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project M8 (CaseLabs M8 workstation build)

p0Pe

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Hello there, and welcome to project M8!​

The idea:
The idea came when i first saw a post on overclock.net, where a person named Jim showed some prototype pictures of a new case lineup. The company he started was named CaseLabs, and they specialize in high end enthusiast watercooling cases. I knew that this was a case that was build to house a HUGE watercooling system, and wanted to see how far i could push it. Jim was generous enough to offer sending one of his cases all the way to Denmark for me to play with!

The watercooling:
I will put a lot of time into creating a watercooling loop that is simple, silent and easy to fill and bleed. My latest project PC-Beto had its flaws with the watercooling, one being that it was compact, and components was pretty tight screwed together.

Components:
Case:
CaseLabs M8

watercooling:
3*360 mm radiator
2*laing d5 vario pumps
Bitspower fittings

More components will follow as i figure out what to put in:)

And now, lets get to the fun part! This project is going to progress slow since school and other stuff is taking up a lot of time, but i will try to update it on a regular basis! But on to some pictures, since half of you dont read this anyway:D

Enjoy!

Full review of the case:
http://www.itrends.dk/31638/

First, some pictures of the case itself:








As you can see the case is absolutely HUGE and will have plenty of room for loads of watercooling and hardware!



I will be using this combo of pumps and bitspower fittings, and the first update you will see sometime next week will be the mounting of the two pumps to the radiator.



This combo will sit in the psu compartment in the bottom.



Still havent decided weather to use the EK reservoir, or to make one myself. (am i the only one that think that picture want to dance with me?)



For ease of acces, i will use these awsome QD´s. They are 100 times better to work with than other QD´s you can get, and only spill about 1 drop when disconnected.



And just to give you a clue to what the general theme will look like :D

I hope you will enjoy this project, and i sure look forward sharing it with you!

-p0Pe

A great thank goes out to the sponsors of this project, Jim from caselabs for sending me the case, Vincent from bitspower for providing me a huge load of fittings, and Daniel from Coolbits for providing watercooling parts!





 
D

Deleted member 24505

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My mate has a MM UFO2 and this case is miiiiiiles better than the MM crap. I love how it comes with all the stuff it should do, 5.25" blankers etc, his MM case came with feck all.

I will keep my eye on this, i want to see what you do with that lovely case.
 

t_ski

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InnocentCriminal

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Love work logs!

:D

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Who makes those QDs? Where do you get them from?
 

p0Pe

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Subbed.

Who makes those QDs? Where do you get them from?

You can get the from aquatuning :)
http://www.aquatuning.de/index.php/cat/c671_CPC.html

only bad thing is that they are quite expensive:D

Man... I am behind schedule before I have begun lol! Just got a call today that i cant use the schools machine shop before after the easter vacation -.- The plan was to machine the pump holder today, but i guess that have to wait :(

But to give you something to look at, here is the design for the pump holder:


Could be doable with a hacksav, and some files but i also cant get the material before after easter -.-
 
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p0Pe

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And it begins! :D



Remember this? That was the project of the day:)

First, i had to mill down a 10 mm alu plate, since i did not have any 5 mm lol! Then bolting them together, and went to war with the mill.



As you can see, i just printed out the cad drawing, and used that as reference.



And on it went. Luckily this mill got "autopilot" so that I can just set it to move at a certain speed, and comfortably take my pictures.



For the detailed parts, I had to use a smaller bit, and then just fill the edges.



Finished middle pieces. The one on the right have been glasblasted, but will need to have another go.



And this is how they mount on the pumps.



And how they mount on the radiator! I will put some rubber pieces under each end to dampen vibrations. Once all of this is mounted I should have a great pump setup:D



And the finished result. Only need to weld it, and then grind it down again, give it another go in the sandblaster and maybe paint it, yet to be decided:D

I must apologize for the lack of updates, but exams are coming up at school, and there is quite a few things to do :)
 

InnocentCriminal

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p0Pe

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Well, as the previous alu stands failed duo to not being "weldable" I decided to make some of 6 mm steel! This will provide better rigity, and I made them look better this time!


A picture of the failed alu welds.


Used the old stands as reference, and then bolted them together.


These are the new ones, with the old alu one to the left.


And again, new versus old.

I am going to make the support rods tomorrow, and hopefully get it welded too! Lets hope second time is the charm lol.
 

p0Pe

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And welding and filling done! After my .cad exam I picked this up from the workshop. A buddy had welded it in the meantime, and I went straight home and put the pumps on:D


How it looks in its full scale, mounted on the radiator. Did I mention that it is sturdy as hell!?


A close up of the milling. I also countersunk the screw holes for good looks:)


Had to fill about 2 mm off the Bitspower crystal link to get it to fit, but now its like a glove!


Cant decide what color I am going to paint it, but I think that white might be the choice!

Hope you like the end result here:) Now its on to the top!
 

p0Pe

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OK, time for the update!

As you might have noticed by looking at my previous mod, PC-Beto, I like to have tidy cable routing in the case. This will be no different.

