Steampunk inspired build

garthfunkel1984 · 17 Jul 2022 at 09:18

I have finished my build so hope I'm putting this in the right place, this is my steampunk inspired build using a Corsair 750D chassis sprayed using rustoleum aged copper, cables are hand sleeved myself on my Corsair HX850, the pump is painted in the same rustoleum paint, fittings are barrow 16mm compression fittings, piping is standard copper 15mm pipe with the ends swaged to fit in the barrow fittings, CPU cooler is an ncore V1 direct to die cooler CPU is delidded under there, gpu cooler is a bykski cooler as they are the only company that makes a cooler for my gigabyte 3070.
Let me know what you think

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goldy6660 · 17 Jul 2022 at 09:59

Looks great, like the hard line copper pipes. How are the temps?

gpuerrilla · 17 Jul 2022 at 10:34

Awesome. Would think a time-served plumber would have some side jobs on this albeit mega niche market! :cry:

garthfunkel1984 · 17 Jul 2022 at 10:38

goldy6660 said:
Looks great, like the hard line copper pipes. How are the temps?

32 idle mid 50s under load that's CPU and GPU so pretty good

garthfunkel1984 · 17 Jul 2022 at 10:40

gpuerrilla said:
Awesome. Would think a time-served plumber would have some side jobs on this albeit mega niche market!

Lol could definitely of used a plumber with this one, getting the pipe to fit properly took a lot the original mock up wasn't right had to redo the pipes over and over, must've taken about 20 hours for that alone

gpuerrilla · 17 Jul 2022 at 10:53

Great idea though. As I like Function over form would have no problem doing something like this in the future. Not sure how much that copper costs these days I take it is more expensive than I recall it being?

garthfunkel1984 · 17 Jul 2022 at 11:00

gpuerrilla said:
Great idea though. As I like Function over form would have no problem doing something like this in the future. Not sure how much that copper costs these days I take it is more expensive than I recall it being?

About £12 for a 3 meter length, but I was lucky family had some stored away that just needed a clean, cost about £10 for the elbows, solder was £10, propane was £16 flux I already had so can't remember cost on that, overall it cost me about £100 to do the build, not including the water blocks, rads and fans are reused from the previous loop

azazl187 · 17 Jul 2022 at 11:05

Fair play to you. It looks like you put a lot of time and effort into it

garthfunkel1984 · 17 Jul 2022 at 11:13

azazl187 said:
Fair play to you. It looks like you put a lot of time and effort into it

About 55-60 hours in all, quite pleased with the result

Monkey Puzzle · 19 Jul 2022 at 13:06

Polish the copper! Looks great!

garthfunkel1984 · 19 Jul 2022 at 13:19

Monkey Puzzle said:
Polish the copper! Looks great!

I was very tempted too but the other half was having withdrawals from her zoo planet so I had to get it built once it's run for a week or so I'm gonna flush the whole thing in case there's any debris because the copper aside from the elbows was old copper, so I may very well polish it then.
Don't suppose you have any tips for polishing? as the only tool I have with a polishing pad is a Dremmel style tool

dave28 · 19 Jul 2022 at 13:28

i would just hand polish with a cotton cloth and metal polish such a Peek polish.

awkward with a machine and you cant see with the naked eye but machines tend to spit the polish all over the place as a very fine spray / dust. Not good in a PC case

garthfunkel1984 · 19 Jul 2022 at 13:31

dave28 said:
i would just hand polish with a cotton cloth and metal polish such a Peek polish.

awkward with a machine and you cant see with the naked eye but machines tend to spit the polish all over the place as a very fine spray / dust. Not good in a PC case

No dramas with mess I would remove the pipe to polish it anyway and will likely do that outdoors, will hand polishing with a polish like that get the copper up to a mirror finish?

dave28 · 19 Jul 2022 at 13:52

garthfunkel1984 said:
No dramas with mess I would remove the pipe to polish it anyway and will likely do that outdoors, will hand polishing with a polish like that get the copper up to a mirror finish?

I just tried and i think you could with some elbow grease. This was getting better and better the more i polished it. This was in a couple of minutes with a metal polish and an old dish cloth.

Monkey Puzzle · 19 Jul 2022 at 13:56

garthfunkel1984 said:
I was very tempted too but the other half was having withdrawals from her zoo planet so I had to get it built once it's run for a week or so I'm gonna flush the whole thing in case there's any debris because the copper aside from the elbows was old copper, so I may very well polish it then.
Don't suppose you have any tips for polishing? as the only tool I have with a polishing pad is a Dremmel style tool

Hand polish with microfibre clothes and brasso or silvo imo - if it's half-hard copper pipe with soldered joints you should be fine to flannel the pipes easily enough to polish and remove the polishing compound residue fairly easily

https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/jesus1.gif

, or can get pre-soaked wadding packs of either. Alternatively use a polishing paste - I got one from Menzerna that's pretty good.

garthfunkel1984 · 19 Jul 2022 at 13:59

dave28 said:
I just tried and i think you could with some elbow grease. This was getting better and better the more i polished it. This was in a couple of minutes with a metal polish and an old dish cloth.

For a couple minutes that came up pretty good, fair play and thanks for the info

garthfunkel1984 · 19 Jul 2022 at 14:06

Monkey Puzzle said:
Hand polish with microfibre clothes and brasso or silvo imo - if it's half-hard copper pipe with soldered joints you should be fine to flannel the pipes easily enough to polish and remove the polishing compound residue fairly easily

https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/jesus1.gif

, or can get pre-soaked wadding packs of either. Alternatively use a polishing paste - I got one from Menzerna that's pretty good.

It is half hard and soldered throughout, I have a bunch of new microfibre cloths so flanneling the pipes is probably the way I'll go, I've not seen silvo on shelves anywhere but brasso is readily available, I'll pick some up, will post up some pics once it's nice and shiny, thanks for the info

Monkey Puzzle · 19 Jul 2022 at 14:10

The pipes are likely to oxidise from the water temp - I used incralac lacquer - it's an acrylic lacquer with a chemical called benzatriazole that chelates with the copper to stop oxidation. It's around £15-20/can for rattle cans, or available in tins for spray guns.

garthfunkel1984 · 19 Jul 2022 at 14:29

Monkey Puzzle said:
The pipes are likely to oxidise from the water temp - I used incralac lacquer - it's an acrylic lacquer with a chemical called benzatriazole that chelates with the copper to stop oxidation. It's around £15-20/can for rattle cans, or available in tins for spray guns.

Definitely worth thinking about if I'm polishing the copper, would definitely help it keep its lustre once the job is done and yes it definitely does oxidise the copper, it has already changed colour since being built and I scrubbed those pipes well before I put it together to make sure there was no flux etc left on them, they are much darker now.
I do have some lacquers at home already so I will check through them first and see if any have benzatriazole in them, if not then I'll pick up a can or two of incralac as well.

garthfunkel1984 · 19 Jul 2022 at 15:20

Monkey Puzzle said:
The pipes are likely to oxidise from the water temp - I used incralac lacquer - it's an acrylic lacquer with a chemical called benzatriazole that chelates with the copper to stop oxidation. It's around £15-20/can for rattle cans, or available in tins for spray guns.

Can you post an image of the incralac you use please, I'm finding mixed results all claiming to be the stuff so would like to be sure it's the right stuff I'm ordering
Thanks