I am copying the worklog from this build from another forum so there will be a lot of information in my first few posts (I started this project early in February of 2012). Hope you enjoy reading it and I welcome any feedback Silver Blade is only a concept name but I dreamed up this build one night while looking at my NZXT Vulcan that I've owned for about a year know but have never used (it was an impulse buy), still not entirely sure why I bought it but now I finally have an idea for it Because most of my time and money is going towards my main build (Project XT), which I also have a worklog for, this build might be slow to start off at first and it will be low budget but I'm hoping I can make a beautiful system out of the Vulcan So what is my idea? A completely passive cooled portable gaming computer. I am aware these two combinations don't really go well together but this will be a low power gaming computer. Thermalright do a whole range of heatsinks for every component and that is my starting point. Within a day of coming up with the idea I had bought a motherboard brand new off eBay. Most of the people reading this are going to hate me for the decision I made but I am an AMD fanboy and always will be The motherboard I went with is the ECS Elitegroup A75F-M2, it is a mATX motherboard based on socket FM1 from AMD. I've always wanted to build an AMD APU based system but my main issue was all the mATX boards where blue/black themed and I wanted something different, so although this board didn't get as high reviews as the similarly priced Asus alternatives I chose it for it's unique grey colours Of course I will be sleeving all the cables with gray and white MDPC-X sleeving But here I am again, babbling an introduction and most of you have probably lost interest by now, for those of you that have gotten this far here are a few photos of the NZXT Vulcan... I will be removing the mesh side panel and installed an acrylic window And here is a list of Thermalright heatsinks I plan to use in this build: Thermalright Silver Arrow (CPU cooler). Thermalright Spirfire (VGA cooler). Thermalright VRM-R3 (VGA VRM cooler). Thermalright HR-05 SLI/IFX (Chipset cooler). Thermalright HR-07 (RAM cooler). Thermalright HR-09 Type 4 (Mosfet cooler). Obviously things may change as I have to confirm I can fit all of these heatsinks side by side but hopefully this gives you an idea of what this build is going to look like Stay tuned
I have hit a few snags with this build, one of the features of the AMD APUs is greatly increased graphics performance when paired with an AMD graphics card in hybrid CrossfireX. Unfortunately this feature can only be enabled with graphics cards up to the HD6670. Now this wouldn't be a problem for me, the HD6670 fits perfectly in my price/performance range for this build, except the Thermalright Spitfire can only be mounted on HD6850s upward. So, since having the large heatsink is more important to me than the actual performance it looks like I will be going with the HD6850. It just stretches my budget for this build but ah well. The second snag being that the Thermalright RAM heatsinks aren't designed to work side by side (there needs to be one slot between them) and since the board I bought only has 2 RAM slots there could be a problem installing the heatsinks... I wonder if the heatpipes can be bent slightly so they can sit side by side...
Wow, just ran into another obsticle. Lucky I'm planning this out before buying parts now. The Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU cooler is 162.7mm high, there is no way that is fitting in my NZXT Vulcan. New heatsink or new case? New case me thinks I'm totally in love with that heatsink and it is the center of my build. I will buy the Silver Arrow and look into new cases later. Maybe now I can go with a mid tower case and a socket 1155 ATX motherboard Money has been wasted but I will still push on
I'm looking at other ECS boards now with the 1155 socket. I'm unsure yet what I'm going to go with in regards to case and motherboard. ere is a video of a motherboard I am considering using for this build: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqjszw0pLwg&feature=player_embedded At quick glance it has all the features I need, the grey colour scheme is what's most important to me. I'm not so sure about the 'flames' on the heatsinks but hopefully I will be able to replace them with the mosfet heatsinks from Thermalright. Arghh... So much guesswork is required with this build and nothing is available here in NZ.
I will have a look through the options. I don't mind a case that doesn't have ATX motherboard support. I have been thinking about this build a lot and as i want to keep the cost down I would rather not have to buy a new motherboard. I already spent USD $120 on the socket FM1 board and it will do the job Sorry for constantly changing my mind but I noticed that with the mesh panel the NZXT Vulcan will fit the Silver Arrow because the mesh panel sticks out slightly further than the rest, I realised that before but obviously I wanted to replace it with an acrylic window, because the acrylic window won't have the extension that the mesh does the Silver arrow won't fit. So here is my idea: Replace the mesh with acrylic but cut a square hole into the acrylic to fit the Silver Arrow through. I have a feeling this would look quite nice but I may be wrong...
I've decided I am going to try using the Vulcan and see what modifications I can do to make the heatsink fit Here are a few photos of the removed side panel:
I have removed the fan grill on the top of the case and plan on installing a second acrylic window with a hole that the back-side CPU heatsink will come through. I am flooded with ideas for this project, hopefully it all measures up and I can achieve my goals Look what arrived yesterday... The plain Thermalright packaging makes opening the box that much more exciting
Motherboard has arrived! I'm aware that it is a very basic board but in my opinion that is the beauty of it and the grey fits this build perfectly Since I won't be using the bracket for the stock CPU cooler I thought I would take it off and see what the board looked like without it.
