Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Honeycomb - Completed - CustomPC Featured Mod Nov 2012

whoa man, great job

 

Incorrect, there is an option in the user control panel to allow dynamic / variable forum width ( ergo, make the forum page fit your monitor resolution ):

User CP > settings & options > Edit options > scroll down to the bottom > Forum width > select variable.

 

Genius! Thanks for that... not that it wasn't buried in menus or anything...

 

Custom Waterblock and Cables

After talking to a guy on one of the forums he has agreed to help me make a custom made mobo waterblock. Here are some shots of the beginning stages of me planing it out.

These are pictures from a few days ago. The current layout is almost perfect. I still have to work on it for a few more days.






Now for the cables.

CPU Power cable cut.


Assembled


And sleeved.


Here is where I stand with all the other cables.

The CPU Power and 2 PCI-E cables are assembled so far. I have the ATX Power cable cut in the middle and on the left was an attempt at sleeving a SATA cable. I just finished cutting the cables for the SATA power for all the HDDs, the SATA power for the Blu-Ray player and the fan hub power cable.

Now to connect all these to the mobo I need more holes. I wanted to make a hole for each wire to go through but that didn't work out. But it did look good.









I ended up doing this.

Here is where all the wires will pass through the center piece.


This is at the top left of the mobo. The CPU Power will pass through here.


Here are the holes for the ATX Power, SATA cables and the PCI-E cables.










I didn't get a good one of the CPU power. I'll have more later.

And finally I couldn't resist doing a fan test. The white LEDs look good for now.


Today I am working on the PSU support, fan grills, painting the I/O backplate/PCI covers and more PSU cables.

Cheers till next time.

 

EK Waterblocks Goodies

My EK Waterblocks order finally got here! Thanks EK for this massive sponsorship.



Here it all is


2x DCP 4.0 Pumps




2x Multioption X2 Res 250





2x 420 Rads (These are MASSIVE!)






1x Supreme HF




1x RAM Dominator




Tons of 10/13 Straight and 45 degree Compression fittings.
Straight and 45 degree



Huge thanks again to Gregor at EK Waterblocks for sponsoring this build.

 

Installing the Rad/Res

First thing is first. I'm not using the stock bolts for the rads. I like the ones I bought but they don't fit the threads of the rads.



So I drilled


and tapped them to accommodate an 8-32 bolt


When I tried a test fit I was like OH CRAP!! THEY DON'T FIT! My initial measurement was off by about 3/8" to accommodate the rads. So I cut spots in the bottom of the case for them to go.


Here you can see how far it sticks out the bottom. Which isn't much.


Here is the front one on.




How it will look with the second one. Can't install it until the new plexi arrives. Should have been shipped yesterday or today.


I forgot to take a close up but at the bottom of the left rad you can see the barbs are on. I had to cut about another 3/4" to be able to fit the barbs on. No biggie.



It took me quite awhile to figure out where the heck I was going to put the Reservoirs'.

This was my first thought.


And my second.


But in the end my buddy came up and told me they would look sick if I put them back to back on the same stand. I said OK lets try it.

I cut the clear piece of plexi to be exactly as wide as the res clamps.


Drilled and mounted the res clamps. I had to drill a hole the drill a larger hole on the opposite side but only 1/2 through the plexi. The screws they give you are extremely short.


and attached the reservoirs'


Here they are in the case.

This is not actually the final position. They will be about 1 1/2" to the left of where you see them... well to the back of the case but to the left of the pic.

From the front you can see they only block about 1/4 of the 2 front fans. That's fine since everything is WC'd. The 2 fans in the front are just to keep air moving.


With the side panel on.

You can't really see them... Lets fix that.

I cut 2 more hexagons out so that you could see them better. I won't cut anymore because then it will lose its look.




Things are finally coming together. My next update is all about experimenting with lighting. I've never used SMD LED strips before nor just using normal 5mm LEDs but some of the effects look pretty good.

Cheers till then.

 

Lighting

As I said in my last update, I've never worked with SMD LED strips or used LEDs for this kind of lighting.

I drilled some holes in a scrap piece of clear plexi to see how the lighting looks. At the top is a few 5mm LEDs and the bottom is the SMD LED strip.

It looks ok. I don't like the spaces between the light on the side of the plexi.

Now here is the same piece of pelxi but with the SMD LED strip taped to the side of the plexi.

MUCH better looking IMO.

Here it is in the case. Its a bit hard to see it because I didn't cut it to size yet but I'm testing here.




From the front




I also wanted to see how it would look with LEDs directly under the res.

Deff not very good.

Since most coolant is crap I will be doing distilled water and some silver coils for now. The EK blocks are nice because they have a 3mm hole for an LED so I bought some Orange ones 2 days ago. They should be here next week. Anyways by doing this I won't need the coolant reaction, the LEDs should look great.

Well sorry for the bulk updates but I've been working really hard and didn't have time to publish them. I'm gonna work on the lighting some more tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I get some more materials in.

Cheers till next time.

 

Wow sweet design , love that nice even glow through the fans too, bet its gonna be a pain to get a perspex windows to match the honey comb design.

 

Supplies, Rivets and Sleeving

Sorry I haven't updated in a few weeks. Its not that I have been busy its just I haven't done much work. I am still waiting on the rest of the plexi to arrive. Been 2 weeks and I'm still waiting. Anyways... here is what I have done.

I got my Orange tubing in.


I also ordered a Rivet Nut Setter. Basically its a bigger pop rivet gun.


So with that I got the threaded rivets and drilled my old holes.


