It's been a long time. Too long. And now, I'm on a deadline! I'm emigrating less than 3 weeks from now, and i'm not taking all that much with me. However, my PC is making the trip with me, there's no way i could let it behind! Problem though... I don't really like the idea of sending it in the cargo hold. The solution... to begin construction on what I will call: Deus Fresh Intro Allright, so we have our list of demands: Deus Ex inspired colorscheme and design elements. Nothing OTT. Finished case must fit within carry-on luggage restraints. My airline specifies: 55 x 35 x 25 cm. I'll just ignore the 12kg limit for now, let's hope they are as casual as they always are Watercooling capable of dealing with tropical temperatures Should house all of my current components: Maximus III Gene I7-870 @ 4.0GHz 4GB Geil Black Dragon 5870 Lightning CM M1000 PSU 2x Seagate 1,5TB Intel 40GB SSD mCubed tBalancer BigNG To do all this, i decided to shell out for a Silverstone FT03T piece of cheesecake. The case fits in my bag, will allow watercooling (although not without a little help from my friend ), and looks the part! Cooling then! I'm cooling a CPU, GPU, plus a surprise element that i'll reveal a little later. A dual rad will suffice, but i'll be much more comfortable with a triple. No way that's going to fit though. Enter the 200mm rad from Phobya A standard triple rad will have 12x12x3 = 432 cm2 of cooling surface, this radiator will give me 20x20 = 400. Close enough! A wild box appears! I wonder... Silverstone FT03T Phobya 200mm extreme radiator Silverstone 180mm Air Penetrator fan ACRyan AluPanel Gold (outside of frame) Lollypop. What an amazing coincidence! I love lollipops! Chapter 1: The Golden tBalancer The very first thing I have to do is play around with that golden alu. It really looks fantastic, this is quality stuff! The mCubed comes standard with a few slabs of plexi, that make it look very decent, but obviously, gold will be way better! Attack! Draw the first plate out: Don't mind the white stuff, that's what's left of the dual-sided tape that held my previous build together Sawing it out, and filing down to the lines: Transfer the rubber feet, drill 4 holes, and presto! Phase 1 complete, now for the super-secret phase 2 First, i make an identical plate, but here's the twist! A nice challenge for everyone: do you recognise the part in the next picture? Kudos if you do, if not, just keep scrolling That's right folks, it's part of an MCW60 universal GPU block. A friend gave it to me after i complained to him about the mCubed overheating. Now, the top plate is ready for assembly with the MCW60, and i can present you with the golden tBalancer! Ok, one more, just for showing off:
ooo nice start there Xtrafresh! *grabs a sofa and laze around watching this* ooo this sofa is comfy! *dozes off* Also! Subbed!
Fitting the radiator. Chapter 2: Radiator I'm not the first person to realize that this case and radiator are a good match, but I will give it my own twist. I don't want to simply slap it on the top, so I'm going to have to get creative here Let's see what we are working with. On top of the case is a plastic cover that snaps into place with some clamps. Maybe i can use this cover to put the fan underneath, and the rad on top, and then just cover that up. Ghetto measuring setup: Top cover in place, fan underneath, USB cable connected: Dang! No fit. There's no way all the cables that are stuck in the backpanel are not going to get in the fan, so if i leave it like this, i'll have a rattle every 5 minutes. Plan B... Raise the ceiling! The way that this top cover snaps into place is fairly simple. Two of these 'snap' clips in the back ...and a couple of latches that grab the unit housing front USB, power button, etc: Four screws will undo that unit, so i can raise it up a little. Here's the poor thing dangling off it's cables: I've had to stop now, because the next bit will include some very very noisy alu cutting. I managed to get one piece of the extension done. This will give me the space to house the fan and the rad underneath the top cover. To be continued!
