When THREE watercooling loops ARE NOT ENOUGH!

[gilgamesh]

hey folks gilgamesh is back with another EPIC build log!

Remember this?

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18189366&highlight=gilgamesh

Time to redo the whole case properly utilise the two motherboards in this case, including highly modiftying powdercoat etc

and produce FOUR or FIVE loops!

Anyway here we go
Remember that monstrous MM case on my last triple-loop project? Well here we go again............ I have taken the case to the powder coaters and have had it re-powder coated gun-metal grey inside and out.

Specifications#
#
Mountain MODS QUAD LOOP yes thats right FOUR LOOPS, how crazy am I?

Specifications

Mountain Mods ascension with the awful mirror black powder coating chemically stripped off and re-powder coated gun-metal grey British Standard Colour Light Graphite. All fans will be blue, ALL barbs will be COMPRESSION this time but CHROME rather than nickel coated. Fan grills chrome coated also.

Specifications:

Motherboard is a MSI X-POWER big BANG X58
Blue black theme
CPU core i7 950
GPU A single GTX 570 OR 580 if
XSPC 580 waterblock
Tubing
XSPC 1/2 ID UV Clear Blue XSPC 1/2" ID BLACK
12 gigs of OCZ FLEX2 ram ddr3 2100mhz now changed to same amount in GEIL ram
OCZ REVO DRIVE 120GIG PCIE SSD
60 GIG OCZ AGILITY TWO SSD
Crucial SATA 3 150 GIG SSD
OCZ Z\ SERIES 1000K PSU for motherboard one now added TWO GEIL THORNBURG PSU's
motherboard two i was hoping for a second msi xpower but msi are YET to get back to me!
TWO lamptron Anti Vandal switches with cables
FOUR X pumps consisting of two LIANG DDC ULTRAS and two SWIFTECH MCP 3550
Which are mounted in two xspc LIANG DDC dual pump bay res
fluid EC6 Clear and TC EC6 Blue
FOUR Radiators to be installed
140.3 front left for CPU
280mm front right FOR planned GPU 3 front right
140.1 for water cooling MOBO chipset at top panel
XSPC RX360MM Fans for cooling TWO 580's gpu 1 and 2
using specialtech's clearance stock of the blue coollink fans at rear panel
A further PSU to be looked at soon

The Acrylic panels have been fabricated from 5MM thick high quality high impact acrylic 901 shade



The artwork is laid out below. Please take a look and note though the design uses blue panels-these are just to help enhance the etching.

Note these specialtech and gilgamesh wording is no longer an outline and is properly filled out.

Note the specialtech logo and even more so the Ancient Sumerian Cuneiform language of which i fluently speak. This language is 5.5k years old and the Sumerian cuneiform reads EXACTLY as thus.

GILGAMESH PASSION FOR HIGH END WATER COOLING.

These 5mm thick 24" high panels cost me 150 notes to manufacture as you can see the lettering is not some cheap vynil or even THINLY laser etched lettering. But these are ENGRAVED on. Then the panels are polished with a Diamond sander/polisher around the edges.

UNLIke laser cut acrylic even when its polished around the edges it leaves tiny ridges. However these are cut with a band-saw andthen POLISHED with a DIAMOND grade sander/polisher to create an ALMOST glass effect. Will update with a photo showing this soon


As you can see I have taken a lot of pride in this project.


Planned colour scheme is based around the specialtech logo. Sooooooooooo



Alphenon fans



To sum up on colour scheme

gun metal grey case
all fittings grills and barbs chrome polished
cpu block chromed
motherboard blue black
tubing blue-black
rads all black
lighting-UV
Bifenix blue black 24 pin EPS connector
2x Bitfenix 8pin EPS blue blACK (AS THIS TAKES 2x 8 pin EPS)


Four water cooling rads for four loops
3x 580 gpus
core i7 p50
pcie ssd OCZ REVO
2 more ssd's 120 gig SATA 3 CRUCIAL
SATA 2 OCZ

GILGAMESH

 

[gilgamesh]

the side panels

B]MAJOR UPDATE![/B]

ANOTHER major update those side panels again but in a much better resolution and a closeup of the engraving..

