davido_labido

Well, I have been working away a lot and doing a few events, so I haven't been at home long enough to do any updates!! I do however have LOAAADS more products and stuff from my awesome sponsors and I have a few hours before i have to head out the door again so I thought I best show off a little bit more! So first up, a huge thanks to be quiet! for supplying me with the fans and PSU for this build! I actually got an email from be quiet! a long time before I knew I was going to be doing this project asking if I would like to use their products. I have already got a lot of fans from them, and I've also used their PSU's in the past, so it really wasn't a hard decision to make!! be quiet! have been very generous and sent me this: I have actually been sitting on this package for some time, and I got the PSU the same day as it was released!! ! It's a beasty! 1200w platinum rated with one of their Silent Wings fans to keep it cool and quiet. I certainly dont think I will be running out of connections for this build, there are plenty of connectors, I do particuarly like the idea of running the fans of the headers they provide, I have never used a PSU that does this, so it will be interesting. the rear of the PSU has a rubber gasket surrounding it. This will, of course,reduce any vibration that the fan might make from getting to the chassis and making any noise. It wouldn't be be quiet! if it wasn't silent! http://s3.postimg.org/e5jashzz7/IMG_7065.jpg The PSU comes with a lot of accessories, and i mean a lot. its got 2 sets of screws, valcro cable ties, the usual box of modular cables, but then it has fan cables, an OCK jumper and an OCK bracket with a switch For the fans I went for Pure Wings 2 from be quiet! I think everyone has used be quiet! fans one way or another and they really are decent fans, especially for how little noise they make. I have never actually used the Pure Wings 2, however I have used the Shadow Wings before and if these perform at a similar rate I will be very happy. As you can see I have gone for 120mm fans and a lot of them (10), I no doubt will hook them up to a fan controller rather than direct to the PSU just to give me some more control over them, I doubt I will need to have all 10 running at 100%, so I will be able to have a rather quiet PC this time round The fans are rather sleek with the usual black on black that be quiet! love to use. I'm not going to go crazy on the pictures for these as you will see a lot of them when I'm doing the radiators So, that's be quiet!, again a huge thank you to them for supporting me!

Now, without further to do, lets see what my awesome sponsors have sent me for this build shall we?! The first 2 that I'm going to show are MSI a new sponsor for me although I have been talking to them for around 12 months waiting to do a build with them for a while, and have attended many events with these guys, they are pretty awesome!!! Also, HyperX. I'm pretty sure anyone who has seen one of my build logs before knows that I LOVE LOVE LOVE these guys and gals. They help me out all the time and the people are great! If I could choose a company to work for... it would be HyperX! So: MSI will be providing the motherboard for this build. They sent me the X99 A SLI Krait Edition with USB 3.1 This board matches the build colour perfectly! I'm sure i can add some orange easily if I do decide to pop a little bit of colour into this... This will be my second experience with X99, Nom Nom Nom Plenty of sata ports on this board, always great to see! For all you M.2 lovers, this has a front slot. and now for These guys have been awesome and sent me the following Savage SSDs and also their new Predator DDR4 (click the links for more information on these as they have some great specs!) So, HyperX sent me 2 SSDs, both are the same drives, but one comes with a great little adapter and case to enable you to run any SSD drive from USB. This is awesome for me as it means i can keep all my games on one drive and just move them between computers! These have an updated design from the 3k series, but still have the prominent X we all love . This is the case that came with one of the drives. Its as simple as putting the SSD into it.... then locking it using the little switch on the back. It comes with a USB cable and its plug and play! Winner! HyperX also sent me this ram.... NOM NOM NOM!!!! When I get a silly amount of ram, i like to make spiral staircases with it.... So what happens when we put MSI and HyperX together?! It's a match made in heaven! There is something about 8 sticks of ram that just make things look... beastly. I will leave you with this one last picture, if I get time I will show some more sponsor products tomorrow!

What... I've not taken a 'cheap shot' at all.... I just don't like vinyl... No reason to take it to hear, you obviously do, which is fine.... I've seen a lot o people that like the case.... A few in this thread, I'm not offended in the slightest, I like to see other people's opinions on things, hence my post saying it's a good thing people like different things... I don't understand how you can think I took offence from that buy hey ho. I would prefer to get cases that aren't always over done and that are different and have a go with them, thats the whole point of modding. =)

Yeah, it's certainly down to performance rather than aesthetics, I think it will help quite a bit! soon be able to put some hardware in it =D Haha, 'what if the Xbox is good' Soon! I'm working away from home atm so il be back after the weekend! Good job you didn't get asked to do it then isn't it? That's the good thing about tastes, everyone's is different, I don't like sticking a load of vinyl on everything, you do, tis all good though, if we all liked the same things it would be boring.

