Case Mod - In Progress Project: NBnO Nismo's Black'n'Orange |june 28, pretty much done|

That's starting to really look good, keep it up!

 

Love the shape of that top part, this is looking good!

keep it up! :>

 

update

It was a nice warm day so I decided to do some modding utside and I said that I would be finishing the block this time but I did some work on the res instead.

Marked out(pic from the last update):


fast cut:


some sanding:


making a template for the screws:



marking the lexan:


small holes drilled:


some drill bits later and test screws as I don't have the ones that I will use later yet:


more sanding:


Doh! scratches, it looks alot worse in the picture but with water behind you can barely see it but I will make another one if it looks bad later on:


Now i needed to make a gasket but the first one turned out like this because of the hole maker I used is a hole cutter for paper, the kind with 4 hole makers:


new one:


testing it on the res:



it needs some more cutting to get i to look the best but it's most important on the inside since that is what you are going to see.

leak testing:


I'm thinking of putting the res here:


The res is watertight and I will pressure test it later.
I will probobly make a new top for the block and cut into it a bit more when I get some more cutting discs.

Thats's all I got this time.

 

stuff!

I was visiting a car thingy today to scavenge the market part of it for a radiator and other stuff.
So, I was walking around and found a radiator that I thoght would fit but it was made from brass but I bought it anyway since it was pretty cheap (100kr (8£/16$)) and never used in a car.
I walked around some more and found som really nice holesaws asked for a price and got it down from 150kr (12-13£/24$) to 100kr (8£/16$) including the center drill bit, now retail price for one of these is something like 500kr (41£/80$) with the basic center drill bit, I got the more advanced one for quick replacing between holesaws what a deal!
Later when I was at the last row, I found a heater core made from aluminium that looked to have the perfecect measurements asked what he wanted for it (It was new in the box by the way) and he said 50kr! (4£/8$) bah if only I had found that one first, anyways happy with my purchase I went to get some more cutting discs and decided to get a diamond cutting disc to see if it was any good (It worked good for plastic, not so much for aluminium).

Here's the heater core:


Almost perfect (13x26cm of fins):


I have some cleaning to do on it since it had some stupid foam stuck to it:

I will clean it later on when I have some better liquid to clean it with.

It had some unneeded plastic that I needed to cut away (If anyone wants to find one of these the only thing I know about it is the writing here):


First rough cut:


sanded:


Hmm, it won't fit like this:


But there is still some space left in the up/down direction maybe I should place the barbs there instead:


after some drilling, sawing and sanding:


Perfect (epoxying, plugs for the holes and another barb is left to do):


The holesaw compared to the old one (the old one is really badly made, maybe that explains the price of it, no really it is really badly made and flimsy.
If you can't tell the orange one is the new one):



I might be doing some more to it tomorrow depending on the weather.
Until the next time /nismo

 

update

Since I had used filler on the front of the case I needed to drill the holes again trough the filler, so I first I measured:


Then I drilled a small hole:


And after that I used the dremel with a sanding stone(I don't really know the name of them):


Testfitting the button:


2 more holes for the LEDs:


Testing all of it:

Looks good.

Then I drilled the hole for the water res with one of my old crappy holesaws, First time using that size and it is completely dull now... :


Then I used the res to mark where it would be on the backside:


And used the lexan to mark out the holes:



Drilling:


Testfitting it all (still with the wrong screws and more filler!):


Then I started working on the rad and to make the water flow better I sanded the fittings a little bit:



And then used epoxy:

I will probobly paint it black later on so the epoxy won't be so obvious.

Since I'm putting the fittings on the side insted of the bottom of the tank I need to plug the holes, so I sanded the bottom flat:



I need something like what I used on the rad to plug the holes so I can't do that right now.

This is all this time and please don't be affraid to comment

 

Very nice !
I realy like the reservoir and your 3d renders look great !!

keep up the good work !

 

Update at last

After a long time of vacations and the like here is an update.
My memory card to the camera is missing so a couple of pictures was left out in order to have any pictures at all :/

I measured the case side according to the measurments in the sketchup model:


Cut, still needing some filing:


I also fitted the hinge by drilling and pop-riveting it to the "top" after that I drilled and tapped some holes on the case (I removed the spring from the hinge so it works alot better than with the spring):



Then I measured up this on some mesh:


This was because I wanted somewhere to put the fan controller, not sure if I like it just yet but it will probably look better with some black paint on it.
Here it is cut, bent and with some filler on it where the fan controller will be later on:



I have also tapped the res now but this is all the pictures I got of it.
Measured:


Drilled and tapped (not the best picture but it will have to do for now):


I will hopefully get some more done in the next few days if it doesn't rain.
/nismo299

 

looking nice, only thing I'd be concerned about is the res being so close to the PSU


nice colour scheme though

 

I guess it's time for sort of an update after a long wait.
What's that you want to know why I haven't done anything in "x" months? well I'll tell you first off I have been doing other stuff seccondly I have been lazy But the most anoying thing that happened was when my top part for the case looked like this:


Almost finished right?
So I did the last filler on it and started painting it and as soon as I put clearcoat on it, It started cracking tha paint all the way to the filler around corners and rivets leading to pretty deep cracks that made me really kinda want to give up but now I'm back again sanding, grinding and sanding this thing
Anyways I didnät take any pictures of it in it's worst state as I just left it there on the floor for all this time until I started fixing it up again but you can kind of see hos it looked here:


See all those big cracks in some od the spots? everything looked like that so that was a huge waste of time when it turned out like that, anyways let's move on to what I have done.