Apologies for my greasy finger marks on the acrylic lol, will polish off when it comes to assembly



Note the acrylic is 5mm thick and then engraving has gone 1mm INTO the acrylic!



the GILGAMESH panel

SORRY for THE thumb prints these will polish off when it comes to assembly

Remember this is no CHEAP Vynil lettering OR Cheap THIN laser etching, this is properly engraved into the surface around 1mm deep

even the ancient cuneiform script is rendered exceedingly well (says Mr Kipling hahaha)

Just to note I readn and write Ancient Sumerian Cuneiform fairly fluently this is a five thousand year old language nad the script says:

'Gilgamesh Passion for XSPC High End Water Cooling'

NEXT post will be HOW the customised Acrylic Feet are made

 

[gilgamesh]

YET ANOTHER MAJOR UPDATE


So in this mm build USE my own customised feet as I said it reflects the quality of the build

Note these feet are able to have LED'S installed and will be used on this MM build so the case looks like its floating.

Anyway enough of the hot air!

First few shots of the factory where they are made (these are low quality as I didnt have my DSLR with me)

First of all stacks of Acrylic

The Cand C cutting machine and engraver

Feet being cut out

The acrylic then is taken to have FIVE holes drilled though, FOUR for the m4 mounting screws the fifth hole in the centre 5mm being the one that houses the LED!

THEN.....................

SPECIAL NOTE

Most Acrylic is only FLAME polished, IE Cut with a laser and then a flame ran over to smooth and melt some of the sharp edges. THIS is your everday RUN of the MILL CASE MOD!

NOT SO HERE



SO before the flame polish we put them in a DIAMOND SANDER

THis machine uses a naturally occuring diamond to REALLY POLISH that acrylic

SO first up HERE IS your EVERYDAY acrylic feet that you get from a certain USA case manufacturer!

Yes it looks nice but LOOK at the ridges!

Now look at our THICKER,TOUGHER and higher quality acrylic with its Diamond sanding.

(these will be used in this build)

tHE Slight blemish is only dust particles as it has been in my room for a while lol

Next we have them side by side

I know which one Id RATHER USE!

***edit***

Note our acrylic feet in the photo show only four holes not five due to it being a prototype 1 foot !

PT 2 is exactly the same in quality just has an extra hole in the centre wich travels half-way through the foot for the LED

NEXT UP an LED in those customised acrylic feet!

gilgamesh

 

[gilgamesh]

Prototype 2 Acrylic feet testing

Testing the new Acylic feet!

Sorry bud!

Anyway testing

I gavethe company ONE HOURS notice to get these done and dispite being busy with other work they came through.

At the end they said they were NOT happy with the final product as it was rushed and the finish is not as good as PT one as they didnt have the time to do it!

As you can agree their RUSH JOB is better than most peoples hard work!


Note this is the same company that produced the side panels and its etching!

gilgamesh

 

[gilgamesh]

wc parts arrived

Water Cooling Parts arrived

In this photo a full reel of XSPC 1/2" ID UV CLear Blue tubing

another full reel of 1/2 ID BLACK tubing





five x 140mm Alpenfohn fans


these fans are great as they are the only OPEN cornered 140mm fans I have ever seen! plus they look good.

Bitfenix 24 pin PSU extender


very impressed with the quality of these cables btw

Bit fenix x2 Blue/black 8 PIN EPS extender x2


Lamptron Silver FC3 fan controller Controller



more to be added and updated later today

four lamptrons switches (the fourth silver modek is due t arrive)

2 black 2 silver note: the black are for another project.



four lamptron switch cables


Still to arrive in this section

The Lovely XSPC RASA CHROME CPU Block

[

16 x ENZO TECH CHROME Plated compression barbs!

