PART 1 (I'm trying to use dropbox for image hosting, it appears to work, let me know if it doesn't work for anyone) This is my latest personal build involving some case modding of a Thermaltake View 27 case, I chose this case as it was cheap and I liked the curved window. System Specifications (all parts purchased by me privately): Stock case (photo taken from Thermaltake website): My first mod was to enlarge some holes, the vertical slits for the motherboard main power cable and SATA cables, and the slots for the SATA power and data to the SSD's: (viewed from the rear)Before: After: I also made all-custom cables, 6&8-pin PCIE, 8-pin EPS, Sata Power, Molex Power & sleeved SATA Data cables: Here is the case at an early point, I have an unsavory liking for carbon fibre so I used carbon fibre vinyl on the motherboard tray, PSU shroud and main outer panel.
Part 2 More components added, motherboard, ram, fans, cpu & block, SSD's. Plus Pump & res, and fan controller card: Plus GPU: First couple of Acrylic Tube: Final three pieces of tube: Plus Water: Plus Dye:
Part 3 In location with lights on, all uv lighting, custom fitted to fans and waterblock: and trying to get good photo of it with the cover on:
Review: The first problem was that I wasn't happy with one of the more complicated pieces of tubing, requiring four bends, that will be redone when I can get more tubing. The second problem was narrowed-down to probably the PCIE riser cable, I started getting artefacts and instability while gaming which was also causing games to crash, as I've had problems with this waterblock in the past I firstly removed that and went back to air cooling, when that didn't fix it I removed the riser cable and it seems stable now. When I have more time I will refit the cable loose and see if I can cause problems by moving it around, then fit it and see if it's unstable being poked, if I can pinpoint it to the cable I'll speak to scan about exchanging it for another. Finally I ran into a problem with the fan controller, I'm considering ditching it in favour of motherboard control, NZXT have failed to respond to both a support ticket and two messages, not impressed... Presuming I can return the CPU to the vertical position I'd also like to find a nickel-plexi waterblock for it, preferably EK. They no-longer list such a block, only for an MSI card so it's going to be £265 for another card and around £100 for the waterblock... I'll keep an eye on the second hand market and maybe get lucky...
I now have a chip-only GPU cooler (EK Thermosphere, thanks teamtd11), so I've ordered some copper sheet which I'm hoping I can fabricate into a heatsink for the RAM and get a thermal connection to the waterblock, if that fails I'll use the sheet as a heatsink itself. If that whole idea fails I'll look again for a nickel/plexi full-cover waterblock, one option I'm considering is sending my copper/acetel block to someone with cnc to make an acrylic copy of the acetel top of my old EK full-cover block, it's a possibility I'll look into if this plan doesn't go well. I'll update here with some progress on that when it happens.
