Project: Kodiak

[Verloren]

Hey all, I have been working on a new build for a couple of months though (slow progress, work and other responsibilities) and it was suggested I post a project log on here. I will space out the initial updates to make it easier to digest (as opposed to a massive 120 picture first post lol).

I wanted a new build because I havent built one in ages, plus those Sandybridge processors have looked mighty tempting for a while now.

The initial plan for the system was to mod a case to take 2 full water cooling loops. Those loops would be cooling a P67 based i7-2600k system with 2x 6950 in CrossfireX. Supporting thast cast would be 16GB Vengeance memory and 2 OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs. It would be OC'd (naturally) with a target clock of 5GHz.

My first problem was to choose a case to put this lot in. My first thought was an AT server case lying in the server room at work doing nothing. I looked at it and thought it could be awesome (something like this: http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3694/cimg0876largeoq1.jpg - Disclaimer: that is not a picture taken by me, I found it via google image search). However, after talking about the build idea with a friend he brought up an interesting question, is it even physically deep enough to take a 360 rad in the roof (I was dead set on 2 360 rads being housed internally) and after a quick measure it wasnt. Scrap that idea.

Obviously the best choice of case is probably a TJ07 or 800D, but they are too common, everyone and his dog builds a system in an 800D. It was then that I saw the Mountain Mods cases! I shied away at the prices, but in the end I couldn't help myself so I configured a U2UFO:

I had previously decided I wanted to use Aquatube reservoirs, in fact a huge part of my case search was dismissing case after case because I was so fixated on having 2 Aquatubes next to each other in the front of the case (It doesnt help that I live in an apartment with no spare room or outside space with which to do any serious modding)! I also wanted to single sleeve every cable in the system with black high density stuff and black heatshrink for a stealthed look.

It was at this point that I drew a pretty bad, mostly to a 1:3 scale drawing of the idea in my mind:

The plan for that rear exhaust was changed to become an intake, I never corrected the sketch though >.< .

Anyhow fast forward to deliveries:

Sleeving materials and spare psu connectors

The initial order with 50 feet of sleeving and 5 feet of heatshrink, I quickly realized this wasn't enough

so I ordered a further 35 feet of the 1/8" stuff and 15 feet of 3/8" stuff (just in case)

Reservoirs and fillports

The reservoirs, sorry for the many pictures, but I really was obsessed with these at the time:

Aquatube 5.25" mounting brackets (2 of them) and 2 faceplates

I discovered these while cutting the box up to put in the recycling. My wife quickly snapped these up and I haven't seen them since.

Case delivery:

I opened the box to find an inner box surrounded by those nasty polystyrene shavings - the cat seemed to love them and proceeded to go fishing

With the inner box open after removing the cat

In the top right corner you can see the cling film wrapped parts that make up the 5.25" drive bays, next to it is an ATX pin removal tool and to the right of that there is a large packet of screws, bolts, LED's, switches, PCI brackets etc etc. Directly below the fixings package is that cardboard roll, wrapped up in that are the 2 hard drive mounts. At the bottom of the picture is the horizontal motherboard brace.

Under this is the motherboard tray parts, casters, more fixings, 6 panels, 2 struts and so on... a lot of parts!

AANND like a bad movie I'm going to finish with

::::: TO BE CONTINUED :::::

 

[gary996]

Pics not working for me

 

[Avathar77]

No pics???

 

[Hyburnate]

You can't store in a locked album.. Some people X_X.

Upload them to tinypic.

 

[Verloren]

Yea sorry, I copied the wrong link and didn't notice because my thread was stuck in moderation

All fixed now!

 

[Verloren]

Ok, lets get right to what the case looks like most of the way through construction:

I had forgotten to take pictures during the build process, I was far too fixated on the task at hand!

The HDD mounts are below, these will not be mounted to the case until I get the fan filters and and anti-vibration material.

I already had one SSD mount so I went ahead and mounted it.

The case configuration I went with has 12 120mm fan holes, these obviously need filling:

I originally intended to go with Enermax TB Silence fans with red LEDs, but after a friends recommendation I changed that to the red Xigmatek crystal series fans.

These look damn nice spinning. Quite silent, don't move as much air as I expected though (to be fair, the test was subjective - I put my hand i the stream - its also pulling through a fairly dusty fan filter which that can't be helping much).

After pulling it out of the case and sitting it on the floor next to an Antec Tri-Cool on Medium speed, I can say that it seems to push about as much air as the Antec (could be more, its hard to tell), but it is definitely quieter. I'm happy

The fan spacing on all the panels is 15mm (as per my request), so for radiators I chose 2 XSPC RX360s.

