Project Patriot

paradigm · 28 Jun 2011 at 23:45

After the long and daunting impossibility of trying to find, purchase and ship a 3x120mm top panel for my Lian-Li PC-A71F, I got rather fed up and have put custom watercooling of my main rig "on hold" until X79 comes out.

This left me in a bit of a lull, I haven't actually done any case modding or projects (proper projects, a plain off the shelf build log isn't a project) for a long while, since the days of the Socket 478 P4 I believe.

So I had a look around what hardware I had, and noticed some DDR3 that I won from OcUK back in February, Patriot branded (hence part of the reason for the name, the other will be the internal colour scheme, Red, White, and Blue), and pondered what to do with it. In the end I decided to bring my Phenom II 720BE out of retirement, bring it into the current generation (from its old 700 series DDR2 chipset), and see about getting it unlocked to 4 core, and overclocked a bit.

I also spotted (as some of you will know if you have read the CoolerMaster ATCS Case Pics thread) a gem of a Coolermaster ATC-600-SX1 on eBay and HAD to have it (always had a soft spot for ATCS Coolermasters, they are just soooo much prettier than the junk they sell today)!

I'm cannibalising a PC that I built back in 2009 for use as a server (but hasn't been used for 12+ months), that's where the drives and the Phenom II are coming from, but beyond that I've ordered all the bits, tools, and components needed to start commencing the project, the spec is as follows:

Coolermaster ATC-600-SX1 Desktop Case
AMD Phenom II 720 Black Edition CPU
CoolIT ECO A.L.C 120MM Cooler
4GB Patriot Extreme PC3-12800 DDR3 RAM
MSI 880GM-E41 Micro ATX Motherboard
Sapphire AMD Radeon 5770 1GB GPU
2x Hitachi Deskstar 320GB HDD in RAID0
Sony DVD/RW

So the basic plan (will go into more detail when I get chance to get pics/drawings/3D models posted) is to create a custom mount for the 120MM radiator of the CoolIT ECO A.L.C, separate the the PSU from the motherboard half of the case to create two different thermal zones, hide as much as the cabling as possible (difficult given the layout and the fact that there is literally nothing to hide the cabling behind, will involve a lot of custom length PSU cabling, a lot of braiding, and some inginuity), and cover the motherboard with "something", not really sure what yet.

I'm just waiting on some peices of aluminium, my 114mm hole saw, and the braiding to arrive

paradigm · 29 Jun 2011 at 11:19

Apem said:
Wow thats looks so nice why dont they make cases like this and the other Atcs cases anymore. Deffiantly keeping a eye on this build looking forward to more.

No idea why they disbanded the ATCS department, they always made cracking looking cases, and were always of utterly superb quality. If only they had kept going, added some modern 120/140mm fan based designs and stuck to their principals of elegant styling, Coolermaster would still be a premium brand today!

Obviously can't do much whilst at work other than plan, think and imagine, but I decided to take my Vinyl cutter with me and mess around with potential logos.

I need to do another pass with red to get the union jack sorted, but it's cut out OK

EDIT:

2nd pass cut, and logo brought together.

paradigm · 29 Jun 2011 at 12:53

Just sourced a free SSD for this too, it's only an Intel x25-V 40GB, but it'll be more responsive than the mechanical disks for the OS.

Just been ordering some tinted perspex too

paradigm · 29 Jun 2011 at 22:57

Few goodies have arrived

Still waiting on some heatshrink, some other braiding, some fans, and the aluminium/perspex sheets. But here is the case, motherboard, SSD, and blue braiding.

paradigm · 1 Jul 2011 at 11:56

Really quiet at work today, so I thought I'd make a start on the braiding. It really feels wrong to take a perfectly decent braided PSU (Antec TruePower 550 HE), cut off all the heatshrink, remove the pins, and de-sleeve the cables!

Didn't have a pin removal tool either so had to make do with a pair of rather industrial looking tweezers! It worked though, and seemed to be a good fit!

Wanted to go for a stealth braiding, no heat shrink. Never attempted this before, but my god it's fiddly, especially on 3 of the pins where each pin has two wires rather than one, it's a blooming tight fit in those cases! Rather daunting task when you look at just how many wires there are to braid

Half way there, and my fingers are going dry at the tips, stupid abraisive braiding

It's looking good though!

Will continue this evening, as I've actually got some work to do now (for once

).

paradigm · 1 Jul 2011 at 19:49

Got home to find some goodies had arrived from OcUK:

paradigm · 2 Jul 2011 at 18:25

Duesix said:
Any more updates yet?

Only a touch more braiding, weather has been far too nice to be stuck in messing with a PC. I can't really start any of the fabrication as I'm still waiting on perspex and aluminium sheeting, as well as my metal hole saw (114mm, for the intake for the radiator).

One thing I will say though is that these DeepCool fans are sodding superb. Really REALLY quiet, incredibly well built, and the rubberised coating on the fan body itself feels very high quality. Very impressed, can't wait to get some places fabricated for them to go!

Anyway, back to the braiding. Stealth braiding really takes it out of your finger/thumb tips, especially with my new found method of melting the end of the braid at both ends (once it's on the cable), melting it against both the pin (so that you can insert it into the plug without fraying), and the cable where I'm pushing the braid into the PSU.

paradigm · 3 Jul 2011 at 16:03

Got the last of the PSU braiding done today (still got the fans to do, but they take minutes), the pain was the molex connectors, with their daisy-chained wiring. Trying to go heatshrink-less on these was an utter pain in the backside.

paradigm · 3 Jul 2011 at 18:27

I'll write up a quick how-to tomorrow, and post it in the current braiding tutorial thread

paradigm · 3 Jul 2011 at 18:50

2.5mm from a well known competitor, but I would assume any 2.5mm would do the trick. It's not just show no heatshrink, there is no heatshrink!

paradigm · 5 Jul 2011 at 22:39

New 60mm Fractals turned up today to replaced the stock YS-Techs, obviously these are going to be re-braided white

And my new AC Ryan 120mm grille for the underside of the case where the radiator is going to be

paradigm · 7 Jul 2011 at 23:42

Not a huge amount of progress, but finally my 114mm hole saw arrived, and as such I christened it with a nice hole in the base of the case, for the radiator!

The radiator on the other hand, got a bit of the PlastiCote treatment, and is now a much more fitting white

Next job is to fit the radiator and the fans, and then start the arduous task of wiring the thing up!

paradigm · 21 Feb 2012 at 22:28

Mr. May said:
Sorry to be the barer of bad new but you shouldnt spray the rad fins it lowers heat exchange of the rad but does look very nice

It's only a very thin coat on the fins (so as to not lower airflow much). I had the fins masked, sprayed the body, then removed the masking and did the worlds thinnest coat of white (you can still see the black on the fins if you look closely).

That, and the 720be x3 runs pretty cold anyway, it's certainly not been hindered by the whiteness!