El's Desktinosh - Final pictures

FINALLY FINISHED!




Head over to page 3 for the other final pictures

Hey guys,

I've been reading here a lot now, and I wanted to share my current project with you.
Meanwhile playing with the software, I was planning this build. Enjoy!
My biggest inspiration was l3p's d3sk, I absolutely love it.
So I decided to build something similar
The name is made up from desk and Macintosh (Macintosh because I'm gonna dual-boot Win7 and OS X from it), just in case you wonder.
Further down in this post you'll see an image of the desk where I'm going to place all the stuff.

What do I want?

-It has to be silent. Really silent. That's why I'm spending all this money on a water cooling setup.
-It has to be really good looking. Another reason why I spent all this money on a water cooling setup.
-It has to be really fast. I'm a semi-professional graphic designer, so I'm doing a lot of video editing, which takes up every bit of power you can throw at it. Another reason why I spent all this money on a water cooling setup, to overclock the last little bit out of it LGA2011 wasn't worth the money for me, Ivy Bridge will do fine. I rather got an excellent GPU for some nice gaming evenings
-It's gotta run OS X on it - For working, I really prefer it over Windows. And even running on a PC's hardware, it's more stable than Windows...

This is the first time that I build a PC by myself, I've only been using Macs before. So please be kind

So, let's begin:

First package arrived, with some hardware in it:




Intel i7 3770k
ASUS Sabertooth Z77
EVGA GTX680 SuperClocked
2x Corsair Dominator 1600MHZ 8GB (16 in total)
2x Samsung 830 128GB SSD
Seasonic X-750 750W power supply

Had 3 WD 1TB drives and a slot-load DVD drive previously used.

Quickly installed everything to boot it up for the first time



Building a PC is far easier than I thought.

Next package from AquaTuning Switzerland:



A hell lot of stuff....



Water blocks:
EK Supremacy Plexi CSQ
Ek Dominator Plexi CSQ
EK FC-680 GTX+ Plexi CSQ

Rest:
Phobya Xtreme 1080 NOVA radiator (lol, huge thing)
Alphacool D5 with preinstalled pump top
Phobya 250mm reservoir
2x BeQuiet SilentWing2 fans
4x Phobya 180mm Slim fans for the rad
Some tubing and a few fittings, some sleeve and sleeving tools
And a lot of cables..

Another package arrived:





I orded a Lian Li PC-7HX to strip and reuse its internal parts.
Stripping was done quickly:





Looks pretty naked

___________________________________________

Let's get to the building!!

I started off installing the rad and the pump. For this, I'm going to use a spare PowerMac G5 case as an external radiator housing, to save some space in the desk.





Radiator with fans and pump:



Fits like a glove! Didn't had to screw/glue anything, just firmly push the pump inside, and everything sits perfectly. Made my evening





No metalwork necessary at all



The G5 is still by far the most beautiful case out there...



Moving on:

This is where I will put the hardware.



Those are two pieces of glass, extra stable ones. I'm going to install it in the lower left corner, already placed the stuff in the picture. In the front, I'm going to insert another piece of glass, while on the sides and the back I'm place some black mesh metal.
More on that to follow. Just for you to know what this is all about.

Also did some other small things:

The Lian Li HDD rack:



And after 15min of working, it's now equipped with a spare 120mm fan:



And installed HDDs:


I was amazed how much the fan improved my HDD temps, they used to be something like 35-40°C, now they dropped to about 30°. The fans is running at about 800RPM, you can't really hear it.

Started to sleeve some cables:



First time ever that I sleeved a cable, I'm actually quite happy with it.

With a spare MacBook power button, I pmrovised a little power button for this rig:


I find it much nicer than the usual Lamptron vandal switches (I've got one) and it also feels nicer. Just a small detail, I know...

Next, the mobo tray was on my list:
I took it form the Lian Li case, and glues some nice feet on it.







I think it looks really cool!

And last but not least, I installed all the waterblocks on their components:

Started with the GPU:



Also installed the backplate:



CPU followed:




And RAM:



I'm really in love with EKWB's Plexi CSQ blocks!
I think they look totally awesome!
I have some Mayhems Pastel Blue, it's going to look pretty cool




Mounted the SSDs on the HDD rack. I wanted to mount them on top, but there weren't any screwholes, so I just took a strip of extra strong mounting tape on both sides, and it worked perfectly.



I need to re-sleeve those cables :/
Fits nice



Overall I wasn't quite happy with the result, so I took everything apart and rebuild the cage, but differently. I put the fan on the bottom on four nice little feet, then turned the cage vertical and mounted the SSDs in front:



Looks much nicer now, doesen't it?
Also placed a little Apple sticker on one of the SSDs, not just for the optics, but when I remove them I know which OS is installed on which SSD.

HDD rack in place, also test-fitted the res:



I bended the copper tubes today. It was way harder than I imagined, and my father had to help me a little
But anyway, I like the result. I haven't leak-tested it yet, I hope it's fine...
Next time I'm just gonna use regular PVC tubing...

But at least it looks great
I still can't decide whether it was really worth it, probabaly gonna see after the leak test.

Pictures:





Put it into place and took some nice photos:













LED strips arrive tomorrow together with some more sleeving material

Hope you enjoyed it so far!

I really want to thank AquaTuning Switzerland for the outstanding support!!



That's it for now, thanks for watching!
As I said, it's my first mod, but until now, things went quite well...

See you!