Well its time for another build!! This time I will be using the Phobya WaCoolT White OWL Case. This is a new case from Phobya so it will be interesting to see what I can do with it! As per usual, I don't have much time with this build, it needs to be done before the end of August for I55!! Before we get cracking though, I do need to say a massive thank you to Pascal and Antony! A shout out to JR23 and Jamie too for help with the graphics side of things So, without further to do, the case!! This case was actually designed and made with help from the community, Phobya took the ideas and created this! Now, it is a rather strange looking case i admit, and when i only saw the black version i wasnt too taken by it. Once i actually recieved the white one though, i much prefer it. Pictures dont do it justice tbh. drive bays are far less common in cases lately as a lot of people have stopped using disk drives and the only real use for them are fan controllers. This case can hold up to 8 fans straight out of the box, so i will be using a decent fan controller (or two) to ensure they are all quiet, so im glad we have some bays! The back of the case has 4 grommits for if you want to add any external water cooling, im not sure why you would need to as there is plenty of space in the case!! speaking of inside the case: As you can see, there is loads of room!! there is space for HDDs just above the drive bays, this little hdd case is actually on rubber grommets to stop the drives from vibrating which is a nice little touch. for watercooling i have a lot of options, down the bottom we have native support for a 360 or 420 rad and in the top of the case we have support for 480 or lower rads, including 200mm rads! and at the back, you could bang another 120mm if needed! another nice addition is this nice little pump mount, again with rubber grommets to stop the vibration So, thats the case! what do you guys think of it? A lot of people i have spoken to either love it or hate it, there is no real in between. Im just waiting on some more hardware, and then we can get stuck into the build properly, i want to do quite a subtle build, lots of whites, greys and blacks, but I think I might add some orange, because.... davido_labido.

Thanks Guys!!!! it actually made it onto the ASUS ROG Website too!! http://rog.asus.com/422592015/labels/event/computex-2015-asus-rog-announces-latest-range-of-gaming-gear/ Really proud to have gotten something i have built onto one of the biggest booths at computex! Mods, is there any chance you can rename this "Project Unity" please?

So! Today was the day! The In Win 909 was announced at computex and I was the first person to get to do a mod with it! First off i would like to say a massive thank you to ASUS who were the ones to get me the case, and i would also like to appologise for the quality of the pictures. I pretty much did everything you see here the day that i was sending this build to Taiwan, i was awake for 30+ hours and as the case was still NDA pictures were not my main priority. It also isn't 100% finished, i have lots of little bits to do to it to make it perfect, but again, I just didn't have the time. So, the In Win 909 is based on the 904/901, but has much better airflow and support for watercooling. It has support for a 240mm rad at the bottom (although i found this to be rather tight, an EK rad wont fit properly) a 240mm rad at the front and a 360 rad at the back, there is also space for a 120mm rad as well, or a fan, but it just wasnt needed for this build. iirc correctly, the case has support for 5 SSds around the back using nifty little bracets, i didnt need these though, so the first thing i did was cut a bit of the panel away to make this huge hole, this allowed me to curve my 24pin connector around better. on this pic you can see that the bracket for the SSD would have been in the way of the curve. I didnt likke how many holes there were in the motherboard tray so that was the first thing i thought id sort out. As I didnt want to use the bottom 240 mm fan space either, I thought id cover this as well as make a cover for the PSU space. So, measuring and marking what i wanted to cut is first on the list I always draw on top of the protective film so that you don't mark the actual acrylic. I cut this using a jig saw to save time, not the prettiest of finishes, but not too bad. The first sheet in place goes here... This means I can now get the curve that i want (dont worry about the state of the holes, I will sort these out at a later time) The next one was the cover for the 240mm fan slots: The white bit of plastic underneath is actually a light bar, so i didn't want to cover that completely. once i had these 2 bits in place i needed to sort out the final bit that would have been left, just a little rectangle, when id made that it looked like this Once i pull all the bits out, they look like this, obviously this was before i sanded them down. The next job was the water cooling, this was quite a strange loop for me to do as I wasn't sent any RAM for the build. This needed to be added when it got to Taiwan, as such, I couldn't foul any of the RAM slots... and there are 8. Due to this it meant getting a little creative with the loop First to go were the hardrive bays at the top of the case, there are 4 of these so you have plenty of storage options, I drilled all the rivets out so that i could use the space for some tubing. With the 240 radiator orientated in the way i chose, it meant i could only really go this way, the only problem was that is where the case is So, time to drill a hole. add a pass through fitting and get the bit of tubing in place I needed to do the same with the back radiator as again, i couldnt go past the ram slots! EKWB sent me plenty of tubing, I thought with this case being rather big i would need it, but a lot of the bits of tubing i used were very very small Once all the tubing was in place, it looked like this, E22.biz sorted me out a rather nice panel as this build is to show off the ASUS X99 DELUXe I was going to use White pastel fluid, so the CPU block didnt really matter, but i do wish i had gone with nickel rather than copper now, at least i know for next time. I extended the tubing out quite a lot so that hands could easily work with the ram slots. I really like how it all turned out, i particularly like the placement of the rez. The Intel SSD was another item that needed to be on show, I had a lot of ideas with this, but unfortunately i needed a longer cable that isn't currently available at any retailers so i had to just make do with it on the bottom. Once i had added the fluid it looked like this? what do you think? I used Mayhems fluid as per usual, this is Aurora, that i had watered down a little using some ultra pure and then added just a touch of Pastel white concentrate. Im really happy with how this turned out. I cant wait to get it back to finish it to the standard it deserves, but with the time scale i had and everything else, I'm mega happy. As soon as it gets back from Taiwan, I will be doing the finishing touches and getting some better pictures please give my facebook page a like to get mini updates that I post that are not worth popping on to forums with, i will be giving away a copy of TOTAL WAR ATTILA when i get 500 'Likes' (140 to go i think!) https://www.facebook.com/davidolabidomods and also my twitter @davido_labido

