imfaceroll Gaming Liquid Cooled PC Wthin a Cabinet!!

[imfaceroll]

www.youtube.com/user/imfacerollpcgaming
www.facebook.com/imfacerollgaming

Hello everyone and welcome to my new project log!

My first build was quite a success and got a lot of media attention. The build itself was a long but fun process and it just made me want to continue my PC modding hobby.

Please visit my Liquid cooled PC desk mod with built in car audio system here:
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1132057

After months of planning I have decided to continue on this path and go for another furniture build, this time inside of a display cabinet.
Please also follow my build log on YouTube where I will be uploading video progress throughout the duration of the build.

Main ideas:

• Colour scheme: Red and black
• Diamond plate sheet metal to line the inside of the cabinet for that industrial look
• Red and black acrylic elements
• A matt black finish on the cabinet and sheet metal to reduce the reflection and shine.
• A fully custom Water cooled loop
• Elevated platforms and fake walls to create neat cable management
• Custom made Acrylic gaming name
• Custom Interior lighting (RGB and sound active, will mostly use white)
• Custom fan grills
• Rigid acrylic tubing

Build Specs:

• MSI z97 gaming 7 motherboard
• Intel i7 4970k CPU
• Two MSI GTX 780ti graphics cards
• Avexir Blitz 1.1 16GB RAM (MSI red version)
• Corsair RM gold series 1000w power supply
• Asus xonar phoebus sound card
• ASUS PCE-AC68 Dual Band Wireless AC1900 PCI-E Adapter
• 2 x 4tb Western Digital black hard drives
• 4 x corsair force series SSD's two black two red (colour theme)

Before we jump ahead of our selves I would love to thank my sponsors for their generosity and for helping this build become a reality.

A big thank you to Dickos Extreme Computers for providing me with Some thermal paste, fan gaskets and help in general.
Visit his page at: https://www.facebook.com/DickosExtremeComputers
Store: http://stores.ebay.com.au/Dickos-Extreme

Thank you to Hank and the team at Performance PC's for providing me with two hard drive water blocks.
Visit the store at: http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php

Thank you to Avexir for sponsoring me with Avexir Blitz 1.1 16GB RAM (MSI red version).
Visit their website: http://www.avexir.com/

A big thanks to Chris and the MSI team for providing me with a MSI z97 gaming 7 motherboard.
Visit the site at: http://au.msi.com/

Thank you Shakmods for providing the Acrylic tubing, very generous.
Here is the shop: http://www.shakmods.com/

Thanks Icemodz for providing the awesome black and red sleeved cable extensions, they look amazing.
Visit the store online: http://www.icemodz.com/

Thank you Aqua Tuning for sending me out a radiator and reservoir, they will be very useful.
Visit: http://www.au.aquatuning.com/

And a big thank you to EK Water Blocks for providing all of my fittings and water blocks, great service and very generous, thank you.
Visit the online store: http://www.ekwb.com/

 

[imfaceroll]

www.youtube.com/user/imfacerollpcgaming
www.facebook.com/imfacerollpcgaming

My Liquid PC cabinet build idea started from the love of turning furniture into PC builds, my desk build was a success and I had a lot of positive feedback from the community. The thrill out of creating something you enjoy and sharing it with everyone and receiving all of the positive feedback helps me to continue doing what I love.

So.. This cabinet I am actually planning to fix up and refurbish. I was out shopping with my girlfriend and we came across a second hand shop. The cabinet was there looking very old, run down and it needed some fixing up. I was able to reduce the price to $15 from 35$ due to a broken lock. First site of this cabinet I thought to myself 'I could create a very nice build out of this', so the process begins =).

This is the cabinet as it looked when I bought it, I did clean it and dust it before the photo.

The back of the cabinet was stained, cracked in places and had lost most of the nails holding the MDF wood onto it, so i went out and purchased some new 3mm MDF to cut out a new backing for the cabinet.

I thought of the idea of lining the inside walls of the cabinet with this diamond plated metal sheeting, it would create a nice industrial look, provide more stability and support for the cabinet and serve as some fake walls/elevated platforms to route cables through. The sheet metal will be painted matt black along with the cabinet to reduce glare/shine and reflection.

I thought I would show you guys some sketches I did, as you can see I am a terrible artist but you get the idea. These are some rough ideas I have came up with, however, of course plans don't always turn out the way you thought they would and changes are more than likely to be made.

