FEATURED Exoframe Mini

Navig · Dec 23, 2014

Time to start running all my cabling:

I’ve got cables running to power the motherboard, blu ray burner, pump and radiator fan control.

Lining up the cables for my hard drives:

After getting everything plugged up, this was what my cable mess looked like!

Just a quick list of cables I see in this pic: front USB connectors, intake fan power, pump control, radiator fan control, front audio connectors, hard drive power, hard drive data, graphics power, internal lighting junction.

Navig · Dec 23, 2014

Time to start getting my cables organized.

I’ve gotten some recommendations on uniformly sleeving my cables, etc. However, my goals for the cabling in this project were:

1 Unobtrusive
2 Organized
3 Black

Since this project is going to completely encased in dark tinted plastic, and the only internal lighting is going to be UV, I really just want the cables to disappear, so fancy sleeving would be wasted.

So I kept it simple.

Example:

Lined up all my data cables:

Folded and tied excessive cable lengths, and hid A LOT in the dark space between the blu ray burner and powersupply:

And on this major mess side, mostly just bundled things up and threw it in some tubing.

Navig · Dec 27, 2014

Intake fan: Antec Big Boy 200mm.

Back panel installed:

Navig · Dec 27, 2014

Went to work on the fill port.

Located my hole:

Unibits work great on plastics.

Trying out these clamps--they work pretty good. They do scratch easy, and often you need to use a pair of pliers to squeeze the ends to engage the screw, which causes scratches. Slightly longer screw would be good.

Mandrake4565 · Dec 27, 2014

Navig, is that a anti kink coil you have above the reservoir? If so I like the way it makes the connection look. The clamps, are they the Bitspower ones? I've though about grabbing a few of them myself, I have the Koolance clamps on one of my rigs and they definitely do not have a lot of clamping force.

Anyhow, looks good!!!

Silver_Pharaoh · Dec 28, 2014

Looking better and better man!

This is one sweet *** build!

Navig · Dec 29, 2014

I believe the clips are Lamptrons. BPs look nice, a little expensive.

I should note that I decided on my tubing setup: Blue UV reactive clear tubing 3/4" OD, clear water with blue UV reactive dye, and black antikink coils.

Mandrake4565 · Dec 30, 2014

I believe the clips are Lamptrons. BPs look nice, a little expensive.

Yeah from what I've seen the Lamptrons are about $1.00 cheaper ea.

I should note that I decided on my tubing setup: Blue UV reactive clear tubing 3/4" OD, clear water with blue UV reactive dye,

Now I see why you have a set of Blue sticks and a blue based mobo.

Navig · Jan 1, 2015

Here’s my handy tip of the day. How I cut my tubing. I’ve got simple PVC pipe cutter from my local Lowe’s or Home Depot. You need to keep some pressure on the back of the cutting blade to prevent the spring-back from the tubing, but it cuts clean and accurately.

[video]http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v363/navig/Exoframe Mini/Tube Cutting2_zpspjvrmtbv.mp4[/video]

As I mentioned above, I decided to use clear blue UV reactive tubing with black anti-kink coils. I tried a lot of different combos--I looked at orange opaque UV tubing with and without coils and purple UV tubing, and this was the coolest looking setup to my eyes.

Started by cutting my motherboard tubing to length. CPU to video card.

Added the graphics card to reservoir run.

Next I started lining up my radiator tubing. I wanted two parallel runs, running right next to each other, so contructed these elbows:

Started laying out the tubing runs:

Squared everything off with some zip ties:

And that was my tubing!

Mandrake4565 · Jan 1, 2015

Sure does look purdy.

Silver_Pharaoh · Jan 4, 2015

That looks fricking amazing! :drool:

It would look sooo cool in the dark

Navig · Jan 12, 2015

Gettin' there!

Took my first stab at filling the loop.

Here was my setup. Fill the resevoir, got the pump controlled by an external fan controller (with its own power supply).

And ran into a leak, right here at the reservoir return fitting.

Draining the system was a cinch.. Just put a tupperware under the drain plug.

And here was the culprit:

The threaded portion of this fitting had a crack in it--in fact it had nearly completely sheared off somehow. Easily replaced.

Mandrake4565 · Jan 12, 2015

Just out of curiosity, why secondary power supply for the fan controller or are you doing it just until you have the loop water tight?

hokiealumnus · Jan 12, 2015

Ugh; sorry you had a leak (and glad you found it!).

See people? This is why leak testing is so important...can't ever stress that enough.

Navig · Jan 14, 2015

Got my system leak tested, success this time.

Time to work on the lighting effects.

I wanted my tubing to be quite visible and luminous.

However, I noticed that with the 2 vertical lengths, one tube was casting a shadow on the other, so only one was being well lit.

Subtle, but not happy about it.

So I put together another mini UV light:

Now I’ve got that area lit.

Before:

After:

Note, these tubing runs will be much more prominent after I add UV dye to the water.

Silver_Pharaoh · Jan 15, 2015

Holy cow that is one sexy rig man! :drool:

The UV dye will bring it to life.

Navig · Jan 19, 2015

More experimentation with UV colors.

Picked up paints from my local arts n crafts store:

Also picked up nick-nacks from my local office supply including vinyl letters.

This is all just playing around, maybe it’ll stay, maybe not.

The area on the surface of the motherboard is very dark, so these are some pre-made UV dots from the office store.

This turned out really nice.

Mandrake4565 · Jan 19, 2015

A suggestion Navig, the "Navig" you have on the reservoir, I feel it would look better if you cut the lettering out and painted you name directly on the reservoir with the UV paint. I also like the Uv dot on the Cpu block, nice touch.

Navig · Jan 24, 2015

Probably would look cool. Very little of this is actually staying (I do like the dots!). I viewed this experiment as "Fun with UV for $15 or less". I don't actually need a glow-in-the-dark logo of myself on my own case!

Let’s add UV dye. Always so purdy.

http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v363/navig/Exoframe Mini/UV Dye_zpspcflonq0-1.mp4

Mayhem's UV blue dye.

Mandrake4565 · Jan 24, 2015

I don't actually need a glow-in-the-dark logo of myself on my own case!

never know maybe one day when your old and grey you'll need it to remember.

Yes that Mayhem dye does look really cool.

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