Hi again, it's been a while since my last post as I've had very little time for modding. This post should have been posted yesterday and there is another one from today coming in an hour or so (yeah, I type slow). I've always liked Zalman's series of coolers but never really liked the blue color so I decided to do some experiments on removing the anodized layer. I went to the store and bought some sodium hydroxide, something most people use to clean their drains without knowing it'll eat aluminum for breakfast if given the chance. Sodium hydroxide is VERY corrosive and while I still got all my fingers left I'm not going to recommend anyone trying this at home. (And if you do, wear protective glasses, PVC gloves and make sure you're in a well ventilated space (read outside)). I used two old glass jars, one for the sodium hydroxide and one with filled with water used for stopping the corrosion. Once you mix sodium hydroxide with water it'll react strongly and produce lots of heat, to limit the reaction always use warm water. When you drop the aluminum in the sodium hydroxide it'll sit there for a second or two and then start to dissolve. The whole process is very quick and since I only wanted to remove the top layer of aluminum oxide I took it out after about 10 seconds. I don't have many pictures of actually doing anything as I was pretty busy trying to avoid damaging the memcoolers (and myself). Anyways, here's the before and after shot: And here's the whole set. It looks a lot better with bare aluminum in my opinion and when I get the chance I'll do my Zalman northbridge cooler as well (and if I have the guts, my iPod mini ). I also cut a more manageable piece out of my large sheet of 1/2" red UV plexi. I'll use this plexi for a lot of details inside the case and I'm doing some tests with these pieces. The idea is to make something to hold the Tygon hoses in place but I'll get back to this in a later post.
So this is the post today that's actually about today. As I've said before the front of the case will be covered with Akasa mat but since Chieftec cases look like swiss cheese I had to fill it. I started with cutting the fan guards off. And then I epoxied an aluminum plate on to support the bondo. I also want the motherboard plate to be once smooth surface so it got the same treatment. Here's both of them with one layer of bondo. They'll probably need one or two more layers but this should be much easier than the case separator as it's just a flat surface. Last week I got one of those $10 no-name dremel acessory kits. I've only used my dremel to cut things so I figured I'd try to use the polishing wheels. I'll probably do all of the hose clamps when I get the time. I liked how the brass hose fitting turned out so I did the whole pump inlet. Pretty pimp huh? So right now my kitchen table looks like this... .. I think I need a proper workshop :/ The plexi hose holder will hopefully be done by the next update and hopefully some other fun stuff too. Got something to talk about? go here.
wow, looks real good mate nice n' clean! should be nice n' quiet aswell i love the way those brass barbs look, and the pump inlet is nice n' shiny aswell good move
As promised here's the acrylic hose holder. It was 90% made by a friend (Tommy.N on BT), all I did was to polish it up and take some pictures. It's mostly a test to see how it would look and I must say I'm pretty satisfied, so expect a lot of red acrylic details later on. As always it's impossible to get a picture that does it justice, but at least you get the idea. With hoses and lit up by a blue LED (pretty bogus as there will be no blue LEDs in the mod, but it looks nice). It took forever to get it done so I'm thinking about getting any future details done with water cutting rather than by hand. I have to look into the pricing though as it's pretty cheap to have Tommy sitting in my kitchen filing .
wow, those hose seperators kick ass! i reckon they will help set off the mod a bit more, and give it some real final finesse. gives me a few ideas of what do to with my mod
john, its a really great modd, i'm looking forward to see you complete the modd. keep up the good work /// ps. were do you buy the metal for the chassi ? and what is bongo in swedish ?
Wow, those seperators are perfect! Your entire mod gives me ideas (my un-modded dragon needs some attention). Great job, this is my favorite project log!
Love the separator. Any idea on how thick is the plexi and where can you get something similiar on the net? You can given me a good idea to add to my case mod. Thanks.
Thanks for all the positive comments, there will be some modding done today so hopefully another update tonight. I bought some additional water cooling gear yesterday. All things in top condition except for the smaller radiator which needs some work, and it was only about 95 euro in an online auction. I got: Eheim 1048 (yah another, dual loop maybe ) DD RBX block DD Maze3 gpu (which I'll be modding quite a bit) DD heater core DD dual heater core 2 big ass NMB fans relay kit (Swiftech) lots and lots of connectors, block mounting kits, clamps and even some 8mm plexi. Revlimit, It's 1/2" (12.5mm) thick. I have no idea if you can buy it on the net, mine was imported from Italy by a friend for another project that never happened. Apparently this plexi is the best UV on the market and costs well over 200 euro per m^2. I'm trying to make a deal so I can sell the remaining 8 50x100cm sheets he has in smaller "modding pieces" but I need a good saw first.
Time for another small update. Modding has been slow for the past few days and these photos are actually from last week which I haven't had the time to post. Since the Maze3 GPU block I got didn't have the correct mounting for my 6600 I had to make my own. First I marked out all the holes and where to cut. Then I cut it out with my jig-saw. And here it is. It still needs some more polishing but it's good enough for now. I'm thinking about doing some mods to the middle part of the block to get some more turbulence (read drill holes), but I'll get back to that later. I also made some more hose separators, this one is for the RBX block. Tedious work. And here it is holding the block hosing. Sorry for the crap picture, it looked good when I took it but very poor once imported . I'm pretty much done with most of the WC stuff and will start to work on the case frame again so I figured it'd be a good idea to show you how I have planned the water cooling. The dashed line is the lower compartment. As always, leave your comments in the discussion thread.
Those hose separators look amazing (especially with the blue light, shame there will be none in the mod), where did you manage to find 1/2" thick UV reactive acrylic? Nice bondo work with the fans, never seen that done before. Very impressed with your custom waterblock mounting, looks very professional.
looks really good those hose seperators are just perfect, they give the mod some finesse. The m3 block now looks sweet good job on it
