Project Ariyah's Orijin

Got bored and started to disassemble the second monitor for the Snowblind mod.

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Now I have a bit of a problem... the ribbon cable connecting the power and control board to the LCD is comically short, as such this will be a bit of an issue in regards to where I can place the board. The board is horrendously ugly so I definitely don't want it in view, but have so far come up empty handed in my search for a longer cable.

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The ribbon cable I took out of the first monitor appears to be the same and is long enough to move the control board to just beyond the bottom edge of the screen, but for reasons I can't figure out the screen only displays green lines using that cable (it's fine with short one).

Current thoughts are to mount the board to the side glass, covered from view with vinyl on the outside and spray its metal housing black to cover it on the inside of the case... certainly not an elegant solution, but could work.

As our house returns to normality after the madness of Christmas I can fetch the case and everything back downstairs this week so I can play around with placements and see what I can work out. My new 480mm rad will be here on Wednesday anyway so will be getting them installed this week either way, along with splicing extending and sleeving the fan wires so there will be 2 fans per channel on the Octo and a little less cable clutter.
 
So today I had a look at how to mount the control board.

Thermaltake has thoughtfully provided some screw holes on the frame which line up perfectly with holes along the edge of the metal plate the board attaches to, which means I will only need to cut about 3cm off the leading edge, paint it all black, and mount it all directly to the case without any modifications.
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The connector for the ribbon cable ends up being at just the right height for where I'm wanting to mount the panel on the front glass, so this side of things should be a doddle.

Unfortunately it's too wet outside to cut or paint today so that will have to wait for now, but at least I know exactly what I need to do.

I also fished my Alphacool Monsta 240mm out of storage but it's been badly damaged so I can't use it. There was a male to male fitting stuck in one port that took some serious "persuasion" to remove, and the port threads are knackered... Although fittings will screw in, they won't tighten up enough not to leak, and it looks like one of the tubes may be compromised too.

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Looks like it's going in the bin and I'll have to order another new rad.

https://imgur.com/gallery/C2AJxcy
 
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New 480mm Black Ice Nemesis LX arrived today and has been installed, I will need to remove it again to sleeve the fan cables at some point but having dry fit it I'm quite glad I went for a 480mm instead of my original plan for 560mm... On the highest mounting point the ports "just" sit above the PSU which will save me some money on angle fittings when it comes to plumbing the hardline (although exactly what fittings I'll need will still be determined by pump placement etc.).
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I'm now a little unsure what to do with the other radiator bracket. This thing is an absolute unit so I doubt that a second radiator would even be required... Not that anything about this build is actually a "requirement", and the lack of symmetry may bug me in the long term if I don't fill it up.

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Regardless of whether I do decide to buy another one or not, the loop layout will be done in such a way that it will be a simple task to add one later if I decide to hold off until I've seen if the performance is acceptable as-is... I have 4 passthrough fittings ordered and dispatched to passthrough the plexiglass wall and back up through the false floor in the front, either side of the PSU, so for the right hand side the bend would go directly from the pump to the rear right passthrough fitting rather than radiator before passthrough fitting, if I go that route, and would only require a minor tubing change if adding a second radiator.

My tube reservoir appears to have been misplaced at the moment... I probably got it out of storage at some point when first thinking about this build and put it in that special safe place I can never find... If it doesn't turn up I will probably just buy the tube add on designed for the Barrow D5 top and be done with it, that would look a bit cleaner anyway.

https://imgur.com/gallery/8Rh5IBo
 
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Mounted my pump, Octo, and temp sensors.

I need to resleeve the pump... It was the first thing I ever attempted sleeving a couple years ago and I didn't do a very good job. Combined with the cable holes in the Barrow D5 mod kit being incredibly tight, it's caused 2 of the sleeves to pop out of the heatshrink and fray at the ends. I might completely redo it, or just cheat and slip on some self adhesive shrink, I'll decide that one when I get around to doing it.

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The Octo uses motherboard front panel type connectors for temperature sensors. While that's fine for the ambient sensor, the XSPC g1/4 plug sensor I have stuck in the pump tops second inlet uses a fatter connector that won't push all the way down on the Octo, I will swap it out for the right type of plastic housing.

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I'm not sure if I will keep the pump where it is yet or move it, the radiator is at the end of loop after the cpu block, so tubing from the pump will need to go to the opposite side of the case and down to the right hand passthrough; the rear most radiator port will go straight up to the top of the reservoir, with the front port going down into the left hand passthrough.

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I'm not sure if it will look better swapping the pump to the other side so that the section of tubing going across the case is at the top of the reservoir to at least have something going on in the upper section, rather than being all contained towards the bottom.

Again I'll decide on that later.

I need to make a PSU molex cable with the right distance between the connectors for the pump, Octo, and white LED strips going in the front.

