[Work Log] Project: Arete (ACU Camo & Military Themed) - Page 4

Practice, practice, practice!

I've done a lot of spray painting like this, and I eventually got a feel for things. Takes a lot of patience as well which I only have 50% of the time...

Thanks a bunch!

Alright so sorry I kind of went Incognito for awhile. Life's been getting in the way. Cross country sectionals are coming up and so are end of the quarter tests, so I've been pretty busy. However, in my little free time I've been working on my rig.

For starters, all the Noctua fans got sleeved. I used a brown paracord with brown heatshrink. In order to save space and redundancy, follow THIS LINK to see them.


As I showed you guys in the last update, the radiators got painted mud brown, here are some more pictures of them after the clear coat. These are complete, except with crappy lighting (1am pictures for the win!):




I finally mounted the Watercool radiator grill to the front of the case. A couple of holes, screws and nuts later and I think it fits pretty well. The space in the top won't be seen because the LCD/Hard Drive combo will be blocking the view.


Here's the current state of the rig, without the 360GTX radiator up top. The whole inside of the case was clear coated to preserve my nice black finish.




Here's where I need you guyses help. The radiators and fans both turned out really hot, but I have no idea what fittings to use. I do have the funds to completely switch to a new brand or style of fitting, but I need your opinion on what will fit best. Currently I'm using Bitspower matte black, but I was thinking about switching to Koolance. Another option is to paint the fittings, and if so, what color would fit best?


Edited by WebsterXC - 10/28/12 at 10:04am

Small update for today!

Most of my time was spent straightening out the pump. It turned out awesome and I'm really happy with it


Not a very big deal, but I drilled a couple holes to keep the ammo container in place. After my past shenanigans with dropping my case down the stairs with the power supply unscrewed, I made sure these were tight...

Also test fit the LCD screen once more to see what it looked like with the radiator grill. I couldn't attach the hard drive because there wasn't enough clearance between the drive and reservoir clamps. I'll have to turn the clamps around before I can get the hard drive-waterblock sandwich to fit properly.


Last but not least, I fit some Silverstone I/O shields to the back of the case.



That's it for today! Unfortunately I've got to start my crazy amount of homework

Well thanks to Hurricane Sandy, I had school off today so I got a lot done last night. For starters, I received new RAM in the mail from NewEgg. I was lucky enough to jump early on a great deal: 16GB of Patriot Viper 1600Mhz for $51 shipped. I was going to paint the heatsinks brown or OD green, however I think the sticks are really hot in the gloss black they come in and do fit with the rest of the motherboard.




After installing it and going through some issues with MemOK on my motherboard, I was able to get the RAM to boot. I ran Memtest86 at 1333Mhz for 7 passes. I'll worry about getting the RAM up to it's advertised 1600Mhz after my computer is put together and I begin overclocking. As you can tell from the pictures, my computer currently is sitting on green bubble wrap

Afterwards, I wanted to tackle the problem of getting my reservoir to connect with the pump housing. Unfortunately, the base of the res does not line up with the inlet on the Koolance PMP-450, so I had to get my drill and taps out. Here you can see two stubby fittings as the connecting pieces. I swtiched to Bitspower extenders, because the Norprene tubing doesn't look very good when it's so short like that.

I began drilling a 7/16" hole where I wanted the new port to be.

Next I took my G1/4 thread tap and slowly thread it through the hole I had just drilled. While a tap like this ran be almost $20, I've found that it opens up a whole other world of options when to comes to watercooling; I don't have to worry about number of ports, or where the ports are located since I can just create my own.

All finished!

I purchased some thumbscrews from my local hardware store to use as motherboard screws. It's a nice little touch that can get rid of the ugly standard chrome screws when the motherboard is secured.


This was the biggest part of my modding for the night. I attempted to use Norprene tubing for this, but the wall on 1/2"x3/4" is just too thick to be able to make this bend. Digging into my box of Bitspower extenders, I eventually found the right lengths to make a hard tube.

That chrome extender you see in this picture is not permanent. I had to use an EK fitting extender because I ran out of Bitspower ones of that size.

Installed the compression fittings on my new CPU block. Koolance CPU-370SA to match the PMP-450

Last but not least, I installed the final 140mm Noctuas on the front of the case.



Next comes the hardest part of the build, creating the top piece that covers up the top 360 fans and front of case! If you've got any tips, please let me know, I'm a little stuck at this point.

Thanks for the support. Glad to see you around

EDIT:

So after attempting to fit the hard drive into the case, I've found that the drive with the massive waterblock is a tight fit. If I can fit it in the rear part of the case, I'm most likely going to. That being said, I was thinking of filling the LCD bracket with a Corsair Link (VGA Power Draw) meter. Has anyone used the Corsair Link system? Is it worth justifying it's almost $75 cost to get started?
Edited by WebsterXC - 11/1/12 at 5:50am