APERUM DESIGN - Project Starscream

[AperumDesign]

PROJECT LOG TEMPORARILY ON HOLD. PC FINISHED, HOWEVER CHANGES NEED TO BE MADE + FINAL PHOTOGRAPHY

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

This build has undergone ongoing planning between the client and I for the past 12 months with a deadline of early January 2018. The brief was to create a matt-black-and-gold build in the Cooler Master Mastercase Pro 6. Originally we had intended on incorporating some aspects of the geometry of the Transformers character, Starscream. However, we decided that this wasn't going to be so much a typical themed build which would try to emulate the subject. Instead, we simply wanted to add some interesting acrylic design that borrowed from the character's body, while keeping the very minimal modding mostly additive and minimalistic simply to clean up the case a little, since gold tends to look best against simple matt surfaces. The goals for this build were to place aesthetics at equal importance to performance. For this reason, the following design decisions were made:

• All components are to be as black and as simple in design as possible, excluding the fittings which will be gold.
• 16mm OD acrylic hardline tubing used to fill out the large internal size of the case with Mayhems pastel black coolant.
• Barrow Gold fittings to reduce cost compared to Bitspower True Brass.
• Custom laser-cut acrylic in matt-black to cover up and simplify most of the case.
• Custom laser-cut and line-bent geometric acrylic parts which resemble parts of Starscream's body.
• Natural white LEDs to allow the gold to shine through the tinted tempered glass panel, while keeping the matt-black internals mostly unlit.
• All ATX/EPS/PCIe cables custom-made from 4mm MDPC-X black sleeve over 16AWG wire, and all front-panel and SATA cable sleeved.
• Custom laser-cut acrylic cable combs (eg. 8+8 and 16+16 for GPU PCIe cables).
• Mountable CNC-milled cable combs to route all ATX/EPS/PCIe cables neatly.

 

 

PROGRESS INDEX

 

UPDATE 01 (18/12/17) - Core Components Product Photography #1

UPDATE 02 (15/01/18) - Laser-cut Acrylic and Watercooling Components

[AperumDesign]

Reserved

[AperumDesign]

 

UPDATE 01 (18/12/17) - Core Components Product Photography #1

 

Typically my builds would start off with a few hundred hours in CAD, meaning I'd have some renders to show. In this build, all custom parts are laser-cut acrylic, so no 3D CAD will be necessary, although I did model up some of the acrylic work which will be shown at a later date. So instead, to start with, here are some of the core components we'll be throwing into the Mastercase Pro 6 from Cooler Master.

 

 

We originally wanted to go with the new Asus Maximus X Formula, however at the time of purchasing these components we were unsure of the release date, and the price was a little steep for the budget. The STRIX Z370-F is still an amazing board, and I'm so pleased with the direction manufacturers are taking motherboard design.

 

 

The glorious peel.. 

 

 

Couldn't quite fit a 960 Pro into the budget, but this will be plenty. I had wanted to minimise cable clutter by keeping all storage on M.2 drives, however it was just going to be too expensive. So instead, we ended up going for a single M.2 drive and an SSHD. 

 

 

Had to go with the 8700K. A brilliant chip for gaming, and the extra cores will allow for some extra performance in multi-threaded tasks.

 

 

SLI EVGA GTX 1080 FTW ACX 3.0 cards. SLI 1080ti's would've been ideal, however it was outside the budget. A single 1080ti would've been a more logical choice, however the dual cards work much better to fill out the case's internals. EVGA is always my go-to for watercooled builds.

 

 

My past 3 builds have all had Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM. The design is unbeatable if you ask me. These will have CableMod black memory kits on them eventually.

 

 

Always seem to end up using Corsair PSUs. This will be plenty for this build. We could've gone higher in terms of wattage, but at the time of purchasing I was unsure whether we would need the extra space in the case's lower compartment for storage. Sorry about the fingerprints

 

That's all for now. At the time of posting this, the build is about 50% complete. I should have a steady stream of updates for the next month or so before completion. Thanks for reading!

[pistoIs]

Amazing! Hope to see some pics soon!

[AperumDesign]

1 hour ago, pistoIs said:

Amazing! Hope to see some pics soon!

Thanks! Plenty to come in the following weeks

[Tech_Dreamer]

nice , looking forward to seeing the finished build  , awesome photographs with perfect lighting. Good job.

[TVwazhere]

If this comes out anything like Glass and Aluminium it's gonna look killer! Followed  

[AperumDesign]

On 12/20/2017 at 11:37 AM, Tech_Dreamer said:

nice , looking forward to seeing the finished build  , awesome photographs with perfect lighting. Good job.

Thanks mate. Still relatively new to product photography. Some cheap lighting gear off eBay goes a long way though.

 

11 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

If this comes out anything like Glass and Aluminium it's gonna look killer! Followed  

Haha thanks, we'll see . I had some pretty interesting plans involving custom CNC-milled plates for this build to make everything parallel, similar to G&A, but budget got in the way, so the loop is going to be pretty basic. Still should be a nice clean build. Thanks for the follow!

[Empiran]

Ha ha YAES.

 

Me likey

 

Can we see the scales? :0

[AperumDesign]

 

UPDATE 02 (15/01/18) - Laser-cut Acrylic and Watercooling Components

 

Sorry it's been a long wait for the second update to this build log. The project has been on hold up until roughly a week ago, but today the last of the components (namely the fittings) came in. The build is scheduled to be finished within the next week, so expect the remaining updates much more frequently.

 

 

These are all of the acrylic pieces designed to cover up and 'simplify' the case by removing unused holes/grills etc. All dimensions were taken off the CM Mastercase Pro 6. All designing was done in Autodesk Fusion 360 then exported to Inkscape for laser cutting. The sketches from Fusion 360 were then printed onto cardboard for drafting purposes to ensure that everything fit perfectly. Once I was happy with the fit, the pieces were laser cut onto 3mm matte black acrylic. From left to right: midplate cover, motherboard tray cover 1, rear cover, cable management and SSHD cover, motherboard tray cover 2 and cable pass-through. Dimensions are included in case anyone wants to use these pieces for their Mastercase build.

 

 

All laser cutting was outsourced to a local architectural model-making company who did a fantastic job. A few extra holes later, this is the final result.

 

 

EK PE360 and SE240 with 120mm EK Vardar Evo fans installed onto the Coolermaster radiator mount.

 

 

Ended up painting the stock Corsair Dominator Platinum covers matte black instead of purchasing the CableMod inserts, purely based on saving cost. It's a shame that we weren't able to fit the Maximus X Formula into the budget, since it would've worked with the matte black and gold theme much better, but the STRIX Z370-F board still looks great, especially with the HEATKILLER CPU block in Acetal.

 

 

HEATKILLER GPU 1080 FTW blocks also in Acetal installed onto the 1080s. 

 

 

The only pump-res combo on the market that I can justify buying, the Heatkiller Tube DDC 200 with a Laing DDC-1T Plus PWM pump installed. Absolutely amazing piece of hardware.

 

 

All Barrow fittings are in gold and will be used alongside 16mm OD PETG tubing.

 

That's all for now. Next update will be up within the next few days and will most likely include all of the custom cables and the cable management solutions in place to keep everything neat. Full-build shots coming soon. Thanks again for reading!

[Empiran]

Wow Yaes

 

[8uhbbhu8]

Wow that pump/res and those fittings!!!!

 

 

Followed!