Project Infinity - 6th September, Up and Running.

Project Infinity

Introduction

Yes it is true…Baboon is modding! After being a member here since early 2003 i am finally posting my first project log.

First of all I better give some props to Pug, owner of wizd and Bill Owen aka MNPCtech for being the main reasons behind the mod even though they don’t know it. Bills PC7 Plus caught my eye as its my kind of mod, clean, simple and it’s a Lian Li. Then Pugs competition prize of a Nexxxos XP CPU block was the final kick in the butt that got me going.

My last case was a PC60 and I still love its styling but largely due to poor planning on my part installing my water cooling kit compromised a lot of the functionality of the case. The PC7 looks a better option with the 120mm front intake up front I reckon I can fit in a good water cooling loop and still keep most of, or even better, all of the drive bays.

The project will be split into 3 sections. The initial modding of the case, fitting the water cooling loop and finally some additional modding.

Stage one modding

There is not going to be anything ground breaking here and the main parts of the mod are MNPCTechs fantastic range of parts with some slight alterations. Now onto the victim! A Lian Li PC7, based around the classic PC60 chassis, my favourite aluminium case.




Time to break out the ruler, pencil and masking tape to measure up where everything is going to go. First thing to be fitted was the billet aluminium intake plate purchased from mnpctech. Unfortunately in my enthusiasm I forgot to take pics of this but I’m sure you all know how to cut a hole in some aluminium. Once the hole was cut and filed it was time to screw on the plate!





Next was to open up the front 120mm fan on the chassis ready for the turbine fan.





before





after! Its amazing the clean cuts you can get with a hammer lol.

The turbine fan will be a polished AOC aluminium fan bought from mnpctech. He also kindly supplied, attached and polished the alu prop spinner. These were not listed on his website when i ordered but they have appeared now as a complete turbine fan kit! !





My girlfriends nephew is coming up to his 2nd birthday and he's around a lot. Computers are a magnet for him and i'm sure his little fingers would wander towards my shiny fan so i'm planning on fitting a fan gaurd. I like the industrial look of the ordinary fan gaurds so i cut out the centre of one i already had to accomodate the prop spinner and i rather like the results. I might have to mod the fan a bit to get it to fit with the fan gaurd attached as it wont be mounted in the conventional place.





Next on the list was the top of the case. On mnpctech’s PC7 he has a rather splendid 92mm billet aluminium blowhole ring . Now as this is going to be a water cooled case I do not need a top blowhole so I had other plans…

In my original plans I was going to have an aqua-tube res mounted horizontally at the front of the case to give it a bit of visual interest. Unfortunately with the water cooling loop I have planed this was not going to be possible. With the fittings that I am intending to use I would loose 3 of the 4 CD bays and that goes against the aims of the project so a solution was needed. The obvious place to mount the aqua-tube is on the top panel so a plan was devised to incorporate it into the blow hole. I could mount the aqua-tube directly onto the top panel of the case but I would need to cut an extremely neat hole for it too look good but with my skills and the tools I had available this would be very difficult. The other option was to adapt the aqua-tube mounting plate.




Top panel masked off and lines drawn for the cuts. I had to remove the existing grill which didn’t leave much room for the blow hole mounting holes.





Panel cut and holes drilled. You can see on the diagonal parts of the cut how close the existing 80mm fan mounting holes where to the 92mm ones I drilled. The diagonal cuts weren’t as clean as I had hoped as I was intending to use an old cutting disk so it had worn down to a smaller size and would make the small cuts easier. Unfortunately it broke so I had to use a new disk which was almost the same size as the cut and it kept catching the existing fan holes. A quick filing cleaned it up a bit and got rid of any rough edges but as they will not be seen I wasn’t too bothered on how they looked.





Brushed aluminium aqua-tube mounting plate. The mounting holes used to attach the plate to the case did not match up with the holes on the alu blow hole ring. This was easily sorted with a few minutes filling with a round needle file. I originally had a stainless steel mounting plate but I did not fancy trying to file that!

