My goal with Infinity is to create something new in the world of casemodding. Something I have never seen before. The case I will be modding is the Corsair 460X. The Motherboard will be rotated and placed in the front of the case to allow the GPU to be shown through the front glass-panel. There will be a custom liquid cooling loop, custom milled cable combs, RGB Fans/LEDs, New Motherboard backplate and a aluminium PSU shroud. Nothing you haven't seen before. The back and top of the case will be a whole different story however. All I will say for now is that it involves milled acrylic and UV-lights. I wont be more specific at this time. I am sure you will figure out what I have in mind soon enough. Lets start of with a component list. Hardware: CPU: TBA GPU: MSI 1070 Seahawk EK X Motherboard: MSI B350M Bazooka Case: Corsair 460X PSU: Corsair RM650x Cables: Corsair Premium Individually Sleeved RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB SSD: Corsair Force LE200 Fans: Corsair HD120 Fan-control: Corsair Commander Pro LED: Corsair RBG LED kit Liquid cooling: Pump: EK-XTOP Revo D5 PWM Radiator: EK-CoolStream PE 240 Reservoir: EK-RES X4 250 Fluid: EK-CryoFuel Navy Blue Premix CUP-Block: EK-Supremacy EVO AMD Fittings: EK Black Nickel Pipes: EK-HD Tube 10/12mm Before I get this build log started with actual modding I want to go over the components and give a quick note as to why they where selected. MSI GTX 1070 Sea hawk EK X. In this mod with the GPU clearly visible in the front of the case this will be a real eye catcher. MSI B350M Bazooka. A mATX motherboard with a black and white colour scheme. Perfect for this mod! Corsair 460X. The case I will be modding. Glass and steel in all its glory, lets cut it up! Corsair RM650x and Corsair individually sleeved cables in white and black. All good mods need a good PSU and beautiful cables to go with the motherboard. Corsair Force LE200 and 4x8GB Vengeance RGB memory. RGB, who can resist? Corsair HD120, Commander pro and LED-strip kit. Lets just say that some of these fans and LED-strips will be used in a way that's not the most conventional. EK-XTOP Revo D5 PWM pump and EK-CoolStream PE 240. In a mod with a lot of sharp angles this round pump will provide a welcome break. The Radiator is a good balance between cooling efficiency and thickness. EK-RES X4 250. In the planning stage of this mod I was afraid that the case would feel empty because of the layout I chose. With this reservoir that's not an issue any more. EK-CryoFuel Navy Blue Premix. Without this UV reactive fluid the back of this case wont be the same. EK-Supremacy EVO AMD - Plexi. A CPU-block with an acrylic top and UV reactive fluid, what can go wrong? EK Black Nickel Fittings and EK-HD Tube 10/12mm. With the use of UV-lights and reactive fluid I wanted the fittings to be a bit more discrete. I didn't want the full mirror effect of ordinary nickel fittings but still some shine and thus the black fittings where ruled out too. These black nickel fittings is a good middle ground with some shine and a discrete grey tone. Finally a big shout out to my sponsors Corsair, EKWB and MSI for helping out with hardware.
After getting my hands on the Corsair 460X I took a quick look at it and took some measurements. Now knowing that my mod will fit in the case the way I want it to I started making plans for what to cut out of the case. Basically everything inside and most of the outside of this case will have to be removed to fit the new layout. Time to put the scissors to the metal and cut some holes! I started by removing the side panel and front and put them away for later use. Then I removed the built in PSU shroud, drive cage and started drilling out the rivets on the motherboard tray. After some convincing I got the tray out of the case. The top fan-mount is next. I prefer using metal cutting scissors to get rid of excess material when possible. They are easy to use and make good cuts. I then follow up with a file to take the edge off and make the cut straight. Although the case was taped for some protection some nicks have already appeared in the paint. This isn't really a problem since I will make a lot of cuts into this case and thus get a lot of bare metal I decided early on to repaint the whole case when I'm done cutting and modifying. Next to go is the front fan-mount and the rear I/O ports. Finally I need to make a hole in the bottom of the case to get through to the new I/O port location. As you can see the case feet intrudes a bit on the hole. I don't know if this will make it hard to get at the I/O ports. I may change out the feet later on to make it possible to expand the hole some more. All done with demolishing this case. I have to say that I am impressed with the rigidity this case has even after cutting all of this material out its still very stable. Now I will start on the new backplate and PSU mount. Stay tuned!
Time to bring out the aluminium sheets and make some new parts! Because of my design and desire to get the motherboard down low in the front of the case I need to squeeze it in between the front glass and the PSU. There is not enough room if you mount the PSU in the normal way so I will rotate it 90 degrees and use a extender for the power cord. To make this happen I need a new PSU mount so lets get to it. Simple and sturdy wins the race here. Its going to be mounted with 2 rivets in the bottom and 1 in the back of the case. Moving on to the new backplate. After getting the sheet cut to size I took some measurements from the case and folded in the sides and bottom. The plate slides in with the top of the case removed. To be able to connect the cables to the PSU I cut a hole in the corner of the plate and test mounted the PSU. For reasons I will not disclose at this time I have chosen to cut out a "window" at the top of the plate. Later on I need some "ledges" to mount the top fans so I used otherwise wasted material in the cut-outs to create these ledges. Last I made two smaller cut-outs at the bottom to be able to pass cables through. I am not sure if and how they will be used though, we'll see later. Almost done with the backplate. To be able to finish it I need to get some other components into the case to be able to get some measurements for the final cut-outs and mounts for the motherboard tray. Next will be the new motherboard tray.