The plan is to get a fully modular PSU, and make every cable that have to go to the motherboard, go behind the mobo tray.
To do this, I will be using a 3D printer.

Now, all the haters that sometimes crawl up from their holes yelling "bwuuhuuh CNC machining is killing modding, and it have nothing to do with creativity" better slam their head against a wall and GTFO beacuse this machine is EPIC!



What you see in this picture is the part almost completet with support material at the bottom, and the actual plastic 3d print on top. It is obvious that you cant print into thin air, so it needs some sort of support structure in certain places. Other than that, it works almost just like a normal printer, exept that it prints in multiple layers to give the third dimension.



The finished part, this particular part took 5 hours to print. I could have cut the time down by having set the density of the printet material to 75 percent, but I wanted it to be sturdy.



And this is what I will actually be using it for! Routing the 24 pins cables.



On the backside the cables will run and join with cables from grafic cards and 8 pins, that I have yet to design. Note, this is mearly a prototype, and not likely to look anything like the final version, I just wanted to see if the concept would work, and it most certainly does!



Now, I will have to do some milling into the motherboard plate to make it fit perfectly, and a cover plate will go onto the whole section.



Also wanted to see how it looks when painted black. I need to fill the part down better beacuse you can still see the different layers from the printer. To make it entirely smooth, I have to hit it with some sanding love.



You can also tap it (pun intended)



How the white version would look,



And the black. I think I will stick with black. It seems to fit in the best with the white wirering.

And on another note, I sold my three 360 mm radiators! Replacements should be here within two weeks, and boy am I exited to get them!

Now, back to the drawing board. I have a few cosy hours infront of the computer in a 3d program to kill to finish up the cads to the cable system! And the a few days of printing lol:D

Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
 
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Loved your Pete opus mod and really liking where this is going.
 

Bo$$

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I thought your PC-BETO mod was really good!
this looks epic, although i see there is a lot of finer thinking
 

p0Pe

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Thank you bo$$! I hope you will enjoy the final cable manegement system;) I know i sure am:D
 
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Damn the auto fill option that should read pc beto
 
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wow its gonna be a cool project
 

p0Pe

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whats up w/ all europeans seeming to have access to machining equipment.

Dont you know? Every european gets a machine park when they turn 16 :roll:
On a more serious not, All of the machines is at my school:) But everyone can get acces to these machines. Where there is will, there is a way:D

wow its gonna be a cool project

Thank you man! I am glad you think so:)
 

p0Pe

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Print done!!! Could not wait to get off at work and pick this up:D I had to drive out to the school this morning to start it up beacuse I did not trust that the guy before me had startet the next print in line, and I was right:D



But first of all, I would like to introduce my new psu for this build! Got this one unused from a mate! This puppy should provide plenty of power for the components that will go in, and I highly doubt that I will EVER max it out lol!



Now this is the "not so pritty" part that I want to do something too. Even if sleeved this IMO looks bad.



A thing that I am not to fond of with the case is the round holes in the back and inside. Its a square case, so it need square parts :p



Again, to show the plugs.



But now for the fun stuff!!! Cant tell you how glad I was to see this:p



Parts as they looked in the machine. You can clearly see the brown stuff that is the support material, and the actual "white" stuff that is the plastic.



I printed 6 parts that would tell me if I had all the measurements correct.



Just to show the scale of the parts, here is a picture of some of the stuff. You can see that the printer prints 4 layers per milimeter!



After breaking off the support material, the parts are ready for use! These were easy, but most of the other parts will under normal circumstances need to be put into an acid bath for 10 hours or so.



The two plates you saw before will be put together and mounted here. I need to finish the design and print two more. I have a certain plan to pimp these up further:D They simply "click" together which is very usefull:D



And a shot from the inside.



This is the most important part, so let me show you how I want it to work.
The plan is to take the plugs for the psu, and mount them in this part.



To hold the peices in place, I made a part looking like this to "clamp" into the plug.



This basicly works by keeping the plug pressed up against the other side, where it is fastened in a 1 mm hole as you can see on the pwnzor paint drawing above. The blue part is the "clamp" and the green is the main plug. The black is of course the 8 pin GFX plug that goes into the psu.



This is the place where the clamp goes in, after the 8 pins have been insertet.



And this is how it looks insertet. I can tell you that it will NEVER come out.. And how do I know this? Beacuse this is a test piece, and I need to get that plug out again-.-



And last but not least, This is a preview of how it will look on the psu itself. Please note that this is not how the final version will look! Final version is much bigger, much smarter, and very clever if I have to say it myself:D

Just need to go back and readjust the tolerances on the drawing to make some more room for the plugs. They were not exactly easy to get inthere:D

Hope you enjoyd this update! Stay tuned for the finished part soon!
 

p0Pe

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3 more photo´s because I just got it fittet:D I need to take 0.25 mm off the "clamp" plates. But that is already done, and the main part will be printet tomorrow:D









I will be back tomorrow morning:D
 
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