These things were much bigger in person than I expected them to be (not the length so much, but the sheer thickness)!

Because my chosen colour scheme is red I chose to get 3L of red Feser F1 coolant.

Yes I know pre-mixed coolants have their issues with block blocking and such, but if I see that problem come maintenance time I will switch to distilled water, kill coil and some blood red dye.

If you notice that on the previously posted sketch I had planned for 25mm fan shrouds. So I searched my favourite online stores for some. I didn't like what I saw though, it was all way more expensive than I deemed a plastic frame to be worth. So after a quick think I realised that the Xigmatek fans were also 25mm thick. After a quick eBay search I had bought 6 99cent POS fans from China.

A close up of these fans. I plugged this one in and its air movement was terrible, it was barely noticable at about 4 inches away. It also made a high pitched whine sound while spinning that only got louder when held in a horizontal position. Truly the worst fans I have ever tested!

20 secnds later I had fixed the fan, it is now infintely more useful now than it ever was before:

All 6 of them prepped, all that's left is to sand the roughness where the fan struts were (I did do this, I just failed to take any pictures of it)!

By this point I was thinking about my watercooling loops in detail, planning exactly what I wanted and where I wanted them.

Loop 1

Aquatube => MCP655 => T block => Drain port / Swiftech Apogee XT => MOSFET blocks => Southbridge => Radiator

Loop 2

Aquatube => MCP655 => T block => Drain port / gpu block 1 => gpu block 2 => radiator

Below is a very quick sketch from multiple angles of my initial loop ideas. This does not take into account dimensions of parts in the case or anything like that, I just did it while on hold at work!

It was now that I decided exactly where the drain ports would go so I could mask it out ready for the holesaw. To do that I made a 1:1 scale paper mock-up (used liberal amounts of magic tape to hold it together!) of the MCP655 pump to ensure I would leave enough space for everything.

What did you really think I would make a full paper mesh of the pump? I don't have that much patience!

Find out what happened next after the break!

I anticipate having caught up to the current project progress within the next couple of updates, but that said, all comments, suggestions and concerns are welcome even during the catchup phase, so don't be shy! Its never too late to change things!

 

[Evoss]

Looks awesome so far, could you have not got a bigger case? Thats a bit on the small side

 

[Hyburnate]

Looks good, is that the Razer Lycosa in the last picture?

 

[Verloren]

@Evoss Haha I knew it was going to be an 18" cube, but I was still surprised by it's real life size! I am also faced with the current problem of having nowhere to put such a huge case under my desk without compromising my comfort. Impulse buying is awesome!

@Hyburnate Yes, that is a Razer Lycosa, it's a decent keyboard but too noisy while in use for me. I've only had it a year, but I am already thinking of replacing it ;(

 

[SkidMarkKing]

Looking good bud. Excited to see the final product.

 

[gary996]

Yes mate its looking like its going to be a nice build.

 

[G-Dubs]

Will be watching this

 

[Verloren]

This post will be much more picture heavy than previous ones because I realise I starved you guys of case pictures

I built the reservoir assemblies next.

Unfortunately, I noticed that one of the supplied bolts hadn't been stamped out correctly, and was impossible to tighten

I emailed Aquacomputer with this picture and they happily shipped a single bolt out to me from Germany... they even sent it express post and I received it in the USA in 2 days, that can't have been cheap for a jiffy bag containing 1 small bolt!

I then attached the faceplates to the bay mounts from the first post (I had painted the bay mounts black too, none of this was pictured though) and mounted those into the drive bays at the front of the case.

I think they look pretty good in their spots! The astute among you will have noticed that the faceplates from the first images and the case shots above look different. This is because the G1/4" ports I wanted facing upwards were at a 45 degree angle instead in their proper orientation. So to counter that I just flipped the faceplates around so the Aquacomputer branding faces into the case upside down (almost impossible to see because the reservoir obscures it).

Now more shots of the case in its built form:

This is a view of the back of the case. Notice the 120mm fan hole on the removable motherboard tray, the 2 PSU holes (the one of the left is covered with an etched smoked grey acrylic blanking plate) and the 2 120mm fan holes on the bottom. Those bottom fan holes could be used for a 240 rad or as the hard drive mounts as I intend to use them.

You can just about see the horizontally orientated motherboard tray here. The top window should provide a nice view over the components.

This shot was only kept because of the colouring. This is the colour and texture of the case as it really is. Notice that unlike the previous photos, the flash isn't illuminating all of the bumps in the textured powder coat making it look a much lighter colour than it actually is (I don't have any AA batteries for the flashgun to get diffused lighting - I took better pictures at a later date).

