(In Win 901) Asteria II: Rearmoured

If it's any help, my badly bent acrylic seems to be holding fine - even the dodgy up and over job I did. Took the pressure test fine. Only breakage issues I've had are in threads cut onto the end of tubing that isn't properly dimensioned for it...but you've gotta have a play sometimes :D I do seem to have developed an alarming number of micro-fractures in other bits of acrylic though. Near the thread of my monoblock, all over the barrel style filter and a length of link tube. You can feel the cracks with your fingernail in that last one. So it's not all faultless. Delrin terminals seem like a great idea now :D
 
Well, I say I'm sticking with acrylic tube over PETG, but I have 2 insanely tight bends which acrylic may not handle. Plus my planned CPU+GPU parallel run will be nice, sweeping arcs, so getting consistent heat into about 10cm length of PETG may be easier than acrylic too.

I've been watching your tubing runs and threaded acrylic work Cenedd for exactly this reason!
 
My bends weren't all that tight but on the up and over there were two too close together to fit a mandrel onto so I ended up jury-rigging something to give it a smoother curve than if I'd just bent by hand - I'm far from artistic so it's entirely probable that someone less cack-handed would do a perfectly fine job by hand. I partially straightened a piece of split ali tube as that's what I could find. I did find it needed warming (my 12mm mandrels are plastic) first, otherwise the tubing cooled too quickly when placed onto it and that wrecked the bend.

Not sure if I've got anything that's close to what you're trying to achieve but if any measurements like bend radius or gap between bends is of any help to you just shout as I've got it all in bits at the moment.
 
Cheers, man. I think it's safe to say getting a 1D bend radius in 12/10mm acrylic tube is going to be impossible, but I gotta try :D
 
I do have a couple of backup plans.

Essentially the difficulty is I'm drilling through the back wall of the case to run into a 120mm rad. By the time I've mounted the rad and the 90 degree rotaries I have about 18mm of space before I hit the internal rear wall. Now, since I don't want mahoosive holes in my rear wall I need to get the bend radius down to 15-18mm so I can tidily slot the tube through.

If acrylic and PETG can't get that tight I'm looking at a pair of bulkhead passthroughs with non-rotary 90 degree fittings, but rough measurements indicate it'll stick out a smidgen too much. There's also the dual compression right angle fittings, but I've only ever seen Bitspower do them. Since I'm using EK nickel fittings throughout, the mismatch between chrome and nickel and straight and diamond knurling will set my teeth off. Although I have to put up with it for my pump: nickel fittings, chrome adapter on a stainless steel plate - 3 different colours! Good job it'll be hidden in a dark corner :p

Or there's just larger holes in the rear wall. Still, tubing is a long way off yet and I have options.
 
Have you looked at the Barrow 90 male to female (or dual female) fittings I used in what sounds like the same place? They're not rotary so you'd have to be able to rotate the tube but the F-F I have to hand is 20.2mm and 19.9mm measured flat of each opening to opposing rear and 17.5mm wide. Lowest profile I could find.
 
ALXAndy said:
IO cover is much better fella. Practice deffo makes perfect!
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Indeed :)

The previous bending of 2mm acrylic was nothing more than a play with the material, and honestly if I had my sheet bender made up at that point I wouldn't have made as much of a pig's ear as I did. But getting the shape cut out was always going to be a pain, and that turned out to be much easier with the PETG than the acrylic.
 
That board looks so good! Also, I've only just realised the connector layout as well, I quite like the 8 pin being next to the 24 pin for cable management on an ITX board. Well done ASUS :p
 
Cheers dude, happy you like the board work!

The Impact VI was awesome when it first came out and set the bar VERY high. The amount of stuff they crammed into 17cm square was epic, thinking vertically with the VRMs, sound card and M.2 slots, and the actual layout was top notch. And I agree totally with the 8-pin CPU connector directly next to the 24-pin. It makes things so much easier for routing (and my sleeving pattern :p ), and I'm honestly surprised no other board does the same thing.

Personally I think the VIII Impact is a tiny step backwards. Not only is the U.2 port a total waste of time, but it also means the M.2 combo slot is dropped. OK, the WiFi is onboard now, rather than in a card, but we're down a couple of USB ports.

Still a cracking board though.
 
Ahh, I see what you mean with the VIII being a step down, but at least you can split the USB 3.1 to get more ports, but that is a bit of an Apple solution and isn't exactly a solution... And I hadn't checked the specs and assumed there was an M.2 around the back or something, who's idea was taking that out?!

But seriously, how many actually small ITX cases have cable routing that allows for a connector to come in from the top of the board? Seems ridiculous that the thought that went into designing most other boards was "Take some stuff out and make it smaller" haha.
 
I honestly think Asus got a bit complacent with the VIII Impact. The U.2 makes no sense at all given then chunkiness of the cable, and the BIOS battery literally glued to an I/O pillar with a crap cable is laughable. And the Q-Code and control switches are on a vertical PCB now too.

In my mind this has taken away space for a proper amount of USB ports and left the board itself rather sparse. Hell, since there's no big Q-Code LCD or power button on the edge of the board, at least give us a USB2 header!

It's all minor niggles really, the core board is as solid as its predecessors, but I'm hoping some kind of sanity returns to the inevitable IX Impact for Z270 Kaby Lake - at the very least drop the U.2 and give us a full-length M.2, even if it's on the back of the board.
 
I'm sorry to say that this project is on hold for the time being.

I'm in the process of rescuing a number of abused rats and their babies and will need the spare room to house them all, so no space to get any work done.

Hopefully be back soon!
 
ALXAndy said:
That's awesome man :)
Click to expand...

Going to be utterly mental! I already have 3, so this will be a challenge. But I do adore my ratties so it'll be a fun challenge.

Much like painting my copper GPU block and giving the backplate a brushed aluminium finish ;)

(I'll post a little update of that work so far before I vanish for a bit)
 
Well, you've got to give credit for originality of excuse! ;)
Hope you get back to it soon and that everything goes well in the meantime.
 
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