Case Mod - In Progress ASUS X99 Deluxe, ASUS ARES III, 1.2TB Intel 750 SSD... Need I say more?

Well, this is going to be a bit of a strange build log! I contacted ASUS for another build I am about to do, and they actually asked if I could do them something a bit special instead.

I cant show you the case. It's NDA and I wont be able to post pics until it is actually announced, however, I will say it is VERY sexy. As far as i know, i'm the only person in the UK with one and probably one of only a few in the world that has seen it! EXCITED!

Even though i can't show the case, I wanted to just post some things as and when im doing them so that i can keep a bit of a log and then at the end il show the expanded versions of the pictures so you can see how it relates in the case. Hopefully it will work haha.

So, I received a rather nice parcel today...

In this parcel is the main focal point of this build, the beautiful ASUS X99 deluxe. I was looking at these when they were released and I'm rather glad I have the chance to get my hands on one! Thanks ASUS!



Out of the box we can get a better look of the Mobo.







This board actually has some extra pins, which allows for more POWER!



BUTTONS!



On board sound... I have never used a sound card (I know I know) so im always interested to see if i can tell the difference between motherboard sounds... lets see!



Another thing that I think any "enthusiast" would like to get their hands on is the ASUS ARES III lets face it, it's a beast. Well, ASUS again decided it was Xmas come early and sent me one <3!!!

I cant even tell you how excited I was when I was opening this!



It has a case... A CASE!!!! I just wanted to handcuff this to my wrist... chuck on a suit and feel awesome for a few hours...



Opening the case let me to this... Apologies for the fingerprints, i got a little excited and started to have a look, then forgot to wipe them off lol



Oh lord. This is what £1200 (ish) buys you. So So So sexy. Obviously the waterblock is made by one of my other sponsors, EKWB, so its awesome to be able to use both so easily.



Hnnnnnnnng



If you didn't know, there are only 500 of these cards made. I have number 14



This is the backplate, you can see my rub marks (oooops) but yeah, its rather sexy looking!



So, Power, most cards have a 6+8 pin.. or an 8+8 pin cable right? Not this one. 3 8 pin or go home!



nom nom nom. I bet this will even play Minecraft!



Another special item that was in the package was this 1.2TB Intel 750 SSD This is crazy fast.



hmmmm taaasty.



So, this is far faster than any other SSD ive ever seen tbh... the first thing i noticed was this... Yup, thats right, RIP sata cable! we have a new standard.



The other end of the cable this SSD connects to looks like this.



This then plugs into this little M2 card, so you can use it in either the motherboard directly (the ASUS X99 Deluxe has a M2 slot) or if your board doesn't have one you can get adapters that fit into your 1x pci-e slot.



This is the Asus Hyper M.2 PCI-e adapter.



So, thats all for now, I'm waiting on a few packages still before I can really make a start, but I think we can all agree, this is gonna be a beast!

 

Dam!

 

*puts stockings over head and robs Dave*

Awesome gear there Dave!

 

Always enjoy your builds but you've got me intrigued by what Asus have brought out as their next case, especially when you say its so SEXY!

The Ares III just looks....

 

Edit: Is there any way I can resize the picture to not be so ginormeous? Anyways... I believe it says it all about my feelings towards this log

 

Wow that board is sexier than I was expecting... very nice.

 

You have enough goodies Tim, back off haha!! thanks buddy

Its not a case from ASUS, its a case company that have some VERY VERY nice cases out though!

Good guy davido to the rescue

Yeah, I really do like this bored!





So another day and another parcel. this was shipped super fast from my friends at EKWB. They supported me for my BitFenix Pandora build and they were happy to help me out again with this build too!! Thanks very much EK!!



So, opening the box I got all of this inside... Lots of goodies!!



This time I went with my favorite pump, the D5 with a clear top.



I do much prefer these to the DDC, even though the DDC is the only close contender.



I just hope that the clear block suits the build, im sure it will!



