A Window To Wales

OJ46 · 16 Sep 2016 at 16:12

Sooooooo, a quick update: THE RENDERS HAVE ARRIVED! Super happy with how it has turned out, now the long wait until I can get my grubby little hands on it

I know this build won't be to everyone's taste, but all comments, ideas and abuse are, as ever, more than welcome

Cenedd · 16 Sep 2016 at 16:28

Welsh theme all good with me - being a Jones n'all. Lools nice. No abuse from here!

OJ46 · 16 Sep 2016 at 16:41

Haha well that's a good start, at least it's not going to be 100% abuse from over the border

Some of the choices for the layout & details inside might also be a bit Marmite though, certainly won't be doing the usual dual loop design of side by side reservoirs and mirrored loops... And then there's the plans I have for the lighting... Oh well, it'll be interesting even if it does make people sick in disgust!

Cenedd · 16 Sep 2016 at 17:54

Well as long as you don't do something stoopid like bolt a bloody great rad on the side :rolleyes:

OJ46 · 16 Sep 2016 at 18:09

Or hook the pumps up backwards

Haha your build is looking epic though mate, could run that in the desert with the fans off and it wouldn't throttle

Cenedd · 16 Sep 2016 at 18:12

OJ46 said:
Or hook the pumps up backwards

Yeah, it'd take a special kind of idiot to do something THAT stupid! :rolleyes:

OJ46 · 16 Sep 2016 at 19:11

I'm gonna have to go with a 'no comment' on that one, at least until this build is finished...!

LePhuronn · 19 Sep 2016 at 19:07

Cenedd said:
Well as long as you don't do something stoopid like bolt a bloody great rad on the side

Who's done that? Sounds like a right daft sod.

OJ46 · 20 Sep 2016 at 09:19

I just wish you'd both delete your build logs, they keep making my poor PC feel inadequate lol

Cenedd · 20 Sep 2016 at 09:35

More chance of me deleting the actual PC....what with my dodgy crimping!
Yours isn't inadequate....just incomplete. Either that or it's one of those free-air PCs with no chassis! Renders look good though so once Parvum get some machine time free for you it'll start getting good quicker.

OJ46 · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:14

I've never even attempted custom sleeving and probably won't this time either, so much easier to leave it to someone else and then take all the credit... Will delete this comment when they arrive!!

Current PC is feeling very inadequate after browsing some of the build logs on here, feels like a fat kid being entered into the 100m by a pushy parent

Biggest problem for me is going to be the bank account slowing things down. It's already looking a tad sad and with the girlfriends birthday, Christmas and a trip to Iceland in the very near future it could be a VERY slow start to the build! Still, I'm sure once the Parvum guys have finished the case the motivation to work harder and waste less will definitely get stronger...

ALXAndy · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:15

OJ46 said:
And hot on the heels of the white pump top we have... GREEN BITS!

The bottom of the reservoir will be changed for a single port the same as the top, but must say I'm really liking these MMRS components. Reckon if I manage to get the lighting correct the green will really 'pop' against a dark green fluid

Still not heard back from Parvum though

I envy your green bits. It's actually pretty hard finding green bits. I wanted to order some nice green bolts to put the finish panels on my rig but all I could find was red and blue.

There are literally no green M3 bolts anywhere, only M5 which are too big

Cenedd · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:22

Aliexpress. Search for "M3 screw green". Not cheap though - well, for screws that is.

OJ46 · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:28

It has certainly made the build a bit more challenging, I just lucked out that OcUK decided to stock the parts as I couldn't find them anywhere else, and Monsoon refused to sell them direct!

Was scanning through some of your builds yesterday, the effort you put in to absolutely every little detail blew my mind, even if a lot of the technical aspects did go way over my head! It's always good to see such attention to detail in a build though, inspires me to be less lazy with mine

Edit: ^He says, before ordering pre braided cables...

Cenedd · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:30

OJ46 said:
inspires me to be less lazy with mine

Edit: ^He says, before ordering pre braided cables...

There's lazy....and then there's just protecting your sanity!

OJ46 · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:39

To be honest you did kind of put me off... Seeing someone who can build that beast of a PC struggle with something that can be outsourced just made me think it's probably both easier and safer to let someone else do it

^See, I've even outsourced the blame now!

Cenedd · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:48

If you're going to do it ONCE and you know the exact length you want the cables, buying them makes so much sense: easier, better, warranty/someone else to blame.
If you're going to do it more than once (or at least plan to before you know the pain

) or you don't know the lengths yet or have many silly cables to do, it makes sense to invest in the tools and do it yourself.
Paracord is really cheap and I prefer the look compared to the plastic stuff myself. Only downside is that it is snaggable so you can wreck it. Oh, that and it doesn't expand like the plastic stuff - so if you're trying to get four 22 AWG wires (like my RGB LEDs) down one sleeve, you're going to have fun!

The Knipex 12 40 200's are really good for doing repeatable accurate strips - again, not cheap, but you've got to protect your sanity where you can!
The E22 crimps are soooo much better for ATX/PCI-E/EPS pins it's untrue. Still a pain for fan pins though as they're shorter and have a tendency to twist if you're not careful.
It does mean you can do all your front panel headers and all that jazz too.

OJ46 · 20 Sep 2016 at 10:56

Thank you for attempting to break my sanity and give me third degree burns on my fingers, now I'll take all that into account and possibly decide to give it ago myself... Especially as you have given me someone to blame for the headaches & burns!

Think it's one of those things that if I don't give it a go I'll always wish I had, just feels a bit lazy getting someone to do it when it's supposed to be a PC built by myself but then I'd also like it to look good, and not sure I'd get a decent end result. Hmmmm, think I'll wait and see how bad I am at bending PETG first

Cenedd · 20 Sep 2016 at 11:10

You'll be rubbish!....at first. Just plan to have enough extra tubing for the learning curve. I believe PETG requires less heat than acrylic but my limited experience with acrylic I found that you needed to make sure you heated a wide enough area so that it bends nicely roung the mandrel rather than too narrow and it starts bending and then folds the tube for the bits that aren't heated enough. Also, a bit more heat than the bare minimum - not enough and it cools before you've finished then bend. Too much and it 'cooks' - starts bubbling. You may also find it beneficial to warm up the mandrel if you're using metal ones as bending the tube round a cold mandrel will cool the side that touches it quite quickly and it'll stop bending smoothly.
The bending silicon size is important too and they're not all the same size! You want it snug (and use olive oil as lube) rather than rattling around - or you'll get the tube flattening at the bend.

OJ46 · 20 Sep 2016 at 11:18

Might have to wait until Cardiff actually win a game of football, get the patience levels back to a point where I stand a chance of not throwing the heat gun out the window

There will definitely be some posts in the watercooling section of the forum asking for tips on compatible brands etc when the time finally comes, but as it won't be until next year I'm trying to push all thoughts of what could go wrong to the back of my mind for now, got too many hurdles like light boxes, painting etc need jumping before the important things like actually making it work come into play