CyberDruid

I picked up a case months ago that looked perfect for a tiny watercooled mod project--an Antec Nsk 4400 Mini Midtower
It comes with a single rear mounted tricool 120. The first thing I would need to do is blast a hole in the front panel to mount the PA 160 and SilenX fan.

Since this will be a watercooled case UV juices and UV lighting and UV stuff is a big part of the look--Here's a Link to check out and get your UV juices flowing!


I decided to mount this UV light inside the shroud. Should make for a nice subtle glow out the front.


Once I mounted the shroud I marked and drilled an access hole on the side to get at the screw and monted the rad. Clearance to an ATX board was an issue so I fitted the rad with a 3/8 MIP street elbow to clear the board.


I skipped taking shots of modding the front panel--it was COLD out tonight. But the skinny is the front panel is just thick enough to accomodate a 120 x 25mm fan once all the palstic is cut away. And I mean exactly the thickness of a fan.


Here I am using an A8N32SLI to check for fitment. I figure if a SLI mobo will fit anything will fit...


You can see I have all of a 1/16" clearance from the elbow.


I slapped in a pair of 7800GTs for sitment and also mounted the rear fan before attaching the pump to the back panel--it just clears the SLI bridge...this board has the cards riding pretty high so I think almost any board will fit with thepump there.


At this point I new I had a winner--the main components would all fit.


I then mounted the res and a PSU to check again for clearance. I don't know what that curvy area is for--but I like it.


I then got a simple loop together. This would work fine--but there is no provision fr filling bleeding or draining except through the bay res...having had a little difficulty in the past I wanted to improve the loop by adding a fill, bleed and drain.


Although I am sure that I could use the loop as is I wanted to go ahead and make this an easy one to deal with if I needed to drain the fluid or what have you.


One of the things I like about this case is tha way all three panels come off easing access to the case.


I'm using a crystal clear bay res...


Put in a DVD drive to check for fitment--there are only two fans so a 4 fan bus is alittle too much--but it looks nice.


I like the understated details of this case--especially the front panel--the side panel is going to get a big window...


I began altering the loop a little at a time...I added a Tee at the bottom and a Tee at the top for fill and bleed--that way the res never has to be messed with...


Here's a pair of DD FilPorts installed on the top. I needed to make the lines a little slack so I could at least remove the top enough to get the side panels off.


THe only difficulty with these lovely filports is that getting the PSU out will mean unfastening the lines form the Filports...


I spent bit of time working out the best least strained runs for the increasinly complicated loop. This is what I came up with--although I prefer the look of the simpler loop I started with in the long run this will be superior.


In this shot you can see I added the drain line--this actually made the overall loop look cleaner.


THe tee at the drain straightened out the lines a bit. It added a bit more to the overall loop--but when it somes time to drain the sys it will be a snap.


I really like this little Midtower--I figured it would be a challenge to internally watercool this case...but it worked out okay...in fact a smaller pump would make it even nicer.



The understated look of this case makes it more fun to mod into a beast. A real sleeper--if it was not for the res it wuold be hard to imagine this is a WaterCooled SLI rig lol.

I have a few more things I want to fit before taking it all apart again for painting--the window, some UV lights, test fit the PSU cables to make sure all is well and I need to chop up the HDD bays to get it to fit over the rad. I hope I will be able to fit two HDDs...but I am not certain if that will work out--there's always the 5.25 bay under the DVD drive...

So that's another Watercooled ANtec to add to my production line. I hope you guys like it! Let me know what you think about this minibeast.

CyberD

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Fishie36

Wow that's real nice The front panel looks a bit... unfinished though. I don't know if that's the look you're going for but that's my thought.

Great work druid

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NrGx

WoW. Yeah thats really nice! The pipes are huge though and changing out RAM and stuff might be a bit of a problem. Why not pop a few UV cathodes into there and mod a window in? Someones needs to see that awesome job inside!

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mikhsoj

its a sleeper case! nice thought. the bright blue in the front stand out to me for some reason... great job though!

DesertRat

has ne1 ever told u that ur a modding god w/ way too much money

I wish i had the money and the skills you do man.

rock on!

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TheLaughingMan

That's a great idea. I love me some mini cases. I'm surprised all of that fits! Also, what is the ID of those tubes? Maybe the pic is playing with my eyes, but they look huge inside that case. If you can imagine the rig as a mid/full size tower, the tubes look like they are around 1"ID or more to me!

I bet that thing will look smokin after you finish painting it. I am also curious to see how exactly you will manage your wires, given the space constraints. IMO, regarding this scenario, modular PSU = win. I can only imagine how much of a PITA that would be with a "regular" PSU and it's cables.

I would like to see some better pics elaborating what you used to "attach" the pump to the back panel. Did you make that piece holding it, or did you buy it? Nice job thinking of that, BTW. GO, CyberD, GO!

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DesertRat

GitS ROX!!!!!!! woohoo!!!

holy chit taht was random, i feel better now tho


PS: motoko iz hot

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H3||scr3am

rat ur 2 random lol, cyberdruid, nice mod, can't wait 4 the finished product it'll prolly look like sex... wow, fill ports...

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DesertRat

hahaha, fill ports...
***?!? i haven't been drinking....

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TheLaughingMan

Please keep on topic when in a thread such as this, especially CD's.

Yes, I think Ghost in the Shell is teh shiznit (obviously...lol), but let's not spam Cyber's thread anymore, please? Respect the hard work that went into this, and let's not spam, ok?

PS:Hot doesn't even begin to describe her.
Survey SAYS!....Drunk. Trust me, I'm a bartender...I know it when I see it lol. You're cut off.

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