I was super impressed with the radiators I had from EK last time, so i had the same again... just a few more




This time I went with a 360, a 240 and a 120. Bearing in mind the case i am using is NDA and hasn't been announced yet. There is no information available about it anywhere on the internet, no pictures, nothing. So I had to use a bit of judgment and the slithers of information I could find. Luckily a day after ordering the watercooling. I managed to get a spec sheet for the case and all of them will fit.... and more if needed



I do love how this series looks.



and if you didnt already know what they were...



Onto the CPU block and i went for this!



This time i wanted to go for a clear block. I have never used a clear one, so thought it would be something a little different



As with the D5, im hoping when it gets some nice fluid running through it, it will become more of fitting colour.



If not, I can always just swap it out, I can use this for a different project, it does look rather nice!



For the reservoir i went for a X3 250.



This should be the perfect size for what i want to do.



I couldnt decide between white or black, so EK sent me the white ends too



Im going to use the EK-HD tubing again, it bent well last time and looked great and with the addition of the new EK-HDC Fittings, I think this build needed it.



Did someone mention fittings?!



I always under estimate how many angled fittings I need, so I usually just buy them as and when I need them, with OcUK next day delivery, I don't really have to worry or wait long.



These fittings were huddling together for warmth...



LEFT! RIGHT! LEFT RIGHT LEFT!



The new white EK-HDC fittings are rather nice, the black chrome of the angled fittings and the white of these fittings will go together with the black of the radiators to create the perfect monochrome look.... i hope



These are actually compression fittings for hard tubing. I need to send this build to Taiwan once its finished. I'm hoping that these will grip the tubing enough so that I can send it pre-filled.

LINE UP!!! AIM!!!!!



FIRE!



I would also like to invite you all to my Facebook and Twitter page!!! YES! Just click the little icons to get to the relevant pages, i will be giving some bits and bobs away on them at some point



Im just waiting on one other bunch of stuff then I can really get my teeth into this build. Looking at it, there wont actually be that much modding, the case is pretty much perfect as it is and everything fits the colour scheme... I will have to make some custom cables and do some little bits but it should be a really nice clean build!

 

Can't wait to see what you're going to be fitting this pile of dreams into! And how it'll be arranged..

 

Is the NDA up tomorrow?

 

me neither, im away now for 3 days though so wont even be able to play with it =( boooo!

unfortunately not! i think there is a month left on the NDA =(

 

Case with 1 month NDA? must be a very special case.

The hardware is good, but withouth the case photos and the modding planing the topic is prety much another topic.

 

Yeh, i was hoping to be able to give some sneak peaks of the csse, but unfortunately I'm just not allowed

The case is great. Its something I have seen asked for a few times so I think some people will certainly be pleased.

 

So..... Err... I mean the hardware is seriously nice, but we have to wait a month for any actual pictures??

 

Naaaah, I'll figure something out. I won't be doing too much to the actual case, I recon the things I do do I will be able to do some camera trickery or something....

 

There is no such thing as enough goodies!

Subbed like always mate.

 

So, my final sponsor received stock of the parts that I wanted and a day later I received them from Germany!

A huge thanks to Thermaltake for sponsoring this build with fans and PSU. Its much appreciated!

So, this is what they have sent me!! 6 of the new 120mm LED Riing fans, a 1050w ToughPower DPS G PSU and a nice little suprise, a blue switch Poseidon Z Keyboard!!!



So, lets jump straight in with the new 120mm Riing fans.



I saw the promo for these a little while back and then saw them at an event. I can honestly say they looked far better than I thought they would. So much so I have been waiting for a project I could use them in since.



The fans come with a nice set of goodies, including a cable that reduces the fan speed for quite use and a nice set of longer screws for rads

#

This is what its all about, that clear bit of plastic combined with the 4 LEDS make this fan glooooow.



Whilst i was clambering up the loft to find a spare PSU to show you the lights (i failed btw, you will have to wait) i fount a little Tt dude from an old event!! so, he started to help me.. He seems impressed with these fans.



