Project Thief - CaseLabs TX10-D Dual Workstation/Gaming Build - Gulftown and SB-E

[f22a4bandit]

This is a really clean build in progress, Stren. I'm glad you've shared the build with us here on TPU!

[radrok]

Originally Posted by stren

So I'd been suffering wrist pain after pulling 20 hour days working on CAD stuff. This isn't unusual when I'm forced to use a bad mouse or a bad setup, but my trusty G5 on a bare desk wasn't cutting it. I decided to try a "gaming" mousepad and thought I'd check out a razer deathadder while I was doing it. After a few weeks of it I actually prefer the feel of it despite the construction feeling less sturdy and having less features than my trusty G5. The G5 now gets relegated to the gaming rig as I game less than I work

http://i.imgur.com/Y507rl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KCbi5l.jpg

Also parts for my lightsabre came in

http://i.imgur.com/cjtCXl.jpg

Man I wish you the best with your Razer mouse, atleast I hope you won't be unlucky like me, had to RMA my Naga 3 times, just gave up using it

[Drugsh]

FAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKK......awesum case
All the best for your future plans

[stren]

Originally Posted by f22a4bandit

This is a really clean build in progress, Stren. I'm glad you've shared the build with us here on TPU!

Thanks

Originally Posted by radrok

Man I wish you the best with your Razer mouse, atleast I hope you won't be unlucky like me, had to RMA my Naga 3 times, just gave up using it

Yeah I've heard some bad things with them so I was wary to try try them. It does feel like it will break, but so far so good hopefully I'll get lucky because I like the shape - I wouldn't mind if it was a bit bigger though (I have large hands)

Originally Posted by Drugsh

FAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKK......awesum case
All the best for your future plans

Thanks

[stren]

Tease mode activated

A box arrived



You said flap



The largest usb flash drives known to man and some awesome sauce:



Sometimes the front view is better than the back:



Opening a door:



Socket 2011 is bigger than I thought:



Inside the box is two more boxes:



- Curiously only a 2x CFX cable, but yet 2/3/4x SLI cables
- The sata 6gbps cables are black with partly white connectors as opposed to full black for the rest of the cables.
- The OC key that plugs inline with your monitor doesn't support high res monitors - bit of a fail there Asus. Shouldn't affect me as I can use the USB cable from my other rig anyway
- It would be nice if the back of the backplate was also black rather than the shiny tin foil like other boards



And the last tease for the night:

[theJesus]

Originally Posted by stren

- It would be nice if the back of the backplate was also black rather than the shiny tin foil like other boards

It really surprises me that most boards nowadays don't come with both plain and black I/O plates, considering the amount of all-black cases on the market. I spray-painted mine.

[H 3 L L S M A N]

Originally Posted by stren

The largest usb flash drives known to man and some awesome sauce:

I really wanted to get that one when I saw it looks awsome, but I had gotten the Corsair Voyager 3.0 16Gb so stuck with that for now.

[stren]

Originally Posted by theJesus

It really surprises me that most boards nowadays don't come with both plain and black I/O plates, considering the amount of all-black cases on the market. I spray-painted mine.

I know right? ROG go so far to make things different and consistent (i.e. custom colored sata cables etc), I'm really surprised they don't offer this.

Originally Posted by H 3 L L S M A N

I really wanted to get that one when I saw it looks awsome, but I had gotten the Corsair Voyager 3.0 16Gb so stuck with that for now.

To be honest I knew nothing about these, got them free with the RAM. First flash drive that I've seen that is rated for 300m underwater though lol. They are large though.

[stren]

Had some time for another photo session seeing as the cpu doesn't get here for a few days:

Took the board out:





Took the ram out, seems to be the fastest I've seen at 1.5V with 4GB sticks.



Installed the ram, note that the polarity is reversed on each side, which makes sense if they flipped the pinout on the chip.



The paint job on the fins wasn't that even - some sticks definitely got more coverage:



Time to take off the heatsink in preperation for the EK full cover block:



Only the VRM area had thermal pads on the back and front of the heatsink:



Looks like Asus have moved away from that horrible yellow TIM they had on the R3E:



The VRM area with heatsink removed:

[radrok]

Awesome stren, which EK full cover are you going to put?

[stren]

Originally Posted by radrok

Awesome stren, which EK full cover are you going to put?

The plexi nickel version. I know plexi is bad for the long term, but I can't resist the occasional dye for at least the show photos and LANs lol.

Also getting the plexi nickel ram blocks.

[radrok]

Plexi holds on rather good if it is high quality, of course it's not pom delrin or acetal but if you are going to fill your loop with some fancy mayhem coolant it's going to be wicked
I hope you are going to host LANs in your house because traveling with that case would need an helicopter backup

[stren]

Originally Posted by radrok

Plexi holds on rather good if it is high quality, of course it's not pom delrin or acetal but if you are going to fill your loop with some fancy mayhem coolant it's going to be wicked
I hope you are going to host LANs in your house because traveling with that case would need an helicopter backup

Lol yeah I know - I can't actually fit the assembled case in my car, so I may need a friend with a truck lol.

