Chocolate Box
- Thread starter JR23
- Start date
This build, man you should be so proud!
Sterling job mate!
Amazing job parvum have this featured on facebook too
looks amazing
Thanks for the compliments guys and thanks if you followed Parvums FB link to the log, make sure to like Parvum Systems, JR23 and Overclockers UK! I'm sure you do already though
Pexon has informed me progress is being made, brace for substantial updates in the coming weeks.
JR
I love this build, not only bcos I rly like noctua stuff, I duno it just looks really classy build with a touch of bringing sexy back to the aircooler
I do wonder tho if you ever thought in a moment of madnesss doing the coolant brown
it could have been a bubbly chocolate fondue!
I do wonder tho if you ever thought in a moment of madnesss doing the coolant brown
it could have been a bubbly chocolate fondue!
I love this build, not only bcos I rly like noctua stuff, I duno it just looks really classy build with a touch of bringing sexy back to the aircooler
I do wonder tho if you ever thought in a moment of madnesss doing the coolant brown
it could have been a bubbly chocolate fondue!
Thank you, brown coolant has come up in conversation on other build logs. The only other brown build i've seen in person is 'The Bear' and I don't think classy would be a word I would use to describe it. That had brown painted metal parts, brown painted plastic parts, brown coolant, brown acrylic and they just didn't come out looking that coherent. It's an extremely difficult colour to match, not only can it be too light or dark, it can be too red, too yellow and too blue all at the same time. And it's not like there are many alternatives when it comes to brown.
So far i've been extremely lucky in that the acrylic used in the case matches the fans very closely. Infact absolutely amazingly considering all I told Parvum was "can you make it brown acrylic, brown like chocolate" and i'd never seen the fans at that point. Selecting the sleeve was another challenge right now there is Teleios available in brown and... not much else. As it turns out when laid tight over black wire it looks right. But if it hadn't I would have gone with all grey or black to avoid a potential 'nearly' matched colour, if it's not going to match i'd sooner contrast it which is why I often default back to black. Finding or even mixing brown coolant would have been the same story all over again and at the end of the day it would have only been visible in the res, which is in the back of the case sitting right in the centre of a brown interior. I honestly think it would be too much brown for one, a pain to match and a lot more effort to maintain. If I run clear I think things will still look plenty brown enough in the back and it should give me the least trouble.
I'm not worried about a little trouble, time or money if it's going to provide aesthetic value to the build but in my opinion it wouldn't of really worked.
JR
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wow so much thought
yeh it does look very pro the way you did it
marshmallow chocolate fondue is yum is all!!
i was just being a bit silly
im kind of intrigued about "the bear" now
amazing build, maybe it will inspire a few more high end builds with aircoolers in there somewhere
all water seems over done to me
yeh it does look very pro the way you did it
marshmallow chocolate fondue is yum is all!!
i was just being a bit silly
im kind of intrigued about "the bear" now
amazing build, maybe it will inspire a few more high end builds with aircoolers in there somewhere
all water seems over done to me
wow so much thought
yeh it does look very pro the way you did it
marshmallow chocolate fondue is yum is all!!
i was just being a bit silly
im kind of intrigued about "the bear" now
amazing build, maybe it will inspire a few more high end builds with aircoolers in there somewhere
all water seems over done to me
Well seeing as it came up before I thought it was worth discussing my decision. You will find pics of the bear quite easily and i'm sure you'll realise why I can't link you to it on here as soon as you find it.
There are certainly a lot of builds where an air cooler would suffice, perhaps even be quieter, but ultimately the cooling under load when overclocked is insufficient for a lot of CPU's. But that doesn't bring any real gains for gaming so i'm just going to run a stock i5-4440 in this. I've got other toys to overclock.
I think there are times when any cooling method and components are appropriate, as long as they are controlled and considered in their selection it can work aesthetically. A pretty build has to have a purpose in life too though.
JR
yeh i found it my bad lol
i like the side panel with the paw print that's cute, angry bear front panel with added crazy lights not so much
but i do see what you meant now with the matching, and im guessing they are good pictures on that site where you cant see it so bad
you see it pretty clear in one, about 5 different colors going on, i think that could drive you nuts
i like the side panel with the paw print that's cute, angry bear front panel with added crazy lights not so much
but i do see what you meant now with the matching, and im guessing they are good pictures on that site where you cant see it so bad
you see it pretty clear in one, about 5 different colors going on, i think that could drive you nuts
So today i've been attempting to rectify a little problem I unearthed when trying to mate the radiator and the pump together at Pexons over the weekend. The mini-snake from bitspower while perfect in length just wasn't offset quite enough to reach the pump top from the bottom port on the radiator. Luckily I had a cunning plan.
