PROJECT LOG 900D Unforgiven - The Metalica Build

[onevoicewild]

I was happily piping away on the case and I need to drill two holes for where the piping goes threw the midplate. I hate to do this but I only have enough
money for 1 of the 2 cards I need so I have one shipped In so I have somewhere to pipe to. The Card is in town, but not in my hand. Clowns
shipped it USPS and their in no hurry to get it delivered! So I had a little time on my hands. I meet a great builder named alpenwasser from Sweden
who did an interesting copper mod inside his reservoir SO! a copper diverter is in order for the EKWB reservoir.











My neighbor gave me a mouse sander so for the first time on this build I started with it and then


progressed from 400,800,1200,2000 grit wet/ dry cloth and then Mothers polish.









































This is one of those things that looks a lot better in person than my camera can show. But I'm happy with it.

Just one more cheap excuse to put more copper in the build. I'm taking a couple of vacation days next week so I should be able to make some good progress.

 

[onevoicewild]

The Clowns at the postal service finally decided to deliver my GPU. Ahh there is nothing like new toys.
No it's not a Titan or the next thing that will replace it. Two of these are much fasted than I am.
How many frames a second do you need to play Farmville ?



















Maybe it's just me, but this card is kind off an ugly duckling. I applaud EVGA though, They make a version of this same card with the Titan cooler on it
for $50.00 dollars more. This is their highest clocked GTX 770 at a better price without the unneeded cooler, so it's a perfect candidate for a water
cooling conversion. I had to take it for a test drive before I voided the warranty, just to make sure I didn't have a brick. It worked well and
my 800D was pissed off when I repossessed it.













They say that the water block probably weighs more than the original heat sink. On this card I'm not so sure? This has a serious heavy heat sink.
Apparently cooling all the other chips isn't a high priority. The thermal pads push up against the plastic bottom of the heat sink.
What is the heat transfer rate of plastic? Well their the ones warranting it and I do really feel this model was designed with water conversion in mind.
Now if they could just sell us a card with no heat sink at all for a reduced price. And reduce it even further because they know they don't have to
carry any warranty on the card.


























Once I had the first Card in place, I was able to continue more of the piping. I'm really liking the way it looks. I had to trim some of the hidden
Acrylic that covers the drive bays. With the reservoir In the way, it barely comes out, but barely is enough. I pity the fool that ends up with this when
I pass on! They will need an engineering degree to figure out how it all goes together.

 

[onevoicewild]

Ok I was short a couple of fittings for the water cooling and while they were coming in I decided I would Mod the Ram to keep busy. What the Heck was
I thinking. Keep busy for 4 days. Anytime the parts count on a minor mod is over 40 you should really reconsider.

I really Love the Corsair Dominator Platinum but they have been around for awhile and I needed a little extra? who the hell am I kidding I needed a lot
extra. I have taken some major risks and have been blessed with luck almost every time and Like a drunken fool I stumbled back to the bar for more abuse.

I don't have the drill press anymore so I made a little Jig based on a Waynio Idea, to help keep the 40 holes inline as much as I could.













I decided I wanted to polish the tubes, Inside and out. What kind of people polish the inside of tubes - Sick people lol . I used Q Tips with metal polish
on a drill and it would only fit inside if I spun it in with polish. The cool thing was I held the part with a rag and if I squeezed it, the Q Tip would
spin on the inside and if I let off it spun on the outside. Polishing at 1000 RPM is a real luxury!

I know what your thinking - I wonder if I could do that on my ears? what you weren't thinking that? you puss, real men shave with a blow tourch!







Ok on to the Glamor shots or the what the hack has he done now shots, depending on your point of view.
Some one was telling me to do something subtle. Mahhaaaaa Sorry It's not in me!





































Well time to get back to that water cooling. I'm so easily distracted!

 

[onevoicewild]

Planning - system for achieving objective: a method of doing something that is worked out in advance.

Being an Amature Modder can be interesting / frustrating / expensive / Ect. Ok planning is not one of my strong suits! I finally went to mount my lower
480 Radiator and because of all the Modding To get the overkill Grill in place, there were multiple stacked layers. I shortened and cleaned up the
threads on the screws and they wouldn't bite. I thought they were to short, but it turns out I should have used some thread Dyes on them. Also all the
pretty piping seemed to be in the way of the Rad. I found out that if I used elbows on the underside of the pass thru's that it would fit, just barely. That
was close! I didn't want to have to redo a bunch of stuff. Damn now I need more fittings. I'm beginning to understand why the Big Boys ***** about the
cost of fittings!


