Case Mod - In Progress Project: Nutman (update: August 22nd 2011 - FINISHED!)

Even though I really liked the gold/raw finish the blocks originally had, the black coating does look quite nice.

 

Nice modding there bud, I got an old Lian-Li PC-70 full tower case I keep thinking about modding with a phat watercooled i7 setup, this has given me some food for thought....

 

#61: Yeah, black goes much better with the overall blackness of this mod.
#62: Thanks. Go for it!

 

Yes, just a small update, while I'm waiting for some MDPC sleeve. In the meantime I might aswell finish something else on this project.

I got 2 new radiators - GTS240. Used, but cheap and nice - plus they're supposed to be performing very well while maintaining a high flow:




Since you're supposed to learn from your mistakes, I started cleaning the new rads. I'm using a mixture of 5% citric acid and 95% demineralised water:



Looks like they REALLY needed cleaning. Unused solution on the left - used solution on the right:



It's M4 threads on these rads, and not M3 like on my previous ones, so I had to buy a 4 mm. drill for stainless steel. If you've been with the thread a while, you'll probably remember that I had 2 rad grills made (well, I only ordered one, but the nice chap doing the cutting sent me 2) and I'm going to use the spare one on top of the rad that goes in the bottom of the case:




Also, riveted the rest of the case back together:

 

No pics

 

What do you mean? I see the pics here...?

 

looks wicked awsome nutman
but the case looks so lonely in that bare state

 

Well, I plan to change the bare state VERY soon. It's gonna be christmas for this case, too. ;D

 

any plans to reviel on us come on i know you want dual 5970´s

 

been watching this, nice build!!

 

#70: Thanks!

#69: Yeah, I DO want dual 5970s, but first of all I just want to finish this "been-going-for-FAR-too-looooong"-build...

I was pulling my hair out saturday trying to route loop number 2 (a.k.a. the lower loop, ie. the loop that will be cooling my graphics card and the south bridge). It's horrible, I tell you. Absolute horror - I need SPACE and I need a SPECIFICALLY thought out case - as in, thought our for ME! Which is also main reason for me wanting to build my very own case from scratch as my next build.

But anyway, still trying to make an aestethic and efficient routing of the loops - will post some pics later this week!

 

Dude...That is sweet!

 

Ok, as mentioned before, I have been messing about with the lower loop. I think I have it figured out now! Also completed loop 1... it all adds up quite nicely now.

Still missing to put the tubes on, but will have to wait doing this until I recieve the sleeving from Nils at MDPC, as some wires (eg. the inline water temperature thermometres) will need sleeving prior to putting the tubes in the loops... (rhyme not intended!)

Stay tuned!

 

Following a good, long christmas holiday including quite a lot of modding, here's another monster update..

I started figuring out how to route all the watercooling tubing. Of course, I had a general idea about this already, but something ALWAYS comes up that you didn't account for when buying all your WC gear. Usually I find it quite hard to get an overview of how things will sit together and the only real way to make everything fit is to work with it once you've acquired all the bits and can start fiddling around with them.

Since I'm doing a double loop system, there needs to be an option to drain both loops. So I had to make room for 2 draining valves, preferably next to each other, to make it look nice and clean. It was kind of a tough task! You know, these Bitspower fittings are not the smallest there is, so it took 5 minutes (or was it more like 5 hours?) of thinking until both loops had been planned:






Went to the basement to drill 2 holes for the draining system...

And this is where I have to present you with one of my christmas gifts: A Dremel workdesk. Will most likely be used extensively in the years to come!



Oh well, to make room for the draining valves I had to drill 2 16,5 mm. holes. And I found it's quite hard to get a metal drill that is exactly 16,5 mm. wide, so I bought this set:




Covered stuff up and started drilling:




Started putting stuff together:










And that was that....

On to something completely different: Sleeving!

This package had arrived:





Super sleeving from MDPC. Awesome quality!

