Case Mod - In Progress Project Thief -Completed 11-2014 -2 CPUs,8 GPUs,4 Loops,6 Pumps,50 Fans,2TB SSD

Making progress - also last EK package finally shipped!



Finally got the front panels back on - this time with all the radiators in and with longer screws so they are held in place better.



The thing that is bugging me on the "light" side is that the panel is warped because of the disceprencies in the front/back veneers I used. So you might be able to notice the wood warping away at the back of the case. I may have to do something about that.



Dark side extensions were finished and tested, just waiting on new reservoirs



While I wait for the final few parts I just need to finish changing out the white 3 pin headers to black ones which annoyingly seems to mean soldering fatter wires and then recrimping, because my black fan headers don't like the crimps from my white ones for some reason. Then hook up of the fan controllers and I'm really really close.

 

More sponsored parts finally arrived from EK - so much product placement today:





Even my rug is CSQ



Got some replacement x3 style reservoirs as my two X2 res's were different heights:





I already had one white D5 top, but now I had two more:



triplets:





Also since I put the 7990s in EK released the clear terminals - so of course I had to swap those:



Also took the time to correct the orientation of the EK badges (again). I really want to get some ER badges made instead, but I imagine that would be $$$



Also dug out the io plate and installed that finally too!

Mmmmm all the plexi:







My pump collection (D5's only):



The black topped varios are for the dark side (2 for gpu loop, 1 for cpu loop), while the white ones are for the light side. Time to also update the dark side:



Yes you filthy animals had told that air cooled south bridges were for canadians. Or something. So of course I had to comply with your demands:



natemandoo in the house. Time to strip her down:



nekkid:



dat port clearance:



I do wish it was bigger like the original:



I didn't have a black supremacy, so of course EK couldn't let me use a filthy Bitspower block:



Goofy style:



Got me some ram blocks too:



Because 1.5V ram needs cooling:



Blocks fitted and badges rotated:



Tempted to plastidip the thumbscrews - I really think EK should sell black versions of these.

Sleeved the pumps, though I got incredibly pissed off at the black three pin fan headers I had (I think from lutro0), the crimps just won't easily go in. In the end I gave up and decided to buy new ones and reused the original beige ones:



D5 POWAH:



Time to put the motherboard back in the case and hook up the tube:



Found some problems - the tube is not straight from the GPUs and is driving me nuts, and the tube from the ram blocks to the top chamber would kink because I didn't have enough space. More on that later. Time to make more hardlines:



Ready for install:



Can you believe just how much product placement we have today? I should be getting a cut of evo sales right now: Oh and let's not forget the other sponsors e.g. Corsair:



And monsoon



And evga sorta:



And EK again jeez:



Dem bends:



This is the so called infinite loop - no pump required it just keeps both VRM and CPU cool. No radiator required either. Just don't turn it on:



4 fingers - 2 in the cpu, 2 in the south bridge



Lovely jubbley:



dat clearance again:



The NMD block was a bit of a pain to install, no instructions, no opinion on whether to use TIM or thermal pads, and the base of the block got very close to some caps on the board. In addition there were no standoffs, instead, two washers were used. This is a nightmare, because even one washer wouldn't stay still as you put the block on the board, let alone two. It took a lot of wrangling to install. If a manufacturer had released a block like that I would have torn them a new one.

Rebuilding:



Block is not quite level, user error I suppose, but I was too nervous to tighten it down on the sata side of the board because it looked like it would touch something.



All four in:



I will have to wait to reinstall the 4 way ek bridge, because I'm missing one 90 degree fitting that I have to install first.

4 way or no way:



Put back in the case along with the new reservoirs and the bulkhead QDCs:



Pumps are hardlined to the bulkhead fittings. I didn't want to mount them at all so as to minimize vibrations. Hardline of course will still transmit some vibration, soft tube would be better but always looks ugly.

Dat chamber - big thanks to alphacool for the rads too!



FILTER#1



Also put the mora with the gt's plus adpaters back in - really need to get some ER stickers made for the fans:



Light side - the third pump uses soft tube to hang rather than hardline - this will be fixed as soon as I get two more fittings!