The problem with using the aqua-tube mounting plate is it raises the blow hole ring up by 2mm leaving an unsightly gap. Another thing I have to consider is vibration. The pump will be connected directly to the reservoir (more on that later ) so I am worried that vibrations from the pump will cause the entire top panel to resonate. To overcome this I want to isolate the reservoir from the top panel. I had been considering using the neoprene backing from a mouse mat but everything I could find was too thick and still left the 2mm gap from the aqua-tube plate. My girlfriend is in to card making and has lots of card making materials in the flat. I was explaining to her the problem and she came up with a great solution… Funky Foam! Funky foam is a thin neoprene that comes in A4 sheets and is 2mm thick! Perfect!



Funky foam gasket cut to the size of the blow hole ring and hole cut for the aqua-tube. I discovered that funky foam almost has a grain. Cut it in one direction and it cuts cleanly but go in they other direction and it snags. I will cut a neater circle when I get a new sheet of foam (only 20p a sheet!) and some new blades.




Next is another foam gasket again cut to the size of the blow hole ring with a cut out for theaqua-tube mounting plate. You can see how this fits flush with the funky foam and fills the 2mm gap perfectly.

Time for test assembly.





Bottom gasket with the mounting plate on top.





Second gasket fitted so it fits flush with the blow hole ring.





alu blow hole ring on top. Looks good! Time to try it out on the case.




The whole assembly fitted to the top of the case. The bottom gasket sticks out slightly past the ring but that will be fixed when I get some more funky foam.




From another angle. Shiney!


Well that’s pretty much stage one complete. I am waiting for my order from alphacool to arrive then its time to test fit the watercooling gear in stage 2. Hopefully there will be some rather cool things there to keep you interested.

Please post your comments in the project Infinity discussion thread

 

Project Infinity Discussion thread

I hope you enjoy project infinity!

Project Infinity project log

 

It looks good, simply but atractive, go ahead man !!

By the way, where did you get this fan grill?



I love it but I don´t think that MNPCTECH could send me to spain...

Drackhon!!!!!

 

very nice clean mod. its gonna be a good one!

email him and see. he might do it.

 

MNPCTECH ships world wide so i doubt Spain would be a problem. E-mail him on pcbuilder@mnpctech.com and see what he comes up with. It only took 3 days for my order to come from the US to the UK.

 

Very neat baboon. Subscribed.

 

uhhh...sexy
Keep it up!

 

Cheers r00t. just had a look at your project and its very nice! Seems we have similar tastes. I used AC in my last case too.

 

I like where your going with this!!

 

Thanks, I´m going to contact with them to see what it is possible to be done, I hope it could be realized my dream... !!

Go ahead with the MOD !!

Drackhon!!!!

 

I like where this project is going too...

But I do have a suggestion/comment, why not polish that Aqua Computer mounting plate and make it as shiney as the mnpctech 'fan-grill'.

 

I have been thinking of it Erik but i like the contrast between the polished and brushed alu. Also the polished alu finger prints quite easily so having the part i will be handling regulary a bit more finger proof resistant is good.

Thanks for your comment.

 

yes the contrast is wicked.
those MNPCTECH shourds are the sex also, case is looking very well presented, i lke ^__^

 

I really like the way you mounted your Aquatube. Good work.

 

Stage Two

Its here! I came into work on Monday to find a great big box from Alphacool waiting for me. It’s a pity I had been off sick on Friday or could have been modding at the weekend. Oh well

Unfortunately I cant complete this stage as of the mod yet as I’m still awaiting on some parts including a one off custom made part. As the parts I’m waiting for are the parts that will set this watercooling loop apart from the rest I don’t mind the wait.

Enough talk and time to open the box and see what’s inside!





The big box from Alphacool.





A big bag of fittings.





Alphacool GPX-A for my 9800 Pro to match my NexXxoS XP CPU block





Compression fittings attached.





Alphacool NexXxoS Pro radiator. This is the thinnest 120mm rad I could find as I want to try and squeeze it in front of the Lian-Li’s HDD rack. Its more of a heatercore design than the AC rad I had before. I have no idea how it performs but that’s not overly important as you will shortly see.




Check how thin this rad is! It only slightly thicker than a 120mm fan.





My CapeCora passive radiator! I got the midi version which consists of 4 of these tubes joined together. As they are modular you can add more tubes and arrange them in different shapes. You can even make a cooling tower.





The end profile shows the design of the passive rad. The water flows through the central circular channel which is threaded for attaching fittings and joing the rads together. The outer fins increase the surface area of the rad to help dissipate heat.

