Scratch Build – In Progress PARVUM LIGHTNING - Updated 14/06/2016

I'm sure you guys will approve of the next update too

JR

 

Another piece of the enourmous E-ATX puzzle that is Lightning arrived this week and oh boy does it fit in with the uncompromised overkill ethos that has been going on so far. POWER!





MOAR POWER!



Yep, you saw that right, 3000 watts of Strider.





I was quite surprised to see a cheeky little 140mm fan filter which actually might come in handy for daily use.



This is how you know when some serious current is being discussed, C19 Cheesecake!





Hmmmm..... Silverstone pinout <3





I was also shocked to see they didn't have the traditional black Strider paint, instead a far more textured durable anthracite. The feels are epic. It's also pretty small for a 1500W PSU, Silverstone must of learned a lot from their mighty SFX endeavors.





Neat little covers too, this thing was just littered with lovely and yet very practical surprises.







Should be enough connectors. I can't wait to populate ALL of the PCIe blocks.







Big thanks to Silverstone Technology for providing these epic new Striders and keeping the overkill train rolling!

I'm sorry if you feel like this has been yet another unboxing post, but when the hardware is this awesome I can't help it! Digital work will be finalized very soon once i've decided on which 480mm radiators I will be using. And after that cutting will start, I just wanted everything to hand so no space is wasted in the final revision of the case and everything can flow together neatly. Although the monstrous difference in size and shear number of components may make it appear otherwise i'm actually taking a very similar approach to Chocolate Box. There is a full sheet of 5mm yellow and a small piece of 3mm frosted slate grey perspex standing by at Parvum HQ, once i'm ready the custom fun and games will begin.

JR​

 

I do, those little covers are really nice too. I wish they sold them separate.

 

damn 2 psu's 3000 watts...

 

After several days of finalizing the 3d models now most of the parts are here it was time to start cutting the case!



Whats this?



You really can't have enough drain ports...



...or a big enough window.





We got very close to losing the edge of a panel trying to squeeze this huge irregular case onto a sheet of black.



No idea what this was about.



Aquaero mounting in the midwall taking shape.





Much power, much Lightning!





I guess it's difficult to tell, even if the photographs were in full colour that this is a frosted grey sheet, kinda like the Shade 19 of acrylic. Also trying out countersunk everything for the first time including all of the PSU mountings and rather unorthodox GPU mounting interface.



That's all of the acrylic cutting we found time for and we're now waiting on the 5mm yellow to arrive, luckily in the mean time some lovely toys arrived for me to play with!





I've been excited for a long time to get my hands on an M.2, the prospect of RAID0 speeds with no wires or extra things to mount is insane and thankfully we no longer have to suffer green PCB's.







No idea what these tiny chips do but they sure look like they mean business and the size really is astounding.















Very happy with how it looks on the board and I can't wait to see how it performs even though it will most likely be held back by the PCIe lanes. According to the motherboard manual the cards will be able to run at PCIe3.0 x16, x8, x8, x8 while the M.2 still has PCIe2.0 x2 directly from the chipset, which should still make it a decent amount faster than SATA III.

JR​

 

Just a baby update with some more kit from EKWB. Three of their recent CoolStream XE radiators, i've noticed them dominating a fair few performance charts and they certainly look the part too.



Quad rad for quad SLI, that's a thing right? Just incase it's not a thing the 4 Lightnings will have two XE 480's in their loop.







Loving a little more of the new packaging and definitely the detailing on the rads. The paint finish is more durable than i've seen on other CoolStreams, handling them without gloves is now a possibility, excellent.







I thought I would try the F12's on for size... 16 screws later....



Popped one on without the corners just for comparison too, still smart but a little incomplete without them, don't fear Noctua have a solution for this compromise between brown and acoustic performance and it's inbound!





Still a great classy look, if it wasn't for a yellow build I would be ecstatically pleased with that!



Tomorrow i'm going back to Parvum HQ to finish the rest of the case and collect another HyperX filled package! Can't wait to start putting this together.

JR​

 

Hi, nice build, ref: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=3924683&postcount=42 try to help me out but what is this ? It looks like a PSU but I'm not quite sure in spite of all the pictures ?