I hope this build has caught your interest, please stay tuned for updates and progress shortly. Thanks

 

[imfaceroll]

Hey everyone, sorry for the slow update, I have been waiting a while for some parcels to come in the mail so my girlfriend and I were able to take some photos for you guys.

As always, it is nice to see what items are going into a build so here are some photos.

Here are some shots of the gorgeous MSI z97 Gaming 7 motherboard as well as 2 MSI gtx 780ti's.

The items arrived in very nice and stylish packaging so I had to show them off!!

I love the extra detail that MSI has included into these products

Storage wise, I have gone with 4 force series SSD's by corsair to keep the nice red and black theme going. As you can see in the picture I have purchased two red 128gb and two black 120gb. As for HDD space I have gone with two 2tb HDD's by seagate, these HDD's will be covered with a black HDD water block more for asthetics.

Fittings have been provided by EK water blocks, asthetics wise they look really nice. I have gone with the black fittings and a red coolant. My water blocks are also black to stick with in the MSI red and black colour theme.

Air flow and cooling is a big part of this build but I love to stick with a colour theme and I try to keep it looking great. I have chosen to use the Bitfenix Spectre Pro PWM led fans, they look great and I can under volt them for silent operation. Why steer away from a great product when they offer fan controllers as well.

In the build I will be using two radiators and 3 reservoirs. Aqua-tuning has kindly provided me with two Phobya 360 radiators and a Phobya 250 reservoir to get things started. Shakmods have also jumped on board and provided the rigid acrylic tubing for this project.

The CPU I have chosen for this build is nun other than the i7 4790k. Its stock speed is 4.0ghz with a boost of 4.4ghz, it has 4 cores and 8 threads of gaming goodness, and of course this beast will be over clocked.

To power all of this awesomeness we are going to need a decent and efficient power supply. I have chosen to go with a 1000w gold RM series power supply by corsair.

Memory is being supplied by Avexir, they are sending me out the Blitz 1.1 series RAM with the MSI dragon on the side so that could not have been a better choice for this build. I will put a photo up when they arrive.

So these are the general items that the PC build will be based around, I have came up with a few more ideas for the build but i will save them for a later update, as always please comment and stick around to see more progress in the upcoming days, Thanks.

 

[manofthem]

Oh so much hardware-sexiness! Looking forward to more

 

[HammerON]

Sub'd

 

[XSI]

well from zero to hero...have you heard that? as i was watching your first mod, you were newbie right? i'm following pc industry for 7 years and was completely blown away with you first project (probably couldnt do better in my dreams), keep it commin

 

[imfaceroll]

well from zero to hero...have you heard that? as i was watching your first mod, you were newbie right? i'm following pc industry for 7 years and was completely blown away with you first project (probably couldnt do better in my dreams), keep it commin

Wow thanks mate I appreciate that a lot. Yea the desk was my very first pc build, I did countless hours of studying up to build it because I had no idea at all how to put a PC together haha. Thanks mate =)

 

[erixx]

Congrats! For sure a sponsor-witch you are!

Apple will never contact you.... But IKEA maybe will ! hahaha!

 

[imfaceroll]

Hey guys, finally back from holidays with the girl friend and i had a big parcel waiting for me. Finally with components arriving we can start getting some good progress on the build. I am still waiting for the acrylic to create some designs with laser/CNC machine but i wont give too much away. I have worked on the cabinet but i am limited to what i can do until i get the acrylic and my LED lights.

Here is my parcel:

As i said before, i have some progress with the cabinet itself but i will hold off on showing that to you guys for a few days just incase i receive the acrylic and LED lights shortly so i can show you guys more progress. If i dont receive them shortly then i will post the build updates very soon, so please keep an eye out for it =).

 

[micropage7]

woooow...
you make me jealous
d#mn, it should be better than i expect

 

[Ja.KooLit]

two words. wow and jealous lol.

looking forward for final build

 

[imfaceroll]

two words. wow and jealous lol.

looking forward for final build

Thanks mate im glad you enjoy it, let me know if you like my ideas or I can improve on anything, I am always open to suggestions =)

 

[imfaceroll]

Hey guys, you have now seen some ideas that I have with the cabinet build so now I would love to start from the beginning and show you some progress I have made. Please feel free to leave suggestions, I always love to take on-board what the community thinks. Please enjoy.