A view of the front panel between the 2 sets of 5.25" bays. I haven't made a cable harness for the power switch yet. I realise that my sleeving job on the LEDs is beyond horrible... but that doesn't really matter as this section will not be visible upon completion.

The switches are also not the ones that came with the case, I chose to change them for Lamptron anti-vandal ones. I chose a black momentary with red led ring for the top switch to be used as a power button and a black latching red dot led switch for the bottom to be used for lighting. The 2 LEDs are red ones, and I only have a use for the top one as the HDD activity light, I need ideas for the 2nd LED!

Below are the switches that came with the case and are currently sitting idle. Its a shame really as they are nickel coated anti-vandal switches :/

It was at about this time I decided what I was going to do about another design flaw I noticed with the Aquacomputer Aquatube bay mounts, the back riser plate on them (presumably to mount a pump) obstructs the rear G1/4" ports and could not be allowed to stay. I realised I had to do something about this before I painted them, but I didn't have any ides, which is why the paint job on just those parts of the bay mounts didn't have any care or attention paid to them.

I had a stroke of genius when I was staring at it through the camera and broke out the Tin Snips:

I then hid the sharp edges with some rubber edging

Next I decided to use my pump mockup and planned out my drain ports. My original plan was to have the GPU pump outputting to towards the back of the case and have the drain port near the back. The CPU pump was going to be outputting towards the left side panel with the drain port more or less central.

However when I thought about that, I couldn't see how the CPU drain port would be in any way convenient if it was centrally positioned and scrapped that idea quickly. I then though about having both drain ports in a line at the side of the case, this had many advantages... not least of which was far easier access... But I mainly liked that idea for the aesthetics lol!

I masked up where they were going to go and drew round the fillports (badly, but whatever )

The left side of the bottom panel in the above picture is the back of the case and the top edge is the right hand side (when looking at the front of the case).

I then drilled the pilot holes

And readied the holesaw

I paused here to pluck up the courage to continue. This step was necessary because the last hole saw experience I had was not so clean lol. During a previous computer build when I lived in Cambridgeshire, I was drilling 2 118mm holes in the top of an Antec P182 for a 240 rad. The Antec P182 was a hard son of a bitch with its thick rolled steel construction, but I was persistent and the first hole came out okay. The second hole had to go through the honeycomb meshing on the roof so I thought it would be easier. The hole saw slipped a few times, but I kept at it, eventually the hole saw went through and the disk of honeycomb mesh came flying out of the holesaw on fire! It ricocheted around the motherboard tray (scratching the **** out of the black paint I had spent a week lovingly applying) and ended up embedded in next doors fence! This taught me a number of things, always stand behind the motherboard tray when cutting out disks (luckily I did), don't use full speed on a corded hammer drill to speed up the job, and always cut first, paint second!

Anyhow, this time the holes came out uneventfully (a good thing really considering this is a rented apartment and the only available open space I could reliably keep the cat out of, was the bedroom and on my wife's side of the bed :x !), the first hole (left side in the following picture) slipped once, mainly because I was slightly scared of ruining the nice powder coating (doh!), the second was fine though.

I was pretty happy with the result, and obviously that means the first thing I do is fit the drain ports!

(Yes, I fitted those before I sanded the rough edges, and it stayed that way for more than a month before I remembered to smooth the edges!)

A couple of shots with the drain ports fitted and the case re-assembled:

I'm holding the SSD mount in its final position to illustrate the position of the drain ports relative to their closest components. The large black upright on the left of the image is the motherboard brace.

Ok thats all folks! Next time there will be fillports, radiator mounting, cable sleeving, fittings and a delivery I am expecting to receive tomorrow (yes that means this log will have finally caught up, just in time for the good stuff too)!

 

[SGWills]

quick question as you havent setup your trust part under User CP, what will you be doing with the switches that came with the case, as im after one lol

 

[Verloren]

@SGWills I currently have no plans for them - I initially thought about a CMOS reset switch, but I'm not sure I can be bothered... besides that would only require 1 =P

If you want one, I can send one over to you... I believe I have enabled trust now so you can send a message through that.

 

[King Damager]

That's quite a nice finish on the case!

Also much prefer TB Silence to the Xigmateks if I could put LED's in the Silence!

Push much more air, and are quieter! (My Xigmatek's are 140 to be fair)...

kd

 

[Serpantine]

Glad to see you've got this up and commented out nicely, it's good to re-read from a different perspective!

That's quite a nice finish on the case!

Also much prefer TB Silence to the Xigmateks if I could put LED's in the Silence!

