Project Log: Lightening Blue

DeltaSword · 28 Oct 2014 at 20:01

Hi everyone
This is my first full PC build and my first time watercooling, I’m not a great writer but after reading through the other logs here I thought I would share my project to get some advice……so here goes.

Spec
Phanteks Enthoo Luxe
Asus X99-S
Intel i7-5930K
GSKILL DDR4 2400 Mhz 16 Gb (4x4GB)
Crucial M55 240Gb SSD
EVGA Supernova 850W

Nvidia GTX 560 (to be upgraded)
Seagate Barracuda 2TB

Water Cooling
EK Resevoir X3
EK Supremacy Evo (Acetyl)
Alphacool VPP665T
Alphacool Pump Top Acetyl
Alphacool NexXxos ST30 240
Alphacool NexXxos XT45 360
Corsair SP120 QE (x5)
Corsair AF120 QE (x4)

Tubing / Fittings to be decided (most probably hardline)

General Ideas
I am planning on modding the case quite a bit, adding a custom motherboard panel backlit by LEDs to mount everything on and an acrylic front panel with cutouts for the fans and front USBs / Audios. The inside of the case (drive bays etc) will be removed for a cleaner setup and to allow more room for the watercooling, I am going to use an external optical drive if I need one so no need for that and the HDD and SSD will be mounted on / behind the motherboard panel. The colours I am thinking about are a base of dark grey (possibly metallic) for the motherboard panel and the chassis with white and blue highlights to match the motherboard, blue / white LEDs will light in interior of the case and the Phanteks case has RGB LEDs on the exterior with a built in controller. The cables will be custom sleeved in Grey with White and Blue done by myself (unless I make a total mess of it) using Lutro0’s heatshrinkless method, im still deciding if I want to modify the cables that came with the PSU or make a complete new set as the Supernova PSU seems to have capacitors soldered into the cables and I want to keep these as a backup just in case.

*** Edit ***
A sketch of the first loop layout and back panel design

**********

As I said it’s my first time for a complete build and watercooling so any advice would be gratefully received, if I do anything drastically wrong please shout, hopefully I won’t as I will be following the tutorials on here.

Grumbledook · 28 Oct 2014 at 20:18

You need to upload the images somewhere online and then link to them. Imgur is a pretty popular place to host images.

Then to post them click on the image icon

and you can post the web address to the image. It will show in the post message box as:

Code:

[img*]http://www.examplesite.com/images/imagename.jpg[/img]

but without the * (I just put that in so it didn't try and display an image. You can usually get the web address of your image by right clicking on it and going to "copy image url".

You can just type out the square brackets with img at the start and /img at the end and put the web address inbetween them without clicking on the insert image icon.

Hope this helps.

natsu · 28 Oct 2014 at 20:22

Upload images on imgur or other server, copy link from your picture and when You type the answer in Your log there is an icon with a mounting like picture. Click it, paste the link and it's ready

DeltaSword · 29 Oct 2014 at 07:16

Cheers guys, ill get the images up loaded tonight,
hoping to have some sketches showing the design as well

DeltaSword · 29 Oct 2014 at 19:14

****Update *****
Finally managed to upload the images

First a quick sketch of the motherboard panel concept

And then a first pass as the Loop layout, yet to be tried in the case

Now onto the fun part ............. my delivery from OCUK

Delivered in a rather large box

After a lot of packing I managed to discover the goodies inside

and then added the other components ......

My Lovely phanteks Enthoo Luxe and the insides i ripped out to make more room

Some fittings and tube i bought to choose colours

Still so many choices to make, going to CAD up some models of the design to play around with sizings and do some test renders

SPArton · 30 Oct 2014 at 22:21

Serious kit going on there and loving the whole design side of things.

Keep us updated....

DeltaSword · 1 Nov 2014 at 18:43

Everything works

***Update ***

Okay so in between my other tasks this weekend (namely refurbishing furniture) I managed to get some work in on the build, nothing major but as its gonna take a while to finish i figured i better check everything works. Managed to put everything together first time no problem

Everything set up and ready to go, seeing as it was my first build i had youtube on hand to help (PCDIY from Asus)

So my first good look at the motherboard out of its packet

Installing the processor

Everything in and working, i can relax now

And the first screen i see with my new build

so after being up and running for half an hour the processor is running cool at a happy 26 Deg C

Tommyzz · 1 Nov 2014 at 19:14

That motherboard looks so nice!.

DeltaSword · 1 Nov 2014 at 20:00

Yeah bit of an improvement over the current rig

DeltaSword · 1 Nov 2014 at 20:54

Managed to take the front of the case apart as well, got a concept for the front of the case, what do you think?

Paint is my friend

Fallen god · 1 Nov 2014 at 20:56

Sub'd. Really looking forward to this, I actual want a custom loop using Luxe

.

DeltaSword · 8 Nov 2014 at 18:48

Update

Okay so working away means I dont have much time to work on my build, but it does give me plenty of time to plan things.......

As I cant carry my case around with me for dimensions etc I came up with this solution. I laid the case down on squared paper and traced around it. although this wont give me perfect dimensions it was enough to plan the basic layout

I ordered some acrylic today for the motherboard panel and other parts, so next weekend i should make some real progress on the case modding for the build.