Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Cubeleon

It's finally turning into a case instead off a pile of really cool parts. Good luck. That competition is going to be brutal!

It's not like you to do such a rough cut on the mobo tray. I assume you are going to clean that up, right?

 

:O

 

Looks great!

 

The new fan controller knobs look very cool. Nice combo of alu and plexi.

 

I wasn't feeling like it actually. It felt nice to cut holes like this for once, where no one will see them

Thanks FrooP, oldnewby and The boy 4rm oz for the nice comments

 

Nice,very very nice

 

Update 25

And then school started again. My five days off are over, but you still deserve an update of what I've done in the last two days. I took my PC apart on Saturday to fit the watercooling blocks and the power supply. This is how the mobo looks with the three stock coolers:



This NB cooler was a bargain a while ago, and I wanted to use it as a cooler for my GPU. I've never seen a watercooled HD3650 before you know It's cooled passively now, so I guess this will work:



It's a perfect fit, well that's a nice surprise The only disadvantage is that it glows under UV light, so I'll paint it black soon.



The CPU block was a little camera shy, I didn't get one nice picture of it because it's so shiny:



I went into this weekend quite unprepared. I didn't know know the dimensions of the mounting holes of the motherboard and such. The mounting bracket I got with the cooler was for an AMD processor, so I can't use that one. I started with a drawing on paper this time, since I couldn't use SolidWorks



After a few hours of cutting, filing, sanding and drilling, this is how the alu plate looks:



The alu will lay on top of a piece of plexi, whose function is to keep the CPU cooler in place. The assembly will be bolted to the motherboard with four spacers:



All together, they look like this



They are bolted together with two M4 hex bolts, and as you can see, the plexi keeps the cooler in place:



This one is a little blurry again, and I was unable to take another picture because I'm working on my pc againg now I bolted the bracket to the motherboard with four hex bolts, and the one in the middle is for applying pressure on the block. The proc has a heatspreader, so no need for springs I think.
As you may have noticed, there are no holes for the connections. That's because I ordered them, but I haven't received them yet so I don't know their dimension.



I decided to replace the northbridge cooler with a larger passive one that I won as a crew member at bouweenpc.nl, a dutch website about casemodding and hardware. I wasn't feeling like spending more money on a water block for the NB, and this one fits perfectly as you will see in a few weeks.



Back with the boxed cooler, fits perfectly again



I already mentioned the psu, it's his turn right now. I wanted to see how the ATX cable would look in this case, and I found out the motherboard edge needed a little cut:



After that, it did fit



This is probably the largest piece of cable that will be visible in the entire case, but I will replace it with a black one anyway I already bought a new 24-pin connector and some pins and I will use some black cable of the power supply to create 5-10 cm of black atx cable. It was way too long anyway, so I will cut it in half and replace the colorful cables with the black ones.
On the last pic, an IDE connector is also visible. That one will be used for the dvd burner, and the cable won't be visible at all
Well school started again today. I already know that I passed two of the three exams, so that's great But school won't keep me from modding, cause I still have 2,5 weeks left

 

Nice update. Nice work on the CPU block mounting plate. PSU cable cover looks really good.

 

NICE work on those mounting plates!

 

Congratulations on beeing voted to the best 5 modders of the BeNeLux. Just thought it was odd you got so litte points, I rate you number 1. Lets wait and see in two weeks, I'm sure youre case will finish very high !

 

Thanks again TB4O, and blackflag

Tnx Frenk I was a little surprised by the results also, I guess it's caused by the non-modders in the jury who have voted also, and who have seen only a little part of my project log. Also, this project isn't finished yet obviously, but it will be in two weeks See you there!

 

Damned, another two weeks to wait, I cant wait to see your final photo's of the mod.
Succes

 

Really cool build. Nice plexi work! I know plexi is great to work with - and also a lot of pain!

 

How did you screws those aluminium tubes together? Did you tap the holes or use nuts inside the tubes?

 

I tapped the holes. Using nuts would be impossible, unless I would use thread inserts or something. I really need to get those some day

The passed few weeks have been stressful. I'm making great progress, but it takes up all of my time. That's why I don't have time to update the log for now, will do that some day after the big competition.

I will take some of the last few steps of construction tomorrow, gonna get the last two pieces cnc'ed. After that, it's just cleaning up all of the parts and then mounting them. Looking forward to that

 

It's about time to give you guys a little update on how Cubeleon is going. For the past three weeks, I have been working on the case like crazy to get it done in time. Even on the day before the competition, I've done an all-nighter to get the last bits done. But it wasn't meant to be, in the last night I found out that a couple of parts decided not to fit anymore. And after squeezing in the watercooling and taking care of all the leaks, I found out that my res actually does leak. So many problems, so little time. At 5:30 in the morning, I gave up. I couldn't get it done in time before the competition, which would start only a few hours later.

It made me really mad, and really sad, that I wasn't able to show my case to the public and finish this chapter after more than thee years. By now, I've given it a few days of thinking, and I'm planning to finish the case anyway. I wouldn't be able to use any of the parts anyway. I'll have to remake some parts, but at least there's no pressure this time. I'll just sign up for the same competition next year.

For now, you'll have to be patient. I didn't take a lot of pictures in the past weeks because I was too busy, I'll show some status pics soon. For now, I have to do a ton of school work because I just ignored that for weeks. So no real update in the next weeks/month I guess.

 

Im sorry for you,
But more succes next year

 

Shame that you missed the competition. Good luck with all the school work and as always keep on

 

Man that is very bad luck, I'm so so sorry. Good luck with the repairs/upgrades and good luck for next year.

 

It's really to bad. Despite of all your effort. Must have been Murphys law.
Glad to hear you'll finish the mod.