Next up is a little gift from Tt. When we are at events, we always end up a the bar (after the reps have finished work i may add!!!!) and the last time we got onto talking about keyboards. I have never owned a blue switched keyboard and the rep obviously remembered. He sent me this



This is the new Poseidon Z and from the looks of it, they are very proud.. 5 year warranty!!??!



Tt dude is trying to get in on it...



The keys are rather nice, they are rounded for her pleasure



Im not sure what this button does. i will look at the instructions later



The Poseidon Z comes with a blue backlight.... its purdy



Especially in the dark!



And finally the beast of a PSU



1050W of semi digital capacitor goodness.



inside the box we get a wrapped PSU and a large bag of cables.



as always, il be honest and say im not a huge fan of the black/gold/red colour scheme, but both the red and gold parts can be removed so its no issue.



as its fully modular, there are plenty of slots for your cables.



Again, the Tt Dude approves.



These are all the cables that are with the PSU



the Tt dude spotted this one...



after a closer look, we can see its a nifty USB cable that plugs into the PSU. This allows you to some nifty things from your mobile phohne which i'm not even going to try and explain , this website does it far better lol

http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00002390



The build is going to be hard to show whilst the NDA is still live, but I am going to document it still and give you as many sneak peaks as I possibly can. The next job is cable braiding and spraying the PSU i think

Please give me a follow on the following social media accounts! I am going to be doing some little giveaways soon, and its far easier to do via these than it is over forums!!

https://twitter.com/davido_labido

https://www.facebook.com/davidolabidomods

 

Well, i still cant show you the case i'm afraid, but it will be seen very soon!!! I have been working away as per usual, so progress is slow, however I need it finished by tomorrow night as its getting flown to Taiwan on Thursday EEEEEK!!

So, today i needed to sort out the extensions whilst I wait for the last 2 or 3 bits to arrive from OcUK and one of my friends who has helped me with a little idea for some branding.


So, lets start to do some wires!


As per usual, I am back to making all my wires from scratch, Im going to make extensions this time rather than a full set to save quite a lot of time and also because the PSU is quite hidden.




So with this build, I am going to use white black and shade 19 which is a very dark grey unless a flash hits it (i tried to get some pics without the flash too to show you what it can look like)



First job is to cut 24 wires for the GPUs. 2 different sizes of course so that they have a nice curve!



Also, i cut 24 wires for the 24 pin!



once they are crimped and sleeved, we get something like this!



Its the first time I have ever sleeved 24 cables for a single PSU so it was a little different!




once they are plugged in they look awesome imo



It was nice to be able to do the 24 pin the exact same way as the GPU cables as well



depending on which way you want the curve depends on which way you crimp the cables, some are crimped with the "flags" on the top of the cables, so that the clips of the connectors are on the top, and some are crimped with the "flags" on the bottom.



Nom Nom Nom




Oh, my processor turned up as well last week, I almost forgot




As I mentioned, tomorrow is going to be a long day, got a the watercooling to finish off, some small case mods and some acrylic cutting to do to cover some of the bits i don't like. i have around 30 hours to get the whole thing done including testing the loop, software, checking everything is working OK and ensuring it survives the trip! Wish me luck

If you want to follow my progress tomorrow, I will be posting little snippits on facebook, as well as giving away a copy of the new Total War Attila game! check it out here:

https://www.facebook.com/davidolabidomods

On twitter i have a copy of Far Cry 4 to give away!

@davido_labido

I don't really have the time to play games at the moment, so I might as well share them when i get them!

 

Looking good Dave!

Thank God soem of us actually still make our own cables and don't get everything done by others.

 

So! Today was the day!

The In Win 909 was announced at computex and I was the first person to get to do a mod with it!

First off i would like to say a massive thank you to ASUS who were the ones to get me the case, and i would also like to appologise for the quality of the pictures. I pretty much did everything you see here the day that i was sending this build to Taiwan, i was awake for 30+ hours and as the case was still NDA pictures were not my main priority. It also isn't 100% finished, i have lots of little bits to do to it to make it perfect, but again, I just didn't have the time.

So, the In Win 909 is based on the 904/901, but has much better airflow and support for watercooling.



