Project Inspired by iB

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Hello and welcome to my project log!

This project is called "Inspired" not because its divinely inspired or anything like that but because the project will incorporate many ideas/mods I've seen from many truly amazing projects before so a big THANK YOU to all you fellow modders .

The aim of the project is to build a PC that is beautiful to look at, to have high end performance and be very quiet. How hard can it be.
The Colour scheme will be Black and white.

- Mod List -
Cut out window in side panel
Cut out design in case roof for 360 Radiator
Remove HDD cage for 240 Radiator
Paint case
Sleeve PSU (paracord heatshrink-less)
Paint Motherboard
Paint Radiators + Fans
Cut acrylic tubing to suitable lengths
Finalize design for PSU and optical drive bay covers
Build SSD mounts
ETC.....


- Spec List -
Core i7 3930K
ASRock X79 Extreme 9
Radeon HD7950's (x2)
Seasonic Platinum 860W
Lian Li A17FB
D5 Vario Pump
Alphacool NexXxos Monsta 240 + 360
5 x Gentle Typhoons 1850 RPM
Phoyba 250ml Res
Many, many fittings
Acrylic tubing (solid)

Undecided on SSDs, RAM and Pump Top

A few sketchup designs:

Update coming very soon!

Thanks for looking

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Thanks Pgreenwo!

First update:

The typhoons and 240 Radiator need a new look so out with the spray paint and sand paper
Painting the fans and radiator took ages as I didn't want any "orange peel", they're not perfect but I think they look good.

Amazing fans but alittle dull in grey

Much better

Radiator next! You jelly of my Haribo?

The quality of the Monsta isn't great out the box unfortunately, wonky stickers and a bad paint job

White Edition

Still needs alittle buffering but its almost there.

That's it for this update, thanks for looking!

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

PSU Sleeving time! (My poor fingers!) :/

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

looks very shiny very eager for more

subbed

Thanks mate, I'll start modding the case tomorrow and alittle on christmas day so I'll have another update soon

The rad looks awesome in white

Thanks reiyushin, the top 120.3 will be getting the same makeover

It is looking good. But I personally don't like how the res is blocking the cpu cooler.

Thank you
The designs are just so I could get a feel for what I will need to do in terms of mods and to also get an idea of the tubing runs.
I could always change the Res or its location if it looks bad, nothing to worry about

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Complements on the sketchup drawing - I had to look twice to see that was a render!!

Thanks Tattysnuc but it's not all my work, infact most of the components are other peoples work, Check it out here: http://scc.jezmckean.com/home

This looks great buddy.

The White Rads look amazing. Im sure the White GPU blocks will too...

Excited to see this.

Thanks Doomedspeed, the waterblocks in the renders are actually the stock black colour, the white you see is the custom GPU backplates (more on this later). I may spray the block white aswell, will have to wait and see, don't want to over-do it.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Sorry for the low quality pics, some of them were taken after work when there's no daylight, I was just to excited to wait!

Beautiful looking case I think

Time to disassemble

Poor case!

Before painting I need to fill in the un-needed holes and dremel out some cable management holes.
The motherboard will tell me exactly where to cut the cable management holes and also exactly how long the cables need to be.

Late X-mas prezzie to myself arrived

The Accessories

The "Game Blaster", it's an audio and LAN card, Looks beast I think Even this will be modded

No modder should be without the Official Overclockers UK Elite Gaming Mug!

Some dangerous looking thermal paste

Custom GPU plates, Not sure how I will mount these yet, I may just end up drilling holes in the acrylic and screwing it to the cards, but for now I'll try and think up a more elegant solution.

Thanks for looking!

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Coldzero make custom backplates and the likes - who did your plates for you?

Looks great, I'd be all over that case like a fat kid on sugar if it supported XL-ATX.

Let us know how the ASRock X79 board fairs up, haven't heard much about them on socket 2011

Oh right, never heard of coldzero before My plates where made by a chap named Tom at ChilledPC for a bargain price of £15 each.

Yeah the lack of XL-ATX support may be an issue for some, though the V2120X supports XL-ATX but costs a lot more.

I'm hoping the board will be a good overclocker as it is advertised as the overclock king and has a 16+2 CPU Power phase design

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Asrock extreme 9. Had 3 of them all had to be sent back. Project looks amazing, I love white aswell. To bad you chose that board lol.

Lol, oh dear Hope mine pans out ok, what was wrong with the three you had?

-The Gigabyte boards I've had have had awful Vdroop.
-The MSI Big Bang X Power has a hideous 'bullet' style south bridge heatsink, I could replace it but the board is already expensive enough
-The ASUS boards would require a lot of painting from blue to black
-Not sure why I didn't seriously consider EVGA...

So I went with the ASRock Extreme 9 as it has good reviews, a good phase design and is mostly black.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

First one half DIMM slots' wouldn't work and USB 3 headers were not working. Second one USB3 headers didn't work but i cba with another RMA then a week later it just stopped POSTING. Then 3rd one USB3 again.

So I gave up bought an ASUS RIVE and haven't looked back.

Doesn't sound too promising :/ All I can do is wait until I've saved up enough money to buy the CPU and RAM so I can test it out. Fingers crossed.

This looks like it will be....


