Case Mod - In Progress Lian Li V300: Nightbringer 3 - Friday 7 may - and another one!

Hey all.

You may remember my attempt at a shuttle mod... didnt work out so well.

So moving on, and being older, wiser, and more sensible, I have begun again, only in a slightly larger form factor.

You may ask, why a lian li v300 and not a 350 or 351?

Well... the V351 looks like a friendly robot monster out of a disney movie. Screw that.

I have had a V350 before, and the front doesnt sit right with me. Also, its bigger than it needs to be.

But when I owned my first v300... it was a thing of beauty. That perforated aluminium front grill is just lovely, and very friendly to airflow.

So I started with sketchup!



And thats the basic foundation of what we are doing today!

We have 2x dual 92mm radiators in the front, either side of the mesh. Breathing life into these miniature marvels we will have 4 PWM controlled 92mm fans, gasketted, running at low speed.
I may even switch the rad fans to a pull configuration, seeing as it will result in better temps at the lowest speeds.

Between them, we will have 2 vandal switches, and a slot load dvd/bluray drive (bluray later) through a vertical slit on the other side.

So, to get started!

I work quite a bit - long hours, long weeks, and I dont have access to a toolshop at all.
As well as that, I dont have a balcony/yard/whatever to use any power tools on, and I cant make much noise or my neighbors will conmplain.

So I need an uber leet silent drill.

Step one: Get drillbits!


CHECK!

Step two: Find a way to make drillbits turn without noise!


CHECK!

And it works greeeaaaaaaat for drilling rivets and soft alu.

Next, using these uber ghetto tool skillz, gutting the poor thing:


Now, pulling out the bare alu parts i will use, to get them painted:




What an ugly family they make. Soon, they will be pretty and satin black.

NEXT!


In the rear of the Lian li V300 there is a spot for a semi-modular 3.5" hdd bay.
Obviously I have ripped this out.

I use a SSD and a laptop HDD for my os/files so I dont need this at all.

What to do with the space?

Well, I had one of these lying around:

(excuse my beautiful knee).
Its a spare Black Ice 92mm rad - I actually have a non scratched, pristine one sitting in the failshuttle I will pull out later.

All I have to do is drill 2 holes with GhettoNinjaDrill(tm):



And, obviously the 2 rivet holes holding the old drive bay match up perfectly with these two to make a 92mm rad/fan mount.

Like so:



Now with that done, the "cooooool" gimmick feature of this build, the slot load drive.

First, a mount to mount the drive.

I used an old imac drive holder and some alu brackets to fit the drive in the right place, and allows interchangeability:


Second, a rough cut (needs more filing, only just started at one end.)

I had to stop due to fatigue, and needing to get to work at this point.

And that was last night, in the couple of hours spare I had after dinner and some TV with the girl.

Today, I got the rest of my parts except for my koolance order.

Hopefully, more tomorrow!

-Ash

 

And... filed!


Testing...


Looks good!

Now for some brackets for my 2x92mm rads...


And the rad itself:


How does it fit?


Perfect!

Obviously you can see a few scratches on the case - everything will be powder coated satin black when im done.
And when I say satin black, i mean satin black, not this cheap ass semi-gloss black I see so much.

More tomorrow!

-Ash

 

Thought I might add the hardware going into this thing.

Hardware:
EVGA X58 SLI Micro
i7 920 overclocked to ludicrous levels
12GB DDR3 1600 CS8
128GB Gskill falcon modded to OCZ vertex
640GB seagate momentus 7200rpm lappy drive (for files, etc)
2x HD5850 crossfire (only have one for now, we will see if fermi is any decent, which I doubt).
Slot Load Blu-ray combo

Water:
2x Black Ice 92x184mm Radiators
1x Black Ice 92x92mm Radiator
MCP 355 pump modded to 1/2" barbs
1/2 primochill tubing
DD fillport reservoir
Koolance CPU Block
Koolance Northbridge Block
Koolance Soutbridge Block
Koolance VRM Block
Bitspower Matte Black Fittings

Cant wait to hit this thing again!

