SonoDanshi

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I finished the "manual" on how to create your own personal plexiglass designs for the DAN A4-SFX.  Feel free to comment or ask any question if something isn't clear  
 
DAN A4-SFX Window Kit Custom Plexiglass Design.pdf

JBOD or Just a Bunch Of Disks is a means of spanning multiple drives so they somewhat act as a single storage medium. It was far more useful before 2TB drives became a defacto standard and people wanted to make use of several smaller drives. I run raid 5 at home as that's good enough for me and jbod has never been a consideration.

No, but basic Ohms laws tells us we can increase the voltage instead of the current to deliver more over all power. This is why power transfer lines carry 10s to 100s of thousands of volts and are only stepped down to 220/110 volts when they get closer to your home.
 
USB C power up to 100W is delivered with 20V instead of the standard 5V most USB uses for the very reason you state.

I do find this an interesting question. With USB 3.1 Gen2 offering 100W of power distribution in such a small form factor (Type-C), you have to ask, how long until the bulky PC cables can disappear and be replaced by something far more practical and streamlined.

Since roughly the start of 2016 I've been contemplating a new watercooling project, but wasn't sure what to do as I was happy with my main rig already. Then my thoughts turned to upgrading my HTPC so it could play games as well as serve media (with the aim to dust off my racing seat/wheel and play on the htpc. I spent some time thinking about how to approach this and then @red773 made a thread about how he'd watercooled a node202 which really kicked off my interest in making this a reality - although I wanted to go hardline and also wanted it to look completely stock from the outside (so no chopping the top of the case up to let tubes fit etc...).
 
Fast forward a few weeks and I had pretty much everything I needed apart from the pump/res (more on that in a later post) and the final list of fittings.

 
For anyone who wants a complete parts list you can see the pcpp link in the spoiler..
 
Before I even consider putting any of the watercooling parts together, I had to fix a huge issue..... The motherboard and RAM are red and black - which I absolutely detest (sorry to the millions out there who love it). I stripped off everything with red paint on it and already thought the bare components looked a lot better...

 
For the heatsinks, I simply masked off all the black areas leaving the red paint exposed before giving it a light sand. The RAM accents were just sanded and the chipset heatsink had a combination of masking and being attacked with a sharp blade to remove the plastic covering it came with to expose the red paint.

 
As I live in a high rise apartment, I don't have access to large areas to put together a spray booth so I had to go ghetto on it in my living room!


 
A few coats later and it looked a bit like this

 
 
That's it for now but plenty of updates and pics to follow (I'll add spoilers to the first post for late comers).
 
UPDATE 1:
 
UPDATE 2:
 
UPDATE 3:
 
UPDATE 4:
 

Since roughly the start of 2016 I've been contemplating a new watercooling project, but wasn't sure what to do as I was happy with my main rig already. Then my thoughts turned to upgrading my HTPC so it could play games as well as serve media (with the aim to dust off my racing seat/wheel and play on the htpc. I spent some time thinking about how to approach this and then @red773 made a thread about how he'd watercooled a node202 which really kicked off my interest in making this a reality - although I wanted to go hardline and also wanted it to look completely stock from the outside (so no chopping the top of the case up to let tubes fit etc...).
 
Fast forward a few weeks and I had pretty much everything I needed apart from the pump/res (more on that in a later post) and the final list of fittings.

 
For anyone who wants a complete parts list you can see the pcpp link in the spoiler..
 
Before I even consider putting any of the watercooling parts together, I had to fix a huge issue..... The motherboard and RAM are red and black - which I absolutely detest (sorry to the millions out there who love it). I stripped off everything with red paint on it and already thought the bare components looked a lot better...

 
For the heatsinks, I simply masked off all the black areas leaving the red paint exposed before giving it a light sand. The RAM accents were just sanded and the chipset heatsink had a combination of masking and being attacked with a sharp blade to remove the plastic covering it came with to expose the red paint.

