Onwards and upwards by Parvum Systems
- Thread starter parvumsystems
- Start date
- Joined
- 6 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 444
Thank you everyone! Straight tubing in such a small build was insane to deal with!
Acme15: We didn't manage to get the rig running. We had it with us but one of the acrylic tubes got damaged in the drive. I suppose rushed time and all the snow really didn't help us. OCUK had to lend me a gaming rig in fact! I can however offer another update:
UPDATE TIME!
Sponsors:
So to continue with the rebuild to get all the cable management in place. We did it almost in a backwards fashion. No cable holes initially then after a full rig build mark up the exact measurements and cut again. Long winded indeed but gets the finish we wanted.
60mm Alphacool back in place:
Gentle fans installed via the second layer/accent panel:
Would like to welcome Pexon on board. We met James from Pexon at iSeries and got to spend a good bit of time together. We have actually traded work for work here and this is a shot of the PSU as you may have seen already if you follow his work:
Next some floppy tubing that needs to be used in places that wont be seen in the final. It was impossible to not use any in a build so small but it wont be seen. Also the 8pin EPS for the motherboard:
With the Enermax fans installed:
And as promised the EK block changed to clear/frosted:
We had been lucky enough to part exchange an old card for a second GPU and got the matching block for it. SLI connector goodness here from EK:
A little idea of what is going on up there to make this thing all happen. Lots of holes, lots of mad connectors. Excuse the mixture of fittings. These won't be visible so it didn't have to all be bitspower
So now because of the second GPU that we didn't take into account efficiently we had to change the tube routing. It doesn't look as amazing as the all in line tubing but after seeing it filled with tester fluid it still looks amazing and we are really happy.
Here are some photos of the fittings and changes:
A few random shots of the PSU cables and the top chamber, starting to take shape:
To end the update a few shots of the routing system. Though not all direct to the top they work really nice and straight tubing is killer:
Again thank you SO much for reading. It means everything to us. Please throw questions, advice and/or ideas at us!
See you on the next one!! :rock:
Acme15: We didn't manage to get the rig running. We had it with us but one of the acrylic tubes got damaged in the drive. I suppose rushed time and all the snow really didn't help us. OCUK had to lend me a gaming rig in fact! I can however offer another update:
UPDATE TIME!
Sponsors:
So to continue with the rebuild to get all the cable management in place. We did it almost in a backwards fashion. No cable holes initially then after a full rig build mark up the exact measurements and cut again. Long winded indeed but gets the finish we wanted.
60mm Alphacool back in place:
Gentle fans installed via the second layer/accent panel:
Would like to welcome Pexon on board. We met James from Pexon at iSeries and got to spend a good bit of time together. We have actually traded work for work here and this is a shot of the PSU as you may have seen already if you follow his work:
Next some floppy tubing that needs to be used in places that wont be seen in the final. It was impossible to not use any in a build so small but it wont be seen. Also the 8pin EPS for the motherboard:
With the Enermax fans installed:
And as promised the EK block changed to clear/frosted:
We had been lucky enough to part exchange an old card for a second GPU and got the matching block for it. SLI connector goodness here from EK:
A little idea of what is going on up there to make this thing all happen. Lots of holes, lots of mad connectors. Excuse the mixture of fittings. These won't be visible so it didn't have to all be bitspower
So now because of the second GPU that we didn't take into account efficiently we had to change the tube routing. It doesn't look as amazing as the all in line tubing but after seeing it filled with tester fluid it still looks amazing and we are really happy.
Here are some photos of the fittings and changes:
A few random shots of the PSU cables and the top chamber, starting to take shape:
To end the update a few shots of the routing system. Though not all direct to the top they work really nice and straight tubing is killer:
Again thank you SO much for reading. It means everything to us. Please throw questions, advice and/or ideas at us!
See you on the next one!! :rock:
Forgive me if this has already been answered but what connectors are you using for the hardline tubing?
I really want to try something similar but am a bit worried about using standard compression fittings in case they dont grip well enough on the rigid tubes.
Astoundingly good work in such a small space I am in awe
/Salsa
I really want to try something similar but am a bit worried about using standard compression fittings in case they dont grip well enough on the rigid tubes.
Astoundingly good work in such a small space I am in awe
/Salsa
Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Sep 2012
- Posts
- 4,275
- Location
- Derby
is the finish of the plastic cases bought in like that, or is it something that you add after?
i was feeling 8packs rig that you guys did (i know, that sounds weird) and it felt like it had a soft rubbery coating over it?
i was going to come ask you guys, but when i got there you were in a game of league, didnt want to interrupt
i was feeling 8packs rig that you guys did (i know, that sounds weird) and it felt like it had a soft rubbery coating over it?
i was going to come ask you guys, but when i got there you were in a game of league, didnt want to interrupt
- Joined
- 6 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 444
Forgive me if this has already been answered but what connectors are you using for the hardline tubing?