As always I would love to highlight the build before I modify it, I try to show everyone the different views of the cabinet to show you guys what I am trying to achieve. As you can see below it is just an ordinary run down display cabinet.

I hope the community can see the potential in this build from viewing every angle to gain a perspective of what I am trying to achieve.

 

[imfaceroll]

Hey everyone, today was time to disassemble the cabinet parts that we don't need and begin modding.

In the picture above, I have removed the glass door. On the left of the cabinet you can see that there is also a wooden part to the door. I do not want this there because it will eventually be blocking our awesome components. So my plan is to make a new glass door for the build.

For the glass door above I am debating whether i should remove the current glass from the wooden part and replace it with a longer piece to cover the full frontage of the cabinet, or whether to ditch that door all together and go full glass (which I am leaning towards). This is not a major issue at the moment and can wait until a future date.

In order for my components to fit perfectly, I had to drill another hole for the shelving to sit on. The power supply was around 1cm to big.

As you can see above, the cabinet had a wall and some black rails in the main section. The wall has been removed to make room for the components to fit.

With all of the prep work complete, it was time to start some cut outs. This was done by drilling a hole in each corner of the cut out and using a jigsaw. As you can see it still needs sanding, but you get the idea. The motherboard will sit in this position. (See below)

The motherboard tray fits perfectly. The inside of the main section of the cabinet will be lined in a diamond plated sheet metal. The metal is currently very shiny but I plan to paint the whole thing a matte black which will reduce any glare/reflection which some may find distracting. I love the feel and texture of the diamond plated sheets and I believe it will tie in very nicely to this build.

Below I have measured up the dimensions of the cabinet and I plan on using a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade to complete the cutting process. (I am limited with tools).

And this is the result below. I still need to file down the edges of the metal but you get the idea.

Test fitting the motherboard tray.

Thank you for following my build, progress should be up within a few days. Please leave a comment below =)

 

[XSI]

those plates looks really nice

 

[The Von Matrices]

I hope you aren't planning to use those Bitfenix fans for the radiators. I own a few of them and they deliver almost zero static pressure. When I tried to use them in my case they were barely sucking any air through a mesh air filter. They only do well when airflow is completely unrestricted, such as for the case exhaust.

 

[imfaceroll]

I hope you aren't planning to use those Bitfenix fans for the radiators. I own a few of them and they deliver almost zero static pressure. When I tried to use them in my case they were barely sucking any air through a mesh air filter. They only do well when airflow is completely unrestricted, such as for the case exhaust.

Yea these fans are for show. I have a grill which I am placing at the front of the cabinet which these bitfenix fans will be attached to. Their static pressure is 1.24. This is ok but definatly not the best performance wise. My radiators will be hidden so they will be getting some good performing fans on them which still offer low/silent opperation.

 

[imfaceroll]

Hey everyone, this week I have made quite some progress. More cut outs have been done and I have also created a fan controller and switch holder. Here are the progress images.

This week I had to complete some of the more finer cut outs. I decided to go out and purchase a dremel as I recommend any modder should have. It makes life so much easier.

I also spent some time cutting out some acrylic pieces which would sit under my HDD's and SSD's to create a nice red glow around the edges. The acrylic still needs to be wet sanded.

I received my air brush kit in the mail this week and I am debating whether or not I should use it with the build, more updates on that in the future.

With the build I plan on using the bitfenix spectre pro PWM LED fans for show and on the inside of the cabinet I am putting some Noctua PWM on the radiators. This is due to the fact that bitfenix fans are terrible radiator fans and I hate the look of the Noctua fans.

Because there are a few PWM fans I would like to control their speeds with fan controllers for near silent operation. I have created a small fan controller box out of MDF which will also hold my power/reset switches and my LED light switches.

Below you can see each cut out I made to create the box holder, these were cut out with a jigsaw.

Test fitting the fan controllers and switches on the face plate of the box.

I have limited access to tools so I use what ever is laying around to get the job done. Two pieces of wood will hold it together while the glue drys.

While it was drying it was time to move onto the cabinet. This box will be holding the fan controllers and switches so I needed to create a cut out in the top of the cabinet to allow for wires and fan cables to route through.

Next step of the build was to create a door at the back of the cabinet so that I had access to cables just in case one came loose or I needed to configure something. The MDF also provides some stability support for the cabinet in general.

