Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Der_Meister - custom alu case *Epilogue Nov 8th, 2007*

Vid card support relocated

Short update.

First of all, thanks for all the positive comments! I appreciate each one of them!

Sometimes great things happen. When you least expect them to. The vid card support was about 95% perfect for the 6800GT. Now it needed to be changed. So I thought ‘oh well let’s do the best we can’. And, well, see for yourself…but I think we can safely say it’s 99% perfect now!!

Here it is…notice how perfect it lines up with the alu plate of the waterblock:


‘Below’ the vid card support are the holes for the SATA cables and some of the RCA plugs. The support comes close to them, but stays far enough not to cause any problems.

Here’s the money shot. The support is perfectly aligned with the vid card. It doesn’t touch it, but it’s so close lots of people would think it does make contact:


And the ‘upper’ side, this is the side that’s most visible in my case. Here it is perfectly aligned as well…


Needless to say, I’m very happy with how this turned out. I wasn’t expecting a result this good. Woohoo!

That’s it for now, I was so excited with this result I just had to post some pics. See you soon…

 

OMG ! It's perfect!!! Sometimes miss lucky take a closer look at our modding works!

 

That's not luck you see. That's perspiration.

 

CPU waterblock

I’m working on the last pieces, sanding, wetsanding, polishing. To get away from it for a while, I mounted the CPU waterblock. Thought I’d post some pics.

This block is one of the most beautiful pc-parts I’ve ever seen. Here it is from a couple of angles. Made in Germany, of course. Can’t expect anything else for this project, right?








I should be done with the last pieces this week, so in a couple of days, I can start putting it all together…exciting! Till then, bye.

 

oh yeahh , thats what i'm talking about , good luck man , keep going

 

Are you going to put water on the chipset also?

It looks great dude. Can't wait to see it all together!
Rock on!

 

If you will stay on air cooling for NB I suggest that you take down the the panel that says "ASUS". Just for better cooling.

 

thats one hell of a sexy waterblock, but ill say that its really good once i see good temps.

 

this project just keeps getting better and better

 

thanks for the comments.

I'm not watercooling the northbridge and the voltage regulators, imo I would need a second loop for them (and include southbridge and hdd's) and that's not planned so far (maybe in the future though).
@galimim: you might be right, I'll have to see if I can get the panel off.

 

WOW
#
me likes, keep it up!

 

Assembly has begun!

Finally….finally….finally….HERE WE GO!

I’ve done a bit more than you’d expect since I have put the frame together again a couple of weeks ago to glue strips to the lower and top panel.

Here’s a global pic –sorry for the messy backgrounds, didn’t have time to make a good setting for taking these pics-


One thing to note is the middle bar in the lower end, I cut off a bit of that. You can see it in the pic, it’s where the square bit of black alu is missing. I cut off about 4cm, now I can guide the wires and cables that go under the fake bottom through there. The ‘cut in half’ bar is kept in position by one of the bolts in the lower case panel, so all is good.

A closer look of the mobo area. The Lian Li tray needs to be wiped off before I put in the mobo. The black alu looks great, it shines a bit, the anodizing adds a nice depth. I love it.


This is the backside. Ignore finger prints, they wipe off easily cause I clear coated the panels. I just forgot to wipe this one for the photo-session.


The mobotray is attached to the backplate with M3 buttonhead bolts. Nice.


The mounts for the hard discs are also amongst the first things I put in. Now they’re out of the way, that’s 16 bolts taken care off.


Ahh, the underside. Finally the real effect of the casefeet is visible (also for me, it’s the first time I got to see this!). Imo, they look great. Now let’s hope they’re strong enough. Also note the black strips I glued to the front and back end of this panel (and the top panel). They cover up some gaps on the edges. And of course they add to the global look as well. This pic also gives a nice idea of the level of shinyness and reflection I’ve reached on the panels. It’s just what I wanted, so I’m very satisfied with it. Sorry for all you mirrorfinish-lovers, not on this case!