18 pictures of a PSU !?!?! Doesn't it occur to people that the vast majority of people on this forum know what a PSU looks like, in fact most PSU's look nigh on identical, so why so many photo's ?

I'm enjoying your actual build photo's smattered in amongst product placements.

Rant over .....

 

I take in excess of 150 pictures for practically every update, because I enjoy taking photographs and looking at hardware and I know that some people definitely share my passion. Some pictures are more successful than others but in general I try to whittle them down to shots that genuinely add something to the log, in my opinion. If it's something i've purchased, something that has been sponsored or something i've made I do my best to apply that ethos when time permits. It's not at the request of any sponsor, I do it because I want to, and it falls within all forums rules and guidelines so I will continue to do so.

People within the community enjoy different elements of building, for me the experience of unboxing and looking at components in detail is a significant one that I like to share. Just as much as design, fabrication and building. I think it would be unfair to insinuate that overall the project will be imbalanced, especially before it is complete, a significant amount design work has already gone into it and there is lots more ahead all be it in a short space of time. Hopefully I can document it in the same detail as each component, I do try it just often comes at the busiest time. I know so far it's been very unboxing heavy but there are a lot of things to unbox! For me, it's still part of the process.

There is very little 'placement' about it, I don't surround myself with products for no reason or just because they are given to me. I'm extremely particular about components, if I didn't like it on a personal level then I wouldn't have it or ask for it. Anyone who knows me, particularly sponsors or those who have tried to will attest to that.

JR

 

18 pictures of one 'thing' is still frankly excessive, especially if said pictures contain no modding, end of.

 

The OP can decide how many pictures is excessive. If 18 is too many, simply skip along.

To avoid cluttering the thread, this conversation ends here

Keep it constructive all!

 

Hey guys, something a little different in the form of a video update, rather than another series of machining pictures I decided to get some footage while the CNC was doing it's thing in Parvum HQ! My friend kindly edited them into an epic montage along with some pictures from the next update.



Right now I am flat out working on this project and as insomnia is so close (10th Dec) it's unlikely I will be making any big picture based updates until the weekend. So far all is going well despite running out of fittings and the immense amount of sleeving to get done.

JR​

 

amazing!

 

Whoah.... I'm glad I was sitting down. That transition effect was a little too trippy.

 

Well this is a weirdly difficult update to make, with insomnia closing in immensely fast last week making posts or even taking photographs was impossible for me if I was going to get it finished on time. Consequently the log will have to be slightly unorthodox, the build was completed last Thursday, but the 3 days of sleeving, day of tubing and 2 days of assembly will have to go undocumented.

I'll show everything I never had chance to post a week ago now and then try to show how it all went together in the coming days. I haven't had much chance to consider how i'll do the final photographs just yet but it's epic size is going to warrant a different approach!



The first few photographs are from cutting the pass through plate, here you can just catch a glimpse of the tool making o-ring channels. As they require the finest tolerance they are cut first any mistakes here could cost the part so getting it out of the way before investing further machine time makes sense.





Next the areas covered by the black shroud were cleared as they were also depth critical, this part forms the lid sealing the pass through channels and accepting the fittings for the loop.







The tricky parts went well, especially considering how big these parts are.



Following that all of the holes and countersinks were drilled in both the lid and block itself.







Cutting the coolant channels was a comparatively quick task for the 6mm tool.



That just left the final cut out of the sheet and the large 11.7mm holes later to be threaded with 1/4" BSPF. Plenty of drain ports were added to the block itself, running pastel yellow I didn't want to take any chances!









With all of the machining on the block complete it was time for a little inlay work. It would of been rude not addorn the symmetrical roof panel with MSI's impossibly delicate Lightning logo.







Lots and lots of hand finishing on the block tapping the tiny 6-32 UNC holes.







After days and days of waiting and eventually impatiently delivering the gloss yellow acrylic to Parvum HQ myself the 3 accents were cut, waiting for this really held up the build and put an insane amount of pressure on the final week.





With just 6 days remaining until insomnia the case was finally completed!