Also a big thanks to CaseLabs for officially sponsoring this build! I love CaseLabs and I'm very proud to be working with them on this. I will be doing my best to make this as epic as they are.

[user21]

Freakishly sexillent work there

[stren]

Originally Posted by user21

Freakishly sexillent work there

Thanks


Chip arrived, motherboard and ram blocks don't come until tomorrow though.

SSD is actually for my wife's rig. I don't have an ssd on my gaming rig. I only use it for games so I wouldn't see that much benefit from a boot drive. I use my workstation for web browsing etc as it's on all the time. I'd need a 512gb drive or so to cover my games, so I'm waiting for prices to come down more



Batch on the 3930K is 3152B448, we'll see how it clocks soon

[stren]

Suddenly a wild EK party!



Nickel plexi because I want to run some red dye (on special occasions only for all you dye haters out there)



Finished cleaning the TIM off the south bridge only to find a piece of tin foil with more TIM underneath. Weird.



Pretty easy to install when the block is in two parts, the single piece blocks are much harder:



VRM area:



Full board:



and one more:



That's all for now

[radrok]

Everytime I see a set of Dominator GTs sticks on a Rampage I always get a hard, sorry for being explicit

[stren]

Originally Posted by radrok

Everytime I see a set of Dominator GTs sticks on a Rampage I always get a hard, sorry for being explicit

Haha np, it's good to know people like it. Now I'm adding in the ram blocks. Not sure if it looks better or worse than the red heatsinks. Just try to imagine some red dye going through the acrylic blocks.

The fittings aren't the final ones, just more for planning. I'm working with Monsoon free to see if something special will make the tube routing super clean





the ram blocks remind me of battersea power station:



Now adding in the gpu makes it look ugly and busy The copper and green pcb really don't match. I called a nickel plating company to get a quote on plating both copper GPU blocks and it was $175 for both! So that's not going to happen. I may switch to the other acetal/copper block and paint the edge of the copper silver. I have another idea for the PCB



Much better with the gpu off again

[stren]

No comments TPU? Man I should stop giving you updates


Soo like I mentioned before I really didn't like the green/copper look clashing with the black/red R4E theme:



So I started to paint the GPU with liquid tape - first coat:



So here's how it looks now after two coats on both sides:



You can see some of the texture here, liquid tape is hard to work with - either annoyingly thick, or very thin and see through:



From this angle the texture isn't as bad:



However it would look a lot better with a backplate, I'm thinking something like this, smoked acrylic with an etch and a couple of LEDs to light it from the side:



What do you guys think? Feel free to photoshop up your own suggestions

[HammerON]

Nice build log
I think the gpu would look a lot better with a backplate. Your concept looks pretty cool
Sub'd

[t_ski]

I would agree with HammerON. I thought the liquid tape was kinda weird looking, and think it would be better with the backplate.

[micropage7]

last flap to awesome? cool

[stren]

Originally Posted by HammerON

Nice build log
I think the gpu would look a lot better with a backplate. Your concept looks pretty cool
Sub'd

Thanks - I just need to make it (or find someone with a powerful enough laser)

Originally Posted by t_ski

I would agree with HammerON. I thought the liquid tape was kinda weird looking, and think it would be better with the backplate.

Yeah I agree too

Originally Posted by micropage7

http://i.imgur.com/B84Ajl.jpg
last flap to awesome? cool

Haha, I guess newegg are trying to be cool



The temporary parts came in to see if I could get some clean routing for the motherboard/ram/gpu loop:



However it didn't quite work as expected- I couldn't get the 40mm extensions to work with the 5 way rotary snake, however a SLI connector did fit.



Now I'm not sure whether to:
- get two more sli connectors (I need this one)
- use two compression fittings instead
- get two of the bitspower crystal sli links to match better

What do you guys think?

I should probably go with the cheapest as I'm hoping monsoon free's new design will solve the problem for me.

[t_ski]

I personally don't like the rotary snakes and I would rather see a 90-degree fitting off the ram blocks with tubing that criss-crosses to 45-degree fittings on the Mosfet block. And if you know anything about me, I am a stickler about short tubing runs, but I just hate the rotary snakes that much.

Was the 40mm extension too short or something? I know Enzotech makes their extensions in different lengths - maybe you could add a couple together to make it work?

[stren]

Originally Posted by t_ski

I personally don't like the rotary snakes and I would rather see a 90-degree fitting off the ram blocks with tubing that criss-crosses to 45-degree fittings on the Mosfet block. And if you know anything about me, I am a stickler about short tubing runs, but I just hate the rotary snakes that much.

Was the 40mm extension too short or something? I know Enzotech makes their extensions in different lengths - maybe you could add a couple together to make it work?

Yeah I hear you - The length was right - there might have been a just a slight lateral difference that the snake couldn't make. However the main problem was trying to tighten the snake onto the extension - the last rotary section is harder to turn than the 45 degree one before it, so it twists the snake instead of screwing on. I gave up as I don't have sturdy enough pliers to grip it without ripping up the fitting.

Adding an inline rotary like this might fix it though:



One reason I didn't want to do the crossover thing was because the CPU loop will probably come out from there to go up to the roof to the 140.9. But yes the end result may be cleaner.