-Ash

 

I find the brand name of those drill bits quite amusing and ironic in a way

At any rate good mod so far.

PS:
Imo, unless the MOSFETS,NM,SB get hot there's no real point in water cooling them.

 

On any X58 board the northbridge will overheat and affect stability long before you CPU hits its limit, so good northbridge cooling is essential.
Next after that, VRM's will cause bad stuff, again, before your CPU hits its limit. (as we noticed in the overheating VRM's of the HD5970).
Other than that, you dont need to cool the other stuff. But I like to .

-Ash

 

TROJAN MAN!

 

Had us worried for a bit with that dead Shuttle project. Good to see you modding again

Loving the ideas.

 

Hey everyone.

I got the second rad mounting bracket built last night and starting installing the W/C on the motherboard and graphics card.

Phone ran out of powah so couldnt take pics, but I will get some more done over the weekend.

See you soon!

-Ash

 

YARRR! I LUUURVE this format and this case!

 

Just spoke to the powdercoaters.

They can do my case and parts for me, turnaround of 3 days, so if I send it on monday, they can do it by friday.
Then, final assembly that weekend.

So yeah, say 7 days left until this project is completed.

BOOYAH!

-Ash

 

Really? I'v run a P6T Deluxe v2 (previously X58-UD3R) with a i7 920 @ 4.4Ghz (no HT, and 3.8Ghz with UD3R due to massive vdroop) and haven't run in to problems when running P95, OCCT, LinX,etc. Yes, my CPU is WCed with a Swiftech GTZ + a 480 rad (externally mounted rad). All I have is just a front 120mm intake and 80mm exhaust. My NB temps don't rise above 55C with an average Ambient of 20-24C. These are my experiences and YMMV.

And yes, I do agree with you on the VRAM however. And obviously, depending on how far you push, you'll need NB/SB/MOSFET cooling.

 

Yeah, it does depend on the default cooling of the MOBO too - big chunky heatpipe coolers are obviously better.

For this board in particular you really need to change the NB/VRM cooling.
Same for any X58 motherboard that doesnt have crazy heatpipe uber cooling on the NB/VRM.

-Ash

 

Damn...sure wish all manufactures start using pretty good quality HSs, then again, HSs are quite expensive to make (I'd say, ~$7-10 per board for the fancy high end coolers) and add to the cost of the board.

 

How would the HDD's be mounted? The stock cage?

 

OK, got some nice stuff done today.

Here are some pics of how the two brackets fit:



Now, seeing as I'm using a pair of logitech Z-10 speakers with integrated headphone ports, I thought the front headphone ports were pretty obsolete.

Thus, I went scavenging in my toolbox and found one of these:


And I did some filing.



Excellent...

Now for some fancy switches.



Woot!

Now for some new side panels, as the gaping holes in the originals are none too pretty. Also, the people who sold me the case gave me one with 2 left side panels so...
Yeah.

Test fit:


The GF trying it on:


Looks pretty good!

And the cooling for the board:


As for the hard disks, I have a dual bay hotswap 2.5" hard disk enclosure I am going to stick somewhere.


At this point I ran out of ALU for the other side panel, so I have to buy some more tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!

-Ash

 

Nice! Keep it coming!

 

OK, time for an update.

Here is the dual 2.5" drive bay (sorry for the bluriness, couldnt get a sharp pic with my phone camera)...


And now the side panels are done:



And after that, time to set up the reservoir - dangerden fillport res





Dont worry I cleaned up the jaggies and sanded it down afterwards.

I only had time to build one more thing tonight, so I put my skills into this:


Salmon and Prosciutto Cheesecake!!


Now I just have to box it all up to send to the powder coaters.

YAAAAAAY!

-Ash

 

You're going to powdercoat your food?

 

How do you think I get it that lovely color?

-Ash

 

Ha!

Just kidding, it looks great. How do you stay away from real life long enough to get so much done?