Nick B

Update 6
 
Time to change the fan in my Corsair tx750m with a noctua fan. Here are the pieces i have.
 

 
PSU taken apart, wires cut.
 

 
wires of the PSU and noctua fan soldered together and heat shrunk.
 

 
Noctua fan installed in the psu.
 

 

 
The copper pipes have been removed and are ready to be nickel plated, i shall be doing it tomorrow as i am off work.
 

Update 5
 
Got the midplate installed, used a mixture of screws and unibounds super strong double sided tape.
 

 
Drilled holes throught the midplate so the piping could go through, i am going to be putting a piece of plastic on the front of the midplate to hide everything under it.
 

 

 
Midplate lights on again, just becuase it can...
 

 

 
tried some under motherboard lighting but it deifinatly needs to be brighter and possible change to white. i do have some white leds strips as the case is going to be lits up white.
 

 
Filed the loop with distilled water to flush out all of the gunk from the blocks and rads because they are used blocks. after an hour the water is already blue.
 

 
Next update should be tuesday, i have a day off work which i'm going to fill with nickel plating.

Update 4
 
Some fittings to make the drainage system.
 

 

 
Installing a backplate on my gtx 670 i already had the XSPC waterblock installed so i went for the XSPC one so i was guarenteed compatibility plus it looks really good aswell.
 

 

 
Removing the drive cage to make room for the front radiator and to give a cleaner look to the build
 

 

 

 
Using the line method for thermal paste as this is apperently best for ivy bridge as the silicon is in a line down the middle. fittings also installed.
 

 

 
Pump looks really messy but with the foam and plastic tubing it should stop all vibrations from transfering to the copper pipe and into the case. this will be hidden from view with some black acrylic.
 

 
All components and fittings in place just need to give the radiator a blow out and get the piping in.
 

 
as you can see it is now dark outside took around 4 hours to get everything sorted and i'm still not happy with it i think it could be cleaner but nether the less i shall be nickel plating on sunday.
 

 
Wont be able to do any work tomorrow as i'm at a barbecue all day.

Update 3
 
Here is my old computer ready to be disassembled.
 

 
Was going to cut the tubing but there is a Handy little draining port on the side of the rad that is at the bottom of my case.
 

 

 
PC slowly starts to get smaller...
 

 

 

 
And this is the reason why i'm never buying uv reactant coolant ever again.
 

 
The midplate from update 2 install in the case
 

 
push fittings in place on both CPU and GPU blocks
 

 
Time to start work on the copper piping. Here i am just cutting a length of pipe from the coil using a pipe cutter, much better to use a pipe cutter than a hacksaw.
 

 
Hand straightend
 

 
to fully straighten it i clamped one end in a vice and then grip the other with a pair of pliers and hit it with a mallet.
 

 
Nice and straight
 

 
Using a Rothenberger Mini Bender to get a tight radius 90 degree bend.
 

 

 
Cut the scrap ends off and made sure its the correct length.
 

 
Fitted in place between the top rad and the cpu block.
 

 
Only had time to do the one pipe run today should get some more done tomorrow and over the weekend along with the other mods.

Update 1- Front and Top Panel Mods
I am modding the front panel becuase i plan to mount a 280 radiator in the front of the case. The ventilation on the front panel is not really sufficient for me.      This picture shows the plastic front part of front panl that clips off the front, i have un-screwed it from the dust filter, covered it in masking tape and marked out where im going to drill and cut.     I drill the 3 right angle corners because i don't have a demel and i wanted to keep the corner rounded equally. The 4th corner is such a large radius that i will do it with the jigsaw.     Cut from hole to hole with the jigsaw and then used a combination of flat and round files of various courseness to get the edges square and smooth.     500mm x 500mm black mesh from Kustompc, going to be stuck in all of the gaps that i cut out.     Here i am bending a rectangle of the mesh so that it will fit inside the 5.25" bays and so that i have something to glue to the edges. I did this by hammering the mesh over the sides of a vice that has square edges.     Here is the finished 5.25" bay cover, edges so i can glue it to the sides of the bays.     Another piece of mesh cut out, this time slightly bigger than the cut made in the first pictures. I have also put it inbetween some planks of wood and used some G clamps to squeeze it together in order to flatten it as the mesh arrived slightly bent.     When working with the mesh it got a little beat up so i decided to give it a few thin coats of black spray paint just to make sure it was al perfectly black. In this picture you can also see the large piece for the top panel.     To stick all of the mesh onto the plastic i am using a 2 part epoxy resin, i normally use araldite but this stuff was on sale and works just as well.     Applied the resin liberally and used objects to weight it down while it set, took about 20 minutes to dry and about 24 hours to fully set.     Top Panel with resin set and Finished.     On the left is the 5.25" bays finished andon the right is me attaching the front panel back onto the filter frame, i removed the filter and plan to use individual filters in between the fan and the radiators.     Finished the front and top panel mods, next is going to be the midplate in order to create a basement.

Update 2- The Mid-plate
 
My Acrylic arrived, 550mmx250mmx5mm, 4 sheets of clear acrylic (Perspex) cost me around £33 including delivery and cutting to size from www.sheetplastics.co.uk. I ordered it slightly bigger than I needed as I knew it was going to be laser cut and I order an extra sheet as the middle layer is very weak so I wanted a spare sheet just in case it broke before I could get it attached to the other layers.
 

 
I use a VersaLaser 3.50 at my college to etch out the design for the top layer, cut out the edges so all 3 layers will line up perfectly and mark the holes so that they will also line up perfectly.
 

 

 
The laser etches the plastic by essentially burning it away, this leaves the surplus material in the form of a fine powder. I removed this fine powder by washing it under a tap.
 

 
As you can see in the image below the laser etching leaves the un-etched part slightly raised by about 0.2/0.3mm, this is important because of what I’m about to do with the plastic later on.
 

 
The top layer with the textured design is then painted black using a cheap, black acrylic paint that was bought for £5 from a local model shop.
 

 
Using a small vibration sanded with a flat edge I was able to apply gentle pressure to the top of the plastic which removed the paint from the raised parts, due to the fact that the sander is unable to reach down into the lower parts the paint remains intact. Some of the laser painted areas had to be touched up with a smaller paint brush. This allows light to pass through the plastic in the shape of the etched design.
 

 
On the bottom of the 3 layers I applied 4 strips of double sided tape and weaved a 2m blue led strip that has the correct resistors already installed to work with a 12v power source.
 

 
I used a 4.5mm drill bit and a cordless drill to drill holes in the marked places on each sheet. I then got 6 M4 nuts and bolts to attach all 3 layers to each other and have the LEDs sandwiched in-between.
 

 
On the left you can see the mid-plate bolted together without the LEDs turned on. As seen on the right I took a vibration sander to the edges in order to clean them up as there were a few rough edges and a bit of paint spill over the edges.
 

 
Sanding the Back of the top layer down to make it slightly opaque so you cant see the individual LED's. might need to use some frosted vinyl.
 

 
Here are the final pictures of the mid-plate with the LED strip on, not mounted in the case I just messily soldered and electrical taped a Molex plug onto the end so I could give it power from my PSU.
 

 

 

 
on the photo it appears that you can see all of the individual LED's on the strip however you cannot see them in person.