I was still waiting on the motherboard coming from my brother in law before doing any more cables, in order to check the lengths and positioning properly, but I'm getting impatient so might just make educated guesses and get them done.

https://imgur.com/gallery/vqbsZxY
 
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Happy New Year everyone!

In my drunken state I decided to order a 480mm Nemesis LS for the other radiator bracket, and some fittings and tubing. The rad is actually out of stock so it's anyone's guess when that will show up, but will at least even up the rear compartment a bit.

I also decided that I don't like the way the pump looks in the rear or the way the tubing will end up being, so instead I will use my Alphacool Eisball mounted to the false floor on a fan, I'll use 2 of my passthrough fittings to keep the tubing clean. I'll need to order 2 more passthroughs for the tubing run up to the main components, but this should look pretty good once done.

Hoping to get some cutting and painting done today, but with a few sore heads in the house that may be later rather than sooner.
 
Rear panel complete.

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Although not clear in the pictures there is a small section cut out in the middle bottom for running the vga and power cable for the snowblind mod, the fan cable being installed in the false floor, and a molex for the pump.

The fitting and tubing shown is there just for marking up for the passthrough and will be replaced when the new stuff arrives.

https://imgur.com/gallery/thc8TGN
 
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Control board mounted in the side.

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https://imgur.com/gallery/ThvAWQc

Unfortunately paint doesn't like to stick to the cover plate, so I'm thinking I'll just vinyl wrap that bit and poke out all the ventilation holes, but I need to find some matt black vinyl first, I'm going to need some for the glass borders either way.
 
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I'm undecided which fan to use in the false floor.

I have in my collection: Phanteks MP140 & MP120, EK Vardar aRGB (white) 120mm, an extra Artic P120, or Sahara Pirate aRGB 120mm.

I could also replace either of the 140mm Thermaltake fans that came with the case with one of the above and use that.

My plan is to cut the corners off one side of the fan and make a hole large enough to sink the fan into, rather than have it fully mounted on the top or underside, and as I don't have the right size hole saw (and I'm too cheap to buy one just to cut a single hole) so will be limited to cutting the hole with a jigsaw, I'm hoping that the fan frame will help hide any messy edges.

I'm not overly bothered about whether or not this fan is rgb due to the Eisball being mounted to it.

I'm kind of leaning towards using the Thermaltake fan from the top of the rear compartment to keep symmetry. It's not really required in the back as I'm planning to use an equal pressure set up back there with 1 rad intaking in push, and the other being exhaust in pull.

However, I've read in reviews that these fan can be a bit loud. That said, this will only be to provide some airflow to motherboard components as the main heat generators (cpu & gpu) will be watercooled anyway.

Thoughts?
 
OK so yet another disaster today... The (second) LCD got damaged when the box I was storing it in was knocked off the shelf. I've decided to just give up on trying to do a snowblind mod and will just buy a pre made screen for the back wall. Bit gutted not to be doing something new (for me), but it will still all end up looking pretty good eventually.

I'm still waiting for the second radiator. The supplier is also holding back on dispatching the fittings and tubing I ordered at the same time until it comes into stock, which is pretty poor customer service and clearly a shameless attempt to reduce shipping costs at their end. I've emailed them asking when they actually expect to receive the Nemesis LS480 in stock, and made it clear that if it's not soon then they can either cancel that part of the order or give me a discount on paying the difference for the LX480.

Again, another company that doesn't respond to emails over the weekend, so I'll have to wait until next week.

On the plus side I no longer have uncertainty in regards to measurements accounting for the extra bulk of the control board housing, so will be able to get the false floor cut tomorrow and mount the fan and eisball. The aRGB backlights are still in transit from China and I still need to order another pair of passthroughs, but I can at least get the the plexi cut, painted, and mounted in the case.

Once that's in I can also do some funky soft tube routing using old spare parts and flush the eisball and rad of any contaminants.

I should probably rename this thread to "epic fail of an epic vision"... But I ain't a quitter and there's a long way to go yet.
 
So thanks to having our extremely grumpy grand daughter over the weekend I managed to get nothing done besides marking up the cuts for the false floor, although as I will be bevelling the front edge at 45° for the aRGB strip and need to wait on some clamps to be delivered for holding some wood to the plexi as a guide for my jigsaw, that's probably not such a bad thing as otherwise I would have likely just rushed it and messed it up.

My new 5inch hdmi screen turned up last night

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https://imgur.com/gallery/SKELuDZ

This was pretty cheap and designed for the raspberry pi, but I made sure it specifically mentioned compatibility with Windows PCs before ordering and have had it hooked up to my Steam link (closest thing to hand with a hdmi output) to confirm it works. It includes touch screen functionality but as this will be mounted inside the case and used just for displaying Aquasuite and / or Aida64 information that's a nice but basically useless addition.