Once I got home the first task was to finish, assemble and test the pass-through block. After tapping the 1/4" BSPF ports into both plates a lot of o-ring cord and a lot of screws were called for.





Lots and lots of drain ports, 9 should be sufficient!







Just a little teaser as the motherboard went in, bolted straight through both 5mm midwalls.



I was quite anxious to see that the GPU mounting was succesful so that was the first thing to be tested once the case was assembled. Luckily they aligned perfectly and each of the 4 cards was secured in place by an M3 and 4x 2BA screws which threaded into the ports. A unique approach that really paid off, the cards sit beautifully true within the case and it looks extremely clean with no IO plates from the rear, just the DP's have been left exposed.



Well that pretty much gets you guys up to the 6th December and buys me some time to figure out the next update where it goes from parts to completely finished and tested!

JR​

 

The build was finished on 10th December in time for insomnia and spent the weekend alongside APIS and αclass 2.0. It got a huge amount of attention from the public, fellow builders and gamers on the Overclockers UK stand popping up on various social media and news articles from the event.



JR​

 

Gah! a teaser shot!

 

As LIGHTNING is just a little on the large side it will probably be a little while before I can get final photographs taken, I just need to find a big enough space to light and photograph it, then make sure there is two people present at all times just to move it and get all of the equipment to hand! For those who didn't make it to insomnia I came across these pics on the multiplay flickr, I did take some myself but with someone else's camera, when I find them i'll upload them, I believe MakiRole has some on the way too.











JR​

 

Very impressive!

 

I suppose the time has come to stop with the teasing and take some photographs myself outside of the incredibly warm lighting of the NEC. I'll try to cover some of the details missed between the last update and the build being completed without revealing everything to you guys just yet. Not that I don't want to show everything now but I don't want overlook the 6 days of insane paced work and getting something this big into neutral surroundings is quite challenging.



Most of my time went into sleeving the two immense PSU's, a 24-pin, 8x 8-pin PCIe, 8-pin EPS, 4-pin EPS, Auxillary PCIe molex and all of the annoying little cables needed for an Aquaero 6 with 15 fans were made entirely from scratch in the space of 3 days. They are all 3.1mm OD 16 AWG PVC insulated wire, black under the black and grey sleeve and yellow under the yellow. All of the little supplies came from Shakmods, Teleios sleeving from E22 and tri-rated wire from RS-Online.



To keep all of the cables in shape without lacing or combs the holes in the motherboard tray were all cut the perfect size and spacing for ATX spec connectors. Originally I had planned to cut individual holes however the OD of 16AWG sleeved wire is too big and there is no chance they will fit past each other anyway. Each cable was assembled in position and the tolerances worked out just right such that the cables hold neatly but aren't damaged by the sharp edges.



Noctua very kindly sent some (well 120!) press samples of their new Chromax vibration dampening corners and mounts. For the radiator fans I went with the extremely vibrant yellow and in the front panel where the A14's are set against a gloss yellow panel I opted for black to maintain the harsh contrast. They give a great functional accent to the fans really setting off the Neutral all black iPPC's.



Aside the physical assembly the other main time consuming process was bending all of the acrylic tubing. I used Shakmods 10/12mm Crystal Clear tube which was incredibly well priced (check out the 10m pack UK guys!) the quality was great and it took the heat very nicely making it quite straightforward to achieve incredibly consistent bends. I used monsoon mandrels and primochill bending cord. I find it's very helpful to have multiple bending cords just incase the tolerances between silicon and ID don't match up, to get a parallel bend without any flat spots or kinks it needs to be a tight fit.





HyperX also kindly set two 4x4GB Predator kits, rated at 3000C15, incredibly as soon as LIGHTNING booted for the first time all 32GB fired straight up at it's optimal XMP of 3000MHz. Although that may have something to do with the 4.5GHz i7-5960X OCUK lent to me for insomnia.





Thanks for all your kind comments everywhere guys, it's been a busy few weeks but i'll try to respond to everyone now I have a little PC time with my own rig again. In the next update I shall get someone to help turn it around and show you some details in the back!

JR​