Thanks it's some serious hardware for sure... I wish I could afford this kind of gear for all of my builds tbh!!! I just made a computer once and the right people saw it, I made another one, and even more people in the business saw it, now I am lucky enough to have a list of sponsors who are all awesome! Thank you! Yeah, I think I should be ok with the heat tbh, the fans are rather powerful and im going to be setting them to basically just run at full speed when they are at events. I will see how the PSU holds out though, I did a quick calculation before asking for it and figured it would be close, but i *should* be ok. If not, i do have a few spare knocking around at the moment that I can use Well, i still cant show you the case i'm afraid, but it will be seen very soon!!! I have been working away as per usual, so progress is slow, however I need it finished by tomorrow night as its getting flown to Taiwan on Thursday EEEEEK!! So, today i needed to sort out the extensions whilst I wait for the last 2 or 3 bits to arrive from OcUK and one of my friends who has helped me with a little idea for some branding. So, lets start to do some wires! As per usual, I am back to making all my wires from scratch, Im going to make extensions this time rather than a full set to save quite a lot of time and also because the PSU is quite hidden. So with this build, I am going to use white black and shade 19 which is a very dark grey unless a flash hits it (i tried to get some pics without the flash too to show you what it can look like) First job is to cut 24 wires for the GPUs. 2 different sizes of course so that they have a nice curve! Also, i cut 24 wires for the 24 pin! once they are crimped and sleeved, we get something like this! Its the first time I have ever sleeved 24 cables for a single PSU so it was a little different! once they are plugged in they look awesome imo It was nice to be able to do the 24 pin the exact same way as the GPU cables as well depending on which way you want the curve depends on which way you crimp the cables, some are crimped with the "flags" on the top of the cables, so that the clips of the connectors are on the top, and some are crimped with the "flags" on the bottom. Nom Nom Nom Oh, my processor turned up as well last week, I almost forgot As I mentioned, tomorrow is going to be a long day, got a the watercooling to finish off, some small case mods and some acrylic cutting to do to cover some of the bits i don't like. i have around 30 hours to get the whole thing done including testing the loop, software, checking everything is working OK and ensuring it survives the trip! Wish me luck If you want to follow my progress tomorrow, I will be posting little snippits on facebook, as well as giving away a copy of the new Total War Attila game! check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/davidolabidomods On twitter i have a copy of Far Cry 4 to give away! @davido_labido I don't really have the time to play games at the moment, so I might as well share them when i get them!

