Scratch Build – In Progress Project THINKTANK - Finished [High Res Photos] 18th April: Post #45

Hello everyone and welcome to my first ever scratch build .

I've been patiently waiting to make this for an extremely long time, so here we go.

So the main inspiration for this build and the colour scheme came from looking at all the amazing watercooled mods on here and the colour scheme is almost directly derived from the one l3p used in his d3sk.

The shape of this is actually extremely similar to that of my logo as you can see. I dont know where I came up with the idea for it but its mine, its unique and I think its kind of cool .

The actual case will be almost entirely made from transparent black acrylic, apart from a motherboard tray from Mountain Mods and the eyes which will be made from a UV reactive green transparent acrylic.

Firstly, I'll give you some specs of my current PC, in which the parts will be used for the build.

CPU: i7 3770K w/ EKWB Supremacy Acetal CSQ
MOTHERBOARD: Asus P8Z68-V EDIT: This is now a Gigabyte G1 Sniper 3
GRAPHICS/GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 680 4GB+ Backplate in SLI w/ Hydrocopper waterblocks Yay! EDIT: This is now 3x 680s
RAM/MEMORY: 16GB Corsair Dominator RAM 1866MHz w/ EKWB Acetal CSQ Dominator
PSU: Corsair AX1200 Gold

I am also going to watercool the CPU, GPU and RAM.

I will add what other watercooling parts I am using on the pictures they appear in the pictures.

Okay so initially I wanted to plan this exactly right so that everything fit perfectly, heres a Sketchup picture of my planning (I'm not very good with Sketchup )



And heres a 1:1 cutout I made so it will be easier to make the acrylic



Yay its like presents!



New GPU's



Slim DVD Drive



Heres my current setup now:





And now into the fun stuff - watercooling - Coolant to flush rad and loop if I need to (also random surprises?!) Thanks to the guys at the Kool Room for the random free stuff



HYDROCOPPERS!!! (Got the only ones, found them on eBay by chance)



Massive Box finally arrived from FrozenCPU



Sleeved 140mm fans



Gonna use Monsoon Free fittings entirely for this build (except for Crystal Links and a SLI fitting)



1 of 5 bottles of Coolant



And finally got around to cutting out the acrylic, I have 3 of these pieces, this one it the middle piece, with a carbon fibre wrapped Motherboard Tray from Mountain Mods and a Bitspower Upgrade 150 Res with a Swiftech 12V pump



Zoomed in for better clarity:



Now the FrozenCPU box looks like this:



Thats all for now

 

Sounds good

 

Small Update!

Okay so here's a small update on how things are going.

I have just about cut all the holes out on the acrylic, but had to remake the middle piece in a thicker one for sturdiness.

AND I received a new motherboard in the mail which I bought sorry for the bad quality/blurriness

Not sure if its DOA or not as it was apparently thrown over my front gate. So fingers crossed (will check on the weekend [I have looked at it and it all looks alright except I had to buy a separate IO shield as mobo didnt come with one ])



Thats all for now

 

Thrown over your front gate?! I'd take up a complaint with whichever company delivered it. If it's broken it's their fault.

 

My thoughts exactly I just hope it's not broken because I'd actually like to use it soon

 

I imagine it was treated far worse on the way to your front gate. The box IS frisbee-shaped, after all.

 

Haha well the box actually doesn't have any markings or damage on it (besides the cosmetic bullets) so we'll see (the picture might be misleading I know)

- Dan

 

Success Update!!!!

So... the motherboard... IS NOT DOA.

So thats very awesome

This is the new one which has a small hint of green on the side



And this one shows the space in between because for some reason the 4 PCIe x16 3.0 lanes have the bandwith in order x16,x8,x16,x8. So my 680s (which I've decided to keep) are in lane 1 and 3 (if more hydrocopper blocks pop up then those spaces may be filled )



Thats all for a quick update, I will be able to do some more on the case next week hopefully.

 

Guess what popped up!?

