Mini-update for everyone else: I'm 3 or 4 coats in on the chassis and it's coming along great. I've had to sand down and re-coat a couple of places though I think it'll be worth it in the end.
I'm anticipating at least one more ultralight final coat to give everything an even sheen and then we're on to painting the PSU, mounting the mobo and a few days worth of sleeving!
Alllright. Painting has been, as it should be, a careful and time-consuming process. In my quest for maximum sleekness, I decided to sand down and repaint the back panel and a certain hard-headed pci-e bracket more than a couple of times. The high humidity combined with the frequent sand storms here make for a luck of the draw painting/drying experience.
Alls well though and I came prepared. After a few coats of the same pieces, the paint started getting pretty thick and didn't want to look quite like the other pieces. My response? Strip it, and start again. To which I did!
I've just finished with the second light coat on these stripped pieces and once they're dry, we're on to PSU sleeving.
Now that we've got the chassis all ready to go, it's time I tore down my current Antec 1200 build so I can snag the gear that'll be going into this build.
Once I got my old rig apart, out came the PSU and prep time. It's since had its first coat of white gloss enamel applied and is currently drying (pics in due time )
CAUTION: If you're into dirty dirty pics, continue on. If not, ... who am I kidding, you're gonna look anyways!
PSU sleeving, chassis assembly, custom cables, and more to come!
Update: It turns out dismantling an Antec 1200 proper takes two days. Fortunately, included in that time is thoroughly cleaning all blocks. Since this chassis will be making it's last journey to the dumpster, I'm scrapping all the fans, a couple hard drive bays, and all the hard drive bay covers. (I seriously have no reason to keep any of the above, but when it comes to computer parts/ scraps, I'm a packrat. Which brings me to my next point!)
Whilst putting some of the aforementioned items away, I came across a couple of 120mm Scythe Ultra Kaze fans (see ~140 cfm, 50 db). Normally this would bring a smile to my face as I long for the high cfm but then I cringe at the sound only compared to a Titan V rocket launching endlessly with no hope for booster separation. Why do I bring this up you ask? Fan controllers. BOOM. Apologies if I blew your mind. Bringing it back to the stream of thought, I've considered myself a student of air cooling for much longer than water cooling and even though I'll be doing the latter, I much prefer to properly manage the former at the same time. That is, maintain a proper air environment within the case, specifically a negative air pressure environment to reduce dust/ particle intake. Considering I'm using 8 of the Xigamatek Octagon fans @ 50cfm (4 intake, 4 outtake), I could very well leave it alone. What I really concerned about is the PSU outtake fan subtracting from my overall case air pressure, allowing dust to enter through crevices in the process. Enter the Scythe Ultra Kaze. At 3000rpm (and 50db), it's rated at 134 cfm (iirc). Fan controlled at 50%, or even a little lower, could offset the 140mm PSU fan I'm thinking. It's assigned position would be below the 5.25" bays right in front of the SSDs. We'll see how that one turns out. Honestly, on the grand scheme of important items, aesthetics and fan matching have just about equal weight as negative/ positive air pressure so I might just scratch that one off the list. Painting a Scythe fan isn't beyond my measures either though..
In other news: The PSU proved troublesome to paint. Acetone, varying grits of sandpaper, and a piece of tack cloth later gave me a really nice surface to put some paint on.
In other other news: A water cooling buddy of mine decided to go with a TJ07 for his new build and no longer had a need for 2 brand new Swifttech 120.3 rads and instead opted for a 120.4 and 140.2. I now have two more 120.3 rads! Is a tri/quad rad setup in my future or perhaps another build? We'll see!
ALSO: I'm still very indecisive on the bay device placement. I'd like to have the USB 3.0 and fan controller next to each other to have space for wire hiding/ management, and I'd ideally like to have the DVD/ res on the top.
Final parting shot for today. MOBO, 2 x GPU, Res 1 installed/ mock installed. They'll prolly come out a dozen times for wire length mockups/ placements.
Up next: PSU sleeving (really!), front and rear rad installation, and possibly some custom SATA cables being built!
So I got a chance to get some work done on the build. Wired and sleeved the front 3 rad fans together and mounted them with shortened 6-32 thread screws. Also got the new high wattage fan controller in and gave it a test run with a couple 3000rpm Scythe fans. The PSU is currently undergoing its sleeving treatment. That'll be a few sessions worth!
In other news: Everyone can say hello to my lovely girlfriend Jill, who decided to do a little OCF creeping herself
In the midst of sleeving, we'll take a break for updates
Ram heatsinks are drying with a few light coats of white glossy enamel and psu sleeves have been determined to look best with white plumbers tape coating the wires. In the comparison shot you can see a black wire sleeved with and without tape under. This sleeving is only temporary until my massive amount of MDPC-X sleeving arrives
For those who are curious, it's 1/8" Kobra 1/8' white sleeving and FCPU's generic 1/8" black heatshrink. I'm using needle-nose pliers to stretch the shrink and slide it over the sleeve. With a shrink ratio of 1:3, it tightens down nicely. Still though, all will be swapped out when mdpc-x's order comes in.
Update: Rear rad wired parallel and sleeved with UV blue 16 awg. Measured out to reach the fan controller in its bay up front. Rather than wire the fans like the front rad, I ran all three and soldered and heatshrunk underneath the rad to keep it out of sight. Once all the prep work was done, it's mounted nicely
Absolutely! And well, you know the saying, "idle hands are.." something, something, something. I can't stand to put the bare PSU in so might as well! Also, I'll be moving in a little more than a month so if it takes longer than that to get here, we'll be sleeving at the new location too!
Thanks! I thought about painting the rad so many times and decided yes then no then yes then no. At this point, I'm still wanting to balance out the minimal black accents to avoid washing it out in white. Not pictured is a 3.120 rad grill going on the front in white which'll keep the same white, black rad frame, white fans color theme from the rear rad. We'll see how it turns out. I'm not against painting a couple rads either!
Oh gotcha...Sounds like a nice idea.
I like the way you painted those ram heatsinks! Really clever.
You motivate me to start painting my cm690 II. I wanted to do a black and white build myself but never got to start with it.
Now I have a Maximus V Gene incoming so I'll have to change plans, not sure what I'll be doing with it, aesthetic wise that is
Alright. I've got a few ideas sketched up for custom stickers that'll be going on ram, PSU, GPU top bracket, and at least one SSD. Shown in the last pic is the one of the options on a ram size footprint.
Let me hear your pick! 1, 2, 3, 4, or other?
Also, as promised; pics of first MDPC-X order (SATA sleeve, SATA shrink).
In case you were wondering - Acqua is my DJ name, a nickname for my coworkers and friends, and a general style of artistic expression I've created over the years
Update: XSPC Raystorm CPU block in! and progress on PSU sleeving!
I've officially used three methods of concealing a wire's color; plumbers thread tape, white spray paint, and professional white electrical tape. I have got to say the professional white electrical tape is by far the easiest to work with and presents a clean and neat appearance. For large quantities of wire, the spray paints still reigns supreme, but for a few wires here and there, the electrical tape ranks higher in every regard.
ALSO, don't pull with the wrath of Zeus on the wires out of your 24 pin connector. You'll be soldering them back together like I did
In other sleeving related news: Mod/Smart seems to have seem me a 200' mini-spool of sleeving and 'accidentally' taped two pieces together. This cost me a couple feet of sleeve. And I also found heat shrinking a small piece over the connector and slicing ALMOST all the way along the length of it with a knife will give you a perfect connector guard while you sleeve. The same piece can be used over and over on many wires too!
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