So, my final sponsor received stock of the parts that I wanted and a day later I received them from Germany! A huge thanks to Thermaltake for sponsoring this build with fans and PSU. Its much appreciated! So, this is what they have sent me!! 6 of the new 120mm LED Riing fans, a 1050w ToughPower DPS G PSU and a nice little suprise, a blue switch Poseidon Z Keyboard!!! So, lets jump straight in with the new 120mm Riing fans. I saw the promo for these a little while back and then saw them at an event. I can honestly say they looked far better than I thought they would. So much so I have been waiting for a project I could use them in since. The fans come with a nice set of goodies, including a cable that reduces the fan speed for quite use and a nice set of longer screws for rads # This is what its all about, that clear bit of plastic combined with the 4 LEDS make this fan glooooow. Whilst i was clambering up the loft to find a spare PSU to show you the lights (i failed btw, you will have to wait) i fount a little Tt dude from an old event!! so, he started to help me.. He seems impressed with these fans. Next up is a little gift from Tt. When we are at events, we always end up a the bar (after the reps have finished work i may add!!!!) and the last time we got onto talking about keyboards. I have never owned a blue switched keyboard and the rep obviously remembered. He sent me this This is the new Poseidon Z and from the looks of it, they are very proud.. 5 year warranty!!??! Tt dude is trying to get in on it... The keys are rather nice, they are rounded for her pleasure Im not sure what this button does. i will look at the instructions later The Poseidon Z comes with a blue backlight.... its purdy Especially in the dark! And finally the beast of a PSU 1050W of semi digital capacitor goodness. inside the box we get a wrapped PSU and a large bag of cables. as always, il be honest and say im not a huge fan of the black/gold/red colour scheme, but both the red and gold parts can be removed so its no issue. as its fully modular, there are plenty of slots for your cables. Again, the Tt Dude approves. These are all the cables that are with the PSU the Tt dude spotted this one... after a closer look, we can see its a nifty USB cable that plugs into the PSU. This allows you to some nifty things from your mobile phohne which i'm not even going to try and explain , this website does it far better lol http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00002390 The build is going to be hard to show whilst the NDA is still live, but I am going to document it still and give you as many sneak peaks as I possibly can. The next job is cable braiding and spraying the PSU i think Please give me a follow on the following social media accounts! I am going to be doing some little giveaways soon, and its far easier to do via these than it is over forums!! https://twitter.com/davido_labido https://www.facebook.com/davidolabidomods

Haha, i know right! I wish i could get 2 of these cards just to make everything just that little bit more crazy, but needless to say, I doubt ASUS would let me have another (if they could find one, they are getting rare!!) Thank you kind sir!!! So another day and another parcel. this was shipped super fast from my friends at EKWB. They supported me for my BitFenix Pandora build and they were happy to help me out again with this build too!! Thanks very much EK!! So, opening the box I got all of this inside... Lots of goodies!! This time I went with my favorite pump, the D5 with a clear top. I do much prefer these to the DDC, even though the DDC is the only close contender. I just hope that the clear block suits the build, im sure it will! I was super impressed with the radiators I had from EK last time, so i had the same again... just a few more This time I went with a 360, a 240 and a 120. Bearing in mind the case i am using is NDA and hasn't been announced yet. There is no information available about it anywhere on the internet, no pictures, nothing. So I had to use a bit of judgment and the slithers of information I could find. Luckily a day after ordering the watercooling. I managed to get a spec sheet for the case and all of them will fit.... and more if needed I do love how this series looks. and if you didnt already know what they were... Onto the CPU block and i went for this! This time i wanted to go for a clear block. I have never used a clear one, so thought it would be something a little different As with the D5, im hoping when it gets some nice fluid running through it, it will become more of fitting colour. If not, I can always just swap it out, I can use this for a different project, it does look rather nice! For the reservoir i went for a X3 250. This should be the perfect size for what i want to do. I couldnt decide between white or black, so EK sent me the white ends too Im going to use the EK-HD tubing again, it bent well last time and looked great and with the addition of the new EK-HDC Fittings, I think this build needed it. Did someone mention fittings?! I always under estimate how many angled fittings I need, so I usually just buy them as and when I need them, with OcUK next day delivery, I don't really have to worry or wait long. These fittings were huddling together for warmth... LEFT! RIGHT! LEFT RIGHT LEFT! The new white EK-HDC fittings are rather nice, the black chrome of the angled fittings and the white of these fittings will go together with the black of the radiators to create the perfect monochrome look.... i hope These are actually compression fittings for hard tubing. I need to send this build to Taiwan once its finished. I'm hoping that these will grip the tubing enough so that I can send it pre-filled. LINE UP!!! AIM!!!!! FIRE! I would also like to invite you all to my Facebook and Twitter page!!! YES! Just click the little icons to get to the relevant pages, i will be giving some bits and bobs away on them at some point Im just waiting on one other bunch of stuff then I can really get my teeth into this build. Looking at it, there wont actually be that much modding, the case is pretty much perfect as it is and everything fits the colour scheme... I will have to make some custom cables and do some little bits but it should be a really nice clean build!

yeah, This is probably going to be the most expensive build ive ever built. I have used some really fantastic cards in the last couple of years, but the Ares III is just crazy!