Sorry but this seems to be the theme lately. Find something else to do while I wait for parts.
I finished the drain line straight out the back of the case with a pass thru.












The lighting may be the only thing subtle in this whole build? I wanted to mount the lighting somewhere that it could angle toward the back of the
case. The upper radiator blocks the angle of anything mounted in the front behind the side panel. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I made
a shroud to cover up the upper fans and allow me to angle some of the lights at a 45 degree angle to the back of the case. As usual I stumbled into
something good? and unexpected. I was polishing the back of the diamond plate to reflect more light and cool pattern started to appear. Can you say
Deja Vu? The material has some color from the anodizing on the front that looks fairly good.







I bent a strip to mount the lighting to at the angle I want. The front color is actually slightly gold,
the picture's doesn't really show the true color. Hey I'm just going for none blurry at this point.

























The cover comes down a little lower in the case than I would like, but It wouldn't hide the lighting if It didn't. So there it is,
hopefully the better lighting angle will make up for it?















Ok this will never be one of those cases that people say that is so clean! It's as busy as hell on the inside of the case. I have had way to much time on
my hands and not enough of the parts that I really needed to finish. It is coming along and I'll use Metallica as an excuse! Heavy Metal is not known
for being mild mannered! That's my story and I'm sticken to it.

 

[cullam3n]

 

[onevoicewild]

Thanks - Dat's appreciated

 

[.:PTB73:.]

WOW. . . I just finished my first mod, but it's nothing like what you're doing! lol That is just BADASS!!
Later, Phil B.

 

[onevoicewild]

Thanks PT - I recommend not getting totally stupid until your second Mod! so you are right on schedule. The first one is one of the hardest, because you need tools, need to learn skills, ect. I really love the learning curve on new things. It's exciting to do something you have never done before, but you take a chance and work your way through it. Thanks for checking out my build!


Sneak peak at the dual zone lighting I'm working on.

 

[Zodicus]

Man Onevoice.. I want to be just like you when I grow up. I am starting a project in the next few months and if it comes out 1/40 as good as yours I'll be damned satisfied.

I know you are a cnc machinist. But where did you pick up these skills and talent? Or does it just come naturally?

 

[onevoicewild]

Man Onevoice.. I want to be just like you when I grow up. I am starting a project in the next few months and if it comes out 1/40 as good as yours I'll be damned satisfied.

I know you are a cnc machinist. But where did you pick up these skills and talent? Or does it just come naturally?

 

[onevoicewild]

This is all done by hand. No cnc at all. I have a tutorial on moddersinc.com under how to's . Get some aluminum and some files. You can learn to do this. Very satitfying. Thanks for the kind words

 

[onevoicewild]

Here Is something New ! I think they call that a moving part? I wouldn't know, this case has never done this before.
I unplugged it immediately and called an exorcist!







I had a pretty productive weekend. just for fun, I redid the final pipes to the GPU's in ridged Copper. I put O rings on the outside in a pattern.
I think it looks alright. The pipe was just small enough to fit in my drill, so I was able to polish it like crazy.







I also decided to put the SSD in front of the mother board. This serves multiple purposes, It helps hid a lot of the manky wires
that go to the front panel, It's helps with my Corsair advertising and I just think it looks cool. It's cooper! get used to it.







Notice some strange colors in that last picture? I put most / All of the lighting in the case. I really wanted to improve on the previous lighting jobs that I had done. I don't want any direct line of sight on any of the LEDs. I was able to do that unless you are below the case and look up. There are still some light reflections, because of all the shiny stuff. I used 2 separate Hue controllers so I could have more options. From the start me and Sam had decided to be more minimalistic on the lighting. I'm still paying for the sin's of my last build. As a matter of fact I stole one of the Hue Controllers from Bender and it has so many lights that It didn't make much difference.

I set this up in lighting zones. I trimmed as much height off of the radiator / lighting shield as possible. It has a 45 degree place to mount 2 passes of LED's aiming at the components. Then I ran it around the Rad with an angle in the back for 2 passes. I really like how this worked out. with the depth of the Rad in a push/ pull, any lighting mounted in the top front of the case would be partially blocked. the first few pictures are the back zone only.