Playing around with layouts while marking up, I've decided the screen will be best placed towards the front of the false floor, with the fan and Eisball mounted behind and to the right (to avoid conflict with long GPUs), the passthroughs for the Eisballs ports towards the rear centre, and my aRGB back lit project name to the rear left. The passthroughs for the tubing going up to the cpu block and back down from the gpu block are going either side of the screen.

A bit hard to explain, and impossible to take a picture of the markings due reflections on the unpainted plexi... This will make sense once it's done.

Heard back from the supplier for the last of my watercooling parts today and I should be receiving my fittings, tubing, and the upgraded LX480 radiator by Wednesday. Had to put a bit extra towards it, but at least the rear will look more filled out with 2 thick rads, even the one on it's own at 60mm thick looks tiny in the back of this case so I'm kind of glad I didn't end up with the thinner rad on the other side after all.

I'm away this weekend so unless by some miracle I manage to get something done before work during the week, there's unlikely to be any update until next week now.
 
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So my 2nd Black Ice Nemesis LX480 turned up along with fittings and tubing, and I couldn't resist getting it in and the rear plumbing finished.
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https://imgur.com/gallery/QX8E8mI

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I really like the look of these blue Barrow fittings, they match the blue sleeve perfectly and look awesome (IMO) against the black of the case. I'm now thinking of using hot pink pastel coolant to tie in the colour scheme, which is probably a good thing seeing as my Eisball looks to be slightly stained from using pink coolant the last time I used it, and as I haven't had chance to run any cleaning products through it yet I don't know what the full extent of the staining actually is... Throw pink back in it and no one will know the difference lol!

The Eagle eyed will spot that I swapped the silver passthroughs on the back wall for black... I originally ordered 2 of each as that was all the seller had in stock at the time. I prefer the look of the silver so now that I have 2 pairs of silver I'm saving those for the false floor where they will always be visible, and moved the black to the back.

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Besides sleeving the cables which I still haven't got around to doing, and general cable management, that's the rear complete so next I'll be tackling the false floor in the front.

I have everything I need for the "modding" and cooling side of things now, which was my plan to complete first, so the next things to buy over the coming weeks are the actual computer components. Motherboard first, then I'll probably get the M.2's, and see where AMD is at with releasing the 5800x3D by then... Not sure if I'd definitely buy that cpu as I still think the 5600x will be fine for my use case, but it's release might at least affect pricing.

The GPU is still the bit I'm dreading, I reckon it's going to take at least a couple weeks of solid overtime at work to be able to afford it so that's still the last thing on the shopping list.
 
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Spotted a flaw in my plans... The JST connection for the Eisball aRGB doesn't fit the Rgbpx connector on the Octo, it's too big, does anyone know which adapter cable I need for this?

Searching Aquatuning throws up a few different ones, but I'm unable to judge by the pictures if the JST end will fit or is the same as Eisball, and the descriptions don't tell me anything.
 
Ordered the motherboard and 1x 1TB WD Blue sn570 m.2 drive today from amazon, will be here at some point today.

Ended up going for the MSI X570 Edge Max rather than the Carbon, it was £60 less while still offering all the features I need so didn't see the point of going for the more expensive model.

The WD Blue won't be used as an OS drive, just game storage, but I'm wanting to get a 1TB PCIe4 NVME drive for OS and a 2TB PCIe3 for game storage in the 3rd slot at a later date. The sn570 was on offer though so figured it would be best to get it while I could.

My last system had 3TB of total storage (1TB nvme + 2TB HDD) and I was often forced to uninstall stuff to reinstall something else, so I'm thinking the extra TB should allow me to keep most of my frequently played games installed on fast storage and I can always throw in a large mechanical drive later if needs be for everything else.

Once the motherboard arrives I can get on with finishing the cables, and if I can find where I put my old 2600x I can get a basic system up and running to sort fan profiles out at least.

Hoping to finally get the false floor done today too, so pics and updates to follow.
 
https://imgur.com/gallery/PuYaPzG

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Motherboard and the first of the eventual 3 m.2's installed, really like this boards aesthetic, MSI sure do know how to make some good looking kit.

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Also managed to crack on with doing the false floor. I knew from doing the back wall that cutting this 5mm plexiglass was hard work, but cutting the edge at 45° was an absolute nightmare and as it turns out, also completely pointless... My plan was to bevel the front edge and use edge lighting with an aRGB strip to light up the project name, but testing it with my phones torch (the aRGB strip still hasn't arrived from China yet) proved that just won't work, or at least not as well as I'd hoped.