That's it for now! Today's thief update brought to you by the letters E and K, CaseLabs, Corsair, Alphacool, Monsoon etc etc

 

By the bedpan of Gene Rayburn... AN UPDATE

And an epic one at that! Great to see this moving along!

 

It was time to do something about the bottom pedestal. So I went and got some more wood.



Ended up with this chunk which was much larger than I needed - it had pretty grain though and I'll use it eventually:



The back of it has some sap wood which give a nice contrast, but you can never trust sapwood.



It's super heavy though, I mean 2-3x as dense as most hardwoods, and a ton more than pine.

First up let's choose which face to use:









The last one is the prettiest if we can avoid the sapwood. Time to prep an edge:



Sapwood is really quite thin, might be able to remove it by shaving a quarter inch of thickness off while maintaining the grain. After a bunch of work with the table saw:



I had to offset the piece in order to center the grain and so I had to build cantilever style support into the end that would no longer get screwed. Test fitting:



Required considerable fine tuning to get it just right to balance the height of the dress panel:



Then fedex came and more parts were here:



Including temperature probes with lcd screens. Aquaeros are for wimps. Time to fit them:



Jigsawed then tidying up with chisel



Fitted:



Sleeved (I should have ordered more black molexes):



Much fancy:



Many smooth:



Also much fittings - more on these in next update:

 

Thanks dude! Basically done now. Final pics hopefully this week!

 

I lolled a bit.

 

Alright here we go - last update I had got some more fittings and tube. The fittings were mainly so I could run straighter tube lines, or stop tube lines from hitting each other. 4 Loops gets messy real fast with tube routing.



The top and bottom of the front mounted rads for example needed to be joined up, and a curved loop while it would have been less restrictive got majorly in the way of the fill port lines



Sadly PPCS's updated their website and I ended up getting black nickel rather than nickel for the 90 degree rotaries. but it's hard to tell. I also reused some of my BP rotary snakes that I had previously used on the motherboard before I hardlined it.

The extra ports on the alphacool rads came in handy, because I couldn't actually screw in the monsoon rotaries into the "main" ports without removing the fans.

I also needed to get rid of some of the nickel fittings on the dark side:



The QDC here went to a black QD4, and those stop fittings turned black too. Sadly I didn't take a picture yet of the after, but it's looking much cleaner. Then the last thing was to mount the fan controllers to the base of the case and wire them up:



Dem ascendacy's. I should mod an "n" in there. One for each rig.



Notice that they are rotated - this is so the tube routes easily from the nearby radiators without kinking or extra fittings:



Once mounted I had to flip the case to apply the panel which was *much* fun. Here it is in the bottom of the case finally:



At this point I was short 2 ft of tube. So I had to order more:



Ignore the koolance stuff that's just review samples, not for this build. Meanwhile I tested all the loops for leaking with distilled and used some old tube for the 2 ft that I was missing. After fixing the leaks I was ready for dye. But before that I had to wire up the ascendacys which meant custom cables:



These wires were fat enough I had to use two layers of sleeve to hide them too:



I needed two 1 to 2 splitters, two 1 to 4 splitters and a 1 to 3 splitter, some of them being extremely long. I color coded each one with different sleeve so it's easy to tell which is which as this rig gets very confusing. These were a real PITA to make, I think daisy chaining might be easier for future.



Power to the ascendacy's is through a 6 pin:



Bottom chamber wiring getting messy:



Gonna need excessive zip ties to tame that. However before that I needed to fill the loop with coolant because for bleeding I was going to use an external psu to power pumps so that I don't have to unplug the ones that are in there. Dark side you saw already in progress of bleeding:





And dat light side which looks super sexy in color. But I'm still teasing y'all. I've let it bleed overnight, though I suspect there is a ton of air still in the loops, but it's not exactly a case you can pick up and shake. Hopefully tonight I'll tidy the wiring and do a final photo shoot, this time, in color, and maybe make a gif of the loop filling on the plexi side.



That's all I have before the final photos come in.

 

Alright LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, TROLLS, HATERS AND PEASANTS!

Project Thief is COMPLETE. Cue Drums..... Cue trumpet fanfare....



Project thief is based around the enormous, nay monstrous, CaseLabs TX10-D case, and if that wasn't enough, there's a pedestal to make it even bigger.

