Scratch Build – Complete *DONE* "Christmas Calendar" - Reaper PC

14. December - It's starting to look a lot like c..... asemod!​

Oh my as time does fly, it's already the 15th and I apparently just skipped out the Saturday, sorry about that.
I'm a Gamer with a big G so got cought up in both Sequence with my wife (I won 4 out of 5 games, oops), a couple of different voyages in Sea of Thieves (there is a new Maiden Voyage Tall Tale I rushed out), and some rounds of CS with my local friends - I do a lot of headshots.











In the build, the sanding and painting is almost over, so soon more assembly can begin!



Just needs 1 more layer of black to be real Reaper black




Hang on a moment and I will write up the 15th too...

 

15. December - SSD mods​

Not sure if you noticed, but somewhere in the beginning my friend told me that he wants to run the machine totally off SSD, to make it more quiet and look nicer - a raw bare HDD is not a very pretty sight.

Here is 2 of the in total 3 SSDs:




Disassembled:





Before mod:





Black out mod:





Sea you tomorrow for an AIO mod (yep, I'm a pirate)

 

Oops I've done it again, I made a little video clip of something in Sea of Thieves and all day got a ton of response on platforms like Twitter + my son injured himself so I had to leave work really early and keep an eye on him most of today, so in the end I'm actually pretty tired.
Only enough energy for a little sailing trip - so whenever I am recharged (most likely not until tomorrow) you will get a much larger update for all you miss out on. Sorry...

 

16th December - AiO mod!​

All-in-One coolers are not always the prettiest, NZXT Kraken X31 included. (of course I use a Kraken cooler, I am a pirate right)
Remember, the PC this time is actually not new, so it is also an older model AiO and there will not be any upgrades done, only mods.


This is how the AiO looked before I started:




Disassembled:





...for those with an eye for detail, I have actually teased this mod earlier, the round thing in the middle:




I sadly ran out of paint, so could only give it 2 layers so the white lines shine trough a little, but IMO I think it actually looks kinda cool. To spice it up, and because the motherboard is an Asus ROG type, I added this:




...sorry but I'm a few days behind on the calendar aspect, so let me write up some more. See you soon

 

17. December - deep mods​

We have started diving into the little details not everyone does, the little things that distance one mod from another and make it something very special.


Like this one, this is how I found the GPU to look when I picked up the PC from my friend:







Dusty, orange and grey - everything something that needs attention.


Started with a little round of strip:




All the way down to the chip:




Everything got cleaned, new thermal paste (my favorite is Coolermaster Master Gel Maker Nano) and painted!
Remember the theme is "Reaper", so a batman-esque matt black it is now:




...see you soon for the 18th December

 

18th December - Progress​

This is how the whole thing looks as of now:




One of the little extra things I've done is I bought this very cheap RGB strip, only issue is that it apparently was so cheap because it came without a wire attached....




But a little solder work and it lit up!




You can't see it clearly in the finished build, but it's doing a little underglow effect under the motherboard:





...now you got a lot of updates to get this up to speed, so todays update is going to be little relaxed (my son is alright btw after his little injury the other day)

 

19th December - "Reaper"​

Every build needs a name, just like a ship does it, and in this case the name came from these great looking cables from Reaper Cable - I really dig them and must do a shoutout, their quality and colours are very very nice!
Not the last time I'm going to use their cables, that's for sure.








This colour is called "Carbon & Billet grey"





It's because I think these cables look so great, that I try and do as much as possible to hide all the other wires and cables in this build





...follow along and see more in the next "episode"

 

20. December
​

Me and December builds is maybe not the best idea, never goes as I plan... 2 years ago the build did not end up being done until May and last years build log in December is still unfinished because I just don't have the time to do it right.
This year I thought it would be different, but I can see now that all my planning and prep did not work out, we are now 1 day after my own deadline and I miss updates from the past 4 days.... Opps I've done it again...


You get them here anyway:




One of the objectives in this build is to make the cabling almost disappear. One of the ways is to carefully place holes in places you normally don't look.






I got fans!



And the rad got mounted with "invisible cables"




See you in a few for another update

 

21. December​

First a little backstory, in 2010 I modded Macs and iPods, there is almost no one who does that, I did.
One of my projects was to bring a Mac Mini to the Dark Side:



It got wildly popular a lot of places on the web back then, and It made me want to do another crazy project 2 years later, I installed the fastest possible RAM a Mac Mini would recognize with the lowest timings and found at the time some of the highest performing SSDs and I adjusted and modded a little on the cooling solution so I for a short time had what was considered the worlds fastest Mac Mini



Those 2 machines back then made people recognize me on various Mac sites and a lot of my pictures got shares and reposts on the internet in places I barely know. It's also a part of the story of why I call myself "AT0MAC" which is now much more than just an alias. That's a story for another time.
By telling you this, it brings us back to this build, I am giving my friend one of the SSDs there was in the very fast Mac Mini I build, it's a pretty special SSD to me.

Before:


After a little acetone:


After a UV marker, a little lacquer and a UV LED:




After this I ran into a unforeseen challenge. How am I going to cable everything up??
Ended up placing the plate on 2 old chairs and crawl in under it, just like if it was a car.



The result in the end kinda looks like a bomb... There are sooo many things on the backside




Also mounted a very long white LED strip, it is powered off an always on USB port on the motherboard and there is a on/off switch on the wire in case it should not be on all the time.
The wallmount also got mounted on, its made to hang up much heavier televisions so should work perfectly for this.



See you soon for another update

 

22. December​

We are so close now....


I just need to sort out the last pictures and you will see the whole thing assembled

 

23rd December​

If you look carefully, the wall mount is mounted a little wonky on one of the last pictures. Had to fix it but how do you do that on a wallmounted PC?! With kitchen tissue rolls as a lift!




There are so many little details in this build, so I decided that you get some detail pictures in this update and then the finished one little later.
One of the details are the UV LEDs who light up the SSD, they are placed on the PSU cover, I marked them with purple and marked with blue on the SSD where I have done the UV marker, its invisible in daylight and ONLY visible when the UV lights are on.
That's freaking cool!




The painted graphics card turned out pretty sweet, it is not really visible unless you look at it right from the side, but it turned out good.







The little mod on the AIO also turned out pretty good, it matches pretty well with the rest of the hardware.




Reaper Cables looks so good, they really tie into the rest of the build really well!








Give me a little more time and I show the whole thing assembled.

 

24th December


Let me present:

*Reaper PC*






Test-fit at my place:





And this is how it looks installed at the owner (switched off), right next to a window and above his 2 monitors




Thanks to everyone looking
This have been a challenge and very fun to build, hope you like the result as much as I do.


Merry Christmas, Yo-Ho-HOoo to everyone

​

 

Merry Christmas bro!