I really want to try something similar but am a bit worried about using standard compression fittings in case they dont grip well enough on the rigid tubes.
Astoundingly good work in such a small space I am in awe
/Salsa
Hey there. The fittings pictured are c47/48 crystal link connectors. They had been designed to be used with small pre-sized acrylic tubes for SLI/Crossfire W/C set ups. To be honest they are awesome with the right type of tubing but work literally with a tight fit and 2 x O rigs. So user beware. Its also extremely difficult to not damage the O ring with the tubing being as tight as it it. Some people sand the tube ever so slightly but then you can easily get leaks if over sanded in the wrong area. I'm pretty sure standard compression fittings would not work. You could also look into pneumatic fittings but these are not designed specifically for watercooling and you can run into problems with thread angles and lengths.
I expect do yeah, I may have a slightly larger back plate that overlaps the bottom chamber to hide the small gap. We will see though!
is the finish of the plastic cases bought in like that, or is it something that you add after?
i was feeling 8packs rig that you guys did (i know, that sounds weird) and it felt like it had a soft rubbery coating over it?
i was going to come ask you guys, but when i got there you were in a game of league, didnt want to interrupt
Ah you should have interrupted us! haha. Next time you should say hello!
It is a special type of Acrylic that we import. It has a double matte finish with improved qualities for dust/finger prints! It makes cutting it even harder but with a real nice end result.
That is exceptionally nicely machined. My initial thought was "mill? why not laser cut" but then I saw all the 45 degree bevelled edges. The process looks horrifically labour intensive, but that's the joy of a one-off build.
If your CNC can work copper, there's nothing stopping you from making the water blocks yourself. The opens up many interesting options. One a similar note, you could cut some interesting pattern / logo into a side panel, fix a second sheet of acrylic to the back and send the coolant through the channels.
Really nice work. It looks like it has been designed by an architect, not an engineer - my designs are never anything close to that pretty.
If your CNC can work copper, there's nothing stopping you from making the water blocks yourself. The opens up many interesting options. One a similar note, you could cut some interesting pattern / logo into a side panel, fix a second sheet of acrylic to the back and send the coolant through the channels.
Really nice work. It looks like it has been designed by an architect, not an engineer - my designs are never anything close to that pretty.
Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Sep 2012
- Posts
- 4,275
- Location
- Derby
aaah, gutted, really liked the feel of that, was hoping it was just some kind of spray that i could buy!
- Joined
- 6 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 444
30th March cable management
Maybe one day... but hopefully our S2.0?
!!UPDATE!!
Time to manage some cables.
Sponsors:
So first we work on the top chamber. A portion of this will be kept visible from above so these will be managed with some degree of care. The back of the case will be contained so we don't have to be as careful.
We begin by using MDPC clips and clamping each 6 cable bundle to the acrylic:
To fit these cables we use brass inserts and M3 bolts:
To insert the brass peices into the acrylic we used the good old solder iron trick that we first spotted on a project log some time back:
Finishing the rest of the GPU power leads:
Moving to the back of the case; more of the same but as I said not important here to keep it tidy, these wont be seen. The only reason we are doing it is to take any cable bulge or pressure off of the side panel:
With the 24pin we just cable tie it to the other cables. Again we are not going to make this look perfect as it will be housed with acrylic:
Sadly that is all for today folks. Just keeping you in the loop!
can a compact watercooled case get any better
Maybe one day... but hopefully our S2.0?
!!UPDATE!!
Time to manage some cables.
Sponsors:
So first we work on the top chamber. A portion of this will be kept visible from above so these will be managed with some degree of care. The back of the case will be contained so we don't have to be as careful.
We begin by using MDPC clips and clamping each 6 cable bundle to the acrylic:
To fit these cables we use brass inserts and M3 bolts:
To insert the brass peices into the acrylic we used the good old solder iron trick that we first spotted on a project log some time back:
Finishing the rest of the GPU power leads:
Moving to the back of the case; more of the same but as I said not important here to keep it tidy, these wont be seen. The only reason we are doing it is to take any cable bulge or pressure off of the side panel:
With the 24pin we just cable tie it to the other cables. Again we are not going to make this look perfect as it will be housed with acrylic:
Sadly that is all for today folks. Just keeping you in the loop!
- Joined
- 6 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 444
5th April Update - Rear chamber
!!UPDATES!!
Sponsors:
Back again. Sorry for the lack of eye-candy; got to get the boring bits done to make the eye-candy better later ;D!