The build features two full size gaming computers in one case along with custom wood panelling and powder coating. The name thief comes from the this build stealing an awful lot of my disposable income. The Thief symbology is integrated through the use of Skyrim Thief's guild symbols as well as two different themes representing the duality of the thief's life. The "light" side of the case represents the Thief's role by day as an ordinary hard working member of society and features my workstation. The "dark" side of the case represent's the Thief's role by night and features my gaming rig. The ability to fit so many radiators and fans means that the fans can be turned down to be almost silent while still being able to perform at the top of their game.

The idea was really to build a no hold's barred setup with the best of the best that was not only hardcore but easy to maintain. One computer would be my linux based workstation that I use for my day to day work. The other would be my windows based entertainment/gaming battlestation.

Light side:
- Rampage IV Extreme + 4930K + 32GB Corsair Dominator GT 2133 + 2x 7990s + 1TB SSD
- Fully watercooled with 2 loops: cpu, memory, motherboard, gpus

Dark side:
- EVGA X79 Dark + 4820K + 16GB Corsair Dominator GT 2133 + 4xR9-290s + 1TB SSD
- Fully watercooled with 2 loops: cpu, memory, motherboard, gpus

The thief thrives by moonlight:



Suddenly a wild thief:



The size of a fridge:







The top hides a Mora 1260 radiator:



A door opens to reveal the "light" side:



Custom wood panels out of super hard "Cocobolo" wood:

 

The other side' door opens to reveal the "dark" side:



The TX10 features panels that can be removed in seconds to get access to the hardware underneath:



Behind the wood panels are four Alphacool UT60 radiators each with 6 fans:



The TX10-D can fit two HPTX sized motherboards, we only used EATX however. It can also mount server rack mount gear - at the top of the rear you can see 4x1u covers. 4 power supplies are supported by default, though more can be added. We found a 1500W and a 1200W PSU to be sufficient



The "Light" side features the Rampage IV Extreme with a 4930K CPU clocked at 4.75GHz and kept very cool by a polished CSQ EK Supremacy block. The motherboard VRM and south bridge is fully water cooled also by EK water blocks in Nickel/Plexi CSQ polished by hand to a glass like finish. The RAM is Corsair Dominator GT 2133 CL9 - 8x4GB of DDR3 again fully watercooled by EK Monarch Blocks:



The tubing is Monsoon hardline acrylic tube coupled with Monsoon's Premium hardling fittings. These fittings grip the tube so securely they can hold up a 30lb dumbbell:



The motherboard chamber also features two EK X3 reservoirs in 400mm size. Large reservoirs make loop filling easier and putting them in an easily viewable window makes leaks obvious. The motherboard is easily removable as it sits on a removable tray. However the cooling is also quick to remove as each feed uses a Koolance Quick Disconnect. The motherboard can be removed for maintenance or changeing parts within a minute.



The dual 7990's also feature custom chrome plated backplates:



As well as MDPC-X sleeving and Lutro0 Custom's cable combs:

 

EK's clear terminals were used to keep the consistent style:



EK's Ekoolant in blood red was used to make the most of the plexi blocks:





Tubes were bent using Monsoon's pro bending kit which gave me professional results even though this was my first hardlined build:



I like to think that these chromed backplates are what caused EK to start making backplates in other colors than black





The rear fan is a bitfenix sceptre in white with red leds. The motherboard chamber is also lit with RGB LED strips at top and bottom that are remote controlled:



The dark side of course is reverse atx:



The EVGA X79 dark motherboard is well matched to the EVGA SuperNova NEX1500 power supply and the EK X3 400mm reservoirs flow directly down in to the D5 pumps with EK tops:

 

R9-290s in quad crossfire providing the gaming power:



You may ask why not nvidia - generally quad scaling seems to be a bit superior with AMD even if Nvidia has the edge on single card performance. Lightboost of course still works with AMD, and now that I'm done with the build I can focus on getting some Swift monitors

LED strips reflect off the custom ebony veneered panelling:



Close up of the EK X3 anticyclone acrylic:



Monsoon fittings and hardline tube was again used to give an ultra clear look feeding into the EK Supremacy EVO block that cools the 4820K:



