Project Hornet - Water Cooled - Media / NAS Server mATX Cube

Pneumonic · 23 May 2014 at 18:02

Recently moved house and over the next few months am going to be upgrading all my machinery... First on the list is a new Media PC / NAS Box...

Been out of the game for a while and although this started off as a simple little build its now turning into some what of a project!

Hardware For The Build is as Follows:

Case: Lian Li PC-V358B - When looking for an mATX case I had one real requirement and that was plenty of space for HDD.. this mATX cube case can fit six 3.5 inch drives and a further 4 2.5 inch drives.. so is perfect for my requirement.. Also I think its rather fetching!

Motherboard & APU: ASRock FM2A88M Extreme4+ & Kaveri 7850K - Was a toss up between the above and an i3 platform... went with AMD on the basis that I needed as many SATA 8 ports on an mATX board as possible and the ASRock board gives me eight.. Also performance doesn't need to be spectacular! and the less I spent on this build the more I have for the gaming rig later!

It is of-course illegal (or well should be) to build your own PC and not over-clock the nuts off it - just to see what it can do! So I had some spare WC gear laying around and then I thought well won't cost too much to stick it under water.. and will be nice and quiet.. so the above is getting the water treatment.. having had a look around I can't see many O/C'd Kaveri under water (I mean who would bother?!) so should be an interesting little journey.

RAM: Avexir MPower Yellow Series 16BG - PC3-19200 - 2400 Mhz - Having made the decision to O/C I couldn't very well put in rubbish RAM... I also didn't want to spend a total fortune so these are a compromise over the 1333 Mhz sticks it was going to get..

Not sure on the Media Server I will use yet but my current Plex setup does love its RAM. Also goes with the build theme which I will explain a bit more on later...

Storage:
Operating System: 1x Kingston KC300 - 60GB
NAS: 6 x Western Digital Caviar Red - 4TB - Likely run these in two RAID 5 arrays around 16TB of storage.

Power Supply: Corsair CX430M

Network: 4 Port Intel Gigabyte Network Card - More on this later....

Build Theme:
I have done quite a few builds in my time mostly either white.. or black/red black/blue.. thought this time I would give Black/Yellow a whirl..

With that in mind will be running clear tubing with Mayhems Pastel Sunset Yellow.. along with a custom paint job on the inside of the case.. and some other little tarty bits..

Obligatory Picture of Parts:
Not everything turned up yet but certainly enough to get going... Still (perhaps importantly! waiting on the APU and RAM)...

Pneumonic · 23 May 2014 at 18:18

Update 1: Case Prep

So first job on the list was to get the case ready for the internals to be painted.. Internals will end up a mixture of black with the odd yellow highlight..

So I got to do one of my most favourite things and drill out rivets! I HATE rivets and wherever possible replace them with screws on my cases.. this case was to be no exception..

So time for some Case Pictures:
Got a little carried away with the drill and took the internals out before I remembered to take the pictures.. but here are some of the chassis... Chassis is pretty cool as the whole thing is on a hinge so you can open the top right out.. extra e-cookies if you can name the case in the background!

Pneumonic · 23 May 2014 at 21:02

Case Striped Down & Primed

TheyCallMeAndy · 23 May 2014 at 21:20

Looks like its going to be a killer can't wait..

Kobi · 25 May 2014 at 08:03

Oh nice! really looking forward to this!

flame696 · 25 May 2014 at 21:02

This is going to be good! Can't wait for more updates!

Pneumonic · 26 May 2014 at 16:44

Thanks for the positive comments so far guys..

Well a quick update for you.. got all the internals painted and lacquered now.. didn't want too much yellow as the coolant will be yellow so once everything is covered should just be the odd highlight here and there...on with some pictures..!

Internals Painted:

Got some bits and bobs done on the motherboard but more on that later as I must get the kids ready for a trip to the in-laws!

GiraffePencils · 26 May 2014 at 16:45

DAMN
looking good
Pretty much my new build's colour scheme

WalderX · 27 May 2014 at 11:35

Yellow black cant go wrong - looking forward to updates!

GiraffePencils · 27 May 2014 at 11:37

WalderX said:
Yellow black cant go wrong - looking forward to updates!

I think you just did the rounds on every thread I'm subbed to

Filled my subscription page with updates, Good taste sir

Pneumonic · 27 May 2014 at 15:30

So Just a small update... waiting for some black nuts and bolts to arrive now so that I can put the case back together and get on.. but some pictures of case / fans / rad to keep you entertained..

Case Open:

Rear Fan:

Front Fans:

Radiator:

Motherboard:
I have also been doing a bit of work on the motherboard...

