Modding a Phanteks Evolv Shift to allow for a fully water cooled system. It would be impossible to build a fully custom water cooling system in this case, as such, I'm starting with a external water cooling unit. For this have decided to use some live edge oak, which was laying around. Adding some wood thread inserts and creating a PSU aluminium mount Was considering going for a wood distressed look, however, after doing that changed my mind and decided to go for a black look, this was achieved with drawing ink, polyxoil and back furniture wax.
Next turned my attention to the 360 radiator and pump stands, these needed to receive the X-Men treatment as after all, Dark Phoenix, did start as a X-men member Had to create a few more custom parts from aluminium and steel, even though that one of them didn't fit the bill and had to be completely redone. They were both spray painted as per the theme added some dark red vinyl to the water pump enclosure and resized the cables as needed By now, you probably realised that Alphacool was a sponsor of the build. I'm happy to say that not only alphacool, but also TeamGroup and Be Quiet were onboard too. Massive thank you to everyone. Without them, this would have been a lot harder. Some of the hardware used is quite old and some quite low specs, however, more than enough for the intended purpose of this PC, nothing wrong with making it look cool though, well, my opinion only.
All of the alphacool items can be seen in the pictures as they are the main components of the water cooling system. TeamGroup sent 32GB of DDR5 Ram and BeQuiet all of the necessary fans. Thank you guys, highly appreciated Sooooo, as the name of the game is "modding", I've immediately started making a few changes tot he BeQuiet fans, however, the in case fan grills had to be removed due to space restrictions, not happy about that but had to be done A few more aluminium parts had to be created to reinforce and provided mounting locations for the water cooling pass through fittings and the back panel had to be cut to allow for the quick disconnects.
The back panel was then primed, together with the new PSU mount bracket and aluminium SSD mount, this was created as the Evolv Shift SSD location mounts are hidden behind the front case panel, as I wanted the TeamGroup SSD on display this had to be done. Some acrylic shroud panels were also created, this will help to hide all those pesty cables, lol. I have also added some magnets to the shrouds which keeps them in place in the case. The PSU is now supported on both sides, done this as the water cooling station is to be wall mounted Added a aluminium box to hide the PSU cable as this was needed to jump start the PSU
Printed a vinyl for one of the shrouds, can see it below in it's place. Yes, the small bubbles work themselves out over time. Decided to mod the Water cooling unit PSU power cable and ended up looking like this Installed a Barrow water flow and temp display, obviously, slightly modded to follow the colour theme of the water cooling unit Quickly thrown the hardware together and gave it a test run to ensure that everything was okey dokey.
Same thing with the water cooling unit, quickly thrown everything together, did the water cooling lines and tested it to ensure there were no leaks
The front case panel was them hand painted using acrylic paint and some other mixed media, too many to list. Different stages of the painting below:
Massive thank you to my good friend at Shakmods – Custom cables for providing this beautiful 24 pin cable to connect directly from the PSU to the motherboard, not an extension! This was a space and life saver
And now, for the final pictures. Hope you like it and mod on!! The beauty of this game is about creating something that suits you perfectly, regardless of other people's thoughts, make what makes you happy .