Push much more air, and are quieter! (My Xigmatek's are 140 to be fair)...

kd

I would say that the xigmateks move considerably more than 120mm tb silences and probably 140s from my experience as i think they push about as much air as an asthmatic after a run. (Hense my recommendation)

Idea for the second LED, horrendously pointless and I've no idea how you'd do it but ... power consumption = brightness.

Get the rest of the updates up at the weekend

 

[King Damager]

Glad to see you've got this up and commented out nicely, it's good to re-read from a different perspective!




I would say that the xigmateks move considerably more than 120mm tb silences and probably 140s from my experience as i think they push about as much air as an asthmatic after a run. (Hense my recommendation)

Idea for the second LED, horrendously pointless and I've no idea how you'd do it but ... power consumption = brightness.

Get the rest of the updates up at the weekend

My 120 Tb Silence definitely pushes more than my 140 Xigmatek, saying that, it is the one pulling out the back, so it does have my CPU fans pushing out through it as well, so that might be slightly distorting my feel. But I feel everyone's own experience!

kd

 

[Verloren]

We have a lot to get through in this post, so lets jump right into it.

The next thing I did was attempt to uni-sleeve a 6-pin PIC-e cable.

I will be re-using my Antec True Power Quattro 1000W PSU thats in my current build. The cables look like this in their stock configuration:

after I stripped it:

And finally, after I finished sleeving it:

It looks ok to me, but I do wish I used less heatshrink. I guess I could re-do it at some point, maybe with a red wire too. We shall see what sleeving I have left at the end.

I also had some temperature sensors to sleeve:

By this point I was so incredibly bored... and once again I used far far too much heatshrink. I will definitely redo these if they are visible when the build is completed.

While we are on the subject of cables, I decided to change the horrible white fan connectors on the Xigmateks with black ones:

Anyhow, enough of cables x_x

After the drain ports were cut out rather effectively last time I felt all empowered and broke out the holesaw once again for the fillports. This set was more complex, as the only viable location for them meant drilling through the aluminium and the edge of the acrylic. They also had to be in exactly the right place the first time as there is only a 22mm gap between the base of the fillport and the reservoir port. Obviously thats too short for barbs/compressions and would require some kind of sli or connector fitting.

This meant marking the hole locations was absolutely critical, so I started very carefully measuring from the center of the reservoir port to each edge and corner of the case. I then marked it out on the underside of the top panel with masking tape. However I couldn't bring myself to cut the holes because I didn't fully trust the measurements.

I then had another stroke of genius (no really, this time it was actually genius) and worked out a way to measure accurately with a very slim margin of error. My plan was to install a Feser single slot sli connector into the reservoir port and scribble all over the exposed end with permanent marker. It would then be a simple matter of masking up the target area and pressing the top of the case down into position, lifting it off again and admiring my inky ring marking the port position. This worked unbelievably well, but unfortunately I took no pictures of anything until after I finished drilling the holes, anyhow here is the ruined fitting:

You can just about see the black ring of ink around the top of it. This enabled me to drill the following holes:

I chipped the edges of the acrylic here, but nothing too major. The moment of truth:

YAY! I only received the fittings to connect the fillports to the reservoirs today:

Koolance RAM 35 connection fittings. The pictured ones are 14mm Type 2s, I also bought Type 1s just in case, but the above ones work perfectly! I will take pictures of them connected when I am done constantly removing case panels.

I made a cable harness for my power button with LED ring.

To simplify things a little I sleeved the LED and switch cables as two bundles and I am pleased with how it came out.

You may have noticed that in some of the case pictures it is perched on casters, I really really don't like those so I wanted to replace them with static feet. I liked the MNPC Tech billet feet, but eventually ruled them out because they might look too round for a square case. I eventually settled for making my own case feet out of the Mountain Mods acrylic feet. I didn't just want to use a set of them because I don't feel 1/4" is enough lift.

The feet, countersink drill bit, felt, washers, 6-32 screws and locknuts I will be using to make my feet:

The screws planned out:

I initially tried just screwing 3 feet on top of each other as they are advertised with 6-32 threads, however not one of the holes lined up perfectly between feet, resulting in a screwed together mess sort of resemblin the leaning tower of pisa, quite unsuitable for feet. I decided to drill out the screw threads into a straight shaft. This was quite simple and uneventful. I then used the countersink drill bit to sink the holes for a flat standing surface when mounted:

I then mounted them to the case so they were ready for felting:

After applying the felt:

I chose to cut the corners off the felt because I didn't like my uneven scissor skills when corners are involved. This didn't affect how they came out though, they look very nice to me:

Btw, because of the nice diffused lighting this shot shows the actual colour of the case perfectly!