TBalancer... Interesting .. I have one of these in a box never used as I read a few moans about how the software is pretty dated etc . Would you at the end of the build, just write up a small paragraph on how the Tbalancer is performing please? It might encourage me to get it fixed up in the box of tricks
Blarte, you are absolutely right. The software is an absolute nightmare. There's a milion and a half buttons, none of them does what you expect it to do I've set the thing to control the pump to a stable 60%, nothing special there, that just works. What's really useful is the "target temperature" feature. I have a tempsensor in the reservoir, and the controller just keeps the water at a certain temp, going as far as complete shutdown when the water is cool enough. I'll put up some screenshots later when the whole thing is up and running
Thanks guys! Comments are appreceated, it keeps me focued on the task at hand! Speaking of which... Chapter 2: Radiator (cont'd) I left off yesterday at the first glimpse of a radiator housing, held to the side of the case. Today, i made it my mission to finish at least the essentials of the rad box. That meant making two pieces of these parts each: And that meant lots and lots of filing towards the black line. I'm leaving the jokes about over-trained right arms to you lot, but you get the idea In any case, after some time I was able to start testfitting the parts. Here's the first one, on the backpanel. Second, more labor-intensive part testfit: Notice how i had to make an extra bend to the first part. Since i don't have any proper bending machines here, I'm pretty happy with how the bends came out. I did the round ones around a wooden walking stick laying on the table, and the sharper ones were scored on the inside, and then bent using a pair of pliers. Ghetto modding Cheesecake! Ok, so eventually I stopped marvelling at the first two parts, and made a third: Now it's getting a bit easier to get a feel for the final product, and i'm pretty happy with the way it looks on the rest of the case. It doesn't even disturb the sleek lines of the stock case too much. Part 4 proved a tough one, as the protective foil came off too soon. I re-protected it with some masking tape, and re-drew the wanted shape using the other one i already had: So, there i was filing to the line _again_, and now the masking take comes off, line and all Anyway, part 4 was a bit of a PITA, but in the end, i had it done! Time to tape the thing together and see it all assembled. If there's anything that needs changing, now is the time to find out. Tape tape tape tape: And put together: Taped together like this, the whole thing is sturdy enough to be placed on top without slipping off anywhere, and i can even place the stock top cover on there for a pretty good fit. There's some excess material that is going to be cut preventing the top from closing all the way, but this is close enough to get the idea: I'm really happy with how it looks on the last picture, but the backpanel needs a matching opening in the gold part. Pretty happy on the whole though, to be continued! Keep commenting, and keep coming back, because i'll be rapidfiring these updates. My deadline for completion has moved up, as I have a LAN party to go to on the weekend of 2-4 december. One week! Yikes! [EDIT] One more thing. Remember how One of the constraints for this case is the carryon-luggage maximum size. 55 x 35 x 25 cm. I'm trolling them by one milimeter!
Chapter 2: radiator box (cont'd) First, let's clean up a bit. Here's the unit that holds power and reset buttons, audio, led, USB3, the works. Dont need it. Out wit that spaghetti! Ok, great. Next up: trimming the flanges down on the front and back panels. Not as easy as it sounds, with all the bendy-magic already done to the parts. I settled for another ghetto solution: Tape the part i want to keep, score the line where i want to cut with a stanley knife, grab hold of both parts with some pliers, and wiggle until the metal snaps. Worked pretty smooth, results: After that, some fiddly bit of filing, giving each part some notches. It doesn't look like much, but it took me almost an hour to get them all right. Anyway, some m4 holes .... ... and we're ready to start screwing the parts together in one assembly. Next job was to create these two parts. I'll get to explaining what they are later, first i'll divulge in another amusing anectdote on my modding woes. These two parts are basically made from what i had laying around after all the dust settled, so they are not 100% perfect for the job. I'm on a deadline here, gimme a break! Anyway, i tried bending the unmasked one, and it just. would. not. budge. I had marked too short a flange to be bent Long story short: i just did what any sensible man would have done: i picked up a big hammer and beat it into submission! Well, not quite, but all that carnage is not visible in the end result, so let's move on. Part in place: This is what those filed-away notches are for. Without that, these last parts would stick out above the whole assembly, and this way they sit nicely flush: Now, i simply take one of the fan adapter brackets from the rad, mark four times: dot, dot, dot, dot, ... give it another whirl on the drillpress,, and the radiator screws right in! Underneath i have space to mount the fan: I've put the black stock cover on there aswell. It needs to sit upside-down for now, pending a session with the dremel, but this gives a nice impression for now: This concludes Chapter 2, and sadly, I need to stop here for now. Time for some beer and noise, it IS weekend afterall.
Busy week! I only have time for a very quick update from my side. I spent all friday rush-building it to get ready for some LAN-goodness. I took the PSU out by now, because i traded the 1000W unit i had in there for a smaller, better suited 650W unit, that should be arriving wednesday. All I have today is a few shots of the tube layout. More to come!