Moving on to some actual PC hardware! I have given a lot of thought on how to mount the reservoir. Its quite big and it weighs quite a lot so that's definitely a factor too. Originally I had planned to mount it on the fans of the radiator but when I saw how the mount of the reservoir was designed I realized that it would need a mounting plate to bridge the gaps between the fan-holes and the reservoir mount. This would make an impact on the general aesthetics of the radiator area that I didn't like so I decided to make an alternate mount using the side of the radiator. I cut and bent a aluminium bar to size. To make installation and alignment easier I milled out a slot for the reservoir mount screws. After measuring out the height of the mount relative to radiator in/outlets I drilled out the holes in the radiator. Now I know what some of you will think. Did he really drill into the radiator?! Well technically no. This radiator have a gap between the fins and the outer casing leaving room for a M3-screw so I utilized that. Then I simply aligned the brackets with the holes in the radiator and marked out where to drill and tap. Time for a test mount. Everything seems in order and the radiator is sturdy enough to take the weight. The brackets is put on the pile of thing I need to paint later. Early on I felt the need to make a motherboard slide to make it easier to install the motherboard but also be able to distance the motherboard from the backplate of the case. As with many other components in this build it started with an aluminium sheet. I printed out a mATX hole-layout and drilled the holes for the stand-offs. Then I bent the sheet to be able to make the I/O and PCIE cut-outs. After bending I inserted the stand-offs, here in form of M3 popnuts. To be able to route some of the cables later I wanted to try a new method of holding them to the motherboard slide. I milled a series of U shaped holes and bent them a little to make a holder. These holders will be on the back of the motherboard slide so no need for tidiness here. Holding the 24-pin, 8-pin and GPU 6+8-pin power-cables required more fine work though. they are milled from 3mm thick aluminium. The combs looked beat up and bad so I sanded them. Using two planks clamped in a vise I aligned my sanding block with the edge to get a good finish and straight lines. The motherboard slide was cut to size and holes where made to mount the combs. Here is the almost finished slide.
Time to make a PSU-shroud and a mount for the pump. The mount will serve as a mount and a box for hiding some cables. Aluminum to the rescue! Some bending later the holes for the pump mount needed to be drilled. EKWB sends this handy layout with their pumps witch makes it really easy to allign all the holes. Test mounted. Time to cover the top. I like the look with just the plexi top sticking up. Ive also decided to make a combined PSU-shroud and I/O cover. Placing a metal sheet close to a motherboard is risky business you need to be careful the sheet don't get into contact with anything on the board. All shrouds test mounted. I like the way it turned out!
Time to make cut-outs for the radiator in the rear panel. I designed a simple pattern and started milling it but sadly my mill broke 1/3 of the way in. I was forced to do the rest by hand. Hopefully its not too inconsistent I will need some way to light up the GPU at the front so i made a slightly tilted mount for at LED strip. Hopefully this will hide the LEDs from the front but give a good light. Moving on to fans in the top of the case. A simple cut-out will suffice here. The acrylic is 3mm thick and this presented a problem. The screws that come with the fans are not designed for materials this thick. i solved this by drilling out the holes in the fans and press fitted a m3 nut in there. Finally i can start painting the parts! The next update will hopefully contain some manner of a assembled chassis. I cant wait to see the parts mounted!
Sorry, no assembled chassis but I have something else for you! Distribution block! Since I use a conventional bench mill I cant do radius cuts. Therefore the lanes will be square with angles parallel to the edge of the acrylic sheet. The sheet I am using is roughly 250mm wide, 350mm across and 10mm thick. The block is designed to route liquid in three lanes. Pump to GPU, CPU to radiator and radiator to reservoir. I will mount the block on the back of the case to make it fully visible It will also be partially visible from the front trough a "window" above the motherboard. Lets make some chips! The lanes are made 12mm wide and 6mm deep with a track for the seal on the outside. Here is the block after all the lanes and holes are cut. The G1/4" on the inlets and outlets are tapped with the use of jig I made for my last mod. This helps me to get the threads at a 90 degree angle to the sheet. This is important to get a good seal when screwing in the fittings later. Now the holes for holding the other piece of the block need to be tapped. They will be tapped with M3 thread. There are however around 70 of them so I'll get back to you on that.
So the holes are tapped and I finally got into a good flow. The distribution block will have UV-LEDs around it so I measured out the correct length and tested the strip to be sure. The gasket that seal each track was put into the block. Then the screws started to go in. I bought this pressure gauge to check my blocks and pipes. I highly recommend that you guys try one of these. This way you don't have to try your loops with water. Time to turn my attention to the case and start mounting some components. The top fans are mounted on a acrylic sheet with holes to let the air through. The sheet have then been coated with a two way mirror film. The top of the fans have a 5mm distance nut mounted on them to raise the acrylic on top and let the air pass between the sheet and the fan body. The top sheet have a thin gap between the chassis and the sheet to let air into the fans. The sheet is 1mm thin and also coated with a two way mirror film. This creates a infinity mirror where the fans will repeat. This is the smaller of two infinity mirrors on this case. More pictures later! I mounted the Corsair Commander Pro in the bottom of the case. I needed to extend the fan cables but I think the location is perfect. There are some UV-LED strips in the case that need power and also the back side of the case where the distribution block is have UV-LEDs on it. To make this easier to mount and remove I put a connector in. With the distribution block mounted I started on the tubing. This is where the tubes will enter the block. Here are some pictures of the tubing. I will not go into much detail here. I applied heat and bent the pipes where needed. This will be my last entry before DHW17. I will post a last entry after I get back from DH and get some more pictures. The mod will be shown in Corsairs booth at DHW17 and at the Casemod championship. If you are attending come by and have a look!
