Black and Green Water Cooled Shinobi XL!!!

[davido_labido]

Ello folks! as you might have seen, i did a white and orange shinobi xl (build log in my siggy.) I took this along to a LAN (i48) and it got a lot of attention! One guy that saw it (Sean), asked if id build him a computer, i of course obliged, i mean, why wouldn't i? im spending someone ealses money on doing something i love haha

He wanted it similar to my computer, but not white and orange, so he chose black.... i chose green as id seen some awesome sleeving i wanted to use, he was more than happy with the choice!

This build log is as much to show sean what im spending his money on, as it is to show you what im doing at the moment!


Heres what i have bought for him.


YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK Tech Lab H2O Custom GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 £416.98
1 x XSPC Razor GTX680 GPU Waterblock (Raystorm Style) £92.99
1 x Gigabyte X79 G1 Assassin 2 Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard £319.99
1 x Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - Retail £249.95
1 x OcUK Tech Lab - V12 Watercooling Kit 360 £210.79
1 x XSPC RayStorm CPU WaterBlock (Intel) £51.98
1 x Mayhems X1 UV Green Premixed Watercooling Fluid 1L £7.99
1 x XFX 1000W Black Edition Pro '80+ Platinum' Certified Modular Power Supply £179.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD128BW) £119.99
1 x BitFenix Shinobi XL Full Tower Gaming Windowed Case - Black £114.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £71.99
1 x BitFenix Recon Internet-Connected Fan Controller (Black) £29.99
1 x Samsung SE-S208DB/TSBS External Slimline 8x DVD-RW (TV Connect) - Black £21.98
1 x BitFenix Spectre PRO 230mm Green LED - Black £16.99
1 x BitFenix Mesh Stripes for Shinobi XL Tower Case - Green £8.99
1 x BitFenix Logo for Shinobi Tower Case - Green £1.98
Total : £1,917.55 (includes shipping : FREE).

 

[davido_labido]

whats arrived so far....

im waiting on all the stuff for water cooling, loads of stuff out of stock at the moment =(



the mobo, i think it looks rather nice, will fit the build nicely, only thing im not sure about is the "gun" but thats one of those personal preferences.











A Samsung SSD 840 pro series! Looks beauuuutiful!




the sleeve... i wanted some of the green for aaages, but never had any reason to buy it... now i do and im not disappointed !!!!



this is what il be sleeving, these cables are horrible... cant wait to make them look better!!!

 

[Dannyboy84]

Should be a good build if anything like your Orange and white one i think the gun looks awesome on the mobo but as u say its personal preference
look forward to seeing this finished

 

[Drangueos]

this will be nice

 

[davido_labido]

thanks folks! the gun is something i might get to like, il have to see, its certainly different!

 

[davido_labido]

started to sleeve today, the XFX PSU is the worst one ive ever sleeved, its so hard to get the pins out of the connectors, ive got blisters and cuts all over my hands!!!!





see!!! they are painful, like paper cuts but worse! these are the most painful two =( (apologies about how dirty my hands are! seems im getting filthy from some of the tools )

managed to get the pattern i like though, with the green being so bright, i didnt want to over do it, so did it like this:





ran into 2 little problems with the PSU ive not had before. the psu has the usual 24 pin connector on one end, the other end has a 10 pin and a 18 pin connector!!! it means i have 4 double wires, that split, and go into the modular psu separately. I didnt want to deal with this at the 24 pin end, or the psu end as i thought it would look untidy, so about half way down the wire, i did this:




it should be hidden behind the motherboard tray, so wont be seen, but everything visible should look right!

Also when i sorted out the patern i wanted, it landed that the empty slot on the 24 pin was a green wire... if it was a black, it wouldnt have mattered, but i really needed the green one, so i made a fake wire, and sleeved it. the problem is i dont have a spare slot on the other end, so i just made it a good length to hide behind the mobo tray and all should look good!



il tidy them up properly, and re do some of the heat shrink but at least it coming along.... slowly!

 

[Sean.]

Despite his battle wounds this build is coming along nicely, can't wait to take this to LAN with me

 

[davido_labido]

got some more bits again this week, and started to put it all together!

Im still waiting on the GPU block to come into stock so i can start on that!

the case im using is going to be as mentioned, the shinobi xl windowed

i took all the outer panels off first!
its all naked!




i ripped out all the guff, like the stock fans and the HDD cage etc, and added the radiator and new fans!



then fit the CPU block, so shiney!





added the ram, and popped it into the case!



did a little bit of soldering, the blue leds that come with the raystorm blocks just wouldnt work....