It has support for a 240mm rad at the bottom (although i found this to be rather tight, an EK rad wont fit properly)



a 240mm rad at the front



and a 360 rad at the back, there is also space for a 120mm rad as well, or a fan, but it just wasnt needed for this build.



iirc correctly, the case has support for 5 SSds around the back using nifty little bracets, i didnt need these though, so the first thing i did was cut a bit of the panel away to make this huge hole, this allowed me to curve my 24pin connector around better.



on this pic you can see that the bracket for the SSD would have been in the way of the curve. I didnt likke how many holes there were in the motherboard tray so that was the first thing i thought id sort out.



As I didnt want to use the bottom 240 mm fan space either, I thought id cover this as well as make a cover for the PSU space.

So, measuring and marking what i wanted to cut is first on the list



I always draw on top of the protective film so that you don't mark the actual acrylic.



I cut this using a jig saw to save time, not the prettiest of finishes, but not too bad.



The first sheet in place goes here...



This means I can now get the curve that i want (dont worry about the state of the holes, I will sort these out at a later time)



The next one was the cover for the 240mm fan slots:



The white bit of plastic underneath is actually a light bar, so i didn't want to cover that completely.



once i had these 2 bits in place i needed to sort out the final bit that would have been left, just a little rectangle, when id made that it looked like this



Once i pull all the bits out, they look like this, obviously this was before i sanded them down.




The next job was the water cooling, this was quite a strange loop for me to do as I wasn't sent any RAM for the build. This needed to be added when it got to Taiwan, as such, I couldn't foul any of the RAM slots... and there are 8.

Due to this it meant getting a little creative with the loop

First to go were the hardrive bays at the top of the case, there are 4 of these so you have plenty of storage options, I drilled all the rivets out so that i could use the space for some tubing.



With the 240 radiator orientated in the way i chose, it meant i could only really go this way, the only problem was that is where the case is



So, time to drill a hole.



add a pass through fitting



and get the bit of tubing in place



I needed to do the same with the back radiator as again, i couldnt go past the ram slots!



EKWB sent me plenty of tubing, I thought with this case being rather big i would need it, but a lot of the bits of tubing i used were very very small



Once all the tubing was in place, it looked like this, E22.biz sorted me out a rather nice panel as this build is to show off the ASUS X99 DELUXe



I was going to use White pastel fluid, so the CPU block didnt really matter, but i do wish i had gone with nickel rather than copper now, at least i know for next time.



I extended the tubing out quite a lot so that hands could easily work with the ram slots.



I really like how it all turned out, i particularly like the placement of the rez.



The Intel SSD was another item that needed to be on show, I had a lot of ideas with this, but unfortunately i needed a longer cable that isn't currently available at any retailers so i had to just make do with it on the bottom.




Once i had added the fluid it looked like this? what do you think?



I used Mayhems fluid as per usual, this is Aurora, that i had watered down a little using some ultra pure and then added just a touch of Pastel white concentrate.




Im really happy with how this turned out. I cant wait to get it back to finish it to the standard it deserves, but with the time scale i had and everything else, I'm mega happy.

As soon as it gets back from Taiwan, I will be doing the finishing touches and getting some better pictures

please give my facebook page a like to get mini updates that I post that are not worth popping on to forums with, i will be giving away a copy of TOTAL WAR ATTILA when i get 500 'Likes' (140 to go i think!)

https://www.facebook.com/davidolabidomods

and also my twitter @davido_labido

 

Given they rejigged it for watercooling it's a little surprising that the main change is that it's a good bit bigger at the back to support a 360mm rad. With some creative shuffling you could have had the PSU mid-bottom of the case, a 360mm rad in the front and just squeezed a 480mm in the back. Not a criticism of your work in the slightest, but as a watercooling chassis goes it's not that impressive.

I knew the Ares was big, but there's not much room for long cards and use of a thick 240mm rad in the front.

Still, what you've done with it is pretty great, though blue LEDs don't quite do your colour scheme justice in those pictures.