[FINISHED March the 8th, 2015] Redefine R4

[alpenwasser]

<...awesome...>

Dammit, now I need to try this myself! But maybe with copper? I once saw that

somewhere, might require different chemicals. Need to investigate. *sigh*

[Razbit]

I've tried it with copper too, it works out-of-the-box so to say, just do what I said/is said in the instructable (still use alu as sacrificial metal)

thanks!

[alpenwasser]

I've tried it with copper too, it works out-of-the-box so to say, just do what I said/is said in the instructable (still use alu as sacrificial metal)

thanks!

I'll give it a shot when I get the chance, thanks!

[Razbit]

The pics I mentioned.. I got them today

 

Here we go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bigger versions: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/ynptticxz56hiu1/2hEiiBp7Pk

 

Oh, and a bit of an update: one of the name plates found its place!

 

 

Good night fellas!

[alpenwasser]

Good night fellas!

Yes, yes it is.

[whatthe_fuzz]

very well done dude. 

 

very. well. done. 

[flibberdipper]

Sexy. I like this more and more with every update.

[Razbit]

Thanks guys, next week I'll give you something new, so don't start holding your breath just yet!

[Razbit]

Today a mysterious box filled with bubble wrap arrived.. Try and guess what it is, I'll tell it on Sunday with the rest of the update!

 

 

Next update's gonna air on Sunday, stay tuned!

[bob345]

Interesting build so far. Some awsome mods in this build nice job

[Razbit]

Well, let's see what's inside the box..

 

Let's unwrap the bubble wrap and see what's in there

 

 

OOOhhhhhh

A GTX Titan

 

Now, lets unbox the sh1t out of it:

 

 

 

 

After nerdgasming, I put the card in place.

Step 1: Empty the loop

Step 2: Remove the front rad

Step 3: Remove all tubing

Step 4: Redo most of the tubes because I didn't actually like the original ones

Step 5: Install the Titan

Step 6: Install the tubing

Step 7: Refilll the loop

 

aaaannnddd done!

 

Now, I'll let the pics do the talking

 

I made a new drain port:

 

Here's the interior:

 

 

The tube from the res to the drain and the pump now goes straight through the horizontal shroud, no visible bends -> better.

I also had to lower the res. The tube from the CPU to the res is just temporary, hence the extension. It's waiting for a block to the Titan.

 

Just one more thing: the fan holes in the roof bothered me, so I made a new roof plate from al and painted it black.

 

 

There are 10mm stand-offs between the plate and the roof to make airflow possible and have space for the fill port.

 

That's it, I think we'll see a window in the next update, who knows?

 

Bye guys!

[atomicmonkey101]

wow! looking great. how much more left? and why did you go with the titan? maybe 780ti? just curious, looks fantastic nonetheless.

[Razbit]

Let's see if I coould make a list..

- Window

- Some sort of acrylic to mount the led strip better (it keeps falling..)

- Waterblock and back plate to the titan

- Fans to the top

 

I guess that's all I can make up right now, well see

 

I had three reasons to choose Titan over the 780ti:

1. This Titan isn't new; I bought it as a used with warranty for 570e (approx 775$), which is about half the stock price here in Finland because of the taxes..

2. It has 6GB of vram to power all three displays I have (BF4 chockes with 2 or 3 gigs..)

3. It has better high-precision floating point performance, meaning it is better with everything that utilizes CUDA

 

Thanks for the kind words!

[fuse]

Now I'm ashamed to say I have a normal fractal define case after looking at yours. Amazing. 

[JokuTyyppi]

Any news coming soon?

[Razbit]

Just a quick heads-up now, the block for the titan is ordered and it should arrive in the beginning of January.

Now, heres the spoiler:

Once the block arrives I'll take the case totally apart, sand and repaint all the surfaces, and again, redo some of the tubes to accompany titan.

Also, I've been thinking about an inner roof, made of aluminium, to hide the fans (it could be fastened to the roof fans maybe)

So, stay tuned for the update, it should air in the middle of January!

[Razbit]

Hello everybody!
 
It seems that "the middle of January" came a bit later this year than usual, but I'll try and satisfy your needs nevertheless.
 
So, like promised, I took the case as apart as possible after the block arrived. But, school has kept me way too busy.. I come home, eat and go to sleep, so no too much time for the R4.
Anyway, sorry to keep you guys waiting, here we go again!
 
First, I'll show you the new fill port.

 

 

And test mount:

 

 

If you're wondering, this is the rear panel of the case, with a new plate to hide the ugly fan hole (It was hidden before, but I made a less 'holey' plate )

 

Next up, I modified the reservoir holders. Instead of the ghetto double-sided-tape-method , the new version uses two screws. Like you can see, I sanded them too (and painted later, so still, no copper..)

 

 

Let's try them on

 

 

Yup, looks like they're holding the reservoir. Onward!

