Finally had a chance to go at the case with some power tools, if only briefly. Removed the double hot swap bay at the front and SSD bay. which has opened up a vista of prime real estate to build up the liquid cooling gubbons. I've temporarily istalled a 120mm fan in replacement of the hot swap bays, with the modders friend. Blue tak. in the final build this will be replaced by a 5.25 reservoir and pump, so more cutting away of the structure.
The plan of a 420mm rad up front looks like it's going to be more fun than I first thought. actual length of the radis 460mm and the case is 432mm. By the time i've cut away enough to case to mount the rad, there isn't going to be enough case to mount it too. Hopefully a suitably sturdy external rad box will shore up the case and deal with the cosmetics of the rad stuck out each side.
as this is my first real water cooling build, I don't think a corsair H110 counts as proper water cooling. it's a good stepping stone and more effective than a huge air cooler blocking airflow around the case and i would recommend them. the safest and easiest thing would be to just cool the cpu, but to save time and possible heartache on building and stripping and rebuilding the loop once it's in place, i'm going to cool the cpu chipset and southbridge through the 420mm rad and the gpu/gpu's, if budget allows and it probably will. Then the two 290x's will be on a seperate loop with the res and pump where the SSD bay was. i'll leave you with some pics of the absent drive bays and some rather lovely and well made Alchemy braided 24 pin and PCIe cables. not very well routed, but as there's a lot more work to go. cable routing is a long way off yet.
The plan of a 420mm rad up front looks like it's going to be more fun than I first thought. actual length of the radis 460mm and the case is 432mm. By the time i've cut away enough to case to mount the rad, there isn't going to be enough case to mount it too. Hopefully a suitably sturdy external rad box will shore up the case and deal with the cosmetics of the rad stuck out each side.
as this is my first real water cooling build, I don't think a corsair H110 counts as proper water cooling. it's a good stepping stone and more effective than a huge air cooler blocking airflow around the case and i would recommend them. the safest and easiest thing would be to just cool the cpu, but to save time and possible heartache on building and stripping and rebuilding the loop once it's in place, i'm going to cool the cpu chipset and southbridge through the 420mm rad and the gpu/gpu's, if budget allows and it probably will. Then the two 290x's will be on a seperate loop with the res and pump where the SSD bay was. i'll leave you with some pics of the absent drive bays and some rather lovely and well made Alchemy braided 24 pin and PCIe cables. not very well routed, but as there's a lot more work to go. cable routing is a long way off yet.
over the last couple of months i have been extensively modding my XB case. I decided to break away from the red and black theme of the typical ROG build and do a Half life themed build. So that'll be orange and black instead. now being new to modding pc's, I've been on a steep learning curve. so my build has gone through some changes.
From this.
From what I have above to this.
Obvs it's not finished yet. there's still a lot of fancying work to do now i have completed the acrylic walls of the case. what's left of the original case is to be covered in carbon wrap. The back plate and the armour are being sent off to wicked coatings to be aqua dipped. I originally tried using the carbon vinyl wrap, the same stuff they use to wrap cars but it didn't look right. So I'll let the professionals have a go instead.
From this.
From what I have above to this.
Obvs it's not finished yet. there's still a lot of fancying work to do now i have completed the acrylic walls of the case. what's left of the original case is to be covered in carbon wrap. The back plate and the armour are being sent off to wicked coatings to be aqua dipped. I originally tried using the carbon vinyl wrap, the same stuff they use to wrap cars but it didn't look right. So I'll let the professionals have a go instead.