We start with a little drawing:
This is one of the two sections that will make up the back chamber. To hide some cables and enclose the fan controller. Remember there will be a side panel still so some of the boring white will be covered. Tools 45', 1.5mm & 3mm:
Finished:
With both pieces fixed together:
The chamber installed into the back of the case, first use is to hide these molex and other junk in the top. We have actually had to ditch the custom res. We plan to make one in a different spot in the case. It was just to tight to run 4 tubes from the small reservoir AND 4 tubes to each pump. There is also talk of a GPU upgrade and perhaps introducing a rad box to compensate for the new gained power... but we will see!
A helping hand to show you the fan controller in place:
(The controller itself wont actually be seen, more fabrication to come)
Some more photos of the chamber installed:
And a final shot; there is some crazy stuff hiding away in that top chamber!!!
See you all soon!
!!UPDATES!!
Sponsors:
Back again. Sorry for the lack of eye-candy; got to get the boring bits done to make the eye-candy better later ;D!
We start with a little drawing:
This is one of the two sections that will make up the back chamber. To hide some cables and enclose the fan controller. Remember there will be a side panel still so some of the boring white will be covered. Tools 45', 1.5mm & 3mm:
Finished:
With both pieces fixed together:
The chamber installed into the back of the case, first use is to hide these molex and other junk in the top. We have actually had to ditch the custom res. We plan to make one in a different spot in the case. It was just to tight to run 4 tubes from the small reservoir AND 4 tubes to each pump. There is also talk of a GPU upgrade and perhaps introducing a rad box to compensate for the new gained power... but we will see!
A helping hand to show you the fan controller in place:
(The controller itself wont actually be seen, more fabrication to come)
Some more photos of the chamber installed:
And a final shot; there is some crazy stuff hiding away in that top chamber!!!
See you all soon!
Associate
- Joined
- 18 Mar 2011
- Posts
- 810
- Location
- East London.
I cant wait for my case
- Joined
- 6 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 444
10th April Update - Tubing finished
We feel the same way!
Sponsors:
!!UPDATES!!
Hey guys, managed to make some real good progress on the build last week. Been staying at the warehouse after work till around 9PM often so going well!
Not to much in this update but expect a fair few updates real soon. Filling the loop in the next update! Exciting....!
We had pretty much the hardest of the tubes to do. Always leave the hard parts till last! The problem you find here is that you cant really use acrylic tubes in such a small place with the connectors you are limited to (without bending the tubing).
We had been determined to ONLY use acrylic tubing even though using a little bit of traditional tubing would have saved us so much stress.
Tricky connection no.1
Resolved with 3 different angle connections to make it work! ALMOST horizontal connection:
Tricky connection no.2
We got around this by using a double angle connection on the RAM block & the top chamber:
And a final shot to show you the complete connections to the hardware:
A more exciting update next friends. Finally fill the dual loop!!
Goodnight, sleep tight!!
I cant wait for my case
We feel the same way
!Sponsors:
!!UPDATES!!
Hey guys, managed to make some real good progress on the build last week. Been staying at the warehouse after work till around 9PM often so going well!
Not to much in this update but expect a fair few updates real soon. Filling the loop in the next update! Exciting....!
We had pretty much the hardest of the tubes to do. Always leave the hard parts till last
! The problem you find here is that you cant really use acrylic tubes in such a small place with the connectors you are limited to (without bending the tubing). We had been determined to ONLY use acrylic tubing even though using a little bit of traditional tubing would have saved us so much stress.
Tricky connection no.1
Resolved with 3 different angle connections to make it work! ALMOST horizontal connection:
Tricky connection no.2
We got around this by using a double angle connection on the RAM block & the top chamber:
And a final shot to show you the complete connections to the hardware:
A more exciting update next friends. Finally fill the dual loop!!
Goodnight, sleep tight!!
Associate
- Joined
- 9 Jan 2013
- Posts
- 1,627
- Location
- Worthing, West Sussex
Such an awesome build. I follow most of the project logs on here, and this is by far the best looking one. Excellent stuff and brilliant craft work.
- Joined
- 6 Mar 2013
- Posts
- 444
11th April, Mayhems in the loop!
Thank you all! Had some amazing response and interaction on the OCUK forum. Been talking lots with OCUK so you have a bunch of things to look forward to!
To be honest even the SUPER cheap CNC machines on eBay could create a nice scratch build. You are just going to be limited by the size of things you can cut. I can't say it will be the best CNC in the world but I've seen beautiful things cut from extremly cheap home built routers.
!!UPDATE!!
Sponsors:
So now for the fun part! In the loops we have mayhems red & white. The best fluids we've used. In honesty we don't do any fancy temperature or flow tests... as long as our hardware is at a suitable temp and it looks good that's all that matters here. All about aesthetics!
As for Mayhems if you haven't had a look at the fluids you really should!!
One colour for each mini res:
We fill both loops at once here. All mobo power intact and no paper towl or anything to protect us from possible leaks.. we have far to much faith in what can be very tempermental fittings & acrylic tubing. Here are some photos I managed to get as we booted the system a few times:
So we did go ahead and finish filling the loop but you can see a few other little bits before I show you thats.
