Project: Sapphire Stretched ‘n’ Shiny Cooler Master Wavemaster x1.5

[snailmods]

Project: Sapphire Stretched ‘n’ Shiny Cooler Master Wavemaster x1.5



Following the CeBIT consumer technology show in March Hannover, Germany this year. I was lucky enough to display Case mods on both the Cooler Master stand & also the Sapphire Tech stand. The after show booth party at Sapphire got a little messy as the following images suggest, eek! The two Cooler Master girls were spot on in looking after us politely of course. But on the whole the experience is always a good one, even six years on!

Sapphire Tech after seeing a photo of a Stretched ‘n’ Shiny Wavemaster that I was working on in the background as a long term fill in project, they suddenly asked if they could use the unfinished chassis as a display case mod at this years Gadget Show Live event at the N.E.C in Birmingham next month.
They felt it had a striking presents against some of the latest case mods in Satin black around at the moment. The Shiny Sleek Wavemaster x1.5 does tend to stand out somewhat and attract attention. All depends on your own preference I suppose?

Specifications for the new case mod are as follows
Project: Sapphire Stretched ‘n’ Shiny Cooler Master Wavemaster x1.5


Case – Heavily modified Cooler master Wavemaster x1.5 stock height
Motherboard - Sapphire Tech Pure Black P67 hydra (CI7S42P67)
Graphic’s – 2x Sapphire HD 6970 2GB GDDR5
CPU – Intel i5 2500 3.3GHz
Memory – Kingston Hyper-X Genesis 8GB
Hard Drive – O/S Kingston 96GB V+100 2.5" SATA-II SSD
Storage – Samsung Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB
PSU – Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W
Water cooling Blocks & Radiators - EK Water blocks
Water cooling Fittings – Bitspower
Case moddding & water cooling accessories – SpecialTech PC Cooling Solutions

Before I go into the opening couple of paragraphs, a real special thanks has to go out to all the manufacturers & e-tailors that have very kindly supported this project & made it a reality.

Not one to turn down a challenge I accepted the very tight deadline for the case mod.
The idea to Stretch a Wavemaster chassis was purely down to hardware constraints in an old style midi type chassis’s of day gone bye.
I still think this is one of the best cases that Cooler Master have produced, it’s solid aluminium throughout, with the only plastic part being the on/off & reset buttons + mounting plate.
The Wavemaster looks tall & sleek by being extended by ½ its height again in my opinion. Extending the case to 1.5x its original size offers some many different modding & cooling solutions as well & probably more importantly to be able to use the latest hardware available.

More coming soon, thanks for looking.

 

[snailmods]

Making the half sized chassis

Making the half sized chassis​

This all took a little imagine & thought in planning out the complete layout of the case mod & especially the bottom half where most of the water cooling hardware & PSU will reside nicely out of sight.

Stage 1 – The first thing that I done was making the half sized chassis to fit the original Wavemaster case onto. I’ve spent a good while cutting a mild steel frame. I’ve mitred the angle iron for a neater job as I’m no hardcore welder! Spent several hours in the garage, cutting, welding, grinding and I managed to make the new half section of the Wavemaster. Using steel apposed to aluminium was due to availability of, aluminium welder and someone who knows how to use one! Hence I constructed the 480mm x 255mm x 185mm using mild steel angle iron 20mm x 20mm. The hard part of the job was completed soon after lunchtime the same day. As the deadline was so tight, I failed to take a sequence of photographs showing the construction of the half height chassis due to the shower of sparks around, when borrowing my fathers camera! However the images below show the two half’s of the mod being bolted together.

Again thanks for looking & it should start looking more of an interesting case mod within the next couple of posts.



Stage 2 – Fixing or mounting the original Wavemaster chassis to the ½ size one I’ve just made could not be simpler to achieve if the following steps are followed. Again I’ve been lucky welding my ½ size chassis & it is 100% square or pretty much. I’ve laid the wavemaster onto of the ½ chassis & it fits spot on. Once happy with having a good look around that everything is 100%. I can now get the ‘G’ clamps out, with some off cuts of wood to hold the two half’s together. After being confident that the original wavemaster chassis is sitting as best as it can on the ½ sized chassis, get ready to drill a good few holes.