EPIC

Thanks Skeese, I'll try my best not to disappoint

This ^

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

I thought I'd update the thread, not much happening at the moment as I'm waiting to take delivery of some drill bits and metal filler so I can crack on with modding the motherboard tray, case floor and roof.
I've received the spray paint (etching primer, normal primer, gloss black, clear coat) but cannot paint the case until all other mods have been completed on the case, so all work is on hold until I've received the modding bits and bobs.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Thanks Joe!

Alright then, time for an update.

I decided it made sense to modify the motherboard tray next as when that's completed I can work out my cable lengths and continue sleeving, also I can start painting (sleeving whilst waiting for paint to dry).

I used the motherboard to mark out the cuts for the 24 pin, PCI-E, Sata and also front panel cables, I'll use the CPU bracket cutout for the EPS 8 pin(s).

I filled in the unnecessary holes so that the end result is cleaner, I had to use quite abit of filler and it looks a complete mess at the moment but it'll be fine once its been sanded completely flat.

First hole done:

Smile

I then realised I'm an idiot and didn't measure the cable connector width properly and had made the holes too small by about 1-2mm. So I filed off 2mm and now the connectors fit through the holes, still needs alittle more filing to make it neater (though no one will actually see the holes).

Next is to get sanding! (oh joy )

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Good to see you back on the x79 platform how did my x58 platform hold up for you ?

Thanks mate, I do miss the 12 thread powahh of the 3930K when rendering.

The X58 setup is still going strong, been rock solid since day 1

Oh and you have mail

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

I've just re-read this post on my projector screen (102" 720P) following your update, and I have to say that that motherboard looks like a work of art.

Looking forward to see how this develops as I'm in the process of a (re)build too this week

Yeah absolutely, it looks stunning, well done ASRock!

Can we expect a project log for your rebuild?

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Yep. Am photographing at the moment, and testing the equipment - my patience is such that I want to test everything prior to actually starting to document - I've been without my main rig for 2 months and really miss it

Cool, looking forward to seeing that

Yeah it sucks not having your main rig but atleast you have a computer to use in the mean time, I hate building PC's without a computer to use whilst your building, I always end up just rushing it so I can start using it.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

I got some more sleeving done, so far I've done 2 x 6 Pins (PCI-E), an 8 pin, the molex cables I need and I'm almost finished on the second set of 6 pins, after that all I have left to do is the 24 pin cable and a sata power

I decided that instead of having to either try and sleeve the double wires (two wires going into one pin) or solder the two wires half way up the cable so that the connector ends look neat, I'd instead just remove the +2 pins altogether which looks much neater and I also don't have to try and hide the +2 pin cables around the back of the motherboard tray.
I can always just add the extra ground wires back in at a later date if I ever decide to upgrade the graphics cards to something that requires 8 pin(s).

A cheeky demo shot with my hot assistant, a GTX480

Hours with an electric sander and 120 Grit sand paper produced a smooth(ish) mobo tray with the excess metal filler removed, still have to sand it with 800 Grit in prep for painting.

Top case panel masked up....

And Marked up ready for cutting

But before I take the drill and jigsaw to the panel I've decided to see if I can source a replacement panel from Lian Li if I need to, I'll hear back tomorrow with a quote. If the price is high then I'll likely out source someone to machine cut it for me, but if a replacement panel is cheap then I'll give it a go myself as I would like to do as much of the modding myself.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Mobo tray looks like it's ready - What did you use to fill the holes? I've got multiple holes in my Corsair 700D "mobo tray" area I'd like filling, which I guess I can do with filler. What can you use to, say, fill the hole that the psu goes through? I have no welding kid so I'd guess I'd be looking at rivotting a plate in place, and then filling the gap with "filler" (whatever that may be....)

Yeah it's almost ready for painting now, just got to sand it down with 800 Grit to get rid out the 120 Grit scratches.

I use some metal filler called JB Weld, its excellent stuff but the consistency is quite runny, so if you wanted to fill bigger holes then you'd have to let it cure for about 30 minutes before applying it.
Any hole bigger than about 8mm in diameter and you'll really struggle to fill it with metal filler.
A case PSU hole is far to large to fill with metal filler, grab a small sheet of aluminium and cut it to the right size, but surely your case came with a blanking plate for the psu?

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

@ Devrij, thanks mate

I'm working on the SSD enclosure at the moment, I'll post up some pics soon!

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

SSD enclosure Concept

Alright then, I don't want my SSD's hidden away and I also don't want them just placed on the floor of the case so my idea is to integrate them into the PSU cover, this way they'll be on show and the placement makes cable management a breeze.

Below is the enclosure that will be screwed into the PSU cover, it's a really simple design comprising of three pieces of acrylic.

The mounting holes in the enclosure will be tapped and the holes in the PSU cover will be countersunk to give a clean look.

I may carbon rap the SSD's so they fit in better with the colour scheme, or I may use smoked acrylic.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Which SSDs are you going for? The samsung drives would match nicely and are good drives too.

Still undecided mate, the sammy 840's are awesome but I'd still have to camo them in carbon because of the orange square.

I'm considering the ADATA 128GB drives because of their price/performance but will have to check out some reviews.

 

[iB CoMpL3XiTy]

Are you using acrylic pipes to achieve this nice clean shape - otherwise, you may find that they sag and just look untidy.

Yep, solid acrylic tubing, no sagging here!