This post is already stupidly long, and I didn't even catch up yet

Oh well, next time folks - Watercooling parts, some initial components (you can see a sneak preview of one part in the koolance fittings picture), mounting of the radiators, mounting of the pumps (did this today) are all still to come!

 

[Verloren]

I would like to start off this post with some pictures of deliveries:

I was originally going to with the P8P67 Pro as a motherboard, but the more I saw the Sabertooth P67, the more I wanted it. Right up until the point I decided the looks were worth the extra 50 bucks and went for it lol.

As such my MOSFETs would have to be watercooled by the EK Sabertooth block:

I really like the overall quality of this piece and EKs packaging is superb! I chose the black top because I was going for a stealthed system.

I cheaped out on the P67 waterblock, but its black and the ports are on the edge to avoid interfering with the gpu's.

Remember that pump mockup from earlier? well that was of the MCP655 (D5 vario) and I decided it was too damn big and ugly :/ I ended up buying 2 MCP355s instead:

All I did when I got the pumps was cut off the useless RPM reporting cable and cut the warranty sticker along the seam joining base and top. I will be putting an EK top on it and mounting them on the Heatsink accessory (mainly for height, however additional cooling can't really hurt). More on that later...

For fittings I had my heart set on matte black bitspower barbs, but Serpantine convinced me to go for compressions (over a period of 2 weeks). I was only hesitant to do so because Bitspower ones are ridiculously expensive... $8.99 each and I need 32! So I shopped around for other brands matte black compressions, but I didn't really like any. The only compressions that caught my eye were the XSPC black chrome ones (admittedly, because of the $3.99 price tag), but I didn't want those because they wouldn't match bitpower matte black rotary angled pieces.

In the end I gave up and ordered an EK compression, bitspower matte black barb, bitspower matte black rotary 45 degree and an xspc compression so I could see them in person. As expected the Bitspower stuff looked pretty amazing, but the retailer accidentally sent me a black sparkle 45 degree rotary instead. This turned out to be a good thing because of how well it matched the xspc compression... I finally had my answer! Its funny because I initially dismissed black sparkle as looking exactly the same as shining silver, but it turned out that retailers are just terrible at taking photographs.

So the fittings plan was set, Bitspower Black Sparkle angles and misc with XSPC compressions (1/2 ID / 3/4 OD). I will now proceed to put retailers black sparkle pictures to shame:

When my 90 degree pieces and the rest of the 45 degree pieces arrive I will do a full fittings picture, it will quite the sea of brass (ETA on this, 2 weeks from now)!

The full fittings plan is as follows:

32x Compressions
8x Rotary 90 degree
6x Rotary 45 degree
4x Fillports (2 Fill, 2 Drain)
2x T Blocks
2x LED Plugs
2x Plugs
2x Temperature Sensors
2x Koolance RAM 35 fittings

All of that will be connecting up the following loops:

Res => Pump => T block => drain port / CPU block => Mosfet => SB => Rad => Res
Res => Pump => T block => Drain / GPU 1 => GPU 2 => Rad => Res

Those of you keeping score will notice that to connect the GPUs in serial I will have 2 Plugs too few and 2 Compressions too many, Yep that's right, I will be going for Parallel flow, not using sli fittings either, real compressions and hose for me (unless its too hard to actually do it come crunch time, then I will default to Bitspower crystal link). I think it will look absolutely amazing with 2 side panel windows and a top panel window!

Anyhow before I get too excited just thinking about it, on to more mundane deliveries:

The velcro that comes with cathodes and such is way too useless to stay stuck to my textured powder coat (as evidenced by my cathodes falling off the ceiling of my case 3 nights in a row) so I bought this industrial strength stuff (and now its extremely hard to deliberately peel this stuff off):

I also happened to see these snazzy red bolts, at $0.50 each I should have passed them up, but **** it, they look too nice:

I came out with 28 of them, I am not sure how visible these will even be when in place (right now, the only plan for them is the 7 expansion slots).

I got standard fan grills for this case, because I didn't want it to be any more obnoxious than it already is:

That is a stack of 16 Fan grills, I will explain that overly large number in a later post.

To accommodate my anti vibration material (the thermochill gaskets basically), case wall, fan grill, 25mm fan shroud, 25mm fan I needed 2.5" screws to mount my radiators (I will be using a pull configuration):

That is all for now as I have made Mrs Verloren wait long enough to be getting glared at (we have plans to go out). So later today I will be posting pictures of the preliminary cable managment, radiator mounting, pump mounting and the first component delivery. Then we will finally be caught up!