Case Mod - In Progress RV02 - Stealth Stalker

RV02 - Stealth Stalker

Components

Case - Silver stone Raven V02 - EW
Motherboard - Asus P67D Deluxe V2
Processor - Intel Core i7 920 Do
RAM - Corsair 12GB 1600, 1.5V Vengeance memory
GPU - Asus HD 6950 2GB Direct CU 2 Edition X 2
Power supply - Corsair 850 Watt TX
SSD - G Skill Falcon 2 64GB
HDD 1 - 150 GB WD Veloci Raptor X 2 (RAID)
HDD 2 - 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM (Storage)
Fan controller - Aero cool V12XT fan controller
Fans - 120mm NZXT FX-120LB X 4

Water cooling components

Reservoir - Phobya Balancer 150 black nickel
Reservoir mount - Pulse Modding Reservoir Mounting Bracket
Pump - Aquacomputer Aquastream XT USB 12V
CPU water block - XSPC Rasa CPU Waterblock 1366 - Black
Motherboard full cover - MIPS ASUS P6T
Mosfet water blocks - EK-MOSFET ASUS X58 KIT
Tubing - 1/2" ID - 3/4" OD XSPC Black Hose
Fittings - XSPC G1/4 Fittings - Black nickel
Radiator - Hardware Labs Black Ice® GT Stealth 360mm
Fittings Pump - Aquastream XT Pumps Inlet Adapter
Fittings Pump - Aquastream XT Pump Outlet Adapter
Pump mounting - Shoggy Sandwich Ver 2 Anti Vibration Pump Mounting


Other

Lighting - NZXT LED - 60cm White Case Light
Tapes - Self Adhesive Velcro Pad 107 x 85 mm

Note : The motherboard and processor I will be reusing from the current build I have as I believe there is no need to upgrade as yet.

 

Minor update on plans

Water loop diagram


Fan controller diagram


More updates to come soon.

 

Motherboard mounted with water blocks



Motherboard with tubing







Radiator



Fans



Note : Changes my mind about using Coolermaster Excalibur and went for NZXT FX-120LB
instead. Since they are better.



RV02 comes with dust filter mounting at the bottom these got in the way of mounting the rad.
So I removed them.





Test fitting the rad



Insulating the bottom of the rad to snugly fit on the case. I used velcro, this will let me mount the rad as well.



Mounting the motherboard in the case



I also swapped out the top exhaust fan that comes with the RV02 to one of the NZXT's and added a dust filter to the top of the case.







Thats all for now folks. Catch you all soon. would love to hear your feed back.

 

Another minor update guys, got my graphics cards. !!
Asus Direct CU 6950's 2GB editions



They are two monster cards, with look awesome !!!

 

UPDATE : Removing the drive cage of RV02

I had to remove the drive cage of the case due to the fact that it was getting in the way of the graphics card. The sheer size of the card was the factor for this. I knew this was going to be a issue before I even started off this project and purchased the case. In fact it was one of the reasons I decided to use this case for this project. The RV02 has a nifty little part at the end of the card slot structure on the case which allows the last component on the last slot to be over sized. Which comes in handy cause these cards take up 3 slots each. This was also the reason behind choosing the P6TD Deluxe V2 since there is is a 3 slot difference between the 1st PCI-E 16X slot and the next 1. There are only a few mobo's out there which are designed this way. Another mobo which i considered for this project was the ASROCK super computer board which also has a similar layout.



Building the mounting point for the pump



Mounting the pump







Sample fitting the graphics cards



On a side note. Removing the hot swap drive bay from the RV02 is a breeze.
There are 11 revert to drill out and the drive bay just slips out. Its as if Silverstone built it to be easily removable. I will be leaving the 180mm Penetrator fan which came with case in there for better air flow. It will act as the cooling fan for the pump and also feed in more air for the GPU's. The GPU's have a open ended design which allows fans from below to blow air into them, which is perfect for this kind of installation.

That's it for now will be back soon with more updates. Let me know what you think about the build so far. Cheers guys.

 

UPDATE : SDD Drive bays

Since i removed the drive bays that come default with the RV02, I had to implement custom drive holders to house my SDD's and any 2.5 inch drives that I may choose to install. By default the RV02 comes with a SSD holder which gets mounted on the other side of the case (behind the 5 1/4 inch bays). But this holder allows you to hold only 1 drive, and the mounting for this is right in the middle which makes you loose out on valuable real estate, that can be used to mount other drives.

I bought 2 AKASA SSD mounting kits to use for this purpose.



The mounted bays

 

UPDATE : Res Mounting

Mounting the Phobya 150 Balancer







Cheers guys.

Thats all for now, will be back soon, would love to hear your feed back.

 

UPDATE : Finished loop and Leak test

Got a new package with all the additional fittings I needed.
Couple of 90 degree compression fittings and a 45 degree fitting which I needed for my loop.
I got a fill point valve as well for making a drain tube.