 

[gilgamesh]

Re-used parts

These are the products that I have reused from a last build

(note the attached rad barbs will not be re-used for this project)

Left Radiator

XSPC RX360


thE RADIATOR ON THE RIGHT IS A BLACKICE SR 280MM



i WANTED A THERMOCHILL PA140.3 Bit I could not afford it so I am having to use for the first time the

Black ICe SR1 420MM


2X xspc DUAL LAING BAY RES



Four liang ddc ultra pumps


NEXT HARDWARE SECTION

msi gtx 570 GPU
OCZ REVO DRIVE PICE 120GIG
OCZ AGILITY TWO SANDFORCE SSD 60 gig SATA 2
Crucial 128 gig SATA 3 SSD

PSU OCZ Z SERIES 1K Gun-metal grey in colour (though you cant tell here)

you may see in the photo that there is a chrome rasa block .... THIS IS ONE OF TWO ORIGINAL PROTOTYPES originally assigned to the UK!

THE RAM IS OCZ PC17000 (2133MHZ) OCZ FLEX RAM 121 GIGABYTE (Not in photo but using on machine that im typing this on!) but CHANGING THIS FOR GEIL RAM

HARDWARE PARTS ORDERED BUT STILL TO ARRIVE!

CORE I7 950 CPU

MSI X58 BIG BANG XPOWER

2ND PSU will be contacted OCZ OR GEIL about!

2ND AND THIRD GPU will speak to MSI in addition to the 2nd motherboard

GOt spare ram for send motherboard
a Spare core I7 920 CPU for 2nd board

For this 2nd part and EXTERNALLY MOUNTED BLACK ICE 140.4 SR1 560MM will be used to cool this system down!

UV COLD CATHODE lights to arrive and the two black 80mm fans (all chrome grills ands screws already in place)

NEXT WEEK WILL SEE MY CASE BACK from the Powder Coaters!

AND CPU/Motherboard Arrival!

gilgamesh

 

[gilgamesh]

FLUSHING THE RADS

Remember all the stuff here has either been sponsored, or had spare or ex review parts!

There is nothing much I can really do until the case comes back from the powder coaters.

SO let us prep those radiators for the new build.

When either using new radiator's allways FLUSH out the FLUX residue before use.

In my case these radiators were used befor4e, so we need to flush out the old coolant.

A few years back people would have employed white wine vinegar to do a thorough flushout. However even after rinsing people would end up with tube dis-colouration, slight foaming in the fliud etc. To get behind this vinegar is an acidic solution used to strip a very fine layer of impurities from inside your radiator. However the vinegar MUST BE NEUTRALISED into a balanced PH, one can do this by using a Bi-carbonate of soda (baking powder) in a hot solution. Case in point pour this over vinegar and the resultant bubbles is carbondioxide-the waste product of the neutralisation.

After this process repeated flushing is used.

All this is not needed these days... Simply repeated flushing with HOT TOP water can be used. SO long as the FINAL RINSE is with dionised or Distilled water!

Next subject the fans

Making use of the lights and the tent i just purchased to take photos, here are those wonderful fans:

open cornered 140mm fans = WOHOOOO

one flushed out 280mm radiator

FANS MOUNTED

Same again with the rx360 xspc rad

Note this one is going at the back-fans will be changed once i get the same fans but 120mm version

Finally a few comments about those bit-fenix cables

Now that I have held one in my hand and if it means anything to you, i can assure you that these products are of the HIGHEST quality. Indeed, the weave on the braiding is very dense!

I have heard reports that some people say they can see the heatshrink used on the cables....

Judging by the photos below we can assign that claim to the dust bin.

Bit Fenix pushing against the frontiers!

This is my ATX 24 PIN PSU Connector

Well folks thats it, until my case arrives on Monday!

