Roguehavikk

So where to start, well back in 2011 I bought my first "gaming tower" the Chaser MK1. It was my first and only full tower case I have ever owned. I promptly moved my phenom x3 build into it and was content, although it prob looked pretty clownish by today's standard with the giant tower AIR-cooler in it and the Radeon 7950 with no back-plate, Ketchup and mustard cables, and the two HDD wired with mis-matched sata cables and rainbow fans of several different brands. Unfortunately I have no pictures of this PC build but It was the pc I gamed on day in and out for the majority of my life. Later I upgraded to the FX 8320 and gamed content until early 2016 when I went to the I5 6600k and gtx 1070 switching platforms for both the GPU and CPU. I then went with a ryzen 1700 the next year. point is this case has been through a lot and I can never really find a replacement for it. I did try to retire this case at the end of 2017 while I tried some mid towers. But I knew i would want to get back to this case sometime in the near future. Its large presence was sorely missed on my desk. For 11 months it sat in the basement neglected and collecting dust. It was soon time to Not only revive my favorite case but to bring it up to some the modern features we enjoy in today's case market First thing to deal with was the color scheme. I had always tolerated the blue in my red and black Build. A completely overdone color choice in pc builds, but a classic non the less. The blue plastic pieces came out very easily, UN-bent the metal mesh around the front covers and was able to paint most pieces with no masking at. The feet being the biggest challenge was painting the design on the feet. Had a small amount of bleed but not noticeable if you didn't know to look for it. Next was to remove the giant HDD cage that most cases from the time suffered from. A dozen rivets later and it was removed. After finishing that i did a complete tear down and used a can of Matt black bumper paint (spray can) to paint the bare aluminum and touch up and scratches.(not pictured) So with me being a lazy guy i decided to harvest the basement. About 24 rivets later (they really went to town securing this thing) I Had my basement. Same day The first component of the new build arrived, my motherboard. A Msi Z370 M5, a slight budget board for the type of build i was doing but I got it 40 dollars cheaper then New-egg pricing so i wasn't complaining. Using some left over pieces from the HDD tower and part of another case (Frankenstein much) i filled in the large gap making a back wall of sorts which i would later add mesh to. The basement sits in there almost like it came with the case and I mounted it to the front of the case to ensure i have a gap for cable (Front headers, usb,rgb) and to allow for easy removal when it is needed. After rummaging through my closet full of pc parts i found the two original 200mm color-shift fans which i plan to use up top. Two weeks later I order my next couple parts two EK radiators and 6 RGB pack of fans. To keep the budget down i went with an off brand set of fans. They were "upHere" brand which came with 6 rgb fans and a controller which i wired into my reset button. The Radiators were a 360 ek-coolstream for the front and a 240 EK SE for the top, just a note here a 360 SE fits easily up top and i plan on making that upgrade early 2020 with new brand name fans but for the here and now I will use what my budget allows. Also for the front intake and for a mounting point for the radiator I placed a corsair SP 120 fan at the front for both functionality and to increase airflow through the radiator. Well now its time for the graphics cards. Since I already had a 1070 with a ek water block and the prices of the 10 series had drop drastically since the mining crash i decided to go with a 1070 SLI setup. After surfing eBay a good deal for a couple of days a GTX 1070 sea-hawk appeared for a buy out price of $230 plus shipping. I snagged that up in a heart beat. I t arrived the next week but the package was damaged and looked as though it had been given the fedex extreme care . After rigging Up the new gpu into my backup pc wich i was using while the new one was being built I tested it, luckily it worked flawlessly after 5 hours of burn test. I took Apart the new card and gave it a good cleaning. Doing the same with my original 1070 When i had originally bought the EKWB for the 1070 i had i also bought the backplate for the gpu as it was stated it was necasarry, wich it isn't. So i replaced the EK backplate with the original MSI one on my orignal GTX 1070. Two matching gpu's looking good. AT this time the next set of parts had arrived within a day of the gpu. Including the Cpu block witch took a month because the seller was based in china. Which i knew so that was not a big deal. Red sleeved sata cables and the Asia horse sleeved PSU cables also arrived. Since this was a budget "extream" build i was looking for good deals and good reveiws for the parts i used i will go really over the top next year. I was also able to mount the enermax pump/res combo unit as the brackets need to mount it to the fans had arrived It was finally coming together all the parts were finally here. The fittings red Barrow low profiles from an ebay selling arrived next day along with the box of 14mm tubes so it was time to try my hand at bending. I had also purchased a bending kit from xspc for 20 dollars since i wouldn't be doing this to often. This is the first set of bends I did they didn't work out to well, either to short and or the angle wasn't good enough. but I was able to get good bends on my next try. ruined some O-rings on the fittings but these things come plenty of extra. It was a learning experience to say the least. The double bends were a hassle so i bought 90's to make things easier. total coast of fitting was $170ish. So it was finally time to buy the last piece of the build. I had held off buying the CPU because i had missed the big sale and they had shot up to around $520 usd. So i was waiting for them to go back on sale. Luckily i found one for $500, still more then they once were, but it was low enough. Finally ordered my I9 9900k which arrived two days later with the finale piece I could put it all together. With the build almost done I had to think about the last feature which it was lacking. The required tempered glass. There was two ways to pull this off, mod the existing side piece, or mount it directly to the frame. The first step was to find a suitable piece of tempered glass. I had priced out a custom one but i came up to around $200 which brought up my second choice to take one from a cheap case. The only cheap case i had left was that 5PM Mean IT, wich was smoked glass and didn't really fit anyways. so i started to look around the Internet. Enter the Thermal-take P3 Tempered glass upgrade kit. Unfortunately it doesn't fit perfectly but 4 radiator screws and spacers it works so well with the case, I didn't even have to drill holes. Now there is a gap at the front at the moment but sliding it forward a bit and making an acrylic piece for the rear is on the radar. for now it doesn't bother me. This build took around 3 and half months. I piece meale it together and had no real plan for the final outcome. It was a fun learning experience and it was my first hard-line water cooled pc I had done. My previous pc was a soft tubing build. but i can say without a doubt it isn't on the same level as doing hard-line tubes. Even after "Finishing it" I knew it was not done and i have actually added to this pc since then. as it sits on my desk i have added additional storage and upped the RAM to a higher compacity, and i have plans for January 2020! Finale Specifications: I9 9900k 512gb WD black NVME 1TB intel NVME Gtx 1070 x2 850w corsair platinum PSU 16gb DDR 3000 G.skil (4x4g)