And some final shots of the case itself, I really like the way it looks and glass blasting the acrylic made a really matte finish which hopefully will hide the single leds and give an even light throughout the acrylic.
Still need to cut slots in some of the acrylic to be able to install all the leds.
Also need to make something to hold the GPU's in place, i know what i want now so I just have to fabricate it.
Finally decided to go with circular mesh, the hex mesh i got was only 1mm thick aluminum and was not stable enough. This is the color i went with, gun metal gray. Will make a slight contrast to the black powder coating.
For quite a while I've been thinking about what to do for GPU supports, I've seen a few versions out there but nothing that would fit my mod. The biggest problem has been production time of something more complicated that i would have to mill or grind from aluminum. So when I finished another project of mine (homebuilt CNC router) I decided to put it into its first good use (haven't had time to use it since all my time has been spent on the case).
This is what i wanted but wouldn't have had time to complete without the router. Test mount straight after milling all three parts.
Glass blasted and painted. Also countersunk one side and threaded M5 threads into the rear of the aluminum.
Close up of the support
Now you are probably wondering how i will physically attach the gpu's to the support. Haven't had time to see if it works but there is no reason this shouldn't. You mount it from the rear of the support so the tab from the GPU go between the support and the "extra bit" Then you just turn the screws to pinch the tab from the GPU to the support.
Also tried some engraving, my gf wasn't happy with the font, placement, size and basically everything, but I like it, It's about 0.5mm deep
Also covers a extra hole in the case, although this won't be visible when the motherboard is installed but still a nice touch
Still needs a bit of filing to make it fit perfect.
Had to assemble the case in order to figure out where to drill holes in the mesh, so figured i would try to take a photo of the leds going at the same time, took around a 100photos before my gf snapped these two. It still doesn't show off the real red but it is awesome in my eyes
This is as low as it goes, if i crank it up all the way u won't see the case. Gonna check with some ppl if there is a solution to get this right for the final shots.
Getting close to the end of the Coolermaster competition! Have been very busy the last weekend, spent around 30hrs on the computer on saturday and sunday and had to take today off work just to get it up and running. Taking it to get photographed tomorrow so i can get some proper shots of it for the competition.
Anyways, gonna start with the parts. A lot of the parts are from my previous build but there are also new parts
Coolermaster test bench
Intel 3570K
Asus Maximus GENE-V
Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB 1600MHz
128gb OCZ Vertez 2 SSD
Corsair AX850 PSU
2 X Gainward GTX570
2 x Lamptron FC5 V2
4 x Schyte Gentle Typhoon
A lot of leds
Watercooling:
2 x EK-FC5X0 GTX GW Backplate - Black
2 x EK-RES X3 150
2 x EK-DDC X-TOP CSQ - Acetal
2 x EK-CoolStream RAD XT (240)
1 x EK-MOSFET ASUS M5G - Acetal + Nickel
1 x EK Supremacy cpu block
1 x EK Dual parallell sli block
2 x laing ddc pumps
A lot of EK fittings
Mayhem's Aurora tharsis red
Sleeved the led wires, the cat loves it
Installed in the acrylic
The lamptrons installed
Mounted the rads and the fans to an xspc rad mount, quite a tight fit, a little bit over 1mm to spare
Plumbing done on loop 1, was a bit more difficult than i first expected. Ignore the blue cables, resleeved them after
Had to check what it looked like with the Hyper212 that i've used during the build. Had to remove all the water cooling so i could get all the sizes right
So many cables, had to cut every cable and shorten them, they would not fit in the case as is.
Tried to get hold of some genuine CoolerMaster sticker but it was a lot harder than i expected. So contacted Coolermaster and got approved to make my own stickers. Was gonna go with normal stickers but due to the case is slightly textured it wouldn't look good so went with these polyurethane based "3D" stickers. Got a few different color combinations made so i could pick the one i liked the most. Big thanks to Mr Glasberg over at staffans.fi for making these priority 1 and making them in more or less a day
Assembled and more or less ready to go. Still have a lot to do but this will have to do for the competition.
Leak test ongoing
Did a compilation photo of the mod for the competition so thought i would post it here aswell.
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