Used the tool, which I actually had to read the directions for, and voila! A steel threaded hole. These will hold up much better than the aluminum.


2 more 2TB Green HDDs


A 120mm fan for the mobo side of the case.



Sleeving... I ordered the FlexO from FrozenCPU because it was "cheaper". The quality wasn't great but I could afford it. I decided to do a sleeving comparison for my fellow modders and when I ordered the other brands I got my hands on some MDPC-X sleeving. No wonder everyone uses it. The color is amazing and its only $0.22 PER FOOT!! That's 1/3 the price of the FlexO. The only problem is that it takes 2 weeks to get Germany to USA. USA to me. I wish Nils would ship to APO/DPO but he doesn't so I have to deal with that.

Here is a comparison between the FlexO and MDPC-X


You can see on the HDD I bought some Orange vinyl film. Its pretty transparent so I have to put 2 layers down to get the color I want.


Since I had some of the MDPC-X I started sleeving the ATX power. I might add a few more black wires to the mix.






And that's it. I just put in an order to get the rest of the sleeving that I need form MDPC-X and I'll use up what I have left here.

Cheers till next time.

 

Not a real update

Still waiting on my plexi If it doesn't arrive Friday then I'm going to call.

Random shots of my sleeving.


I'm not 100% happy with the connector so I might redo it.


I decided to buy some Primo Chill Ice UV Orange coolant and see how it looked.









Its actually not very UV reactive but it looks great without it. I ran it for 2 days like this and it was fine. I let it sit for a day and there was the problem. My res had an orange residue on it. So I deff won't be using this. Hopefully a certain someone will finish making their orange coolant for me

Random cool looking pics I thought.






Its was a holiday weekend in Germany so my MDPC-X sleeving didn't leave Germany until today so I should have it in about 2 weeks. Hopefully I can get this done by November but starting Tuesday for 2 weeks there will be no modding My wife and daughter come back and my sister is visiting for 2 weeks so I have to spend time with her.

Cheers till next time!

 

Good job so far, I will be following. Cheers

 

Bitspower Goodies



After months of talking with Bitspower, a box randomly showed up at my house So thanks Bitspower for sponsoring my build with lots of fittings (40+), a GTX 460 WB and 2 HDD WB.



Thanks guys!

 

Its been awhile

So its been awhile since my last update. Work has been getting done just not enough at one time to make a post about it. I was super busy with life. My sister came to visit for about 2 weeks and I got a new boss so that is where most of my time has been spent. Also my wife and daughter are back so I spend a lot of my time with them. Here is what I have done over the past month up to this morning. (Not in any particular order)

I finally received the replacement back panel so I drew everything out.

Due to time constraints I forgot to take a picture of it all cut out.

Since I got that done I could finally install the 2nd rad.


I put the waterblock I got from Bitspower on the EVGA GTX 460.









Here I was messing with a single white LED under this plexi to see how well it glowed... It didn't workout as well as I hoped so I need to work on it more.


I needed to drill holes in the center divider for the Bitspower pass through fittings.


Starting to install them.


All done.


Here I was trying to figure out where to put the pumps.






This was my next solution.




And my final solution.


I also started working on my water tubing routing.



Its still a work in progress.

I built a cover to hide the PSU cables.






And then I glued it all together.



And finally I covered it with Carbon Fiber because it looked like crap. Once I get some good acrylic glue I will remake it properly but this will have to do for now.

I decided to cut down the Media Card Reader enclosure to make it smaller. There is no need to keep it full size.






Here I measured the half I cut to the other half.


Marked and ready to cut.

More pictures of the final product in my next update.

Here is one of the sides of the HDD racks I made from scratch.

They came out rather nice.




Now I'm working on a mounting system so I can take the HDD cages in and out with ease to add more HDDs.

And finally today I started working on the HDD side window.


Drilled and ready to cut.


I have more on the side panel coming in the next update since it took all day to upload these pictures.

Hope your happy to see more work!

Cheers till next time!

 

HDD Side Panel

I got more work done on the side panel last night.




What I did was clamp the orange pieces to the main panel and lined them up as best I could. Then I filed down all the edges so that they were perfect. Then I sanded each edge with 200 grit to get most of the big scratches from the files out. I still have to sand a bit more but its pretty much done.







Once I finish the edges I will glue them to the main piece and then glue on the clear piece. I don't think I will get the lighting done before the 20th for the competition but I can try. More work to come very soon.

Cheers till then.

 

WTH?

What can I say, thats an art piece!

How much time have you spent on it to date? Money LOL?

Can't wait to see it finished!

 

WOW that will be a kickass mod brother amazing job!!!!

 

Thanks guys! I have put in well over 300 hours so far. I now put in at least 2 per day and 8 on the weekends. Money isn't so bad. I got roughly $1000 in sponsored items.

Means a lot to me coming from you AnG3L!

 

Wow this mod is coming along very nicely, specially all the orange WCing stuff

 

Lot of work you did, probably doing at this moment, and you'll do!!!

 

Feet and Lighting

I made some feet for the HDD cages. I glued them on. I hope they hold if not I will have to use a different acrylic glue.


Now lighting.... Firstly, here is what it looks like.

I wrapped the Orange SMD LED strip around the orange piece of plexi.


And here is the effect




You can see how the pieces that stick out don't have any light going through them... How can I fix this? Also the inner side of both windows have no light. I might have to shave off enough of each window piece that I can wedge the LED strips between them so I can get the lighting. But I still have the same problem, no light on the 3 pieces that jut out.

Thoughts??