We made a start on the top layer. This is made up for a 5mm red then a 5mm white. Here is the red:
We then cut the top from the white. The rog logo requires some very tight cuts. The Hole at the rear has a nice 120° edge cut and the entire panel had been cut out with a 45° cutter:
A cheeky shot of the back with the red rear chamber installed. Remember there will be a second white layer to cover the majority of this:
We then finished the side panel. Very similar to the standard S1.0. but just revaling more of the internals. The 'republic of gamers' text was inlayed with forsted red. Very fiddly to get the tolerance to actually work and get these letters installed without any cracking! Here are a few shots of the loop filled with side panel in place:
With the white roof layer installed. We may actually inlay the ROG logo here with grey and red but its extremly tricky and we wanted to see how the cut through would look first:
We will leave you with some nice shots of the case now both loops have been filled. This is really what the case was about. Redicleous amount of hardware and cooling:
This all in a somewhat 'neat' mATX LAN rig. It really wasn't until this point we really got to see our our hardwork shine on this one. Will we ever straight tube cool a rig this small again? hmmm unsure.....
Once again thank you all for reading. We hope these photos made reading and following so far worth while. We would say the build is about 90% complete now to be honest. We have since added a second layer just to strenghten the entire thing. Its MAD heavy and have a bunch of final touches. To have a few bits to finish. The PSU side cover which will inclose the fan controller etc. The top ROG inlay and case feet.
Please understand these are not the final photos so if you do wish to share them wait for the best! We are heading to the studio Tuesday to get some super nice final shots together for you with a great friend of ours Tom Barnes. If you are into photography you should check out his work here. He couldn't shoot things any further away from computers but he can sure as hell make a fine job of them as well.
Untill then! Have a good one!
Looks good
Thank you all! Had some amazing response and interaction on the OCUK forum. Been talking lots with OCUK so you have a bunch of things to look forward to!
To be honest even the SUPER cheap CNC machines on eBay could create a nice scratch build. You are just going to be limited by the size of things you can cut. I can't say it will be the best CNC in the world but I've seen beautiful things cut from extremly cheap home built routers.
!!UPDATE!!
Sponsors:
So now for the fun part! In the loops we have mayhems red & white. The best fluids we've used. In honesty we don't do any fancy temperature or flow tests... as long as our hardware is at a suitable temp and it looks good that's all that matters here. All about aesthetics!
As for Mayhems if you haven't had a look at the fluids you really should!!
One colour for each mini res:
We fill both loops at once here. All mobo power intact and no paper towl or anything to protect us from possible leaks.. we have far to much faith in what can be very tempermental fittings & acrylic tubing
. Here are some photos I managed to get as we booted the system a few times:
So we did go ahead and finish filling the loop but you can see a few other little bits before I show you thats.
We made a start on the top layer. This is made up for a 5mm red then a 5mm white. Here is the red:
We then cut the top from the white. The rog logo requires some very tight cuts. The Hole at the rear has a nice 120° edge cut and the entire panel had been cut out with a 45° cutter:
A cheeky shot of the back with the red rear chamber installed. Remember there will be a second white layer to cover the majority of this:
We then finished the side panel. Very similar to the standard S1.0. but just revaling more of the internals. The 'republic of gamers' text was inlayed with forsted red. Very fiddly to get the tolerance to actually work and get these letters installed without any cracking! Here are a few shots of the loop filled with side panel in place:
With the white roof layer installed. We may actually inlay the ROG logo here with grey and red but its extremly tricky and we wanted to see how the cut through would look first:
We will leave you with some nice shots of the case now both loops have been filled. This is really what the case was about. Redicleous amount of hardware and cooling:
- Socket 2011 i7
- 16GB RAM
- 2 x 7870
- 2 x 240mm rads (60mm & 35mm)
- 2 x DCC pumps
- 2 x SSD's
- 5 Waterblocks
- Over 40 fittings!!
This all in a somewhat 'neat' mATX LAN rig. It really wasn't until this point we really got to see our our hardwork shine on this one. Will we ever straight tube cool a rig this small again? hmmm unsure.....
Once again thank you all for reading. We hope these photos made reading and following so far worth while. We would say the build is about 90% complete now to be honest. We have since added a second layer just to strenghten the entire thing. Its MAD heavy and have a bunch of final touches. To have a few bits to finish. The PSU side cover which will inclose the fan controller etc. The top ROG inlay and case feet.
Please understand these are not the final photos so if you do wish to share them wait for the best! We are heading to the studio Tuesday to get some super nice final shots together for you with a great friend of ours Tom Barnes. If you are into photography you should check out his work here. He couldn't shoot things any further away from computers but he can sure as hell make a fine job of them as well.
Untill then! Have a good one!