The last pic is an attempt to show you the clearance of the case when it’s on its feet. At the moment it’s about 2cm, but it’ll become less when the weight increases.


I figure it’ll take me over two weeks to assemble the case. The metal parts are easy and fast, but the wiring and leds will be much slower. The first part of that will come very soon, I’m going to put on front and top panel soon and I want to glue/tape in the UV leds before that.

Finally, I’ve come up with another ‘crazy’ idea. In order to simplify the wiring mess of the bottom panel, I’m thinking about buying some stripboard, some PCB headers and sockets and make a pluggable board to put in between the bottom panel and the RCA’s. But this would require a lot of extra work, soldering and so on. So I’ll first look if I can’t clean it up a bit with a few zip ties and some extra terminal blocks.

Expect a new update in a couple of days. Till then, thanks for looking.

 

you are now offically on the home straight!

keep up the brill work.

 

Indeed..And looking exceptionally-good..

 

We've been waiting months for this moment and I am officially excited. Take your time and good luck, it will be amazing.

 

Awesome Project, kind of makes me realize I should have clear coated the panels on my alu custom case.
I'm interested in you choice of solid square bars over hollow box section or L rail for the frame? I would have thought you could achieve similar strength at considerable less weight?

 

Wow! In my mind I've tried to figure how the final assembly will looks, but in photo is better! Go on and take your time, the finishing is always a time consuming and boring job, but the end is near! Good work as usual, really stunning effect!

 

Yeah, quite nice.

 

Thanks all.

Greensabbath: yep, when I started this I thought it would have been over by August l2006...so I've been waiting for months as well. Now I'm glad though I chose not to rush it.

Hi, I chose the solid bars because I wanted to have clean joints between them. There's nothing sticking out, no L-braces on the corners, nothing like that. Besides, the frame is not that heavy, it's about 6kgs. Of course it's a lot more than hollow bars or L or U shaped parts would be, but considering I think the total weight will be somewhere around 40kgs, it's not a big deal.

 

Assembly, part two!

I’m getting good progress with the assembly. Next week is quite busy, otherwise I think I would have the case up and running by next week-end. Now I’m aiming for the week-end after that (feb 17). A buddy of mine will come and help take pics. He has some nice photography stuff that I don’t, so it’ll be beneficial for the quality of the FIN pics.

But that’s still far away, so let’s focus on respecting that deadline!

Yesterday I wanted to mount the front and top panels to the frame. For simplicity reasons, I first needed to put the UV leds in. I used hot glue, velcro, double sided carpet tape. Here’s how the front panel came out.


When the 27 leds were all mounted, the time came to put on the panels. It all went well. Here’s the front:


For those who are thinking ‘wow that black plexi logo panel’, here’s a closer look…I think it looks pretty amazing:


Here’s the optical bay and aquatube cover. I said it before and I’ll say it again, the edges of the plexi are incredible. Novus acrylic polish…a tip I got from Modsquad. Thanks man!


The top. If you read all my notes you know the first layer of clearcoat went wrong on this panel, so I needed to correct it. Took about 5 layers in the end, it shines more than the other panels. You can see it in the reflections of the bolts, they’re very clear here and more diffused on the other panels. Oh well, no biggie, this side will be exposed to light and dust the most so I can use a bit more protection.


Here’s a good example of the ‘shine’ on the black anodized alu. Look at the bolts at the back of the ‘Benzin’-piece. Look at their reflection, nice huh?


Here’s the inside…a look at the led wiring.


And another…not much of this will be visible when everything is in. The blue wire is UV reactive, so if a part is visible, at least it won’t look bad.


Speaking of UV, she’s baaaack!



Today I’m installing some of the inside lighting, the hard drive cage with some sound dampening stuff, the psu, and some watercooling components (rad, fillport, aquatube).

See you soon!