PROJECT LOG Circuit Box - HAF XB mod

Alright time to post some progress!

First off HUGE thanks to my current sponsors Performance-PCs, Lepa and Enermax!

Lepa supplied 5 LP70D12R fans and Enermax supplied a Platimax 1200W PSU!




Performance-PCs supplied a third radiator, some fittings and other goodies!



Alright small update for the first one, but there's plenty more to come.


I took out the factory mesh on the top panel and made a window for it.








Next up I started getting some hardware mounted so I could figure out the routing for my tubing. The board shown here is just for mock-up.








Next I drilled mounting holes for the pump mount and mounted the pump.








Then I drilled holes for the reservoir mount. Being that this case is short and fat rather than the typical tall and skinny I decided to mount the res to the back panel.










Here's a shot with the board and GPU's I'll be using. I'll be using my current XFX 6870's paired with their EK blocks. The board shown here I'll be using along with an i7-3770k and the EK block shown here. I still need to strip the block mounting bracket from the last mod and repaint it black for this one. I also plan to remove the MB heatskink setup and paint the blue trim pieces green to match the rest of the mod.




And last up a shot of the green/black paracord I'll be using to sleeve all the cables for the mod.




I've got some Mayhem's pastel mint green coolant mixed up and waiting for the build as well. I think the whole black and green theme will look killer in this.

I'm also debating on adding another 120mm rad in the floor in the 5.25" drive bays for some extra cooling, but we'll see.

Time for an update

The two 6870 waterblocks were starting to get slightly stained, so I took them apart and hit them with some Mother's metal polish with the Dremel and buffing wheel and cleaned them up pretty good.








I also cleaned up the nickel on the CPU waterblock as well as stripped the old paint of the retention bracket and re-painted it black




I also got my care package in from Performance-PCs! I got a second XSPC 120mm radiator, some Bitspower fittings and some other assorted goodies.




I decided to mount the second 120mm rad on the bottom of the case in the 5.25" drive bay compartment. I'll be using a fan controller but it's short and won't interfere with the fan/rad setup at all.




I also removed almost all of the 3- and 5-way snake rotary fittings to clean up the overall look. It looks much cleaner this way and the Duralene tubing I'll be using is very flexible so I don't need perfectly straight line-of-sight from one barb to the next.






Next up I drilled a hole at the back of the case for the Bitspower panel fitting. This will allow me to connect the reservoir and pump through the back panel of the case.









I had to notch the motherboard tray support just a tad so the panel fitting lock ring would fit properly.






Then I installed the necessary rotary and barb fittings to line everything up.






I also got my i7-3770K in for the build (Thanks TGS!!)




I used my custom fan template from White Light Laser to mark the bottom of the case to cut out for the 120mm intake fan for the lower radiator.




Silly me marked the holes for the 120mm fan but marked (and unfortunately cut) the large hole for the 140mm fan. No worries though, I'll make something to clean it up.




Next I made an accent piece for under the pump mount. This not only gives a little look to the pump mount it also raises it 1/8" so the pump to radiator fittings line up better.




Then I sleeved the pump's wires with the black/green paracord. This was my first time working with paracord and I like it a lot.




And finally I cut a small piece of tubing for the pump intake. The crystal block is a "T" style and the system temp sensor will go into the bottomside opening.



That's it for now!

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This is going to be a great build....

Thanks!

You can check out my last mod here if you're interested http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?p=332236

Minor update time.

I got a Bitfenix Recon fan controller to keep the system cool




Next I swapped the small piece of tubing leading into the pump for a Bitspower crystal link to clean things up




Then I got some sleeving done. I sleeved the 120mm and 80mm Lepa fans as well as the wiring for the front panel buttons and LEDs. I also removed the wiring for the front panel audio as I will have no use for it.






Then I cut out all the plastic honeycomb mesh that's molded into the front panel. I'll be keeping the steel mesh that covers the intake but I wanted that plastic stuff gone.




Lastly I drilled and mounted a 16mm Lamptron switch. This will turn on and off the case lighting.




That's it for now!

Update time!





I started off by sleeving all of the cables for the fan controller.




Next I tackled the vortex in the reservoir issue I was getting. I decided to cut a small piece of acrylic and thread it into the outlet.




And it worked beautifully




I also scooped up a G1.Sniper 2 from Lee Harrington for the build, this will fit the theme much better.


Next I designed and made the circuit board that will read and display the coolant temp and flow rate. I designed it in Eagle CAD as i do all of my boards. I decided to make it single-sided to it'd be easier to etch and solder together.






I printed the board layouts onto inkjet photo paper with a laser printer. The small boards on the bottom are for something else - I'll get to that in a bit.