I'll fix the light leak on the right side of the Rad. I'll have to play with this quite a bit until I'm happy, so don't pay much attention to the colors at this point.
Just goofing around to see what it would do. Also the brightness is up high in these pictures. It will most likely be much lower in the final product.













I really like the front to back light separation that I am getting from this setup. Now I'll turn on the front lighting for full volume.

























I may need some more LED's to light the company Logo's, but I'll hold off on that for a while. When my wife looked at it,
she almost made me sleep on the couch because the fans didn't lite up. Damn you can't please every one, can you?
Trying to explain to her that this case wasn't really designed to be a lighting show case did no good.
She came up with 4 ideas that caused 12 more problems and Finally gave up. Dx







Ya you know what that's for. I went around and made a final check to see if all the fittings were tight. when I got done, I looked over and there was one lonely O ring laying on the work bench?
#%*&%## hmmm I wonder which one of those fitting that goes to? After Checking a couple of the last few fittings I had put together, I pulled off one of the O rings and looked at it compared to the extra One. They were not the same exact size - Ohh thank God! it's an extra one from the GPU piping. That had me worried, these Ghost fittings don't like to come apart where they are supposed to so, taking them back apart can be a pain.







I'm just running distilled water for leak testing. I don't want to waste any of my fancy English water to do testing. I'll save you the obligatory pictures of the paper towels while leak testing. Zero leaks which is all part of the plan. I'll get a little Photo flo this week to clear the bubbles and put in the Mayhems ulta pure H20. I'm not quite ready to fire up the whole rig yet, but as you can see I am getting closer.













I need to straighten out those silly O rings some more. you never notice the little things until your done taking pictures. lol

 

[onevoicewild]

Hey everyone - I need your help in the Asus rush for the gold case mod contest. They are giving away free mother boards to random voters. I am up against some very nice builds by pro modders and I could use your votes.

Thank you


http://www.asus.com/microsite/2013/MB/gold_rush_promotion/AllEntries.aspx?p=&s=v

 

[uglykidmoe]

what you accomplished far out shines the two ahead of you and it looks like we can vote once a day? no?

curious, why are the pics presented on the voting page not showing your finished product? can you change that, or was it for a reason?

great job, and good luck, you deserve to win!

 

[tripleM1515]

voted. good luck

 

[onevoicewild]

thanks for the help everyone. Our build is hanging in there very well against some Asus sponsored builds. If I could only tap into my friends at Corsair Brasil it would be all over, but because Coolmaster Is part of the event I can't post there. Ohh well I appreciate the extra votes. Some of these other cases people may forget to vote more than once. See you guys!!

 

[uglykidmoe]

voting looks likes it's open till nov 28th so there's a couple of weeks to go, and you can vote once a day.

i'll post a link on my facebook page and threaten all friends and family members to vote for "onevoicewild" or else ; )

ok forget it, it looks like only asus members are allowed to vote ; (

 

[onevoicewild]

thanks bro I do appreciate that!!! I got my Mom voting for me ha ha ha

 

[bassnut]

hang in there .... sitting @ #3

 

[onevoicewild]

Unforgiven - Complete!

We thought we would never see this day. Thanks to everyone for your extended support on this build. I Have a better camera arranged in the next week or two, to get some better close ups and Low light shots.

Me and Sam started this just goofing around with a pipe dream of mine to build a big wide case. God i didn't think I would actually build the thing! Thanks to Bill Owen's encouragement we started a build log, when we didn't even have a case? What the Hell were we thinking? Based on the strength of Sam's renderings, the build caught on. About this time I thought, Man I better do something or this is going to be a one man show! Amazingly with all my Modding hero's looking over my shoulder I did things I never knew that I could. Fear does amazing things. The stars aligned for us on this whole deal and I don't think I could duplicate it with a Chrystal ball. I have gained much more respect for pro Modders, They do amazing things with the pressure of a deadline and their financial well being on the line.

My eternal thanks goes out to Sam, Bill Owen, Ronaldo Buassali, Corsair George, Eddie and Peter at EKWB, Michael woods at Mayhems and all the Mod entusiasts. I could have never completed this without all your help!!






















































































I've always loved this picture. Sams rendering on the monitor was done months before I got the case to this point.
To be able to come that close to his incredible design made me feel great!









And this is where it all began.









Thanks everyone for checking out our project.