 

Time to assemble the passive rad! The rads join together using a special clip which holds them surprisingly securely. Once they are joined its time to put the fittings together. This was a really time consuming process as its made up of t compression fittings joined by small lengths of tubing. Trying to join two compression fittings with 17mm of tubing and is not easy. Making sure all the threaded connections are facing the same way is even harder!





The assembled CapeCora passive radiator. If you look closely at the fittings you can see the small lengths of tubing joining the fittings. The claw hammer was used to attach the u clips.

Once the rad was assembled it was time to fit it to the case and time for the first major problem. The Lian-Li side panel is 410mm high, the same as the passive radiator. I thought it would be the perfect fit but the radiator is 410mm high with out fittings! Once the fittings are attached it measures 480mm high. Why is this a problem? Well when I align the mounting holes on the rad with cases side panel it protrudes off the bottom of the case so much it lifts the case off of the ground.

My first thought was to either build a plinth for the case to stand on or raise the height of radiator. I decided I would rather raise the height of the radiator but that meant the mounting holes on the radiator did not line up with the side panel. What did I do? I decided to drill some holes into my shiny new passive radiator!





Radiator taped up to prevent scratches and position of the new mounting holes marked. You can see the side panel it will attach too to the left of the radiator and the difference in size.





The new holes drilled and countersunk. Yeah, yeah, I know the hole on the right isn’t quite centred.





The side panel taped up and marked ready for drilling. You see my mistakes and the reason you should learn the modders mantra of ‘Measure twice, cut once!’ In my case measure three times. It was getting late at this point and even though I scribbled out the drilling points I marked by mistake I still drilled them. I should have gone to bed. That becomes more apparent in a minute.





The back of the side panel with the rad mounted. I thought I would be clever and drill 4 mounting holes top and bottom incase of future changes. You can also see the 4 pilot holes I drilled by accident. Do not mod when its late and you are tired!





The passive rad mounted on the side panel. The observant will notice fittings are pointing the wrong way so the inlet and outlet is at the wrong side but that’s easily fixed.

However I don’t like the way the rad sticks up past the side of the case. I stuck it against the side of the case and tbh I think it looks a bit dumb and really detracts from the clean look of the top. #!*@ IT!!!

I’m going to have a go at mounting the rad horizontally but now I have a load of drilled holes to hide.

Time to put the thinking cap on.


Comments, commiserations and suggestions are always welcome in the Project Infinity Discussion thread .

 

To cover/hide the whole you could drill a row all the way across and put some colored plexiglass and some leds behind that. It would look snazy and intentional then. Otherwise maybe finding some nice looking screws and put them all the way across or make a custom cutout from thin ALU or plexiglass and attach it using your holes.

 

Might be a little too late for this but how about mounting the rad array to the bottom of the case to use as a stand, and then possibly use some feet or something, looks about as wide as the bottom for your case. You could then get a new sie panel to hide your mistakes. (its ok, we have all done it from lack of sleep) Looks great, nice work with that res

 

tm36usa thats an interesting idea!

I had another idea in bed last night about how i could re-arrange my passive rad and cover the holes i drilled in the mounting process. I can split the rad's up into four individual rads or in pairs etc so i have some layout options to run past you. I prefer this idea to cutting a window as that side of the case will be facing a wall and i want to leave it clean. The bling will be on the other side.

To re-itterate the current problem. The Rad is taller than the case and it sticks up about 2-3 inches past the top of the case which detracts from the look of the top and the effect of the billet ring. I had a brain fart at the time and forgot i could use different fittings to change the inlet/outlet path for horizontal mounting. I have now drilled the holes for vertical mounting so i need to hide them.

So opinions on the following options please! (Drawings roughly to scale )







Rad how its currently mounted.







Spliting the rads in to two pairs joined by an external length of tubing.







Split the rads into four and space them equally over the side panel, again joined by external lengths of tubing.



So what d'ya think guys?

 

After a session with the thinking cap i have a couple of options for mounting the passive rads.





Spliting the rads in to two pairs joined by an external length of tubing.







Split the rads into four and space them equally over the side panel, again joined by external lengths of tubing.

Let me know what you think of the options in the Project Infinity discussion thread