As this was a gaming computer primarily I went with a 4820K to acheive slightly better clock speeds, as that seems to influence high fps more than cores do though that is starting to change for some games. I love bridges to connect GPUs - they not only give a clean look and make hooking up the blocks easy but they also give a rigidity to the cards that can help reduce sag:



Some people have problems fitting them because it requires you to be comfortable sealing a block with an o-ring - but honestly if you are water cooling then you should be comfortable with taking a block apart and resealing it anyway. I also love the clean look of a backplate - and the EK 290 backplate also includes thermal pads that help to keep the hot R9-290 VRMs and core a little cooler:



The X79 Dark was one of the very few boards that EK did not make a motherboard block for. Luckily Natemandoo stepped up to make blocks for the board instead. Hopefully we will see some EK blocks for the EVGA x99 boards now that EK also supply the classified waterblocks:



A motherboard full of GPUs is a joy to see:



Powered up with RGB leds set to red:

 

You can see an error code on the motherboard simply because there is no boot drive or monitor connected. I need to have some friends over to help me carry this 100-200lb behemoth upstairs.

All the radiator fans are Gentle Typhoons. Some are 1850RPM while some are the 2150RPM units shown here:



Gentle typhoons can't be beaten for noise/airflow performance through a radiator, and running in push and pull means great performance while being able to dial them down to silent levels.

The bottom radiators even use 120mm Gentle Typhoons even though they are 560 sized. The use of a 120mm->140mm fan adapter makes this possible. You can also see the 4 screws (2 at either end) that hold the radiator side mount in. This side mount makes it very easy to remove radiators for cleaning out dust:



Even the Mora 1260 radiator (140x9) does the same thing:



The red ringed fittings are fill ports - one for each loop making filling a breeze.

The amount of display outputs just gets silly:



The monsoon hardlining is great for "mounting" pumps too. As it can carry significant load the pump itself can simply hang rather than being mounted:



This also has the benefit that vibration isn't transmitted through the mount. It even works with the EK Dual D5 top:



While the EK Ascendacy fan controller controls the fans and can measure temperatures I wanted to be able to have a quick glance to check out my coolant and air temperatures and so I built in these Phoby temperature sensors into a wood panel on the pedestal:



The temps here are a little off as the computers are powered on, and the pumps were not running so they're not indicative of real performance yet

Lastly the LED strips that are pretty well hidden in each chamber at the top and bottom:



Here are some vids that show the LEDs cycling through colors:

http://youtu.be/LvSCPImtu5Y

http://youtu.be/nBoBcF-hfTo

So that's it from me and thief and it's nearly time for us to say goodbye, throw a party and move this fridge sized beast upstairs! Again a big thank you to sponsors for their generosity in making this long project happen!

 

So, plan on visiting a LAN party with this?
Of course, you'd have to build an engine into the case, to be able to drive it there, but there's already so much stuff in there and still SO much room left, that I think you'd be able to pull it off!

On serious note: CONGRATS on finishing it! I've been following this for a REALLY long time and it's been crazy since day 1 and you never really backed down from the craziness since then. Pleases me to see.

What are you going to do with the possible huge increase in income now?
New crazy projects in the pipeline?

 

I love so many of the details in this build, awesome, really awesome.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

Hahaha yeah no lan parties - it can't even fit in my car, I'd have to hire a van or something realistically. Sad thing is I can't even carry it upstairs by myself.

Thanks so much for the kind words and thanks for the support too - I might be slow but I'm stubborn haha. I'm very happy to be done now.

As for the increased income, legitimately trying to save for a new house haha, so yeah no more crazy builds any time soon. Right now I can't even think of new projects - I have a backlog of reviews to get through, and by then CES will be here, and who knows what 2015 holds I'd like to do a scratch build next, but realistically, I don't see that happening for a *long* time lol.

 

Been following this for a long time now, and it pleases me to no end to see that it is finished. Congratulations are in order!

One hell of a finale too. Took me a solid 10 minutes to read through. Reminds me how much I miss gargantuan updates

 

Good god, what a monster!! That thing would probably blow the breakers in my house!! I'd love to torture test those GPUs and see how much heat I could generate. Not to mention how much voltage those systems draw under stress.

Great job Stren!

 

Awesome to see it finally finished man, I loved watching this project!