I have been filing a bit on the side window:

Still a bit on filing left to do

After that I cut my peice of lexan for the window:






Next I decided that the radiator with fans just wouldn't fit in here:


So I decided to cut most of the front up and mount it a bit "outside" of the case behind the stealthplate:


Of course my sawblade snapped and I'm out of dremel discs so I didn't get all of the cutting done. (I have a really blurry picture of what's done but I don't think you want to see that, My pictures are blurry enough now )

I also decided that the case needed som case feet so I fitted these because I think they look pretty good:





Tapped and screwed directly to the case

That's pretty much what I have been up to, I'll try to get out updates more often now and I will leave you with a picture of the tops part state now:

(It's getting better but theres still a bit of sanding left, ugh I hate sanding )

 

It's update time again

and the sanding + paint is finally done for my top peice, I decided that I wanted a satin/matte finish on the case instead (Got inspired from that case Bill/mnpctech did a while ago)

So here it is:

The watercooling gear is not for this case.

The main case is also being painted now but is not finished yet as theres still some wetsanding + orange paint left to do on it.




Remember this?:


Well I did cut between the thick fins to make more thinner fins as someone suggested and put an aluminium top on it.
Right now it's in my server cooling a Intel Xeon TDP:68W really well, look:

Idle, air cooling:


Full load, water cooling:
Time and date is wrong I wasn't finished with this 6 years ago hehe.


The air cooler wich is used with a 80mm fan:


And a bad picture of the waterblock:




That's about where I'm at right now, I am pretty pleased with how the waterblock performs for what it is.
I might make a new one for w/e socket it will be in this case since it probobly won't be a 603 Xeon later on.

As always comments + suggestions is appreciated


/nismo

 

New waterblock.

Heres another quite small update of my newest waterblock, I listened to some of your suggestions and looked around a bit on "real" waterblocks and came up with this:

Just a basic zig-zag patter creating "diamond" shapes:


Cut:


And the top with a test-fit:


Next was the the gasket:


Test-fitted with the gasket:


After that I took the block apart to sand it to remove most of the marks from the block but I also decided on making a new gasket to really force the water through the fins (extreme paint pic):


Sanded with the new gasket:


I hope this block performs enough for a semi-new system it's not perfect but for a dremel I think it's pretty ok.
I think it should work when comparing it with the old block that works this should be a lot better at moving the heat.


Small paint update also:



Anyone want to comment this time?

/nismo299

 

Surprised I haven't seen this before with the amount of time I spend on Bit-Tech.

Nice design, always good to see something different.

Nice work on the res. I love the lifting cover as well, looks awesome

 

apr 10

Here's what has happened since the last time.

After I finished painting the case matte black I just had the "stripe" on the case left.
Masking with 3mm painting tape (I was inpressed with this tape absolutely no leakage on the edge unlike masking tape)






After that I finally decided on having some mesh on the sides of the front because otherwise you would see a bit too much of the radiator and I think this looks alot better.

Trying to get an idea of how it should look:


Some cutting and bending later:


Drilled and tapped:


Some testing:




I also painted them black but the camera battery ran out of power, use your imagination


I ordered some new black tint acrylic for the res to make it blend in a bit more with the paintjob:


Making a new res window, first some tracing of the old one:


On the bandsaw:


And done:


Before putting it all together i used some rubber edging on the top to give it a better seal and to make it more "cut-proof" I'm also not finished with the fastening of the front peice that's why the hex-set is holding it up, but here's how it looks now:






Oh, and I almost forgot I polished the waterblock too:



/nismo

 

Thanks, I think it's probably bacause of that there is usually a couple of weeks/months between updates

 

Here I am again after a long time of other things to do, other mods and so on (read lazyness)
I have fitted some old HW in the case and I am using it as a kind of a media center pc It works pretty well even though the HW is pretty old.

The case is done apart from that I need to solder the system leds and I should do some paint touch up but then again it's summer and I'm lazy

The PC has been running for a couple of weeks now and the watercooling is working very well on the Athlon XP 1700+ lol there's less than 10c between idle and full load (prime95) with 40Mhz OC (all I could get from this setup ) and about 8c over room temp on idle.

Here's what I planned:




and here's what I got (yes I'm missing a screw for the front plate ):





It's pretty similar I think and I'm pretty satisfied with it.
Things I need to remember to the next mod is to get som better paint this one was pretty bad and to update more regularly and more detailed (even I can't keep track of what I've done when reading the log) and to get a better camera.

Thanks for reading my log and I hope you got something out of it.

I might get some nightshots later if I can get the camera to cooperate with me, maybe some comparison shots to regular cases too.

/nismo

 

I'm impressed, thats really good and turned out perfect in comparison to your plans!
Excellent mod, you should definitely be proud!

 

Pretty wild design, I'm liking it! Although, the CPU temps can't be right... The water might or might not be 2 degrees colder, but your ambient temperature must be pretty unpleasant for those temps to be right.

 

I guess you mean the pictures with temperatures, right?

In that case it's because the server which that block was tested on was on my unisolated attic in the winter, probably should of mentioned that

/edit: I must have tested it on different dates or something, I see what you mean now with lower temps on load :S

Thank you!

 

very nice work nismo!

 

Pretty cool mod there! I like the mad max feel to it

Great idea on the opening top section.