Case Mod - In Progress Discrete modded and watercooled Lian Li PC70

I wanted a tower again, so I had plenty of space for both disks and watercooling. I wanted the whole watersetup to be easy accesseble, since I dont want to use to much time maintaining the setup
So when I saw an elderly Lian Li PC7077 for sale, I did not wait long to purchase this old beauty. I had the perfect size for what I wanted to do with this casemod.

I decided to mount the radiator, reservoir and pump at the case top, this way I can pull the whole setup out fairly easy.

The casetop ready to have the Reservoir, pump and radiator mounted.


The Alphacool tripple 120 radiator, had no tread for mounting the fans and the radiator it self. So I needed to put some treads in the radiator, I chose an easy way to do this, mounting 24 pressbolts and the radiator had treads in a matter of minutes.


The Radiator, reservoir, pump all mounted. Also I added 7/12 volt switches for the fans so I can run silent when full fanpower is not nedded.


The pump is mounted directly onto the reservoir. The reservoir being mounted with virbationsbrackets, makes this a silent setup.


Now the front of the case is not uggly, but a bit boring, so I got hold of some black aloymesh and paintet the dvd fronts black so it all matched the X-Fi front panel. Not a complicated mod, but it radically changed the look of the front
Before

After


To spare myself from hearing the fan cooled cpu cooler, I cut of the legs of an old socket 478 waterblock I made a few eas ago, using this until the real block is ready.
Before I cut the mounting legs of:


The bottomplate needed to be changed, so I heated the block, and removed the old bottom. And that was a good Idea, the block really needed to be cleaned up, just take a look here.


Cleaned up and ready to have the new bottomplate mounted.


Soldered and ready to be polished.


Polished and mounted. I used part of the fancooledblocks mounting, the two black plasticthings, then I made a aloy bracket for easy mounting the waterblock.


Also I needed to move the alloybeam that keeps the case stable, pay no attention to the wires, they will be cleaned up later.
Before the beam is moved:


After the beam is moved:


So my next step is to make the waterblocks I', actually gonna be running with, I will post them asap.

Note for the last picture, the pump, my good old LaingDC4, send the water around so fast in the system, that after 2 minuters, the water was changed into foam. But, hardly believing it myself, the temperatures was pretty good, 32c iddle 39c full load

ZeroHerO

 

Umm, hasn't this already been posted? I even remember commenting on how awesome the mesh front was...

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=1586492&postcount=28

Tada!

 

yes but the pictures changed adress, and i was faster to repost, but apparently I can not delete the old post. So Ill have totry to get an admin to do it for me

ZeroHerO

 

The new waterblocks

I have done some work on the new waterblocks, nothing fancy, since I just have regular tools. But they should do the job.

The tools:


A few more tools

 

The cpu block

First step is offcourse to cut a block of Copper, i cut a chunk of 45*55*10mm, that should be more than big enough.


Then I made sure all the angles were 90 degrees.


Then I drew a mesh and hit some drillingpoints.


Then I drilled 4mm deep with a 4mm drill. The center of the holes are 6mm appart.


After the holes were drilled, I drilled them with the drill used to countersink screws with, don't know whats it called, sorry.


Then I milled the block.


Then it was time to solder the block together, I used some flux, "solderled" and my weedburner for this










Sanding the block


Polished, and just needing one more fitting before its gonna be mounted. I am gonna do the waterblocks the the voltregulators, noprthbridge and gfx first


I used car coolant for avoiding corrossion, against my better judgement. Next time I'l, listen to the litle voice who says its not a good idea. The top of the reservoir cracked, the plexiglass and the carcoolant dont like each other.


So I bought a Aqua Computer reservoir, and well, needed to resize the holes for the fittings from 6mm to 10mm.


Made some tread, so fittings could be mounted.

 

Awesome, looking really good, since you re-threaded the reservoir what size tubing are you planning to use?

 

Angleus, Im just uing 10mm id tubing, but the reservoir were only threaded to 6 or 8mm tubing/fittings. I´m gonna run 4-5 blocks in a seriel setup, so I thought that was to narrow. And I dont want a parrallel setup but just a simple seriel setup.

ZeroHerO

 

Ok cool cheers man, great blocks btw, keep up the good work

 

You guys and your home-made water blocks. I am just now getting into the watercooling scene and here you are with a great-looking piece of hardware you hand made. Now thats skill. Great job.

 

Thacrudd, don't worrie, the waterblocks you can easy make yourself, its not nearly as impressive as some of projects inhere build from scrats.

Anyway welcome to watercooling, even though watercooling is becoming more mainstream I think it's cool ;-) in more than one way.

ZeroHerO

 

I didn't remember the name, But I remember your work! It's good to see you back at it! I always loved your waterblocks.

 

And look on the bright side - an alluminum reservoir will now require the use of car coolant!

 

Carcoolant

MegadetHCI,

Carcoolant would just end up cracking the plexiglass on the new reservoir. But I have purchased some anticorrosionfluid, this way the copper and the aluminum should not corrode eachother.

ZeroHerO

 

I have never seen a PC-70 like that before? the whole drive bay system and front panel is completly different, where did it come from I want one

 

Ahh found it! its a Lian-Li PC-7077 - not in production any more though booo

 

DeadMan, yes unfortunately they no longer produce them, but they can still be found if you search the net, and cheap due to its out of production.

ZeroHerO

 

Heh I have been searching all morning to no avail

DeadMan

 

awesome job, i love lianlis that are kept simple, but layed out well: )

 

Small update, new reservoir mounted and waterblocks

Well, I finally came around to mounting the new waterblocks and the new reservoir.

The voltregulator-waterblock from now called VR-Block


CPU- and VR-block, perfect fitt




Tubes and tubesecuring


The reservoir mountet and lightet


More to come soon.

 

Nice