I also got along with a some cable management stuff such as wire tie bases and cable ties.

Additionally I got 2 tubes of Promochill blood red die which I will be using with my Distilled water.





The finished loop









Leak testing





Will be running it for at least 12 hours to see how it fairs so will update after that cheers.

 

UPDATE : 1st Boot, Fan controller and Top panel

The 24 hour leak test went mostly uneventful. There was a minor problem with the angle barb fitted on the pump which had a minor leak which was easily fixed with a rubber seal ring.

1st Boot test & running 3D mark, Prime 95 all at default clock speed just to see how the WC was fairing.

The temps were good. At Idle it was just above ambient 27 - 28 and on load it was 51 - 52
which is good considering i was hitting 60 with the H70 I had installed before.



Top panel cable management



Heat shrinks



The finished top panel cables all heat shrink-ed



Areocool V12XT fan controller



I sleeved all the cables coming from the fan controller is sleeving bought from WCUK



Fan controller mounted in the system

 

UPDATE : 3.5 " Drive bay

Since i removed the hot swap drive bay which comes with the RV02 for 3.5" drives I have to now custom make 1 to hold my 2 raptors (150 GB) which are going to be on raid.

I used the drive bays which came with the RV02 for this mod along with a RAD stand that i had purchased.



I then removed the drive covers



The built drive holder using the RAD stand







Test fitting the drive bay in the system



Cheers that's all for now, let me know what you think about this.

 

UPDATE : Logo design

I've been working on a logo design which will be laser cut on acrylic for some time now. My thinking is that the design will be cut on transparent acrylic and painted white on the top allowing blue light (which i will use in the case) to bleed out from the edges. I think it will look damn cool and would go along with the case colour theme as well, which is White / Blue / Black.

Here is the logo design



Cheers, that's all for today.
Waiting for another package to arrive so more updates to come soon.

 

Nice pump and reservoir placement.
I'd love to fit complete loop or two in a small case just for fun... looks challenging

 

Thanks man, I had to change the placement of the pump and Res a couple of times before I found the optimum place. At 1st I thought I can place it below the top exhaust fan, but the tubing would have became complex and did'nt look neat, I also thought about placing the pump on top of the bottom rad fans and constrain the loop only to the right hand side of the case but that did'nt work out either. So finally I ended up with this idea.

 

I'm a bit curious of why you will be using Raptor-drives?

 

I'm using them only because of capacity. I would prefer to use SSD's instead but the 300GB of space in SSD's just costs too much. Its mainly for large video and audio files which I work with for editing. And for all the source code of projects which I work on. Its mainly a work drive.

I have 2 60 GB SSD's in Raid as well which will be for OS/ Applications

I have another 60GB SSD on its own for games

That's what i have planned for my drive break down.

 

I like the Raven case (loving the rotated motherboard concept), and I like how your mod/build is coming together. Nice work on the logo too.

 

thanks dude, I've sent the logo off for laser cutting, so I should have it in about a week or two.
So I will be able to start work on the side panels once that comes through.

thanks again for the feed back.

 

UPDATE : SSD Drives & Sata 3 Raid Controller

I received my next package. 2 X Crusial M4 64 GB Drives and My PCI-E Raid controller
I also got a couple of sata 3 cables to go with them

Drive controller package





I like the raid card since it has a 2 pin connector for a indicator LED which I will be connecting to the Areocool V12 which has a HDD activity indicator. This will allow me to see RAID activity of the card





Next steps

1. Update firmware on the M4's to 0.0.0.9 which can be got from the crusial site.
2. Install fresh copy of windows 7
3. Bench mark the drives
4. Bench mark my CPU at stock
5. O/C CPU to 4.0 Ghz and Bench mark it / along with temps
6. Bench mark 6950's at stock
7. Flash 6950's with 6970 bios updates & unlock shaders
8. Bench mark unlocked GPU's
9. O/C Cosair Vengence memory (RAM) from 1600 to highest possible

Will be doing all this starting today, will be updating the results as soon as I'm done.

Cheers catch you all soon with the results.

 

Are you sure you can flash the 6950's? Most cards available now can't be flashed.

Nice build

Another question... Where do you get the laser etching done? I'm interested in putting a logo on my next build.

 

Thanks man.

Well, I did a bit of research about the ASUS Direct CU II 2GB cards before I bought it. It seems you can flash the 2GB version with a ASUS built BIOS of their original 2GB edition which came out. I'm not 100% about it, haven't got to it yet. Probably this evening. Bogged down with work. If I'm successful I'll post a download link for all the files I used.

And here's the link to guys I use for Laser work

http://www.cutlasercut.com/

Their prices are pretty good as well, and they are based in London which is where I am,
so it easy for me to pick stuff up when they are ready.