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Luckily for me I anticipated possible problems and masked off a section directly behind the project name before painting the plexi, so I will just mount the strip directly below. Although I forgot to take pictures, I "frosted" the plexi by sanding it before painting so the LEDs should be diffused a bit.

Had to scrap the idea of "sinking" the fan into the plexi as it would make the connections for the Eisball too low to get the 90° bend into the passthroughs. I could probably of achieved it by using 90° fittings, but I'm trying to avoid using extra fittings if I can.

Once I got the motherboard in I realised I made a rookie mistake and used the wrong 4 pin connector on the CPU power cable, so will be swapping that over tomorrow when I make a start on doing the rest of the cables.
 
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Didn't get chance to do the cables but instead got the false floor mounted and plumbed up.

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https://imgur.com/gallery/VwN7Bfp

I will be leaving it running for tonight with plain distilled water to flush the rads and hopefully clean up the pink tint on the Eisball. By-passed the upper part of the loop as I can't hardline that section until I have the cpu and gpu anyway, but the connections under the floor will be left with flexi tubing for ease of use as some of the bends would be a nightmare to achieve with hardline.

Pretty happy with how it's turning out so far though.
 
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After 24hrs of running the pump at full speed and adding some white vinegar to the loop the pink tint to the Eisball remains, so looks like I will have to use pink coolant so it isn't so obvious.

Managed to pin up the PSU side of the CPU cable and swap the 4 pin connector at the motherboard end. I've had it hooked up to my PSU tester and confirmed it works correctly, but I did mess up the lengths on a couple of the wires and the orientation of the wires going through the last closed cable comb before the PSU, so it looks messier than I'd like.

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I'll get around to sorting it eventually but for now I'm moving on to the 24pin.

Got all the wires cut to length and pinned at one end, including the 4 double wires which I soldered together 15cm from the PSU end so the join will be in the rear compartment rather than on show.

By the time I'd done that I needed to clear the table ready for dinner, so will sit down with a beer once the kids are in bed and get on with doing the sleeving.
 
No real update this week, 2 of my kids caught covid so haven't really done anything.

I bought some fittings to tidy up the tubing under the false floor but due to some random issue on amazon's end they were never delivered and it's now just saying that they are waiting for them to be returned before issuing the refund.

My aRGB strip turned up finally... I actually ordered a single 50cm strip that I was planning to cut and solder to have one strip under "Ariyah's" and another under "Orijin", but what they actually sent me was 2 separate 20cm strips which makes life a little easier although I will still need to splice the wires to a single header.

Got the wires for the 24pin sleeved but haven't pinned the other end or wired up the plugs yet, I'm hoping to get the time to actually do some work on this at the weekend now that the house is getting back to normal.

Unfortunately, having not been able to work for the past week means I can't afford to buy any more parts this week, but my boss is sorting me out with some overtime moving forward so from next week I should be able to get the last few bits over the course of 3-4 weeks.
 
Been a while since the last update, been busy working 72hr weeks and doing bits and bobs around the house but happy to announce I will finally have a running system by the end of tomorrow.

Bought the Ryzen 5 5600x last week along with 32gb Corsair Vengeance RT @ 3200MHz (thought I'd ordered the 3600mhz version but apparently clicked the wrong one when ordering on my lunch break, never mind, the performance difference is minimal).

Managed to get an MSI RTX 3070 Ti Ventus for a reasonable-ish price (less than £800) which is due tomorrow.

Cracked on today and managed to get the PSU cables finished, the aRGB strips behind the project name installed, and the CPU plumbed up using an old EK Supremacy EVO block I've had since Devils Canyon.

I still need to buy the GPU block but undecided whether to go with the Alphacool or Bykski block... The Bykski looks nicer IMO but will take a month to get here, whereas the Alphacool should only take a couple days from Germany... Both come to about the same price with shipping so I'll have to think about that one, but I wanted to run the card on air cooling for a bit first anyway to make sure it's fully working before blocking it, given the cost and warranty implications. I'll buy a better CPU block at the same time.

I also still need to buy the rest of the storage drives, but that's not a huge priority.

For now, or at least from tomorrow, I'll have a fully functioning kick ass gaming PC with a massively overkill CPU only loop, so I'm a happy man.

Pictures to follow tomorrow.

As a side note... If I ever mention making every PSU cable from scratch again, someone please slap me... It's possibly the most time consuming and frustrating task I've ever done for a computer lol!
 
Pictures
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Of course, this wouldn't be my log without a disaster or 2... Immediately after taking these pictures my D5 pump packed in. I've tried re-wiring it, checking it with a different psu, etc, but it won't turn on. I've had it for nearly 10yrs so not a bad run, just gutted because it was working perfectly up until that point and showed no signs of dying.

So, all I can do for now is drain the loop and run the cpu with the stock cooler until I can buy a new one.
 
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