Well, this is going to be a bit of a strange build log! I contacted ASUS for another build I am about to do, and they actually asked if I could do them something a bit special instead. I cant show you the case. It's NDA and I wont be able to post pics until it is actually announced, however, I will say it is VERY sexy. As far as i know, i'm the only person in the UK with one and probably one of only a few in the world that has seen it! EXCITED! Even though i can't show the case, I wanted to just post some things as and when im doing them so that i can keep a bit of a log and then at the end il show the expanded versions of the pictures so you can see how it relates in the case. Hopefully it will work haha. So, I received a rather nice parcel today... In this parcel is the main focal point of this build, the beautiful ASUS X99 deluxe. I was looking at these when they were released and I'm rather glad I have the chance to get my hands on one! Thanks ASUS! Out of the box we can get a better look of the Mobo. This board actually has some extra pins, which allows for more POWER! BUTTONS! On board sound... I have never used a sound card (I know I know) so im always interested to see if i can tell the difference between motherboard sounds... lets see! Another thing that I think any "enthusiast" would like to get their hands on is the ASUS ARES III lets face it, it's a beast. Well, ASUS again decided it was Xmas come early and sent me one <3!!! I cant even tell you how excited I was when I was opening this! It has a case... A CASE!!!! I just wanted to handcuff this to my wrist... chuck on a suit and feel awesome for a few hours... Opening the case let me to this... Apologies for the fingerprints, i got a little excited and started to have a look, then forgot to wipe them off lol Oh lord. This is what £1200 (ish) buys you. So So So sexy. Obviously the waterblock is made by one of my other sponsors, EKWB, so its awesome to be able to use both so easily. Hnnnnnnnng If you didn't know, there are only 500 of these cards made. I have number 14 This is the backplate, you can see my rub marks (oooops) but yeah, its rather sexy looking! So, Power, most cards have a 6+8 pin.. or an 8+8 pin cable right? Not this one. 3 8 pin or go home! nom nom nom. I bet this will even play Minecraft! Another special item that was in the package was this 1.2TB Intel 750 SSD This is crazy fast. hmmmm taaasty. So, this is far faster than any other SSD ive ever seen tbh... the first thing i noticed was this... Yup, thats right, RIP sata cable! we have a new standard. The other end of the cable this SSD connects to looks like this. This then plugs into this little M2 card, so you can use it in either the motherboard directly (the ASUS X99 Deluxe has a M2 slot) or if your board doesn't have one you can get adapters that fit into your 1x pci-e slot. This is the Asus Hyper M.2 PCI-e adapter. So, thats all for now, I'm waiting on a few packages still before I can really make a start, but I think we can all agree, this is gonna be a beast!

doh! don't have my glasses on haha GPU block was going to have a logo on it, but I really didn't want to use a vinyl sticker and laser wasnt an option because of the acrylic block

I actually like the CPU block as it is tbh, its personal preference though on that though so I certainly don't mind you saying it I absolutely agree with you on this!! I was actually trying to get the HyperX logos white (using around 5 different methods, but I failed every time!!!) The logos are raised, they have ripples and they are quite detailed. If id have thought about it more at the beginning I probably would have been able to do what I wanted, but like an idiot I thought I'd spray them purple then detail them in white after. What I should have done is done them in white, then masked them off then done the purple... If I didn't make these mistakes though I wouldn't get better!

As some of you know, OcUK help me a lot in a multitude of ways, so I offered to put my build on their stand for the weekend at i54 - the UK's biggest gaming festival. Well, all the staff really liked it, particularly the big boss man (wooooohoooooo!!!) but these are some pics from teh stand. A huge thanks to OcUK for allowing me to be part of your display, it really does mean a lot. Before the masses arived. It soon started to pull people into the stand. Lots of people! 8-Pack spent a lot of time with me around this build, he really liked what I had done, which hearing so many good things from the biggest UK components retailer and the worlds number 1 overclocker is huge for me. CS:GO was being run on my computer the whole weekend with a BenQ freesync monitor which was awesome. I wish i could have taken it home!! It was awesome to see the ocuk stand so busy all the time, and to have my build on the "front line" was an honor. A huge thanks to my sponsors! and the final build