 

[gilgamesh]

LAST large RAD FLUSHED OUT

final large rad flushed and mounted

Final large rad flushed and fans mounted

MAJOR POINT YOU NEED TO CONSIDER WHEN USING THESE FANS:

Normally when usin g open-cornered fans in radiator cooling , you simply use a FAN-RAD screw I.e one side of the fan screws inTO the rad and the other side of the fan you have a screw/bolt that goes through fan-grill case and into fan. Easy and simple.

THough these fans ARE open cornered allowing you do that, I dont think that system will work at all with this fan. This is due to the rubberised material of the fan housing, Normally for example with MM cases you use a 5mm Self -tapping screw which goes straight through grill case and fan but the 5mm self tapping screw will NOT BITE into the fan housing. So to all intents and purposes TReAT THIS FAN AS CLOSED CORNERED AND USE ONE LONG BOLT to go through fan grill case-fan-and then into the radiator!

gilgamesh

 

[gilgamesh]

The case has arrived

Got the case back

Photos here

HMM a darker gun-metal gret than i wanted.

The Customised Lightup acrylic feet added
Parts of the case

Constructing the beast

Starting to take shape thought the grey is slightly darker than i wanted. it still goes well with the chrome and the blue!

Looking beautiful now

CORE I7 950 CPU arrived.

parts still to arrive:

Motherboard due tomorrow

Enzotech chrome barbs (compression of course)

Three bottles of UV CLEAR BLUE thermochill
XSPC GTX580 waterblock
2x80 mm black fans
Silver thumbscrews 6/32

 

[gilgamesh]

Motherboard Arrived

Right folks:

YOU better put seat-belts on your eyes folks.... as im about to take them for a riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide of their lives!

In has come my lovely MSI X58 Big Bang Xpower Motherboard

I purchased this directly from overclockers.co.uk (here) along with the gpu

I will be reviewing this motherboard shortly so as well as this project I took some review shots of the board so please bare with me.

Various full motherboard angled shots

Ram Sockets

Various CPU socket area photos


Nice and Clear great for WATER cooling or high end air and EASY to insulate for sub-zero also

Northbridge Heatsink shots

Southbridge Shots

SATA ports whoite SATA 3 black Sata 2

Full Board shot again-notice the TWO Eight Pin EPs connectors

This provides extra power for extreme sub zero overclocking

voltage measuring points

Phase indicator for all 16 phase

Extra PCIE POWER for extreme GPU overclocking

gilgamesh

 

[gilgamesh]

GPU arrived

MSI GTX570 Arrived

The case on how its looking so far.

 

[Schizo]

amazing !

subbed.

how much you looking at spending for the entire build ?

and how much time will you be spending on this ?

 

[gilgamesh]

testing the acrylic feet underneath the case.

I think you may agree the glow is very subtle, enough to give it a bit of class-without it looking like a chav-mobile!

BTW NEW SPONSOR for RAM GEIL are sending me some units

RIGHT thats it folks UNTIL the rest of the parts wrrive

gilgamesh

 

[gilgamesh]

amazing !

subbed.

how much you looking at spending for the entire build ?

and how much time will you be spending on this ?

a lot of time mate!

Cant spent time at the weekends as I have my son at that time, so I spend all my time with him!

So that only leaves the weekday-nights.....

Theres a lot of work still to do

by the time im finished the whole machine will be worth maybe 3-4k there will be amost £1000 worth of water cooling kit ALONE!

 

[Schizo]

thats a epic amount of money for a pc !

got any more spare money lying around ?

 

[gilgamesh]

lol mate note i said WORTH, not paid for

 

[gilgamesh]

Note all ram and PSU's will be changed for GEIL type!

 

[gilgamesh]

lol mate note i said WORTH, not paid for

sorry i mean more that most of the stuff is paid for, some of it is sponsored.

 

[farmer]

Monster build, will keep an eye on this.

1 minor thing, but I would be tempted to use some rubbing compound on the case as there is quite a bit of 'orange peel' in that powercoat covering. Nothing you have done wrong, but I would have thought the powder coaters would have got a slightly better finish.

 

[gilgamesh]

rubbing compound?