Had to sleeve the ATX extension. I had bought an extension especially made for the Aquaero, but it turned out to be too short, so I got a regular version which was longer, modified it to suit the Aquaero and started sleeving it. First, I had to unplug all the wires and everybody having done this in the past will most likely nod their heads looking at this type of injury:



Anyway, jacked everything up on my new workdesk in order to stretch the wires to make them roughly the same length. Otherwise it wouldn't look right when the ATX extension was to be used in the case:





So, I sleeved my ass of.

I found it's a good idea to slightly melt the ends of the sleeving after cutting it. It keeps the sleeving from unwinding itself when dragging it onto the wire.

Use a candle - it's easiest to control. And make sure that the melted end is as straight as possible. This will ensure that the final result lines up nicely:




You check where the sleeving is going to sit on each individual wire:



Don't forget adding heatshrink:



A little tip when cutting heatshrink: Cut it in the EXACT same lenghts and make sure to get as straight ends as possible. You will set yourself up for a much better end product. And make sure the heatshrink overlaps the metal pin slightly, to get a firmer grip on the sleeving itself. It just holds the sleeving much better in place if you shrink the heatshrink on the metal pin:




Put it back in:



Done!



Sleeved the PCI-E cables.

First, I had sleeved all 6 wires together:



But this was much too stiff, so I divided them into 2 sleevings per PCI-E cable, making it 3 wires per sleeving:




The S-ATA power cables also got sleeved:




As did one of the short UV cathodes:



Mounted the sleeved UV cathode:




Sleevede the cables for the USB connectors on the front of the case:



And plugged them in the motherboard:




When I had the internal parts of the case anodized I didn't notice that the nuts on the PCI card holders had popped off:



Quite a pickle, since I wanted to be able to secure the PCI cards in place.

But then I thought that since I'm using rounded nuts for securing many other things in this case, I might aswell make a "theme" of it and also use rounded nuts in this case:




I think it looks OK, and you can't really see that the anodizing isn't perfect here....

Ok, time to spread the IC7 Diamond paste on the motherboard chips. I had worked with this cooling paste on the graphics card already, and found that it was a motherf*****r to spread. So, I had searched the internet for suggestions on how to make it easier to spread and people mentioned that heating it up would make it easier to spread - so I put the tube in boiling water:



This worked fine and it was much easier to push out the paste from the tube, but immediately when spreading the paste on the chips, it would cool down and get hard to spread again. So, I took my trusty hair dryer and heated up the chips aswell - not enough to damage them (I hope), but enough to ensure an even spread of IC7:



It actually worked quite fine!

Next up was to mount the motherboard and, as I might have mentioned earlier, I wanted to put some light under it. I had stripped a couple of light blue CCFL cathodes and isolated them using transparent tape, so I tried putting them under the motherboard:






Tried to find the right spot for them to produce the light I wanted. I found that putting them as close to the edge as possible produced the best result. However, the inner cathode produced too much light, so I had to dampen it a bit. And how was I supposed to do that the best way? Well, after having thought about it was a couple of minutes, I thought I'd trying sleeving it:




It's a little hard taking a good photo of the actual amount of light, but I managed to snap a few that are quite close to what it really looks like:







The observant reader would already have noticed that I used black bolts to secure the motherboard and not the "classic" chrome-alike ones. This adds another dimension to the overall look of this mod. Actually, I managed to get hold of a good, varied collection of black bolts. Have a look at a couple of the various types:



Next update *soon*.

 

That CCFL-sleeving idea turned out neat. I hate when people just slap those bright-ass lamps so they are visible through the window, but I bet that won't make you blind and even if it does, atleast it looks better doing it than a bare stock CCFL

 

Very nice touch with the sleeving on the cathodes. They look fantastic illuminating the mobo

 

Yes, actually I didn't mount the other cathode (= the one close to the outputs on the motherboard), since I think it was TOO bright. I will think of another way to use it.

 

That looks awesome, I love the idea to sleeve it. Very neat

 

Comin' along nicely, Buddy...

 

Extremely nice mainboard-lighting.. might consider that into my next mod
If you don't mind (no worries, you will be credited for that one )

On another node.. in danish.
Hvor har du fået skåret de grills?? skal selv lege lidt med noget scratch senere. og skal ha skåret noget ret nøjagtigt grej.