Then I placed the printed side down on a piece of single-sided copper board and ran them through the laminator a few times to transfer the toner to the PCB.






Then they went into a warm etchant bath until all of the exposed copper was dissolved.






Then I trimmed the control board to it's proper size.




Next I drilled all the holes and soldered in the components. The ribbon cable is going to connect to the board that will have the LCD mounted to it which I still need to make.





Now most of you probably know that the G1 series of boards come with green LEDs in the heatsink assembly. Well Thomas is cutting me out some custom GPU backplates along with all the other laser-cut parts so I figured I'd like UV LED's to light it up rather than green ones. This is where that small board comes in. I picked up some 0603 SMD UV LED's and resistors and made a replacement PCB for it. These things are TINY!




Here is the board I made next to the one out of the board - looks like I measured the LED spacing correctly.




And a couple shots with the new PCB installed into the motherboard.






And a shot of it with my UV green fan template lit up.




That's all for now!

Wow, excellent work
I like the para-cord idea for sleeving, and good color choice...
Subscribed to watch the progress.

Wow awesome build! Can't wait to see more!

sweet work, just sweet can't wait to see the end.

Alright it's been a while but I've got a small update. I swapped the Primochill LRT tubing for some E22 10/12 solid tubing. I think it looks much better.
















I ran out of the E33 tubing so I just used a BP crystal link fitting for the return line to the res.




And a preview of one of my fan grills from White Light Laser

Wow this is beautiful! How did you get such clean bends in your tubing? I've never seen tubes go from a bend to perfectly straight like that.

E22 sells the 10/12 tubing and the bending cord to go with it. I got it from Performance-PCs.com(http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...3_1227&zenid=696701b0c053d50e98aada5e5ce89b85) get the 10/12 as that works with the bending cord and the Bitspower Crystal Link fittings. slide the bending cord in the tube, heat it up till it gets soft and floppy, bend it to suit and let it cool. I'd never done it before and I only managed to waste ~8" of tubing out of two 40" lengths so I think I did alright.

Subbed.

Nice work on the rigid tubing. If I may ask, why didn't you chose the primochill rigid tubing, which is available in more colors, like green ?

Well I looked into the Primochill stuff as well. I'm running Mayhems Pastel Mint Green so clear is what I want. The one thing I didn't like is the size of the Primochill compression fittings. They'd just look so big and odd looking on a lot of my fittings whereas the Bitspower ones are nice and small diameter-wise. The Primochill compressions look easier to use though, but in the end it all boils down to looks.

OK so it's been a LONG time but I've been working on getting this done. She's 99% - almost done Time to post some long-needed updates!

Here's all the goodies I got from White Light Laser:

Now that's beautiful!

Nicely done man!

Next up I got the side panels done. I measured and cut out the panels for the windows






I opened up the lower guide track and slid a white LED strip into the track to light up the window etchings.




Then I filed the cuts smooth and put some edge molding on then mounted the windows with 3M VHB tape.




Next I got to work on polishing the GPU blocks and the EK bridge link block and got the blocks mounted.






Now for strange unknown reasons EK chose to NOT put a G1/4" threaded hole on the bottom side of the bridge, only the bottom right side. Well that's useless isn't it? With the way the flow is set up I need the flow to enter the left side of the bridge and exit the right. This is due to the universal GPU blocks having a dedicated flowpath.




So I picked up an 11.5mm plastic drill and a G1/4" BSPP tap from McMaster and made my own hole.




Now the topside of the bridge block has one threaded hole recessed into the block while the other is not. Presumably the recess is for the plug to sit flush once it's installed. However this needs to be my exit and because of the recess I can't install a fitting here. So I took the Dremel out and milled out the recess enough to allow the installation of Bitspower's new rigid tubing compression fittings.






After that was done the blocks were all mounted and I got to work redoing the tubing to and from the GPU's.










I also picked up a green Bitspower LED station to make hooking up all my LED's easier. I wired the ground on the LED station's Molex power to the switch I mounted in the front panel earlier. This allows me to turn off all the lights if I want.




Then I installed white LED's into the CPU block, GPU blocks and the bridge block.






And here we are ready to fill!



Next update coming tomorrow

Silver_Pharaoh said:

Now that's beautiful!

Nicely done man!

Click to expand...

Thanks!

May I ask what GPU that is? (Sorry if you mentioned it before)

Silver_Pharaoh said:

May I ask what GPU that is? (Sorry if you mentioned it before)

Click to expand...

They're Gigabyte 7970 Windforce's. Non-reference so I had to go with universal GPU blocks and the copper RAMsinks instead of a nicer full-cover block