The new backing is 3mm MDF and I have routed it in 3mm so it is flush with the edges.

With the dremel I cut out a square door. I attached some hinges and a latch to make sure it stays closed.

My last update for the week was to create a slot in the back of the cabinet on the second level so that cables from the power supply could route down from the second level, down in between the door I made and the sheet metal.

Thank you for following my build. Updates are usually done weekly. Please leave a comment and let me know what you like or what you think I could do to improve the build. Thank you everyone for your support.

 

[imfaceroll]

This is my first PC cabinet progress video, everything up to date. Please check it out. My cam recorder died half way through so I had to use my phone but please ignore that and enjoy =)

 

[PainfulByte]

My soul burns with raging envy and impossibly quantifiable jealousy.

I feel like throwing a tantrum right about now.

 

[imfaceroll]

My soul burns with raging envy and impossibly quantifiable jealousy.

I feel like throwing a tantrum right about now.

haha thanks man xD

 

[imfaceroll]

Hey everyone, sorry it has been a while since I last posted. We finally received our last package in the mail so we have made some nice progress. This should be my last update before we paint the build so please enjoy.

In the photo below I have roughly drawn my msi dragon in place so that I could make sure my led lights fit nicely behind it. The 3 cut outs will each hold a pulsating red bitspower RAM mod LED. I still need to sand them back.

Below is a fluorescent red acrylic cut out of the msi dragon. The one on the right is snapped and is just going to be used as a test fitter. This dragon will sit over the holes we cut out and the LED lights will illuminate it when they pulse.

What I have done below is cut out the msi dragon from some 3mm thick sheet metal. This metal dragon is slightly smaller than the red acrylic dragon. The metal will sit on top of the acrylic so that only the edges are pulsating a nice red colour. The dragon will be painted black.

We also have some custom msi fan grills which have been created from 3mm sheet metal, I am very happy with the final result. These grills will be painted black.

These fan grills however do not fill the whole gap in the shelve where the radiators sit so I have created a quick boarder to fill in the gap.

So back to the cabinet. On the top of the cabinet you can see I have created another casing. This will house another reservoir on the top of the desk. I will be placing a clear piece of acrylic as a window over it. Because it is the highest point of the loop it would also make a nice place to place a fill port.

A few weeks back I shared with you my idea of creating the raised platform to route my cables under for neat cable management. Here is what it looks like.

And as you can see, I have cut some slots in all of my metal sheeting for all of the cables to route through. We should have some pretty neat cable management =)

Hopefully by this time next week we will have the cabinet painted and then i can start putting components inside and get some acrylic tubes into the build. 1 thing I will still need to do is drill some holes through the top and shelves of the cabinet so that I can route my tubing through. I will also have another cabinet progress video released very soon but for now you can watch the first progress video to get up to speed with the build. Thanks

 

[Toothless]

All that MSI hardware.. So beautiful.

 

[imfaceroll]

All that MSI hardware.. So beautiful.

haha i 100% agree with you there =)

 

[imfaceroll]

Hey everyone, I finally got around to painting the cabinet a nice matte black colour. My MSI dragon has also been stuck onto the side of the cabinet and it looks great.

All that is left to do is:

1. Install components
2. Drill two 13mm holes for my tubing to route through up to the top shelf
3. Screw in my radiator mounts and PSU mount
4. Attach custom 5.25' box to cabinet and make plexi window for res cover
5. Bend the acrylic tubing
6. Connect wires
7. Fill the loop/leak test
8. Overclock
9. GET SOME GAMING HAPPENING

Here is where the cabinet is at.

I have installed my water blocks kindly supplied by EK Water Blocks.

As a few of you may know, my desk PC was painted in my dads spray booth at work. This time It was painted in our garage with the air spray gun. The paint job turned out amazing.

Here is the prep work:

The images below were taken with my phone son I apologise for the bad quality. These were taken just after the paint work was finished.

The paint finally dried and i was able to install the MSI dragon. I Glued the metal and the red acrylic dragon together then glued the dragon to the side of the cabinet.

Here is how the paint work and dragon turned out, It looks amazing:

This is the cabinet up to date. Next update i hope to have all of the components installed and hopefully some of the acrylic tubing installed.
Thank you for showing some interest in the build and let me know what you think =)