 
As I live in a high rise apartment, I don't have access to large areas to put together a spray booth so I had to go ghetto on it in my living room!


 
A few coats later and it looked a bit like this

 
 
That's it for now but plenty of updates and pics to follow (I'll add spoilers to the first post for late comers).
 
UPDATE 1:
 
UPDATE 2:
 
UPDATE 3:
 
UPDATE 4:
 

This should be the penultimate update for Phase 1 of this project, so lets get straight to it.
 
I pretty much had 1 choice of graphics card for this build, as I wanted something as powerful as possible that I could watercool, was short in length 
(so it didn't block both rad fans) and also only took up a single expansion slot otherwise it would interfere with the radiator. So the R9 Nano it is then!

 
Here it is with the waterblock fitted along with the inlet/outlet block..... Wow that thing is big and I don't think it's going to give me enough room to actually route the pipes inside the case...

 
Luckily EK also offer angled terminals which give me the room I need.

 
So along with the challenges of squeezing all the watercooling gear in here, because it is a hardline loop, I need to think about draining it. This weird little group of fittings - whilst not very pretty, should get the job done.

 
With it in place (temporarily) this is how it should look - and yes I can open and shut the valve without interfering with the fan blades:

 
Hooking up the radiator and the pump was always going to be tricky as this is one of the points where I have to jump between the 2 case "zones" and to make matters worse the clearance of everything was extremely tight.

 
I tried to do this with petg but there simply wasn't enough space and distance to get a clean bend without forcing the pump out of position and meaning the res and other connections would never clear other hardware.

 
I ended up spending a small fortune on 5 interconnecting fittings to get a very sharp turn completed.

 
The next problem area was always going to be connecting the CPU block and the res because it has to squeeze between the RAM, GPU riser and the return feed from the GPU.

 
I really don't know what I was worried about - there's LOADS of room....

 
And believe it or not that is the loop fully connected up to everything. My final update tomorrow will show the loop filled and leak tested with everything finally crammed into place.

I spent a couple of hours last night overclocking and benching, so I hope #1 in the world for the CPU/GPU combo is good enough? >>link<<

 
I didn't get any screenshots of temps (I'll do that later today when I have time) but after ~2hours of continuous benching the GPU (core clocked to 1100MHz) capped out at 57c and the CPU (clocked to 4.5GHz) topped out at 81c
 
For daily driving though, I'll most likely drop the CPU back to 4.4 or 4.3 as the temps really spike at 4.5GHz

Since roughly the start of 2016 I've been contemplating a new watercooling project, but wasn't sure what to do as I was happy with my main rig already. Then my thoughts turned to upgrading my HTPC so it could play games as well as serve media (with the aim to dust off my racing seat/wheel and play on the htpc. I spent some time thinking about how to approach this and then @red773 made a thread about how he'd watercooled a node202 which really kicked off my interest in making this a reality - although I wanted to go hardline and also wanted it to look completely stock from the outside (so no chopping the top of the case up to let tubes fit etc...).
 
Fast forward a few weeks and I had pretty much everything I needed apart from the pump/res (more on that in a later post) and the final list of fittings.

 
For anyone who wants a complete parts list you can see the pcpp link in the spoiler..
 
Before I even consider putting any of the watercooling parts together, I had to fix a huge issue..... The motherboard and RAM are red and black - which I absolutely detest (sorry to the millions out there who love it). I stripped off everything with red paint on it and already thought the bare components looked a lot better...

 
For the heatsinks, I simply masked off all the black areas leaving the red paint exposed before giving it a light sand. The RAM accents were just sanded and the chipset heatsink had a combination of masking and being attacked with a sharp blade to remove the plastic covering it came with to expose the red paint.

 
As I live in a high rise apartment, I don't have access to large areas to put together a spray booth so I had to go ghetto on it in my living room!


 
A few coats later and it looked a bit like this

 
 
That's it for now but plenty of updates and pics to follow (I'll add spoilers to the first post for late comers).
 
