Pretty mild in comparison to many of the incredible case mods that have featured on here, but now I'm at a point of decent progress I thought I might as well start a thread. MELLIFERA is my second custom loop and first hard-line loop; I'd done a previous build in the O11 XL using soft tubing and a custom D5 side distro, but I was never really happy with it. That earlier project gave me my first experience doing CAD modelling for components, getting stuff CNC'd and 3D printed, but it never really came together in a way I way happy with. Combined with some cracking and spidering in the side distro, likely as a result of me not giving proper consideration to screw placement, and slightly underwhelming performance in some high intensity workloads, I decided to embark on a new build. "Mellifera" is the Latin name if the Western/European honey bee, which should give some inclination as to the colour scheme. I'm also incorporating honeycomb motifs in a few places- a custom frosted acrylic light box, and eventually via glass etching onto the front and side panels. In terms of hardware, it's a 5900X and 32GB of 3600MHz CL16 Trident Z RAM in a Gigabyte X570S Pro, plus an RTX2080. Storage is exclusively NVMe, with 3TB of PCI-E 4.0 and 1TB of 3.0. I'm reusing my trusty Corsair AX750. The actual case modding is fairly light compared to many builds on here. In addition to the glass etching, I'm refinishing the front panel in satin/brushless aluminium for a bit of contrast with the black exterior, plus a few small tweaks as necessary for things like cable routing. Anyway, enough waffle. EKWB front distro. I ended up refinishing the stainless steel front plate to match the case a bit better. Motherboard, plus some experimentation with the EKWB 16mm acrylic to get a satin finish. TechN CPU block- the quality and heft of this thing is insane, it's actually heavier than some of the monoblocks out there. Experimenting with paint finishes on the fittings as I didn't like the shiny nickel. I have yet to find a paint that gives me a satisfactory match with the satin titanium fittings. You may also notice that this fitting is NOT a satin titanium one, something I only realised after buying 12 of them (they're stickered as satin, but it looks like EK put nickel ones in the boxes instead). CAD work for the light box, showing the hexagon motifs at alternating 1.5, 3 and 5mm depth. The two aluminium pieces cover LED channels. Laser cut pieces. CNC cut frosted acrylic lightbox. Countersunk and satin finished. 320 grit automotive disk 180 grit Abralon pad 500 grit Abralon pad 1000 grit Abralon pad Test fit. LEDs in. Case front disassembly Front panel refinished, similar approach to the aluminium pieces on the lightbox, except I had to go all the way down to 150 grit to get rid of the anodising on the case. Refinished the steel plate on the distro to match the case. Notch in the bottom of the case to run the pump cables. Distro fitted. The lightbox, however, did not. I made a pretty monumental error in not accounting for the thickness of the distro. Even after taking a jigsaw to it and lopping off 10mm, there still wasn't nearly enough clearance around the pump bracket. I thought about taking a bit off it but it's not that thick. After giving it some thought, I decided the only approach would be to mount the lightbox on the rear of the case. Ended up really happy with how it looks actually. Motherboard in. Lower rad test fit. Just about clears the drain port. Measuring tubing runs. Finding time to work on it whilst juggling a hectic job and a two year old has been challenging. Much of the progress has been over the Christmas break, but I'm hoping I can get the bulk of the runs planned, measured and cut, and the whole thing pressure tested, in the next week or two.
NICE. Welcome to the project logs. Cracking on an old distro? any pics? The forensic team might be curious.
Thanks! The old distro was based on a GrabCad model someone put up of an EKWB style side distro that ended up getting quite heavily modified between myself and 2 different CNC providers. There are a few points of cracking, the worst is around two very closely located screws in front of the pump mount. I also had a couple of screws which were close to the o-ring channels crack through.
You were probably right about screw placement. The top pic would have been better with one screw, and the 2nd should have been in the open space above. I'd say the 1/4" top layer was not enough and was warping. I suspect you could remake the top in 1/2". Going for the softest shore rating O-Ring you can get for stuff like this is a good idea.
Thanks, real shame I had to lop a chunk of it off with a jigsaw but you can't tell from the front at least! Not much progress to report other than cutting and bending tubing really. Will try and get most of the rest of the loop finalised this weekend...
Tubing run "planning", mostly straight lines so not much thought needed. Top rad in, cables in. More cable training to do. Satin finish on the tubing done, very easy and I love the softer look it gives. Finalised runs and got everything nicely aligned. Aaaand filled. Still need to do cabling and tidying, sort a back panel cover, tidy up the front alu panel (grubby fingerprints) and sort the stencils to etch the glass.
After an extremely weird fail to boot situation that turned out to be caused by my aRGB hub, it's all up and running. I'll be picking up the final finishing touches over the next couple of weeks.