So in the last week a GTX 680 Hydrocopper went on sale on eBay. I contacted the guy selling it about the waterblock, and turns out he had another waterblock which he'd used on a different card. So if I ever wanted to upgrade to a third 680, here was the chance. I purchased the block and look whats on its way!!!



So that makes a total of 3 waterblocks when it arrives! (If I can find some money to put aside for it, ill try and buy a third 680 before watercooling)

Might be able to get a case update out by next week, didn't get a chance this week .

 

Subbed. Looks like this is gonna be nice.

 

Thanks man . Should hopefully be able to get an update out next week for the case, I've been really busy lately.

 

Hydrocopper Block Arrival and other news!

Hi,
So unfortunately I don't have a case update this week, but there will 100% be one next week for sure.

What happened in the last week however was good anyway.

So firstly, I bought a 3 way SLI bridge cover from ColdZero, however it arrived in the wrong colour, because they dont print the order notes when they print the order to make it.



I emailed them and Ricardo said that it was a mistake and said he would send me a new one free of charge! So that arrived and is now blu-tacked in place.



Then my 3rd Hydrocopper block arrived with a bit of residue from the previous owners coolant (I'll make sure to flush the system first with clear coolant before I put in the actual coolant)



Unfortunately, as you can see, no thermal pads came with it (Though the screws and plate did so thats ok)



Due to the lack of thermal pads and because my other 2 hydrocopper blocks have some ripped thermal pads, I bought 4 new thermal squares (in case I stuff one up)



Also, I managed to get a stable overvolted overclock on my 680s of 1202mhz base clock, 1254 boost clock and 7010 mhz mem clock running at 1.212v (the fans are really loud trying to keep the GPU's under 60C so its a good thing I'll be watercooling Also the skin is my custom Precision X skin I made that I use



So thats it until next week! Will definitely have an update as I want to make some good progress!!

 

Case Update!

Ok! So I have a case update. Currently the middle piece is too thin so I'm going to re-cut it in 10mm thick (its currently 2-3m), but I'll leave the other panels be. This is because all of the components will be put on the middle piece so it will need quite a bit of sturdiness.

This is the old middle piece:



This is the new piece of acrylic which will be cut out.



This is the first of the side panels (there are 2 cut out). This specific one will have the back of the PSU coming out of it.



This is the old piece with all the measurements for the new one (they need to be perfect so that the new piece fits with the other 2 that I already have cut.)



Thats all for today. I have some free time most Wednesdays now so updates should become more regular every week.

 

Yeah, thats a good idea. I will do that then. Thermal paste is an interesting idea as well.

 

Nice work, very interesting, subbed.

 

Thanks mate

 

HUGE UPDATE

OK, so I've been a bit slack with last weeks update , but I have it and this weeks update here and now in a super massive update!

I'll start with last weeks work/update:

So this is the cut out PSU hole for the side of the case



This is the new middle piece in 10mm solid black acrylic, the ear is cut off on the left because behind the motherboard tray there will be a slim DVD drive and power buttons



Here is the saw in action!



And here is the newly cut out base piece with markings for holes for a PSU grill and for the Radiator



Ok, now this is on to this weeks update:

This is an idea of how it will look on one side (the PSU grill has been cut out and the rad holes have too, they're just hard to see)



Here is the other side, showing the rad holes with the metal grill



Here are the rad holes at a better angle without the metal grill on top



Here is a closer shot of the PSU grill



Here is a shot of the protective paper peeled off on one side of the left side piece and prepping the bottom piece for gluing



Now it has been glued and is being held so it can set over night



Here is what it looks like from the other side



And some tape to hold it at a perfectly perpendicular angle with the metal supports



That's all for this week and last week, next week I will try to remember to post the pictures on the day haha.

 

Coming together at last!

Before I start, why the 3 stars guys?

Ok so, today I did some gluing, but first heres a picture of the side after it has been glued



Heres a picture demonstrating how it will look after



Here is a picture of the back after gluing the middle piece and of the support triangles in place



And a last picture with everything in place for today



That's all I had time for this week, next week I'll start cutting out and gluing the side pieces and work my way up to the top.