UPDATE 1:
 
UPDATE 2:
 
UPDATE 3:
 
UPDATE 4:
 

That is a classy build. I really like the aesthetics of it.

My recently completed workstation project  This is a dual Xeon, 44-core rig with GTX 1080's in SLI and 256 G's of RAM. All EK loop.
 

 
More pictures:
 
Here it is on my desk 
 

 

That is a classy build. I really like the aesthetics of it.

And again, I wonder why there isn't a *wow* or *jawdropped* reaction for posts. Amazing build, totally awesome loop! I've got an Evolv for my future, slow accumulation of parts PC, so this help give me inspiration for my build!

Final update time!
 
So carrying on from the last update, as I had everything connected I figured it was time to leak test. Time for lots of paper towels and a light color tint to the water to highlight any problems.
 
As the res was so small and the connection to the pump is right near the top, I had to add a temporary tube to the fill port that would give me enough liquid to cycle the pump on and off without it running dry for too long.  The tube also helped with the bleeding as it allowed air top bubble up and escape wit the water level higher than the res.

 
To my complete and utter surprise absolutely nothing leaked at all and after adding a bit more dye to the loop it looked like this:

 

 

 

 
Here's a better look at the res when fully topped up.

 

 
And finally... here she is with everything in place and ready to roll.
 

 
I haven't done a great deal of benching and haven't done any overclocking yet, but the CPU idles at 24c and peaked out at 67c on the highest core when benchmarking. I definitely plan to push things beyond stock but with such small thermal capacity I imagine things will spike very quickly beyond a certain point. I also have plans to cut the top of the Node202 out and replace it with some beveled tempered glass so I can actually see all the hard work that has gone into it.

Since roughly the start of 2016 I've been contemplating a new watercooling project, but wasn't sure what to do as I was happy with my main rig already. Then my thoughts turned to upgrading my HTPC so it could play games as well as serve media (with the aim to dust off my racing seat/wheel and play on the htpc. I spent some time thinking about how to approach this and then @red773 made a thread about how he'd watercooled a node202 which really kicked off my interest in making this a reality - although I wanted to go hardline and also wanted it to look completely stock from the outside (so no chopping the top of the case up to let tubes fit etc...).
 
Fast forward a few weeks and I had pretty much everything I needed apart from the pump/res (more on that in a later post) and the final list of fittings.

 
For anyone who wants a complete parts list you can see the pcpp link in the spoiler..
 
Before I even consider putting any of the watercooling parts together, I had to fix a huge issue..... The motherboard and RAM are red and black - which I absolutely detest (sorry to the millions out there who love it). I stripped off everything with red paint on it and already thought the bare components looked a lot better...

 
For the heatsinks, I simply masked off all the black areas leaving the red paint exposed before giving it a light sand. The RAM accents were just sanded and the chipset heatsink had a combination of masking and being attacked with a sharp blade to remove the plastic covering it came with to expose the red paint.

 
As I live in a high rise apartment, I don't have access to large areas to put together a spray booth so I had to go ghetto on it in my living room!


 
A few coats later and it looked a bit like this

 
 
That's it for now but plenty of updates and pics to follow (I'll add spoilers to the first post for late comers).
 
UPDATE 1:
 
UPDATE 2:
 
UPDATE 3:
 
UPDATE 4:
 

Not much to look at, but here are some in-development pictures of my build. i7-7700k and a Titan XP in the loop, all inside of a Node 202 case. At first the thermal results were a little disappointing. I switched the fans to be between the GPU and the radiator pushing air out the bottom of the case and now it works great. It fits with all of the exterior shell of the case being unmodified. Pretty happy with the results. 

Since roughly the start of 2016 I've been contemplating a new watercooling project, but wasn't sure what to do as I was happy with my main rig already. Then my thoughts turned to upgrading my HTPC so it could play games as well as serve media (with the aim to dust off my racing seat/wheel and play on the htpc. I spent some time thinking about how to approach this and then @red773 made a thread about how he'd watercooled a node202 which really kicked off my interest in making this a reality - although I wanted to go hardline and also wanted it to look completely stock from the outside (so no chopping the top of the case up to let tubes fit etc...).
 