Much better!



Started to get the cables into place a bit see what they look like!

 

[tomparker95]

Love the black and green! how long did the sleeving take haha?

 

[Sean.]

The sleeving took him a good few hours split up into a few days because the original sleeving was a pain to get off, it seems like they like to make sure it's firmly on there or as Davido_Labido said "glued on" which means this took longer than expected. However, things are still going to plan as you can see it's looking very nice so far!

 

[Hyburnate]

The sleeving took him a good few hours split up into a few days because the original sleeving was a pain to get off, it seems like they like to make sure it's firmly on there or as Davido_Labido said "glued on" which means this took longer than expected. However, things are still going to plan as you can see it's looking very nice so far!

Is he fitting a drain? Because surely it'd be easier for you to do it like that than have to take everything out. I've never quite got the concept of people buying watercooled PC's with lack of knowledge (not saying you haven't got knowledge, just talking in general) on how to maintain them.

 

[Sean.]

I understand what you're saying, he's fitting a reservoir with a pump, I'll need to flush it all out and put in new liquid coolant every few months. I'm more than happy to do this, we fairly frequently attend LANs where if I need more hands than I am equipped with then this can be done there with 2 pairs of hands. I have seen this being done before with an identical water cooling system to what I'm using (same reservoir, same pump, same piping, same fittings, same water blocks) so I'm fully aware of how to do this and how often plus I'll have people who have done this before with the identical water cooling system right next to me if I need assistance. It was a messy task to change over the liquid coolant when I watched them do it with another PC but I'm sure we'll manage

 

[original.wood]

love the black and green colour scheme. I really want the Bitfenix Prodigy case, watercooled black and green, similar to the NVidea limited edition one.

 

[Hyburnate]

I understand what you're saying, he's fitting a reservoir with a pump, I'll need to flush it all out and put in new liquid coolant every few months. I'm more than happy to do this, we fairly frequently attend LANs where if I need more hands than I am equipped with then this can be done there with 2 pairs of hands. I have seen this being done before with an identical water cooling system to what I'm using (same reservoir, same pump, same piping, same fittings, same water blocks) so I'm fully aware of how to do this and how often plus I'll have people who have done this before with the identical water cooling system right next to me if I need assistance. It was a messy task to change over the liquid coolant when I watched them do it with another PC but I'm sure we'll manage

My main concern if I were in your shoes would be air bubbles and knowing the best way to get rid of them and having the time to get rid of them

Taking this off-topic slightly, sorry - subbed

 

[davido_labido]

I did think about putting a draining port in for him but Il be showing him how to maintain it, how to get rid of any bubbles etc etc, as he says we frequent lans quite often, so if needs be I could help him with it there, it's not really a concern imo, if he has problems with temps/bubbles etc, I'm only a text away, or he could look at the hundreds of posts here about how to do it =)

The sleeving for the 24 pin took around 7 hours tbh, most of that time was spent trying to get the wires from the plugs, there was some residue inside stopping the pin extraction tool from pushing down the 2 'wings' that hold the pins in. Not sure if it was a coating they put on, or something else, but it wasn't fun gettin them out ! Luckily I have spare pins and a crimping tool, so the ones that were really stuck I could getout by bbreaking the 'wings' and re doing the pin

 

[Uncle Petey]

I do enjoy your work, David

May I ask what brand of sleeving you use and what you make of it's flexibility?
Got an urge to give it a go as extensions are taking a lot of space at the back and my psu is fully modular, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to get it done (he says).

 

[davido_labido]

I do enjoy your work, David

May I ask what brand of sleeving you use and what you make of it's flexibility?
Got an urge to give it a go as extensions are taking a lot of space at the back and my psu is fully modular, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to get it done (he says).

thanks again petey!

its mdpc-x sleeving, the flexibility is good, not as good as non sleeved cables obviously as it adds some dentistry to the cable, the best thing about it is the quality, if you do it correctly you wont have ANY of the cable colour showing through!

i personally wouldnt use any other sleeve =)

 

[Hyburnate]

Ahh right, well, I'm subbed, will be nice to see how this turns out and what a mega pc ends up coming out of it.

 

[davido_labido]

Aye, looking forward to getting a graphics card in it so I can sort the loop out!!

 

[setter]

Looking like another very nice shinobi xl build.