Case Mod - In Progress Dual Loop CM Stacker est. 2009 - update: 13th April '13

With a 360 and a Q6700 that rad should be enough, or keep the 240 plumbed in and run it before the vid card. No need for dual loops for 2 components. Would keep things simpler.

And if you dont clean it after 4 years, filter or not itll still look like that.

 

I've had a 4ghz i7 920 for the past 4 years. I could get away with cooling the CPU, GPU and RAM on the triple rad but I already have an extra pump, rad, res, tubing and fittings going spare that aren't worth selling so the second loop makes sense really. Plus the case is huge so it would be a shame not to fill it with gear.

Made a bit of progress today:


Prepping for paint.


Decided to go for gloss white and keep all the mesh black.


I didn't take any photos of the painting process apart from this blurry one of the top panel. I will get some pics tomorrow once its all dried.


Mounted the power and reset buttons.


Although the brushed alu effect looked pretty good, I decided to polish the switch panel to see how it looked. If I decided against it I will quickly make a new panel in the future.


No going back


After all of the sanding stages and onto the wet and dry, in this picture I think it was 600g.


After 3000g, very smooth but quite dull.


Autosol followed by Megs metal polish.


Not too bad, I didn't spend as much time as I usually do on a polishing job and there are a few very fine scratches. If I decided to go for the polished look I will take more time on this.


A few bits painted, still quite a lot left to do! I forgot how many individual pieces the Stacker has.

 

I love stackers. I have redone my one twice now. It's black and white this time and I have done that same as you with the flushed top panel.

Looking good dude.

 

Thanks man, black and white is always a winning combo!


How its sitting at the moment, I think it looks quite good without its panels


The top panel assembled, once the paint has had a week or so to harden I will buff it up with some polish.


I re-polished the switch panel.


I decided to mod the connection panel as I never use firewire on this computer.


I replace the firewire connection with a small rocker switch which fits perfectly


I removed all of the unneeded PCB to allow clearance for the new power and reset switches.


Its a squeeze but everything should be fine once wired up.


Made a small platform to support the remaining PCB, which will be mounted on super sticky tape to isolate it from the metal plate.

Thats all for today.

Left to do:
Paint the front door, bottom skirt and both side panels white.
Repaint the chassis matt black (there are a few scratches).
Paint all fan blades white (not buying new fans as the Yate Loons are great).
Mount all the components for the second water loop.
Flush the old water loop.
Re-plump both loops and fill with distilled water + silver coils/PT Nuke.
Rip out all wiring and cables, reconfigure and sleeve etc.

 

I didn't get much done today in terms of modding but i've stripped everything down ready for some real progress.


Draining the 4 year old coolant.


The worst dust i've ever seen!! Quite a bit of it is the result of using an electric sander on the walls in my room and forgetting the PC was running. Nothing the air compressor didn't fix though.


I decided that green sound reactive under-slung cathodes are were no longer cool



I was quite worried about the damage the green coolant may have caused but I was pleasantly surprised, the rad, pump and res were spotless after a flush out. The RAM block was actually shinier on the inside that the outside. The only sign of mess was in the CPU block.


The worst of the green stuff, not bad at all.


I was hoping to reuse the Tygon hose but its quite stained and as I will probably be going for red coolant this time, it may look purple? I tried scrubbing the inside of the hose with a toothbrush and soapy water but I didn't have any luck.

 

That shiny switch panel looks pro. I'm liking the black and white theme. I know you were planning on going with cathodes, but you can get a white LED strip for under a tenner, much cheaper to run and less likely to combust:

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_21023.html

...or if you need softer light:

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_21038.html (this one is 60cm though)

 

@Stu That seems like a good idea as im sure 1 strip will be enough to illuminate the entire inside of the case.


Originally the pump was going to be mounted inside the drive cage but ideally I like to mount pumps directly below the res.


This was the ideal spot for the pump but I didn't want to just bolt it through the mesh of the built in fan grill as that would look a bit crap really.


I made a plate to cover the hole left after I remove the fan grill. I only had gloss black paint to hand but I will pick up some matt black at the weekend when I respray the chassis.


Much better.


As previously mentioned the 240 rad is mounted up front with a couple of brackets. Although they are substantial as the rad is also sat on the floor of the case, I might swap these for some lengths of aluminium 'L' channel.


Inside shot, ignore the shabby looking chassis as this is going to be repainted soon.


