First off, I want to apologise. I'm pretty good at a few things (including building PC's), but I have SHOCKING camera skills, so expect many blurry, dark, grainy and generally unflattering and deceptive pictures in this thread. Anyways, onwards! I've had my current PII A05 rig for well over a year now and it's starting to feel dated (2 cores and 4GB RAM in 2011?!), the upgrade itch has been there for a few months.... So there I was, randomly browsing through ebay auctions a couple of weeks ago, when I come across a brand new and unused Lian Li P60 on a no reserve auction with only a couple of days left and BAM! New project was on the cards. HARDWARE: Intel i5 2500K Gigabyte Z68X-UD5-B3 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz XFX 1GB 6870 Dual Fan Black Edition 1TB Samsung F3 Corsair HX450 (PSU will be upgraded and a 2nd 6870 added in the spring, SSD will be going in sometime in January) COOLING: EK Supreme HF Plexi/Nickel EK Coolstream XT 240 Laing DDC Pro w/EK Plexi Top AquaComputer Black Delrin Aquatube 1/2" ID Tubing w/Compression Fittings EK Blue/UV Blue Coolant MODS: Aquatube mounted in case roof Shield design side panel window w/clear acrylic Stock power switch replaced with illuminated Lamptron anti vandal switch Acrylic floor and drive bay covers cut and covered in carbon fibre vinyl Motherboard tray cable management holes cut out and covered in carbon fibre vinyl Front panel IO cables braided First step, masking tape, ruler and biro: Then time to get funky with the power tools: Lamptron switched arrived shortly after.... minus the instructions. Fortunately i've used these switches before so I had a rough idea of how they wire up, unfortunately however I couldn't find a concrete answer as to which pair of diagonal terminals I had to use so I did what most real men do.... I guessed. Whew, lady luck was on my side this time: The other problem I had was that the outside diameter of the switch was the same as the diameter of the hole for the stock one (22mm, which I thought was the thread measurement when I ordered it). Luckily the locking ring they supply it's quite a chunky piece and I was able to superglue that in place to allow the switch to thread into it and mount flush with the case: I then started to get busy with the carbon vinyl, covering the mobo tray: And even the PCI slot covers One of the focal points of the build then arrived, the very swish looking Aquatube. Beautifully machined bit of kit this and will make filling and bleeding the loop an absolute doddle: So it was then time to get to work chopping the top panel up. This is probably the only time i've ever been nervous about taking a drill or jigsaw to a case. P60's are rare as a rare thing nowadays and I knew if I made 1 slip it'd be an absolute nightmare to rectify. Measure twice... measure a third time to be really sure: Then cut. Ended up going to plan so I thought i'd do a quick mock-up to get an idea of what the top will look like when finished: The next part though was even more of a nightmare, trying to accurately mark out and check the locations for the mounting bolts was a bit of a brain melter. I ended up just masking out the whole area and drawing a horizontal and vertical grid of lines 5mm apart and using a small set square and straight edge to measure the distance of the bolts on the reservoir itself and then transferring them over to the grid. In the end though it worked out a treat and the finished result looks as good as I hoped it would: Last night I finished off the acrylic covers by mounting the drive bay one to the case with 4mm bolts, using some nuts to act as stand-off's so the DVD and HDD can still be fixed in: And this is where i'm up to. Just need to finish the side panel and wait for the last package of watercooling bits to arrive then it's Sandybridge build time.
Yeah I haven't used anything other than Lian Li cases for about 4 years, this is probably the lairiest looking one but still leagues ahead of anything the likes of Antec or CoolerMaster are churning out nowadays (imo of course). As long as your not THE guy outside my bedroom window... Jesus H he is annoying.
Whew, finally got this finished.... I wont bore you lot with why it took so long but here is the end result (minus the acrylic being mounted onto the side panel, need moar double sided tape!): My genius solution to mounting the radiator in the drive bays - drill the rivets out of the base plate of the HDD cage and use thumbscrews to secure it to the radiator: Drill a few more holes and it doubles as a pump mount as well: Jobs a good'n, no more wobbly radiator and the pump runs silent: I could mount it further inside the case and fit the drive bay covers, but obviously temperatures will suffer (it's pretty much flush with the door fans atm), plus who needs drive bay covers when you got a whacking great big door anyways: I found out rather quickly that the Aquatube doesn't like high flow loops, so it was a nightmare to bleed as the pump can't be run with the top off (it's like there's a small humpback whale in there, needless to say I shat bricks when blue coolant ended up all over the roof of the case). The still dont do it justice, the turbulence is insane in there: And with the side panel on finally: And moody dark shot to finish:
Nice and clean! Well done. I have the same reservoir with an aquajet. Maybe it's an idea to insert an aquajet in your reservoir, for getting the air out of your loop.
