the exception of in and out of the pump. I think I'm going to use a bit of clear vinyl tubing here to help prevent pump vibrations from being transferred by hard tubing to the case.

Stay tuned...

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Sure looking brilliant mate .

 

Thanks Wayne.

I just ran into a major problem. I was planning on hard lining the tubing with 1/2" OD copper tubing, which is all I can get here in that size. I was going to do like Alain-S is doing using Bitspower BP-MBWP-C47 fittings with 12mm OD copper, which fits perfectly. The fittings are exactly 12mm ID, so the hard lined copper is a no go for me as my tubing won't go into the fittings as 1/2" OD is 12.4mm (by my calipers). The copper in countries that use the metric system must be 12mm OD as he is using.

Oh well, back to tubing.

 

I know it would be a lengthy task but couldn't you wrap some wet/dry paper around the ends you want to plug into the fittings to try & thin them down by the 0.7mm checking regular with calipers.

 

I thought about that, but it would be next to impossible to keep the ends round as they must be in order to seal, and sanding them down would also make the tubing kind of thin.

 

The interior is looking really tidy - great work.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to do with the fittings - are you trying to plug 12.4mm OD tubing into 12mm ID bitspower (comppression?) fittings? If so, could you just take 0.4mm off the OD of the copper using a lathe, assuming you know someone with one? Copper pipe has a reasonable wall thickness from my experience - far more than is needed for the pressure watercooling runs at anyhow. Is the idea for copper pipe for looks or due to a lack of space? It's not very practical if you ever need to change the routing or fittings!

Anyhow, keep up the good work - the scrollwork looks great.

 

What MP said or the other option would be to import but the cost will probably be quite high.

 

What about soldering a short length of 12mm OD in 12mmID? -might take some sanding...
There's got to be someone on the metric pipe standard here that could ship you some.

 

Thank you for the nice comments. Plugging in the 1/2" tubing, which is 12.4mm into the Bitspower fittings is exactly what I was trying to do without realizing that 12mm OD tubing is actually 12mm exactly and so are the Bitspower fittings. Unfortunately I'm out of luck in the lathe department.

As for the idea of going copper, its for looks, and also to avoid the plasticizer issues that I'm tired of dealing with. I wanted to either use plasticizer free tubing, or go hard copper as I'm sick of having that white film end up on and in everything. As for practicality in changing things out, I have no problem with it.

Having it imported just isn't going to be an option from what I can see online.

I'm hunting around online to see if there is a source stateside for 12mm that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm also debating whether or not to just go with tubing and be done with it as I've already got 7/16" black Primochill handy.

 

That rocks already bro!!
I believe you should go with normal tubing even though I wouldnt recommend that size for your case. The best would have been 3/8'' ID 5/8'' OD due to better bending ratio.
Smaller would be better but it will be somehow restrictive.
Tubing also its more versatile and in case of mistake it wont worth a fortune neither you gonna
have to create a tube again.
I think always with functionality in mind but thats just me

Mod on my friend you rock!!