There was no chance in hell of moving the radiator in any direction and no other options in terms of fittings. So the pump had to move, although it already sat on the floor so I had to make it just a little shorter.
I shortened the head of the bolts which secure the heatsink to the pump top, making them 4mm instead of 7mm.
The head of each bolt is actually threaded on the inside to accept the feet hence I cleaned up the end of the thread where they had been faced off.
Obviously this meant the feet no longer fitted because the threads were too long, no trouble
Here you can see a modded bolt and foot alongside an original.
Now to assemble the pump, reservoir and heatsink...
The heatsink replaces the standard DDC body and uses a 1mm thermal pad to make contact with the PCB. The bolts I have modified tighten the heatsink against the top, trapping the pump securely in the middle and sealing it against the top with an o-ring.
But will it fit? and more importantly how?
Now just to bring the halves together...
Success
Next I will be replacing the vertical pipe as the current one is now 3mm too short, and once i've checked that fits the rig will get completely torn down so I can drill the floor. Once everything is mounted it will be on to cable management fun. I had everything except for the lights and 24-pin in earlier and that pretty much filled it!
JR
There was no chance in hell of moving the radiator in any direction and no other options in terms of fittings. So the pump had to move, although it already sat on the floor so I had to make it just a little shorter.
I shortened the head of the bolts which secure the heatsink to the pump top, making them 4mm instead of 7mm.
The head of each bolt is actually threaded on the inside to accept the feet hence I cleaned up the end of the thread where they had been faced off.
Obviously this meant the feet no longer fitted because the threads were too long, no trouble
Here you can see a modded bolt and foot alongside an original.
Now to assemble the pump, reservoir and heatsink...
The heatsink replaces the standard DDC body and uses a 1mm thermal pad to make contact with the PCB. The bolts I have modified tighten the heatsink against the top, trapping the pump securely in the middle and sealing it against the top with an o-ring.
But will it fit? and more importantly how?
Now just to bring the halves together...
Success
Next I will be replacing the vertical pipe as the current one is now 3mm too short, and once i've checked that fits the rig will get completely torn down so I can drill the floor. Once everything is mounted it will be on to cable management fun. I had everything except for the lights and 24-pin in earlier and that pretty much filled it!
JR
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So nice and tidy. Wish I had the patience and money or sponsors to build something like this. Nice work.
After the adjustments made to the heatsink yesterday it meant that the vertical pipe in the back of the case was just a little too short. As I have more time on my hands now than when I cut the first lot of tubing I thought I would document the process.
Firstly I wrapped a single layer of electrical tape around the end of the tubing where the cut would be and another slightly further back. This allowed me to securely hold the part in the lathe without marking the plating.
The old pipe was measured and the new one marked accordingly to be 3mm longer. Last time around I measured the acrylic tube which was used to mock the loop purely because I had some left from a previous project and it was far cheaper than wasting the Alphacool tubing.
To avoid damaging the off cut it was sawn off while in the lathe, it was much easier to hold in the chuck rather than a vice.
The end of the pipe was then faced to the required length, while perfectly concentric this obviously left the edges very sharp.
As the pipe must be fitted through two o-rings in the fitting I chamfered the outside so it will slide in nicely.
...and similarly cleaned up the inside edge.
After giving it a good scrub on the inside to be sure there were no contaminants or fine pieces of brass left behind the last part is finished.
It fitted perfectly into place and i'm very relieved to have the loop completely finished.
Now that's all together I will start work on the floor.
JR
Firstly I wrapped a single layer of electrical tape around the end of the tubing where the cut would be and another slightly further back. This allowed me to securely hold the part in the lathe without marking the plating.
The old pipe was measured and the new one marked accordingly to be 3mm longer. Last time around I measured the acrylic tube which was used to mock the loop purely because I had some left from a previous project and it was far cheaper than wasting the Alphacool tubing.
To avoid damaging the off cut it was sawn off while in the lathe, it was much easier to hold in the chuck rather than a vice.
The end of the pipe was then faced to the required length, while perfectly concentric this obviously left the edges very sharp.
As the pipe must be fitted through two o-rings in the fitting I chamfered the outside so it will slide in nicely.
...and similarly cleaned up the inside edge.