So a generic picture... quite a nice little mATX board with lots of SATA 3 ports as required... standard AMD CPU cooling bracket has been removed in preparation for the water block.

The eagle eye'd amongst you may have noticed that the VRMs have no cooling... for a motherboard with "extreme" (worth a giggle for what I think "extreme" means ) in its name that was a bit poor in my book but then for £45 odd quid I guess I couldn't complain to much..

So given I want to overclock I thought it better safe than sorry to stick some little heatsinks on the VRMs..

Rooster212 · 27 May 2014 at 17:54

Loving the colour scheme. Keep up the good work!

paulstoke12 · 28 May 2014 at 21:45

Very nice I did a similar build recently in a cooler master elite 130 custom loop

Pneumonic · 2 Jun 2014 at 23:40

Had sometime this evening to move the build on! Final parts arriving over next couple of days so plan is to complete over this week and the weekend..

On with the build pictures:

Hard Drive Mounts:
I decided to move these around from their original positions mostly to free up space for the pump in the lower compartment and probably a little black box to stuff all my wires into to make things a little neater..

Hard Drive cages I am using just some standard noise dampening fan things to mount into place keep things nice and quiet.

and all mounted in position.. god I hate those fan mounts.. getting all four to line up at once was a little testing!!

Optical Mount:
Next job was to get the Blue-Ray drive in place.. I don't normally bother with optical drives these days but kind of a must in a media build..

Pump Mount:
Cleaned up an old Laing DDC and pump top that has now been in probably 5 builds.. love these little pumps..

Radiator Mount:
The case has quite a cool "swing door" to mount fans / rads on.. not too sure on its usefulness as once you have tubing in place you can't open it out... but did make the mounting nice and easy..

and in place and secured

Reservoir & First Piece of Tube:
Always feels like you are getting somewhere when you can put your first piece of tube in! Also got one of the white LED strips in place along with the SSD's.

Tube!!!

And Finally just laying the motherboard in place to test everything fits.. lost the darn back plate somewhere but to tired to go searching now..

More to follow this week!

Pneumonic · 4 Jun 2014 at 20:32

Just a quick update!

RAM arrived today but wasn't yellow as it was in the pictures; so hopefully I can get that returned and sorted..

Also a big shout of thanks to Roy @ ASRock Netherlands who is sending free of charge a new back plate for the motherboard after I lost mine.. great service from the ASRock guys.

mightymouse · 4 Jun 2014 at 22:50

great colours and keep sharing, thanks in advance

davido_labido · 4 Jun 2014 at 22:55

looks great,

yeah the ram is a bit more goldy/orange than yellow im afraid.

i think kingston did some yellow ram if my memory (no pun intended) serves me correctly.

mushtafa · 4 Jun 2014 at 23:13

This is going to be interesting... all looks a tight fit!

Pneumonic · 6 Jun 2014 at 20:31

So an update... still waiting on some fittings for the water loop and the hard disks so not going to get it finished this weekend rather irritatingly but still progress made..

RAM
What a saga to be honest! ordered the Alexir from two different e-tailers and must be something wrong with the manufacture codes or what not but both sets were core series rather than MPower.. and thus not yellow! OCUK and the other e-tailer were good about taking the RAM back and OCUK to the rescue with 16GB of Kingston HyperX NA'VI.. have to say am please with the colour match!

Cables!
Is going to be a tight squeeze in this case... with the WC gear and six hard disks in the bottom along with cables for everything inc.. lighting etc... so mean as you start to go on and get them all in nice and clean.. originally thought these would be two short! but tested it out with an old HD and on the longest run I have 0.5cm of cable to spare!

Filling The Loop
Been thinking about how I am going to fill the loop on this one and have gone with a QDC off one of the spare radiator ports... should be pretty simples with this and fits with about 1cm to spare to the front of the case when the lid is back on!

More Fittings:

Testing Some Of The Lighting:

Slight Snag!
Always new this was going to be close! but trying to close the lid the optical drive catches on the radiator top fitting..

Fortunately that corner doesn't actually hold the optical drive.. so will be meeting its end tomorrow when I attack it with the jigsaw.. then all should fit snugly!

Hopefully some more updates early next week once the last parts turn up!

Pneumonic · 3 Jul 2014 at 20:36

Well after what seems to have been a world shortage of 45 degree matt black 19/13 moonson fittings I finally have the last parts of the build turning up tomorrow! super excited to get this one completed and up and running! Then on to some mATX 3930K Quadfire goodness for the re-build of the day-to-day gaming / productivity machine...