Project Rainbow (ITX)

Cheers Darren. Happy new year :)

Big thanks to OCUK for the quick delivery of this lot. Wasn't expecting it to come next day with the free forum shipping considering I ordered it at 5PM the day before :)


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I also had another look at the USB cables and Thought I'd have a go at cutting the outer sleeving away to allow it to bend round the GPU.

I managed to cut the sleeving away with out cutting into the internal wiring but as soon as I tried to bend the cable around the GPU it snapped one of the internal wires. I though it might happen but it was worth a try. So I just cut it off.

At some point I may solder on a USB 2 port instead as less wires to route around the GPU.

Luckily the other USB cable I was able to bend around the GPU.

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Next I fitted another fill/drain port at the rear and added the pastle coolant.

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And it was all looking great until......

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I noticed a small spot of coolant on one of the tubes.
I wiped it away as I thought it was just a small drip that had leaked onto the tube from the bottle but as i wiped it away again the drip came back.

I left the pump cycling for a few minutes and no more drips occurred, some thing weird is going on!

So I grabbed some isopropyl alcohol and rubbed it over the suspect area and not only did the drip come back but it was now a very visible hair line crack in the tube!

fluid was now rapidly dripping from it.

So I've powered down and drained the loop. Really glad I added the second port now and draining was fairly painless.

This is what happened when I removed the tube.

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I'm guessing that when I swapped the rear fan that attaches to the rad for the new RGB fan it put some extra stress onto the tube.

Another thing is acrylic tube is very rigid and brittle and it has little to no "flex" Unlike PETG tubing that will "flex" a lot more once bent.

The alignment of the tube must have been a bit off putting stress onto the tube when I fitted it.

So now I'm left with only 2 spare tubes to get this bend redone and going on past experience it's not looking good. :(
 
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Case Looks famous, Just when I was thinking the case was Finished, Lovely Fans & Love the Fill Ports, Any longer the case be Called K-9.
Ah nice you sorted the Front panel USB's Out, Nice picture & now know what to expect
if I put a GPU in the case like Yours
 
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That tube breakage sucks, but I'd honestly consider the cost of chaining up some angled fittings, it's going to save you time and money in the long run. If you nail the replacement tube in one go then awesome, but if you're going to drop another tenner on more tube, that's almost the same as the fittings.

Or you could switch to soft tube for this specific part; you have coloured coolant so the clarity differences between acrylic and soft won't be evident, plus it's largely tucked away so the difference in light reflection won't show up either.
 
Cheers for the help and suggestions guys.

I did consider going over to soft tubing but all my fittings are tied up in my current rig. Don't really want to mess around pull this one part if I can help it.

I could order some more fittings but If I do I might as well get some 90 bends for the acrylic. I do much prefer the look of acrylic over soft tube.

I'll have a go at bending a new bit first and go from there. I've kept all my reject pieces of tube as they can be cut and utilised if I do get hold of some 90 bends.

Believe me I've tried all sorts of different ways to route the tube and nothing else I tried worked. The trouble is the top right port on the CPU block is so close to the rad there is no way of getting a bend in, that's why I've had to come out and over the other tube.

I've also far surpassed my budget for this build it's getting out of hand :(
 
I was only referring to soft tube for the 2 runs from the pump top, not the entire loop.

You've probably covered this already, but my initial impression looking at your pics is this:
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Glorious Photoshop Master Race!

Obviously I'm thinking visually here, but the fittings you have in the rad and block currently are the same height as the rotating part of a 90 degree rotator. Put a 90 degree rotator into the rad port closest to the camera and the center line looks like it might just line up with the center line of the port adjacent to the Eisbaer fill. Similarly, a 90 degree rotator in the Eisbaer below the fill port looks like it lines up with the other rad port.
 
Cheers for the help. I think if I cant bend another tube this might be the way to go.

I've just had a look inside the case and the front rad port should work like you've shown.

Unfortunately the rear port on the rad is further back behind the port on the Eisbaer so wont work quite like you've shown.

This pictures shows it better.

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I could still do it like you've shown but I'd have to use soft tubing I think, Either that or daisy chain a few fittings together.

I'm Still hoping I'll be able to bend a new bit of tube just not had the time to do it yet.
 
rotate the eisbaer unit , should help, yes the logo and window will either face the rear of front of the case. from experience - running the unit with logo on its side was a little quieter .

dont no of much help now but alpha's new unit will ship Q1 - will be at CES - basically like silent loop unit but with multiports. should allow fans to be bought back on the inside and run pump 100% silent
 
So I had some spare time to have a go at finishing off the build.

First up was trying to bend a new piece of tubing. Thankfully I kept hold of the broken bit and used it as a guide to bend the new one.

I really took my time and thankfully it came out spot on first try! Having the broken one as a guide really helped and the new tube was even better than the first one.
I'm glad it worked out okay as I didn't want to use any fittings if I could help it. Though I am thinking of replacing the two fill/drain ports at the back with 90 elbows as I think it will look cleaner.

The RGB fans are all fitted and the cables as tidy as I can be bothered to do them at the moment. It's been so long I really just want to get this build finished.
I'm not overly happy with the 24pin cable. I might buy a new one at some point and redo it but it will do for the moment.

So here it is Finished for the moment up and running :)

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Also did a quick Video to show off the RGB.

 
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that looks really good.

the problem you had with the bend could have been solved with a GPU block i think. but obviously thats a lot more money over your budget and you have solved it anyway.
 
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