Playing around with fittings.




Im using old pieces of tubing to plan everything out, I have a couple of meters of brand new tubing that will be used.

Thats pretty much all I can do at the moment until I've repainted all the matt black parts, once thats done I should be able to make some pretty quick progress.

 

I wanted to move the 250mm res up to allow the pump to sit better than it did before but this support was in the way.


I drilled out the rivets that held in the chassis brace/extra long psu support.


Then trimmed a couple of inches from the side support, I now have plenty of room to mount the res and the chassis is just as strong as before.


Everything got a fresh coat of paint while it was disassembled.




The rear of the case will rarely be seen but the blanking panel looks pretty good, I was tempted to make another panel to fill the gap left by the fan blow hole and plenty the join with filler to make it look completely factory. In the end I decided to leave it like this and save it for the next revamp in 2017


Could also do with some prettier 90 elbows really :/


Quick colour test, yep, looks red to me

 

I haven't had much time to work on this recently as i've started a new job but heres what i've done since the last update.


I wasn't happy with using 90 degree fittings due to flow restriction so these were all replaced with 45s. I also swapped out all of the older style 45 fittings I had for newer chunkier ones which offer less flow restriction, which I tested by blowing through them and the difference was noticeable.


One of my original 45s also started to leak slightly from the rotary joint, but they have lasted a few years so I didn't mind buying these new fittings.


I've mounted the res for the second loop upside down as its going to be filled from the top.


Im much happier with this configuration rather than using that ugly 90 degree fitting, these will also be swapped out for the chunkier 45s when I order some more.


I painted all of the fans the same white as the rest of the case, I could have bought new fans but the Yate Loons have served me well.


Really happy with the way this turned out, the reason the top tube from the cpu block to the rad is so long is to allow room for the second pump and tubing. This will make more sense once I start to get the second loop built up.


A shot from the front, im really liking this red coolant over the old green stuff. When this picture was taken I was still leak testing but once its complete I will be filling up the res.


A shot from above, from this angle it looks like the tube on the far right protrudes through the side of the case but in actual fact its flush.

Left to do:
Paint the front door, bottom skirt and both side panels white.
Buy a GPU block, more tygon, fittings and blue coolant for second loop.
Mount all the components for the second water loop.
Add two fill ports to the switch panel.
Sort out a bit of subtle white lighting.
Cable management.

 

I managed to get a bit more done today and partly assemble the rig so its usable for now.


Theres about 10mm of clearance between the longest tube and the side panel mesh



I decided to paint the strips that surround the drive bays black, instead of polishing. The bottoms piece was riveted in place so it was easier to mask the surround area and paint in place.


Painted the PSU plate white.


I also painted the bottoms 'skirt' of the case white, leaving only the two side panels and the front panel left to paint white.


Really liking the white so far.

Left to buy:

1. GPU block for the GTX285.
2. White LED lighting strips.
3. A few more compression and elbow fittings.
4. Another meter of Tygon tubing.
5. Blue coolant.
6. White and black sleeving & heatshrink.

Left to do:

1. Paint 3 panels white.
2. Wire power and reset buttons.
3. Mount some white LED lighting and connect to front mounted switch.
4. Drill two holes and mount the fillports in the polished top panel.
5. Connect one fill port to the first loop (loop 1 then complete).
6. Mount the front 240mm rad.
7. Paint 3 more 120mm fans white.
8. Mount GPU block and plumb second loop.
9. Massive cable sleeving and management session.

Thats all I have for now untill next week

 

Very impressive. I'm still using my Stacker 832 and I love to see how your is shaping up!

 

Yes! Progress

I need to see this in person, let me know if you want some help bud.

 

@GravitySmacked - Thanks I was tempted to buy a new case but it would have been a shame to ditch the mighty Stacker.

@StuBabes - Once i've got hold of a GPU block cheap and I have the fittings etc, fancy helping me route it all and plan the tubes etc? It took me literally a couple of hours just to decide on the layout for the first loop which is pretty basic haha.

Im planning to sleeve most of the cables black as before but the 24 pin cables and graphics card cables will be sleeved white with black connectors to help tie in with the theme a bit more. The second water cooling loop will have blue fluid to emphasis having dual loops and it should tie in with the motherboard quite well as its covered in blue and red LEDs.

 

Yeah would be more than happy to look at routing the tubes. Case tidying (cables etc) is something I like doing