I plan to polish the caps with acetone. It is my first time working with acetone so I want to use this board as practice before doing it to my more expensive MSI board I put the motherboard inside the Vulcan to see how it looked. I also installed the Thermalright HR-05 SLI/IFX chipset heatsink. Without further ado, here are some photos The Thermalright IFX-10 arrived also, I won't be able to install it in the case until I've made a few modification but here are some shots of the heatsink:
I just bought an AMD A8-3870K 3.0GHz Llano CPU and a Thermalright VRM-R5 graphics card VRM heatsink, the latter of which goes well with the Thermalright Spitfire graphics card cooler I purchased previously. This particular VRM heatsink restricts me to two choices for the graphics card. The HD5850 or the HD5870. I am aware they are both older cards but they still pack a punch for a portable gaming system and this way I can be certain they are 100% compatible with the heatsinks A quick browse of online stores and I found a site that was selling reference AMD HD5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition graphics cards for a very reasonable price. Unfortunately they are OEM cards with no included cables but I think I will buy one tomorrow regardless
A small update Spot the difference? You guessed it I polished the motherboard caps, first time, and I'm very happy with the result
I think it's time to update this worklog! I have done a few things since I last posted, I removed the mounted 3.5" drive bay that was riveted onto the case so now all the case can hold is an optical drive and a hard drive in a 5.25" adapter! But that is enough for this build and now there is more room in the case The Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU heatsink arrived and it is massive! The heatsink presses up against the case and the caps on the end of the heatpipes extend even further! But I was prepared for that and I plan on drilling holes in the acrylic window so the heatpipes come through which I think will look quite nice I also cut the side panel out for the window, here are a few shots of the end result: That's all for now but I have a few other modifications planned and I'll make sure I keep you guys updated
I have made some progress! First off, after modifying the retention bracket for the Thermalright IFX-10 backside CPU heatsink I was able to mount it in an orientation it wasn't actually designed to be mounted. Unfortunately I forgot the take photos of the back of the case showing the modifications I did to the bracket but I will take some more photos when it's light. And the I/O shield before painting: Acrylic top window installed: I/O shield after painting It wasn't until after I installed the IFX-10 that I realised there will be no room for the 10.75" HD5870! :facepalm: Slowly bending the heatsink back so that is was parallel with the side of the case quickly fixed this problem There was minimal flattening of the heatpipes as a result of the bending so mission success! I will be installing the side window tomorrow so more pictures to come
Side window has been cut and installed, here are some photos As you may have already guessed those aren't my hands, I asked my old man to do the precise drilling for me because I was afraid I would make a mistake I will be back with another update soon, stay tuned
As promised here is a picture of the modified mounting bracket for the Thermalright IFX-10 backside CPU heatsink. All it took was taking out a section with a hacksaw, filing it down and a coat of black paint. It does the job and doesn't look horrible either A 5th heatsink?? The Thermalright VRM-R5 VRM cooler for Radeon 5850/5870 graphics cards I also had a play around with some logo designs, I had an idea to make a panel covering the 5.25" drive bays and get this logo laser cut into it with white LED backlighting Aaannd the exciting part (well I think so anyways) A completely reference non-branded AMD Radeon HD5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition 2GB graphics card Of course after taking a few pics of the stock cooler for later comparison I got straight onto installing the Thermalright Spitfire! At first I was unsure about the looks but it is really starting to grow on me now
It has been a while since I updated this worklog so I thought I might share with the family what I have done since my last update. The Thermalright HR-07 Trio Type H RAM heatsinks have arrived. I didn't quite need three of them but since I will be bending them slightly it doesn't hurt to have spares Unfortunately the overhang of the CPU heatsink prevented me from mounting heatsinks on both of the sticks of RAM but I am still quite happy with the looks of having one of the RAM sticks with a heatsink. I will not be overclocking the RAM at all in this system so the RAM heatsinks are for aesthetic purposes only. Here is a photo comparing the original HR-07 with the one I bent into shape so it could make clearance with the CPU heatsink. On a completely different note here is a mock up of the side panel I will be installing (I messed up when drilling mounting holes so I need to start again). Enough sleeve and heatshrink to sleeve 4-5 PSUs hopefully The two shades of grey and the white heatshrink will be used in this build. I will get to sleeving soon and upload some pics. The billet machined aluminium case feet I ordered have arrived. I installed them on the Vulcan right after taking this photo. They look great, hopefully the silver will match the heatsinks. They also add to the height of the case which makes it look more impressive for a mATX build. More sleeving shots: As for the 5.25" drive bay, I did manage to drill it out and cut off the top bay, file it down and install it in the case again but it needs to be powdercoated before I call it a job well done. I will share some more pics later
Here are a few shots of my sleeve job, it isn't the best but I feel I'm slowly improving I haven't been able to get as much done towards this build as I would have liked because I've been working long days but all the more money to go towards my builds I guess
I have a few more photos to share but I haven't been able make much progress as I've been working long hours lately and have been struggling to find the time to work on my builds I put everything back into the case to see how it looked with all the hardware installed and the drive bay shroud installed. It was a very tight fit but I managed to get everything in After looking at the drive bay shroud for a while I decided it was covering the GPU VRM heatsink and was making everything look a bit too cramped. One other thing that was bothering me was that both the window and the shroud were rectangular, only straight lines, and it wasn't complementing the case very well, so I had an idea to mirror the section cut out of the front of the case and cut it out of the shroud First I drew the area I wanted to cut out with a permanent marker and stood back to see how it looked. I was quite happy with how it looked so I cut the section out, you will have to wait for my next update to see how it looks in the case but here is a photo of the shroud with the cutout. Prepping the GPU I/O bracket for a paint job I'm very happy with how it turned out, so that is the mobo I/O shield and GPU I/O bracket painted, only the PSU cover needs cable routing holes drilled into it and then I will be painting that black too Oh and the Scythe Himuro finally arrived from Europe, parts like this aren't available here in New Zealand :angry: That is all for now but I will install the Himuro in Silver Blade and update soon after
