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

[stren]

Alright LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, TROLLS, HATERS AND PEASANTS!

Project Thief is COMPLETE. Cue Drums..... Cue trumpet fanfare....

Project thief is based around the enormous, nay monstrous, CaseLabs TX10-D case, and if that wasn't enough, there's a pedestal to make it even bigger.

The build features two full size gaming computers in one case along with custom wood panelling and powder coating. The name thief comes from the this build stealing an awful lot of my disposable income. The Thief symbology is integrated through the use of Skyrim Thief's guild symbols as well as two different themes representing the duality of the thief's life. The "light" side of the case represents the Thief's role by day as an ordinary hard working member of society and features my workstation. The "dark" side of the case represent's the Thief's role by night and features my gaming rig. The ability to fit so many radiators and fans means that the fans can be turned down to be almost silent while still being able to perform at the top of their game.

The idea was really to build a no hold's barred setup with the best of the best that was not only hardcore but easy to maintain. One computer would be my linux based workstation that I use for my day to day work. The other would be my windows based entertainment/gaming battlestation.

Light side:
- Rampage IV Extreme + 4930K + 32GB Corsair Dominator GT 2133 + 2x 7990s + 1TB SSD
- Fully watercooled with 2 loops: cpu, memory, motherboard, gpus

Dark side:
- EVGA X79 Dark + 4820K + 16GB Corsair Dominator GT 2133 + 4xR9-290s + 1TB SSD
- Fully watercooled with 2 loops: cpu, memory, motherboard, gpus

To skip on to the final pics - start at post 324!

And so it begins

The project name is not finalized so suggestions are welcome - I thought of thief because it dual wields and it steals all my money!

I am working on a huge monster build that will showcase CaseLabs newest case - the monster TX10. This monster case can fit two SR-2 (HPTX) systems with full water cooling. As shown it could fit multiple Mo-Ra 140x9 raditors, or 6 140.4 radiators. It can even fit front mounted 140.5 radiators.

The main feature will be two giant custom waterfall reservoirs that will occupy the front bays.

Here is the current hardware that I have to go in:

Unboxing Videos and Pics

I picked up the case directly from Jim - so the packing was reduced in order to fit in my car. If you buy one of these it will come in two boxes as it's packed a lot more securely.

Videos - I can't work out how to embed youtube so here's some links:
CaseLabs TX10-D Unboxing Part 1 - YouTube

CaseLabs TX10-D Unboxing Part 2 - YouTube

Lots of Parts

Building the case

As Jim knew the case was going to be powder coated by FTWPC he saved FTW the hassle of sandblasting it by skipping the CaseLabs normal black/white powder coat. Because of this the case is not only in it's raw bare aluminum state, but it also is less assembled than normal in order to save on time taking everything apart.

The Pedestal frame consist of top, bottom, front and back that are screwed together with countersunk screws

Screwing the casters in

These are the spring clips that hold the panels on - they hold the panels tight, while still be pretty easy to remove for changing your loop up

Pedestal frame with one of the clipped side panel and the back plate screwed on

Pedestal with all panels attached except the top/bottom cover

Main case frame coming together, this is the view from the back showing the holes for the dual vertical motherboard trays

Case + Pedestal with XXL window fitted on one side

Here's a quick video of the partially assembled case

CaseLabs TX10 - Partially Built - YouTube

Choosing colors for the powder coat

To make sure I was making the right choice on the color I decided to get some card and tape it to the frame. I removed the acrylic window and used a grey piece of card to model the motherboard:

Metallic Charcoal Grey and Metallic Crimson Red

Metallic Charcoal Grey, Pearl White and Crimson Red

Metallic Charcoal Grey with Metallic Pearl White

 

[stren]

1-03-12

Paint samples came in today - it looks like "Galaxy Grey II" will be the exterior and "Silver/White" will be the interior. It's hard to show the texture, but those two are both similarly smooth, with a bit of shine but not much.

 

[stren]

Picked up an EK 250 res off of hardass, a second ax1200 from patch to replace my dying ocz psu, and an open box xonar stx

 

[stren]

Thought you guys might want to see some pics of the existing hardware that will be *partly* reused as well as some of the new pieces. Apologies that the photos aren't that great, my wife took the camera with her tonight so I had to use my phone.

Here's my modded Antec 300 that contains my gaming rig (i7-920, Rampage III Extreme, 3xGTX480, Xonar STX, AX1200). When the workstation gets SB-E this will get the 990x. Note that one gentle typhoon is stopped - I unsoldered the power wire because it's out of balance so the noise is annoying.

Here's the front of the case with the space efficient but bubbly Koolance dual D5 reservoir as well as the dual 24V controller. I'll be using this reservoir until the 18 bay FTW reservoirs come in. No dvd drive, I removed it after installing windows and a couple of games. Most other games I have are on origin/steam.

Here's the interior - cable routing isn't perfect because I knew I was moving to the TX10 soon. I'll also be replacing all the blue LEDs with reds to match the ROG theme a bit better:

Here's the workstation in it's current temporary incarnation in a DD torture rack. i7-990x on an asus p6t. LSI raid card, 3 ssds and 3 hard drives and a 8800gt to drive the monitors. It has the H100 cooler temporarily and as you can see it needs some sleeving work:

Here's a front shot showing the push/pull AP15's on the H100, they perform about as well as the stock 2600rpm corsair fans at max, but with a *lot* less noise

Trident + turbulence memory - back in the day this was sweet stuff 3x4gb @ 2000-8-9-8, now of course you can get better for a lot less money haha such is progress!

