Case Mod - In Progress Project: Wet Rarity - 16th MAY 2013 - Revisited, Revamped, Retubed, still unfinished.

^^ That. If you've got an airing cupboard that's just as good, but remember to use the alcohol to clean it all.

 

This is why i don't water cool, to scary

 

on the hunt for a new sabertooth now. i hope that's the only piece i need to repace.

 

New Sabertooth motherboard and GTX 560ti are here, tested and confirmed working on air. will soon be converting to watercooling blocks and reinstalling in the case. pics to come.

 

Still P67 or Z77 this time? My P67 probably needed the block, the Z77 is awesome on just its back exhaust fan.

 

P67. didn't fancy modding the thermal armor on the Z77 board. and it's just the CPU that's getting waterblocked, unless there's mosfet blocks you can use while the armor plate is on

 

Just received an email.

First off, little moan here. you could post this question IN THIS VERY THREAD. not only would you get an answer from me, but you may get a better answer from someone else posting here too. (because most of my answers suck)

Anyway, the question is: How did I paint my GPU backplate.

Answer., i 'Tried' to paint my backplate, but failed. I used a hardwearing white radiator paint (cause hey, could get hot) straight out of the can, sprayed onto a cleaned GPU backplate with no primer coat. however 2 things happened to it. 1: i must not have cleaned it well, because the paint had a reaction to something and started to bubble off and 2: i sprayed too much and got paint runs and pools of paint.

I was thinking of sanding the whole plate down and repainting, but after using the white vinyl on the motherboard, i figured i could cover the GPU plate with it too.

Of course this covered up all the holes on the plate, so it was out with an exacto knife, and i cut out each and every hole on the card. it took a while, but in the end, it gave me the flawless white plate i wanted in the first place.

 

Lol is there a way to get a link or exact model number to the adhesive white vinyl you used?

 

I've used 2 different brands of vinyl so far, i've never heard of them before. but to be honest, i don't really see much difference between this stuff and other brands, even more expensive ones such as 3M

'd-c-fix original' which i found in Wilkinsons for about £4 a roll (2m x 45cm)
'Melinera Decorative film' which i found in Lidl, usually on sale 3 rolls for £5. (2m x 45cm) but they tend to be sold on certain weeks, like most of the home goods offers Lidl do.

If you don't have one of those stores nearby, I'd check out hardware and arts and craft stores to see if they stock this stuff, (usually near anything to do with window coverings/stained glass effect)


But yeah, back to the modding. Before the hardware fail, i had a couple of small issues with the NZXT lighting kit. for starters, the power cable...

(excuse the crappy picture, camera phone)

the black cable was the stock power line, all 3" of it. there was no way to plug this into a molex cable without having to trail a cable across the motherboard to get to it. So out with the soldering iron and i replaced the socket on the board with a 2 pin plug. used the molex wire from an old 80mm fan to make a new power line that could come from behind the motherboard tray, to reach the board.

SO after sorting that issue out, let's mount it in the case.. here's issue 2. the PCB is mounted on the PCI bracket so low down that the thermal armor plate blocked it. there was no other option, i had to cut a slot in the armor to fit it in.

Not the prettiest of mods, but necessary. on another motherboard, the LED board would be mounted so close to the board, you'd have to be concerned about any large caps (the board sits a few mm lower than most graphics card PCBs)
I'll be recovering the armor plate that surrounds the IO panel with vinyl, as the filing of the notch chewed it up a bit, but at least this was an easy fix, otherwise i'd be looking at new lighting systems (Can't fault the NZXT Kit purely cause there's a easy accessible on/off button and that's worth it's weight in myrrh [/Clarkson])

Now armed with a new Sabertooth motherboard and a new 560ti. it's about time I got the kit reinstalled inside the case and get it watercooled again.

 

doublepost

 

I didn't know you could burn juice.



New board on the left, old board on the right. Old board will be sold off soon, but first it needs a few parts switched out.

Obviously, the thermal armor plate will be swapped, due to it already being white and modded to fit the lighting kit. the next thing will be



The heatsinks. rather than repainting the new board's heatsinks, a few pins out and the old heatsinks can be swapped in place.


Reinstalled and testing away again, just to make sure no more surprises are in store.. with no sponsors backing me up, the next thing that 'surprises' me may result in me not baing able to afford to recover the project. It's check thrice, mod once from now on.



I also finally finished sleeving the power supply wiring. next time i want this, i'm going to pay someone else to do it for me. the ammount of swearing i did while trying to remove pins was astronomical (the Phobya pin tools were not much help, had to constantly rebend them into shape.) and the stock plugs on the Antec PSU were really tight, trying to squeeze the tool in the plugs.

But still, all done now, bar the hard drive modular cable. speaking of modular cables, there's now 2 more added onto the PSU, but what for...


turns out my dead graphics card, which was having issues with 3 PC's and deemed broken... came back from RMA working with no issues. so now i have 2, 560ti's in this PC, which will require a little tweak to the Watercooling layout, and a new waterblock.