Stage 3 – The mounting hardware I’ve chosen to bolt the two half together is Stainless Steel fasteners, a selection of domed 3mm -4mm Allen head socket screws that will feature across the whole case mod, again for the sleeker look, rather than having large bolts or thumb screws hanging from the panels & radiator grills. After the two half’s were firmly bolted together, I turned my attention to mounting the mighty Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W. Using some sticky back neoprene to cushion the PSU against the steel base unit, I’ve used the original wavemaster PSU holding plate as a template to drill through the steel in the correct places. When completed 3x 6-32 countersunk Stainless screws hold the PSU in place perfectly in the steel chassis. Whilst annoying the neighbours drilling in the garage at 10.30pm, I also got the case feet holes drilled & the drillings required to fit the front panel of the Wavemaster.


Stage 4 – Looking at the case fixed together with the PSU & front panel in place, I’ve moved on to thinking about where to cut through the case for the water cooling hosing & wiring to the motherboard etc. More hard work & I’ve cut enough of the original wavemaster case & steel ½ sized bottom sections of the chassis to allow the essential wiring into the main PC. Using again simple tools I’ve drilled, hacked, and filed the holes needed.

Moving on in the old style cases or some new for that matter, I feel that you tend not to see a great deal of the internals, due to the drive bay holders. This mod really has no need for a DVD / Blue Ray drive so I’d rather show the complete motherboard & water cooling setup as neatly as possible.
With that in mind I’ve cut the viewable drive bay holder down to a minimum size and slotted the other side as well, so too much rigidity is lost in the chassis itself.

Again thanks for looking

 

[t_ski]

I followed your SR-2 build on [H]. Glad to see you made it over this way. Subbed for sure!

 

[Techtu]

Subbed for sure!

+1

Gonna be interesting

 

[snailmods]

Thanks for all the comments guys, very much appreciated good & bad alike, gotta keep trying different things lol

 

[snailmods]

Lower section of wavemaster coming together nicely

Working in the bottom section of the wavemaster, I’m placing water cooling kit & PSU in likely positions. Mounting the radiator was pretty easy using a 120mm radiator mounting set, again drilled to the underside of the wavemaster base & finished off with stainless fasteners.

This second of the water cooling loops for the graphics cards that will be sitting in the ½ height chassis. This will have an EK 360mm radiator, XSPC D5 pump reservoir combo unit & be more than adequate to cool the monster Sapphire HD6870 graphics cards with the lovely EK Nickel Blocks!.

The pump combo will be eventually mounted on a custom laser cut panel, but for now an aluminium sheet approx 1.5mm thickness gives me the measurements I require. The pump will be secured using double sided sticky back neoprene in order to reduce noise levels. Although the D5 I’m using is a vario, so we should find a good compromise between pump noises vs. cooling performance for the x-fire setup.

Again thanks for comments & looking

 

[snailmods]

Some reassembly takes place at last!

Stage 5- The Sapphire Pure Black P67 hydra motherboard arrived with a pair of HD6970 graphics cards, so it did not take me long to get these mounted in the cases motherboard tray. The motherboard fits the tray very well, filling it up fully & most likely where I will cut the case window, concentrating on the hardware area as mentioned previously.

The cutting of the 360mm radiator has to be done with care, firstly from a personal injury point of view, secondly that you take your time in marking out the radiator hole. I stripped & polished the top panel as not too weaken it too much during applying pressure against the polishing wheel. After all is said & done the top 360mm radiator top is a successful job. As I’m using radiator grills & I only have to cut an oblong shape. It gets more difficult when trying to follow a radiator shape, but there are many radiator download templates available. Starting off I covered the wavemaster top with masking tape, this makes it easier to see the cutting lines to follow. Moving on I’ve drilled a section of holes along the inside of the drawn cutting line. This will enable me to get the hacksaw through the piece of aluminium & start to cut the oblong radiator hole. Once cut all around the marked area, drilling to pass the hacksaw through in several places takes place until the unwanted aluminium is removed. The masking tape can be removed a you should find a light dressing with a good file should sort out any discrepancy in your cutting Generally then I make sure the radiator and grill will fit before getting back to the wet ‘n’ dry sand paper to smooth the radiator oblong hole I just cut + a slight re-polish of the top panel.