And now for some parts waiting to be installed - vintage EK gpu block:

My old rasa block - I'm hoping to not use this and instead get a second raystorm soon - note the o-rings on the barbs seem to be dying:

EK 250 res and DDC-1 for the worksation gpu and motherboard loop that will be self contained on the motherboard tray.

That's about all the fun stuff I can show for now!

 

[t_ski]

Been following this on [H] already

 

[stren]

Been following this on [H] already

Ah yeah I've been slow to join here but I thought it was about time to post a log here too

 

[theJesus]

This is insane. I love it.

 

[MT Alex]

Nice work. I'm glad to see some CaseLabs love. They don't get nearly the recognition they deserve.

 

[stren]

Thanks guys - yes CaseLabs are awesome. It's just because they're new, as the word spreads and as the more affordable cases come out they'll get a lot of love!

 

[stren]

sneak peak

 

[Fitseries3]

looks like mountainmods taken to the next level. im watching this one.

enjoy the rad

 

[stren]

Thanks fit!

 

[Disparia]

Already awesome, looks like it's only going to get better!

Hey, can that top area accept 19" rack units?

 

[stren]

Already awesome, looks like it's only going to get better!

Hey, can that top area accept 19" rack units?

Yes the top and bottom heat chambers as well as the rear of the pedestals can all accept 19" racks (4u worth each). You couldn't use all of them though or you wouldn't have any room for a PSU (unless you mod it)

 

[Huddo93]

This is going to be absolutely crazy! Really want to see the end product now

 

[stren]

Well guess what came today:

 

[mATrIxLord]

total awesomeness so far... subed to see moar pics!!

 

[Disparia]

Yes the top and bottom heat chambers as well as the rear of the pedestals can all accept 19" racks (4u worth each). You couldn't use all of them though or you wouldn't have any room for a PSU (unless you mod it)

Cool. 8U is still enough for a switch, a 3U 16 x 3.5" drive rack/system, and a pair of 2U (or 4U) UPS.

If somehow I could possibly want more, some short-depth racks would probably fit in front of the PSU's, that way I could also incorporate a ClearOS, Smoothwall, or other dedicated router box.

After all that, I think I could still fit a decent water-cooling system in there. Not as elaborate as yours for sure, but enough for my mild overclocking needs

 

[stren]

Yeah if you ever need to expand the rackspace you can add more pedestals with another 4u each. You may want to check with Jim about the weight handling of the rack. Initially he said it wasn't designed for heavy items like servers and UPSs but I've seen a photo with an empty rack mount case in there. So he may have changed his mind.

 

[stren]

My testpack of monsoon fittings arrived today, these are the 3/8 ID 5/8 OD

With primochill tube:

 

[radrok]

Lovely fittings, it's a shame I can't find a retailer here in Europe, Aquatuning answered to me in a mail saying that they'll never sell them

 

[stren]

That's a shame, hopefully someone will start carrying them over there. I'm using the 3/8's on the workstation motherboard/gpu loop, if they work well as well as look great, I'll get the 1/2" ones for the main higher flow loops.

 

[stren]

Seeing as my boss gave me the week off (why not a raise?) for having to work like crazy the last month I decided to test out some of the components that came in on my workstation. for the last few months it's been running the H100 cooler, now it's time to switch it to partial watercooling.

In the end the workstation will have two loops:
1 - CPU (raystorm) - mora 140.9 - dual D5 varios
2- GPU (8800gt) - GPU (9800gt) - motherboard - DDC-1 - RX360

The GPU's only do 2D, so there's very little heat on loop2. Both loops will eventually run with low speed yates and I'm hoping it should be close to silent while giving excellent overclocking performance on the cpu.

As I don't have 4 D5's yet (still one short) I'll be temporarily running this loop with a DDC. I picked up one of the NOS ones from bmaverick, they're not that powerful but this won't be driving a critical loop. I picked up an xspc acrylic top (later I'll run some dye for the money shots):

However the XSPC screws don't fit the old DDC's so I had to drill out the holes a bit larger

Done:

Then with the EK 250 res fitted. I used a bitspower shining silver male to male rotary fitting to attach them:

Also remember that talk about the acyrylic vs delrin 8800gt blocks, well I ordered the acrylics and they arrived the other day:

They do look sexier!

Taking apart the 8800gt:

Then I realized I didn't have any non-conductive TIM left, so I put it to the side and put the 9800gt in for now. Built up the temporary cpu loop in the torture rack

Kind of a funky radiator setup - the torture rack only supports 240 rads, so I ran 2 fans in push and 2 fans in pull. I have 12 more gentle typhoons coming from the ocn group buy:

Then more stuff came:

Fan adapters for the gtx 560, plus rubber fan isolators. Not sure if they'll do much but they were cheap if I bought the adapters, so I picked some up:

 

[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

Also parts for my lightsabre came in

 

[Outback Bronze]

This is looking kick ass mate. Nice work. That case is bloody massive!