 

Since someone asked me about the GPU backplate, here's a photoset of the same process on the GPU waterblock instead


Take one nickel waterblock (unfortunately, couldn't get a matching copper block like the first one, couldn't afford to buy 2 nickel blocks)


cut some white vinyl to fit. the backing paper has these handy squares for cutting out)


attach to waterblock and press down hard (a hairdryer is helpful here)


cut out the screwholes and fitting holes, trim the excess vinyl around the edges.


Nail polish in the grooves of the EK logo (optional and not really going to be seen, but it's the small details)


wait till dry then clean off with acetone polish remover. proceed to attach block to graphics card (follow your blocks instructions carefully)


finally, use some scrap vinyl on an SLI bridge and volia, SLI is good to go

 

Project: Wet Rarity - 12th JULY - Stitch by stitch, putting it together.


I guess nobody's interested anymore... considering this'd be the 4th (should be 5th, but one of those was a accidental doublepost) post in a row with no comments.

finding a lost SD card from the camera revealed a few older pictures. nothing special really.

Picture of the replacement Sabertooth under test before being re-modded for the build


receiving the old graphics card back from RMA (the one with the black PCB edge) apparently all it needed was a holiday in order to come back working again.


when it was working, one thing i did notice was my tubing slowly turning from clear to white. Talks with Mayhems indicated its a problem with the tubing, so a new lot of tubing was ordered that was recommended by Mayhems.


I have no idea why i decided to install hardware in the case upside down, but i did anyway. first thing in was the motherboard, with the CPU block fitted. this time the fittings were tightened up with a set of molegrips as tight as possible.


The old graphics card had it's waterblock refitted and reinstalled. What i didn't account for was that the tubing is a smaller OD than the old stuff, so my compression fittings don't appear to work. however, they've still sealing fine on just the internal barb alone (i do believe i need 5/8" OD compression fittings, instead of 3/4" OD)


The new card was then installed and linked together in serial using some EK compression fittings. However, this did require taking a file to the graphics card, filing away a round notch to allow the fitting to.. er.. fit.


The smaller diameter tubing actually allowed me to route the loop where i originally wanted, under the 240 rad in the front. so, once everything was plumbed together, came the typical overnight leak test.


While it was leak testing, I fixed the NZXT lighting kit into position. While i couldn't get a lot of illumination into the centre of the board, it does certainly light up all the surrounding area. a loop in the drive bays also provides light for the reservoir. I'm considering adding some reflective chrome vinyl on the inside of the case panel, to see if it can reflect the light around the case better. but as of now, it's not that bad. If i can find small enough LEDs, i may put some into the CPU waterblock, however, i will have to wire them up to a switch in order to be turned off when not needed.


Finally, i actually decided to give a video montage another go (and it seems to be the 'in thing' to do with project logs), this time with music and titles and stuff. Let me know if this is more
interesting than my postings.

 

Don't be glum, chum! I'm sure there are many like myself that are ardently watching your wonderful mod, but unable to think of much to say or add to the thread.

 

On one hand, that totally sucks. On the other, WOOHOO!!

The purple pearl is a neat effect...looking forward to seeing the completed pics. You're getting close!

 

I really love the purple coolant.

Have you considered making some sort of glow base on the bottom in the same blue as her cutie mark? Or blacked out except her cutie mark?
Like this: http://www.amazon.com/Trace-Pad-Light-Box-11-X17/dp/B002RU3CLK

((I also couldn't find a way to subscribe to the thread without bumping it.))

 

Even if it's just a 'hey, that's cool' post, that's more helpful to me than silence. many a time, i've almost done work to the mod, and not grabbed a camera to record it. only to go 'hang on, there may be people still reading my log' and then i look at the log and it's all blank.. sorta makes you not want to stop and record things really.

I knew once i saw the Aurora coolant from Mayhems, i HAD to use it. it's so pretty looking. there's Green fluid waiting for the Vortex PC, once i finish modding the thing

Thread Bumps are always nice. getting the project back to pg1 gets it more noticed.

I've seen illuminated flooring done before, but i don't think it'll work well in this case. mostly because of the giant PSU. i only have about 4mm from the top of the PSU to the motherboard.. which is going to make it a chore to tidy the cables for the USB ports and other things. I've got a feeling there's going to be more purple heatshrinkin' in the future for me.

 

great job so far ....but I don't think that waterblock covered with white vinyl looks good. I believe it would better to paint it white but that would void any warranty.

 

Perhaps you could do it on the same level as the PSU? Hide the cables coming from the PSU in the light box.
Like this:
((NZXT Tempest 410 with Corsair HX650Watt PSU. Excuse the clutter in front. I'm doing my own pony-themed case mod (Chrysalis, by the way))

Oh, god dammit. Forgot the PCI covers....