After giving it a good scrub on the inside to be sure there were no contaminants or fine pieces of brass left behind the last part is finished.
It fitted perfectly into place and i'm very relieved to have the loop completely finished.
Now that's all together I will start work on the floor.
JR
Thank you, I think it has been asked somewhere before scroll back and you might get a better answer than this one! Anyway without changing the overall size of the case fitting in more radiator area isn't really possible, even going to a single 140 would present clearance issues with the graphics card and the cubes which assemble the case. So in the end watercooling both wasn't a sensible option maybe with a lower TDP graphics card and a particularly fast fan it could have been done but it never really crossed my mind to attempt that.
Once I had the idea to watercool only the GPU I realised it could work really well aesthetically, a clean full length blocked card lurking under the exhaust grill. Then I started looking for CPU heatsinks and found the Noctua L12 and that pushed me towards the iPPC's and shaped the entire theme. Plus performance wise raging CPU clocks doesn't add many fps and acoustically the graphics card is going to benefit more from water. A stock intel heatsink is quieter than a 290X! As of yet it's still untested but with the available space I think it will be a strong solution. I agree it is different, most people would watercool the CPU first, but it should be different, it's brown
JR
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Not a fan of the Parvum cases, but I'm an SFF freak so I still think it's an epic build, kudos to you chap. Anything that involves a bit of turning gets the thumbs up from me.
Late last night I marked out and drilled the floor, to mount the pump and SSD's, I would have taken a pic of the process but it started snowing while I was outside. So straight in with the finished article and a test fit.
Both the HyperX 3K's ready! They are so pretty they just steal your eye and beg for pic's, probably the vainest SSD's on the market
It's always nice to see the holes line up.
With the pump to hold the floor on it's side mounting the SSD's was easy.
While everything was mm critical the tightest spot was right in the back corner where the SSD's sit right next to the screw which secures the floor. I spaced them back just enough to let me remove the cube with the drive's in place.
The bottom was even tighter though as the SSD screw sit's right against the cube, but it missed perfectly of course. Any further away and i'd be wasting valuable space ^_^
I didn't know whether to use countersunk screws but in the end went with cap heads to match what Parvum do on the underside.
The especially short SATA power cable Pexon made me fitted on perfectly, the drives are spaced 20mm apart, just enough to fit a pair of right angle SATA's in.
I'm very happy with the floor so i'll probably tear it down and test the motherboard/CPU/RAM/PSU/SSD's, maybe install the OS and prepare for the final assembly.
JR
Both the HyperX 3K's ready! They are so pretty they just steal your eye and beg for pic's, probably the vainest SSD's on the market
It's always nice to see the holes line up.
With the pump to hold the floor on it's side mounting the SSD's was easy.
While everything was mm critical the tightest spot was right in the back corner where the SSD's sit right next to the screw which secures the floor. I spaced them back just enough to let me remove the cube with the drive's in place.
The bottom was even tighter though as the SSD screw sit's right against the cube, but it missed perfectly of course. Any further away and i'd be wasting valuable space ^_^
I didn't know whether to use countersunk screws but in the end went with cap heads to match what Parvum do on the underside.
The especially short SATA power cable Pexon made me fitted on perfectly, the drives are spaced 20mm apart, just enough to fit a pair of right angle SATA's in.
I'm very happy with the floor so i'll probably tear it down and test the motherboard/CPU/RAM/PSU/SSD's, maybe install the OS and prepare for the final assembly.
JR
Great build, looks epic - any chance of a picture of your photo "studio" setup - your pictures are astonishingly good!
Last night Chocolate Box was torn down and re-built on the back of a fan box, no seriously the motherboard is exactly the same size as an iPPC box! Everything was tested apart from the GPU and functioned perfectly, getting the motherboard to co-operate with the fans didn't happen immediately and for a moment it was entirely passive cooled but it's all dialed in now. The LED's can be dimmed nicely using the motherboard, I installed W8.1 Pro onto the 120GB drive and left it at that.
So until the final assembly here's a roundup of everything that's going into the build, hopefully
Special thanks to Pexon PC's for their fine craftsmanship on all of the cables. I'm very much looking forward to seeing this all together and finding out how the GPU loop works out.
JR
So until the final assembly here's a roundup of everything that's going into the build, hopefully
Special thanks to Pexon PC's for their fine craftsmanship on all of the cables. I'm very much looking forward to seeing this all together and finding out how the GPU loop works out.
JR