Been a while since I've posted a project log, so for those who don't know me, or don't remember, Hi, I'm Mosquito, also known as Chris, and I'm a case modding enthusiast A coworker and I were talking about some of the case mods I've done in the past, and as a result wanted to try watercooling his BitFenix Portal case. He thought switching back to the Wraith cooler for the CPU, and doing a custom loop with a 120mm radiator for just the GPU would be all he'd get. I told him I bet I could fit a 240mm radiator in there, so that's what we've decided to go after... It actually took a lot less modding than I thought it might, as we got relatively lucky with the radiator just clearing the GPU block, but we'll get into that more later. First things first, this is the Bit Befnix Portal, for those who are not familiar Something that makes things a little weird, is that the chassis slides out of the main shell, so we had to make sure we allowed that to continue working through all this. This is what the 'stock' build consisted of. ASRock B350 ITX, Ryzen 1600X, and an RX Vega 56. First things first, gotta tear that down. With the case empty this is, roughly speaking, what we intend to make happen. Removing the back fascia gives a pretty compact little chassis. Though with some indexing pins on the bottom, it doesn't sit on the workbench very well! Next up, remove the drive cage. I'm not sure why this wasn't easily removable, as the bottom is mostly held in place by some sliding connections, but never the less there were 6 rivets to drill out After some fiddling around, we realized that it was going to be a lot more work to get the radiator mounted on the outside of the case, so we would have to make fans in front work instead. Next up, we'll have to get it to fit both fans up front, so stay tuned for that, and please ask questions, post comments, and let me know what you think. Forums are about community, whether we all agree or not
Yay! Mos build. -sort of. This case looks like it does a lot of breathing in a paper bag, otherwise I'd suggest fitting the 120 in there too. Hell, if you put the GPU on a ribbon cable and chop the I/O out, You could get another 240 in there.
haha, Thanks Cheaps. There is definitely a little recirculating of warm air going on in there I think. The plan as it stands is to add a single 80mm radiator in the back of it as well. I had mentioned something along the lines of a GPU riser cable and putting the GPU where the 80mm fan mounting is, but part of why he wanted to watercool it was to see the GPU block in the top window. I told him we could probably figure out a way to use some combination of an HDPlex PSU and a Pico PSU to get rid of the SFX and put another 240 in the floor lol
Alright, now that we've proven that we should be able to make the radiator and fans fit in the front of this thing, we had to cut open the front to make room for those fans... (This was his first time using a rotary tool, for the record) We trimmed out the cross brace, and made the opening a little wider to line up with the OEM fan opening. Also trimmed the fan opening a little taller towards the top as well. We did a test fit with both fans and the radiator, and realized at that point we needed to make the opening a little larger, so out came the rotary tool again Now things fit quite nicely. Ports on the top, because we'd have to cut out even more to flip it, and we had planned the loop out to run one of the lines straight between GPU and radiator. We're starting a new way to do Push-Pull with a single layer of fans on your 240mm radiator We also drilled a set of 4 holes in the bottom of the case to install a 2.5" drive (in addition to the M.2 SSD) And don't forget to paint your freshly cut edges Weirdly, that's about it for the actual modifications to the case. Next up, we'll be working on the watercooling part of it...
After modding the case to fit the watercooling gear we wanted to, it's time to get the parts ready to watercool First was to remove the stock heatsink and install the waterblock on the Vega 56 Shiny We got the waterblock on the CPU and got the radiator installed Got the extra 80mm radiator installed, and start running some of the tubing We routed the tubing for the GPU from the radiator around the edge. This was probably our favorite run of all of them, as it showcases well in the top window This is essentially the loop completed. We still have to flush and clean out the radiator, but at last we know it fits A quick sneak peak at the top window We figured we better make sure we can get the PSU and wires in as well, so we put that in before calling the fit good. Then we took it all apart, so we could clean everything thuroughly before reassembly.
Little hiatus due to work, but back at it now... I sign everything I build/make for modding and woodworking. This one under the motherboard on the tray. Shhh he doesn't know (ok, he does know, but he didn't lol) Mike started out with getting the motherboard, and the radiators, pump reservoir installed in place. The pump/reservoir/radiator assembly is much easier to put together outside the case, before installing. After that, reinstalled the hard drive Tight spaces, but we got the GPU, and PSU installed, and everything plumbed and wired up After leak testing it with distilled water for a while, we drained it and filled it with XSPC white liquid. I'm not a fan, but it's the look Mike wanted I do have to admit, it does look good. I just usually prefer distilled water + biocide Next up we reattached the front button/light cable, and reinstalled the front (side) I/O board. Then just slide it back in to the outer shell
