Hey all, firstly, I was going to put this in the build logs section, but it didn’t fit with the rules of outlining my plans, drawings etc. so it’s here, just move it if it needs to be moved. I just wanted to show you a few photos and a little chat about my new build, based around the ridiculously popular BitFenix Prodigy.
As it turned out the entire setup was pretty much Bitfenix Asus and EK components, I seem to always stick with a particular brand when I’m doing a build!
So, the case was, as i said, a white BitFenix Prodigy. The motherboard was the Asus P8H77 coupled to an i3 processor, the reason for this was purely power consumption. I use the box as a headless unit (I simply use team viewer to connect to it) so it didn’t need to be massively fast or have a huge GPU, integrated was fine, also, since its next to my router I didn’t want wireless. Basically it has everything i need, and nothing I don’t.
After this I needed some power, so, the case was white, my theme was white, white PSU it is then. The only modular one I could find was the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III. The box says it’s made by the OCZ technology group, in the end I don’t really care, it was 400W which isn’t huge but bear in mind the PC's use...
I then sat and hand braided every cable in the machine, you will see more of this later, but for now...
So, there’s something else in that photo, some lovely blue water-cooling. This is the EK H30 240 LTX kit, not the best on the market, but fairly good for the price and the kit is very comprehensive. Total fitting time (first ever water cooling build btw) was about an hour, the fluid inside it is the EK clear coolant, I dyed it a deep blue using the Mayhems blue die. It was around 30 drops of dye I ended up using as I wanted a deep (but not navy) blue.
As for cooling the water, this is taken care of by a 230 mm BitFenix Spectre fan in the front of the case and two 120mm BitFenix Spectre fans on the radiator which is mounted in the case roof. I chose the spectres rather than the Spectre Pro's because of the higher static pressure. I know the Gentle typhoons of the Noctua NFP12's are better for this, but they weren’t white so....
I monitor the system with a BitFenix Recon fan controller. I have this in the optical bay, but had to do some hackery to get it to fit. I didn’t have a hacksawor any kind of mechanical cuttong tool that would touch metal this thick, so had to use the drill...you can’t see this unless you're looking for it but the Recon fits in, with a 240MM watercooling radiator with NO re-drilling of any mounting holes, you just have to loose most of the drive bay bracket, in the end its about 5-7mm of clearance...
The storage in the case is taken care of by two 2.5 inch HDD's. One is a 120GB OCZ Agility 3, the other is a 1TB Samsung M8. Clearly, the SSD has the OS and programs installed on it; the slower mechanical M8 is used for storage of data.
I wanted all the air being brought in by the 230mm fan to be taken through the rad, so I cut some Perspex to block up the rear fan grille, in white naturally, this can be seen, just about, here, along with some more braiding.
And some more photos for no reason at all. I apologize for the variation in quality. Some were from a camera (bad photos), some were from the iphone5 (good photos)
I was quite happy with this, but it wasn’t special, so I white carbon wrapped the Recon fan controller so as it matched the white theme of the case, the end result was pretty good to be honest, but it still wasn’t different from any other Prodigy out there...
That’s when I got in touch with SCISS Ltd in Kent. They are a water jet cutting company. With some VERY crude drawings Ian at SCISS was able to give me an exact price, a complete bargain to be honest. He charged me £32.40 for cutting, postage and the dreaded VAT. The turnaround time was about a week. Fantastic company and very well priced in my opinion. I’ve never had anything water jet cut, but was amazed at the precision of the cut, and the fact that it can slice through steel, yet the paint was totally undamaged, not even chipped. Anyways, this is what i received back.
The cut-out case door
And the part removed from the case door.
Sliced up, and stuck in some Perspex..
Et Voila...
Oh, wait, I’m forgetting something...
As it turned out the entire setup was pretty much Bitfenix Asus and EK components, I seem to always stick with a particular brand when I’m doing a build!
So, the case was, as i said, a white BitFenix Prodigy. The motherboard was the Asus P8H77 coupled to an i3 processor, the reason for this was purely power consumption. I use the box as a headless unit (I simply use team viewer to connect to it) so it didn’t need to be massively fast or have a huge GPU, integrated was fine, also, since its next to my router I didn’t want wireless. Basically it has everything i need, and nothing I don’t.
After this I needed some power, so, the case was white, my theme was white, white PSU it is then. The only modular one I could find was the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III. The box says it’s made by the OCZ technology group, in the end I don’t really care, it was 400W which isn’t huge but bear in mind the PC's use...
I then sat and hand braided every cable in the machine, you will see more of this later, but for now...
So, there’s something else in that photo, some lovely blue water-cooling. This is the EK H30 240 LTX kit, not the best on the market, but fairly good for the price and the kit is very comprehensive. Total fitting time (first ever water cooling build btw) was about an hour, the fluid inside it is the EK clear coolant, I dyed it a deep blue using the Mayhems blue die. It was around 30 drops of dye I ended up using as I wanted a deep (but not navy) blue.
As for cooling the water, this is taken care of by a 230 mm BitFenix Spectre fan in the front of the case and two 120mm BitFenix Spectre fans on the radiator which is mounted in the case roof. I chose the spectres rather than the Spectre Pro's because of the higher static pressure. I know the Gentle typhoons of the Noctua NFP12's are better for this, but they weren’t white so....
I monitor the system with a BitFenix Recon fan controller. I have this in the optical bay, but had to do some hackery to get it to fit. I didn’t have a hacksawor any kind of mechanical cuttong tool that would touch metal this thick, so had to use the drill...you can’t see this unless you're looking for it but the Recon fits in, with a 240MM watercooling radiator with NO re-drilling of any mounting holes, you just have to loose most of the drive bay bracket, in the end its about 5-7mm of clearance...
The storage in the case is taken care of by two 2.5 inch HDD's. One is a 120GB OCZ Agility 3, the other is a 1TB Samsung M8. Clearly, the SSD has the OS and programs installed on it; the slower mechanical M8 is used for storage of data.
I wanted all the air being brought in by the 230mm fan to be taken through the rad, so I cut some Perspex to block up the rear fan grille, in white naturally, this can be seen, just about, here, along with some more braiding.
And some more photos for no reason at all. I apologize for the variation in quality. Some were from a camera (bad photos), some were from the iphone5 (good photos)
I was quite happy with this, but it wasn’t special, so I white carbon wrapped the Recon fan controller so as it matched the white theme of the case, the end result was pretty good to be honest, but it still wasn’t different from any other Prodigy out there...
That’s when I got in touch with SCISS Ltd in Kent. They are a water jet cutting company. With some VERY crude drawings Ian at SCISS was able to give me an exact price, a complete bargain to be honest. He charged me £32.40 for cutting, postage and the dreaded VAT. The turnaround time was about a week. Fantastic company and very well priced in my opinion. I’ve never had anything water jet cut, but was amazed at the precision of the cut, and the fact that it can slice through steel, yet the paint was totally undamaged, not even chipped. Anyways, this is what i received back.
The cut-out case door
And the part removed from the case door.
Sliced up, and stuck in some Perspex..
Et Voila...
Oh, wait, I’m forgetting something...
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