Hello there, long time reader, amateur modder, and first time full-modder. I've been a big fan of this site for the past few years, and I've made my first modded machine with a full record to be used in a build log. Things could have gone a lot better overall, but it's done now, and I am very impressed. Gentlemen, this is Project Gunship. The idea came after the last lan I drove to. My original machine (Skyline) was in a Lian-Li V2000 case, and composed of 6 HDDS and a lot of weight. Although the machine could be wheeled around, it was impossible to due so without risk of running over a rough surface and shaking the drives to death. The box was cumbersome to carry as well, and overall a handful. So I hatched an idea. What if I took the total drives number down to 3 or 2, put it in the smallest full-atx case I could find, and maybe even water-cool it (the lan location I mention got so hot that my rig crashed, even with what I thought was overkill air-cooling). The search for a case brought me to the GMC-Toast. Able to fit a full size ATX motherboard, 2 HDDs, an extra length GPU, and a single vertical-mounted CD drive. I had no need for more then 1 optical drive, and it's tiny footprint looks like a good option. I did some double checking to make sure my 4870x2 would actually fit in the machine, and all signs pointed to yes. Newegg had a sale back in the winter, and I picked this one up for $30 after rebate. Win. My overall plan, in short: put these full size components in a near-micro box, fit twin radiators to the outside (without interaction with the air inside the case itself), make separate water loops for both the GPU and CPU, change my drive configuration so all my files would be spread across 2x 2tb drives instead of 6 smaller ones, and then do the entire thing in a military/helicopter paint job. Man was I over my head (and over my budget, lulz). More to come soon, the build is done, I just have to post it. And yes, my photography sucks. I tried very hard to do it well, but some things just came out bad. I will try better next time.
Concept and the start Ok, so I thought we should at the beginning. I mentioned already that I was aiming for a small, full powered, high-storage, water cooled lan rig. These were some of the original sketches I made late one night in an attempt to visualize what I wanted. Yes, even though 'I didn't even', I did understand 'thicker material = win'. After that it was time to start buying the parts. Here is a breakdown of what I got. Yes, again, some of these photos are trash. I switched back to using flash After the first few. Here is the first box, from FrozenCPU One of the 12 compression fittings I bought. Koolance 1/4" (6mm) ID G1/4 Threaded Nozzles Pair (NZL-V06KG) Generic no-name steel grills, 80mm and 120mm. One of the 2 Danger Den pumps. One of the 2 Swiftech radiator-reservoir combos. My Danger Den 4870 x2 block Underside of the block. Dead smooth despite the machine marks. 12 Masscool fans. I found out too late that these fans cannot be daisy chained together, or with other power plugs, they are terminal. But they do have 3 pin connections. More to come on them later. And the first of my many pains with this build, the Enzotech Sapphire scw-rev.a block. Nice underside to the block. Twin Western Digital 2tb drives. Now that I had all the things I needed, I just needed a place to work. No external outlets outside my apartment to hook up my dremil and drill to, and the noise would be too loud for the people next door. No place that is easy to clean dust and grime up from in this place, except... Best, plan, ever! Stay tuned as Project Gunship goes under the cutting disk.
Some of my biggest fans Welcome back. So I shut the bathroom door and went to work, happy to learn that the whine of my dremel didn't anger my neighbors in the apartment. My fist step was to remove the dual rear 80mm fan grills. I simply cut along the edges to make octagons, and then smoothed down the sharp edges. Not bad for my first ever dremel work. Next step was to cut the top exaughst hole. This one I was not sure of. At the time I beleived I would be able to fit a single 120mm fan inside the case, so I decided to cut this as a circle. The hole didn't come out bad, I simple followed a youtube guide suggesting to hold the tool in at a 45 degree angle, and to move in small steps. The circle was very well shapped, but still jagged. If I was more patient I would have saved this for my father's holesaw back home, but it turns out the fan wouldn't fit inside anyways. Next up were the side fan intakes. I decided it would be simpler to just cut octagons here, because I knew the fans would never fit inside. Here is the first one, and with the fan mounted as well. Quickly followed by the 2nd hole. And then holes 3 and 4. They were pretty jagged here, but I smoothed them down soon after. Then, I cut A hole in the other side of the case to feed cooling tubes and fan wires through. My eyeball said it was big enough for everything I wanted at the time. Ok, that's it for right now. Next up, bad planning and redneck engineering to counter. Stay tuned!
Problems, solutions, and paint. Ok, so by this time the build had been going great. I had all my parts, my cutting opperation was not causing headaches, and things were overall going to plan. Then I hit a wall. In my plan, I designed 2 radiators to fit of the right side of the case. But after a quick test fit, it dawned on me that the radiators would be so heavy that they would tip the small-foot case onto it's side when filled with water. But my ingenuity struck, and I opened up my V2000. The side panels are held inside with these metal beams. Maybe I could use these as feet to stabilize my rig... Wow did I luck out on that one. Sure, it is a duct-tape solutions, but it works well. I will most likely replace it another day with a better solution, like a 'foot' that extends down from the radiators and contacts the table it's on. Next up is the paint. Original I wanted to do this in desert camo, but I could only find 2 of the 4-5 colors I wanted. And I have done items in freehand woodland stripes before, and they have come out nice. I was not sure if the same technique would work for desert, so I stuck to my guns and got these basic colors at wal-mart. I hit the sweet spot as far as weather was concerned. New England had been hit with non-stop rain for weeks on end, a half week of clear skies, and then a flipping hurricane. I got my parts out on the lawn at daybreak, and hoped the job would be done before the heat and humidity kick up. Yeah, at this time the heat started to get to me, so I just put the camera down and got the painting done ASAP. Next update will show the actual case details, as well as the fans. Then, it's on to the assembly. As well as the horror. "...The horror, the horror..."
The passion of the waterblock Welcome back, and you are just in time for the pain. So, I bought this cpu block off of newegg, with a good number of reviews. Now that I have all the parts, it's time to install. First, the painted case...\\ I am currently busy, but I will update this post as a final setup to the entire build. More to come soon...
Hey, OP here again. Well, I'm gonna cut to the chase. Although I have this machine done and working, I am not as happy with it as I thought I would be. I just have too much equipment stuffed into too small a box. 4 HDDs, 15 fans, 2 pumps, I just over-reached myself. I was able to close the door on the case, but cable management has turned impossible. And then the very bad news happened. My onboard sound on my new motherboard is starting to die. I need to take the whole thing apart, and test a few things, and I have no intrest in spending another weekend draining coolant and slipping screwheads. That, and the fact that I am moving in the start of October, and I don't want my comp in a heap of parts when I do that. The final straw is, if I have to add a new soundcard, then it is game over, simply because one will not fit inside. So, I will leave it as it, move the rig, and then some time later, pull the guts out, and put them in a tech station, like one by DangerDen or HSPC. But gunship, as a small, easy to move (can't say that without loling), watercooled rig, is soon to be history. But the project will be reborn, someday. I intend to keep the camo-case and fans, and build a dedicated lan rig with air cooling. It would be much easier to move without the water cooling, and not impossible to take to quake-con next year (getting it on a plane though, umm...). So, unless the BT community wants me to continue posting, I shall leave this build log here. I have plenty more photos and text to show you how this was done (and went wrong), but it shall be soon dismantled, and no longer among the living. Thank you for reading.