 

Like I've said a couple times already, the case was taken totally apart, holes and scratches were filled (with stinky car putty), sanded and re-painted. A few pics of the act:

 

The new rear panel (with the reservoir mounted on the other side):

 

 

While the parts were drying, I noticed they had become rather 'holy' during the modding:

 

 

Holes must be quite cheap nowadays..

 

Not just the case, but the shrouds got the same thing done, too:

 

The right-most one is a newcomer, it comes to the inner side of the roof (you'll see soon)

 

I let them dry a day or two (or a week, a busy school week). While they were drying and I was suffering from lack of modding motivation, I got a cold. Darn. But lets look on the bright side: finally, some time to work on the Redefine! Yay!

The ugly sleeving had bothered me a while already (some heat shrinks had let go of the sleeve and all that kinda sh1t.. Ew!), so I remade the other end (the visible one) without heat shrink. Instead, I used super glue.

 

Step 1: cut the cable and the sleeve (I recommend not burning the end of the sleeve)

 

Step 2: connect the connector. I didn't use a real crimping tool, pliers and a tiny bit of solder did the job

 

Step 3: put the sleeve so that it comes over the connector just a bit (in other words, put it over the connector for about the same length as the wire goes (to the beginning of the 'tube')). Then, wrap it tightly using some sort of wire, I used solder:

 

Step 4: drop a small drop of super glue to the end (in the case of the above pic, you'd drop the drop on the two right-most wraps (or a bit to their left)). Let it dry, and shove it in..

 

Step 5: ..to the connector, not where you first thought

 

Ah, much better

 

 

Now that the parts have dried, lets get back to them.

Here comes the new inner roof:

 

 

It forms a sandwich with the roof and the two fans (and generates a nice ear-shattering standing wave, which I luckily fixed by lowering the rpm of the fans..)

 

Next up, a new feature of the case taken to good use: SSD mounts behind the motherboard! Nice job, Fractal!

 

 

But, as usual, nothing  works as intended on the first go.. I had to make a custom power cable to them.. But for a modder, that's not a problem.

 

Then, the PSU and the HDD to the new rack:

 

Then, the mobo:

 

Ew, Intel's stock cooler.. I'll get rid of it asap, I promise!

 

Some more cables to the PSU:

 

Shrouds went in too:

 

 

Titan, all the cables and the wire separator guider thingy in place aaaannnnddd DONE!

 

 

This build isn't actually 'done' yet..

 

The loop is still undone because I'm too afraid of voiding warranty of a $1000 card.. Especially when it doesn't work 100% of the time correctly.. Looking for answers to my creepy frame time graphs, Titan's block still sits in its box..

 

About the problem:

while gaming, at (supposedly) random moments the game nearly freezes for a little while and doesn't recover well (frame times range from 5 to 500 instead of the usual stable 10ms (triple screen)) Also, during this lag, event viewer floods from nvlddmkm event 14s.. When I quit the game and start again the problem _may_ have disappeared. But, still that bastard is somewhere, hiding and waiting for me to get frustrated and strikes in, just to maximize my frustration.. If you have any ideas, I'm more than happy to accept them

 

Why don't I just RMA it then, you ask? Well, I can run furmark forever with maximum settings and no lag occurs. I'm totally helpless. Might as well just create a thread for the problem..

 

So, there you go. Now you now what I've been doing for the last four months. I'll finish this build once the issue with the Titan is solved.

 

Until then, stay tuned!

 

Raz out.

[KR_king]

looks amazing! Even without the water cooling, really liking the shroud.

[Razbit]

Nope, nothing new to show to you guys just yet, just giving a little heads-up..

 

The issue with the titan is now 'solved': after RMAing the *first* Titan, I received a *used*, factory-overclocked titan as a replacement. Well, during the first one hour of gaming, everything seemed to be fine. Well, apparently Gigabyte had somehow f'd up the overclock, resulting as an unusable graphics card. So, I decided to RMA it again, this time by contacting the RMA dude personally (he's a friend of my friend, so..). As a result, the shop gave me a brand-new Asus Titan Black! Well, everything seemed to be fine, until that same friggin' instability occurs, BUT nothing shows up in tests (furmark, memtest, IBT, Prime..) Nothing.

 

I was devasted. What is wrong with my system?? I mean, if the problem wasn't about the GPU, then why did they fail the shop's tests? After thinking about this with my friend JokuTyyppi, I decided (my inner assh*le decided, TBH,. ) to sell everything and thus avoid the problem. So, that is what I did. I sold the Maximus, I sold the 3770k and I sold the Titan Black (and the block that had been sitting in its box since January..). I sold them to different people, and according to them, everything seems to work. So, as we expected with JokuTyyppi, it was an incompatibility issue presumably (that's weird tho..). I sold them and bought a Maximus VII Ranger and a 4690k and a (used) 280x. Then, a little while after paying for the Radeon, I found a (used..) 290 and I was like "Sh1t, I just bought the 280x.." Nevertheless, I bought the 290, too..