Fast forward a few weeks and I had pretty much everything I needed apart from the pump/res (more on that in a later post) and the final list of fittings.

 
For anyone who wants a complete parts list you can see the pcpp link in the spoiler..
 
Before I even consider putting any of the watercooling parts together, I had to fix a huge issue..... The motherboard and RAM are red and black - which I absolutely detest (sorry to the millions out there who love it). I stripped off everything with red paint on it and already thought the bare components looked a lot better...

 
For the heatsinks, I simply masked off all the black areas leaving the red paint exposed before giving it a light sand. The RAM accents were just sanded and the chipset heatsink had a combination of masking and being attacked with a sharp blade to remove the plastic covering it came with to expose the red paint.

 
As I live in a high rise apartment, I don't have access to large areas to put together a spray booth so I had to go ghetto on it in my living room!


 
A few coats later and it looked a bit like this

 
 
That's it for now but plenty of updates and pics to follow (I'll add spoilers to the first post for late comers).
 
UPDATE 1:
 
UPDATE 2:
 
UPDATE 3:
 
UPDATE 4:
 

Fixed some LED strips, added more strips, and removed the Koolance Flowmeter =)

 
Side panel still fits too.

I'm back and finally able to work at this mod again. No photos of the cnc milled parts yet but i continued working on the heatsinks and stuff.
Since the red didn't go away with the drain cleaner i started sanding these parts like i did with the RAM heatsink.
 

 
After 1-2 hours this is what it looks like. 
 

 
Definitely worth it.
 

 

 
To prevent the aluminium from oxidation i sprayed a really thin layer of clear varnish on it, this way the heatsinks are still functional.
 

 
Some hours later the varnish dried and i put everything back together.
 

 

 
I decided to countersink the holes in the RAM modules, this way it looks much better.
 

 

 
Next step was the Eisblock XPX CPU Cooler.
 

 
I had to swap the alphacool logo with the white one from the modding kit and i also wanted to make the cover fit better.
 

 
I took it off, started sanding it, gave it the brushed look, painted it with clear varnish and voilà.
 

 
I might paint the mounting matt black afterwards, not really sure yet.
 
To end this update i have some more pics of the GPU block. Next update will contain some shots of the whole hardware in the case as well as the cnc milled parts.
 

 

 

+1 for this. Very much interested in the rest of the internals. I keep toying with moving from the R9 Nano to a 1080 in my 202, but not sure if it's worth the hassle.

I will change stock psu cable with some custom made, and rewire other with some sleeving work... maybe remove the Acrylic tube to carbon.. I intended it to check flow and potential air in the loop.

Thoughts on this lettering? Not sure if I'll keep it or not - the letters are perfectly smooth, but the adhesive backing makes them look a bit iffy. Might look alright when everything's in and lit up a bit.
 

 

 

 

 

#fillingherup
 
Tissues are in. Let's do it!
 

 
Going with Mayhems Pastel Orange.
 

 

 

 
Been leak testing for a while here, and everything seems perfect! Air bubbles are slowly receding, and it's nice and quiet. The only "leak" I had, was when I got a bit to overeager with the filling, and some fluid came out the fill port, ran down the side of the reservoir, and dripped onto the power connectors for the Titan. 
 
All was good, though. No biggie.
 
Final state of cable management. Could be neater, but I just needed it to be flat, so the covers would fit over them...
 

 
Voila! Really love the way these came out. It might seem silly spending so much time and effort on something you won't really see that often, but yeah.
 

 

 

 
But this is more or less it! Here it stands in its, potentially, final form, ready to crush some games! Thanks for sticking around, hope you enjoyed the build and the result, I certainly do. 
 
I'll shoot a few more glamour shots in a bit.