Stage – 6 Now that the hardcore case modding has finished, as now I think I just about covered the little chassis mods required + I’m awaiting components & modding parts. I’m straight off to the local powder coaters to have the internals of the case powder coated Satin Black. Upon collection of the now Satin Black chassis internals, soon the wavemaster case mod is up on its feet again and looking pretty neat 

Again thanks for comments & looking

 

[snailmods]

up date

Stage – 7 With more parts arriving daily now I’m soon working into the late hour’s fitting out the case with the hardware and trying to make the dual loop cooling system as tidy as possible.
The cabling has turned out very well, almost unseen at a glance. The cooling the dual cooling loops are better than to be expected (bring back X-Flow radiators I say!!!)

In the meantime, not that I’ve had much during this build, I though it best that I think how to design & make the radiator grills. Following the wavy curves of the wavemaster case I came up with a couple of designs for the top radiator grill & the 2x lower radiator grills. The Sapphire Pure Black P67 motherboard corporate markings had to be included as the mod is being built for their Gadget show stand.
The detail required for achive this was well beyond the deadline line date to cut by hand, I’d have grown a full beard by that time + stainless steel is not the softest of material to be cutting by hand.
The designs were laser cut from my good friend Steve Miguire at laser_4_u_@yahoo.co.uk , he’s a great guy to help interpret a design & the quality of the work is always tip top. The material I chose was 2mm brushed stainless steel & the panels look really smart.
The other small panels pictured are for the PSU cover from the original wavemaster (top), a floor section to mount the pump onto in the bottom half of the case. A new PSU cover again for the bottom half & 2x polished stainless steel panels for each side of the lower section.

Again thanks for comments & looking

 

[snailmods]

All the EK Nickel water blocks were fitted, graphics cards, CPU, memory cooler & the Bitspower compression fittings finished off a very nice set of water cooled graphics cards & motherboard blocks.

Next I moved on to what is one of the greatest pleasures I Reckon in building a case mod, carrying out the dual loop cooling systems leak test, whilst wiring up the power buttons etc. Thanks to Richard Bateman a ‘local friend’ from Apem components http://www.apem.co.uk/default.htm for supplying the quality anti-vandal Blue coloured halo power switch, which is currently connected to the HD activity pin headers on the motherboard. SSD’s just don’t rattle along enough to offer a good affect, like good old WD Raptor-x 150 3.5” HD’s chattering away, but hey that progress as the Kingston SSD is lighting fast to say the least in comparison & so very quiet.

 

[Techtu]

*Drools.... Everything is so shiny!!!



EDIT: It's one to keep out of direct sunlight wouldn't you say Infact you should have a warning sticker on the door of the room :WARNING - May cause blindness enter at own risk.

 

[snailmods]

Finish In Sight !!!

The final instalment will cover fitting the original polished wavemaster panels, polished painfully by hand, and it really did look like I’d been down a coal mine for a week!

Also the Stainless steel panels are fitted to the case along with a larger window being cut to allow further viewing of the internals.

A real special thanks to the sponsors has to go out on my part for making this case mod possible
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/?lid=1
http://www.coolermaster.com/ http://www.kingston.com/ukroot/
http://www.ekwaterblocks.com/
http://www.specialtech.co.uk/
http://www.bitspower.com/
Laser_4_u_@yahoo.co.uk

The Sapphire Stretched ‘n’ Shiny Wavemaster x1.5 case mod really drew attention at the Gadget Show Live Event, as over 20,000 people past the Sapphire stand per day. The endless nights of very little sleep has paid off. This has brought the sponsors & me of building the project some great feedback via various company’s & media.

Without further ado the finished photo’s some of which were taken during delivery at the Gadget Show Live event & the majority where the main of the case mod was constructed on my dining table!

I thank all who have taken the time out to view the Sapphire Stretched ‘n’ Shiny case mod & comment accordingly, very much appreciated.

The Stainless Radiator Grills & Window surround are going to be replaced with Satin Black versions, more to give the case mod a different look & focus on the Sapphire 'Pure Black' P67 motherboard release. It’s a kicking setup in terms of performance all around & I will be posting the development mods to the case as time progresses.

Best regards
Tom
Aka Snailmods
Thanks again for looking.