 

Well, as it turns out, the 280x was working fine. The 290 in the other hand, wasn't.. It's vBIOS was corrupted, so I contacted the seller, and he told me that he still had a bunch of them (29 to be exact), and that I should send the 290 back to him, and in return he would send me another. So, after a week, a new Radeon R9 290 arrived at the local post office, from where JokuTyyppi fetched it with his Honda Varadero (thx again, man ). So far so good, the card seems to be working just fine. Ah, finally a graphics card that works! I made a new personal record: 6 graphics cards in 9 months

 

Now, I'm waiting for someone to buy the 280x (stupid stupid stupid meeeeeee  :angry:). When that happens, I'll have the money for a water block for this card, and then it's time for a real update again. Quite soon, I promise 

 

Oh, and one last thing: every update needs a pic, so here we go:

 

 

This is the 103% correct way to carry around a 1100€ graphics card

 

 

Well, anyways, thank you for your time,

Razbit

[Razbit]

Alright folks, here's a real update for you after a way too long waiting..

 

First of all, I wanna say that I'm sorry about two things: being way too slow with this build AND that my pictures really suck ass..

 

Anyway, now that I finally received the water block and backplate to the Radeon, it is finally time to start wrapping up this build!

 

Lets start by "blocking" the Radeon:

 

 

 

 

 

Then, it was time to get bendin' them tubes! Gosh I hate my bending tool (model el-cheapo..), but, it suffices.

 

So here we have the graphics card installed and the cpu -> gpu and gpu -> reservoir tubes done. A part of the reservoir -> pump tube can be seen, too:

 

As you may see from the pic, the radiator is turned upside-down. That was JokuTyyppi's idea, and it turned out to be a good one! Except for this one f*cker that had to be made for the radiator to work that way. This tube goes from the radiator to the cpu. It has many bends as you can see, and with the nearly-useless bending tool I have, it was a real pain to make. But, the third attempt worked! Which means I wasted only about 1 meter of copper tube. Out of 2 meters I bought. So, in the end, I had a 20cm piece of tube left over

 

 

 

So, as you can see from this (crappy..) picture, it goes from the bottom of the radiator to the CPU block:

 

Another pic of the same tube:

 

Next up, the pump. I used a EK DCP4.0 pump, which is run at 7 volts. Works fine, keeps quiet = profit?

 

Anyway, I had to make (again) a new drain port This time I really hope it'll be the last..

 

Yeah, those hoses are ugly. And those fittings are ugly. But hey, the work! And can't be seen! And still, it hurts me when I think about them..

 

Here we have the new tubing, all done:

 

Also, as it can be seen from above, I re-routed the GPU's power cables. They go now through the vertical shroud, thus freeing 7 holes in the wire separator. I puttied (I hope you know what I mean, I'm way too tired to figure out a better word.. ) some of the excess holes, and made a hole (read: left 3 holes un-puttied (??? wtf my english)) for the front-panel USB3 cable, so now I present you the Wire-separator-guider-thingy 2.0!

 

 

And after painting:

 

And now, to the new cabling of the GPU:

 

Better, eh?

 

 

And now that we're talking about the vertical shroud, the new tube from the CPU didn't work with the old hole -.- So, a new one had to be made, and it needed a cover to hide the old one:

 

 

There you can also see a glimpse of these:

 

Corsair AF120s. Awesome fans.

 

Here they are, in-place:

 

And now I'll just be quiet and let the pics do the talking.

 

 

 

There. Inside done. Now, the only things left are

1) A glass to the side panel window

2) Make a new front panel (totally new, JokuTyyppi's great idea again )

3) A power button (vandal switch?) to the side panel

 

I guarantee you, the build looks way better in real life than in  these pictures taken with a OnePlus One.. It is a great phone, but its camera compensates for the $300 price-tag.. Its fast, but the quality could be better.. Way better..

Which is why my friend Janne, the photographer, promised to take some kick-ass pics of the build once it's ready!

 

Anyway, thanks for reading, please leave a comment, tell me what you think! Thanks for your time!

 

Cheers,

 

Razbit

 

 

[Anthony10]

awesome build man! the evolution of this build is absolutely mindblowing

[Norman_the_Owl]

"Redefine R4"

 

Still gets me

[Razbit]

awesome build man! the evolution of this build is absolutely mindblowing

"Redefine R4"

Still gets me

Thanks guys!

I really would like to hear what you (all of you who are reading this) think about the build, so please, leave a comment! Anything!

Thank you

[austin541]

just amazing, puts my r4 to shame  .

[Gilbert]

Can you give me a schematic of the customized parts of the case so i can make a Redefine like that? I really like how spacey it is.