Maximum Security Build Log

Parts are in. Enjoy

EK-Supreme HF CPU block


Laing DDC pump with Phobya Black Nickel pump top


Phobya Balancer 150mm Black Nickel res


And a nice pile of Bitspower Black Sparkle fittings

garfi3ld wrote: your about to post new pics!! woot

I gotta quit posting the pics on FB first



Big update this time, I got a lot done this weekend!

I got the top 3-way splitter's mounting holes drilled.


I also got the Phobya pump top mounted. Damn is that thing heavy!


Then I got the res and pump temporarily installed to check fitment.


Then I made up a pump mount plate from black acrylic. I used the 4 120mm fan mounts in the bottom of the chassis to mount it, along with 4 rubber dampers.


Then I ran into an issue with the rear radiator. I thought just the single Phobya rad spacer would be enough, but it wasn't The fittings still wouldn't fit in the holes. I found that if I used a 140mm fan on the outside of the case then put the rad spacer and rad on that they fit perfectly. So I decided to not use the 120mm turbine fan and use the 140mm fan that came with the case because it's still got that look I want. I decided to cut out the rear of the case so you'd be able to see the fan.


Now the fittings line up nicely! I had to run to the hardware store and get some 10-28 x 3" SS screws to hold everything together. I drilled and tapped the rad to accept the larger screws (for strength) and cut the screws down to about 2.25".


I also picked up this cheap momentary key switch off eBay for $3.


I drilled out the stock power button mount and installed the key switch. It fits in there perfectly.


I had to cut the stock button mount in half to clear the key switch. I'll still need to either modify the steel part of the case or bend the tabs on the switch to make it fit 100%

That's it for now! Once my motherboard comes back from Gigabyte I can get the bottom 3-way splitter mounts done, then it'll be time to drill out a TON of rivets and paint the case! Stay tuned

Minor update.

I got the case disassembled (mostly). I plan on leaving the drive bays as a single piece like they are for ease of assembly later.


I also got the EK waterblock mounted to my 6870.


Bye bye warranty!


All cleaned up and ready to go.


MMMmmmm shiny


All ready to install!


I should have the case painted this weekend. I've got to steal the garage for a few days to paint. Scuff, primer, sand, primer, paint!

HUUUUGE update today

I got all the parts hung in the garage ready for primer and paint.


Here is the paint I used. It's from Arctic Cat. I saw a 4-wheeler come into my dealership in this color and immediately thought it'd be perfect for this mod! 3 cans of primer and 5 cans of paint later, it's all done!


And I was left with a whole lot of overspray dust to clean up as well.


Here are the front and top panels with the masking tape removed.


Next it was off with a box of rivets and my rivet gun to reassemble the case. I think it looks pretty damn good, no?


Then there was a point in time in the basement when I was just running through putting stuff together without snapping a whole lot of pics, but I did get some taken


Kingston 96GB SSD mounted to one of the hotswap trays.


And more assembly pics


Here you can see the side panel and it's windows and frames mounted. I also mounted the NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller into its place on the front side panel.


I also designed, etched and assembled a circuit board to hold the two RGB LCDs. The spacing is perfect so they fit centered into 2 5.25" bay covers.


I also got the plastic frames for the bay covers fit to the LCDs. Next I need to cut the foam filters and the outer mesh to fit the LCDs as well.


That's it for now!

Plague wrote: that looking awesome can't wait to see the LCD screen in the front. great work man.

Thanks Plague. Check out one of my first posts for how the LCDs are going to look/operate. One will show the readout in the video, the other will show water flow (with the flowmeter) and coolant temp

Got some airbrushing done Thanks again to Auto Air Colors for providing the paint!!

Still have more to do on the smaller bits. Enjoy

This mod is retarded, retardedly cool! Every update looks better and better. I am really liking the rustic look. Looks like you let it sit outside for a couple of months.

Thanks man, glad you like it!

Update time!!

I cut a piece of mesh to cover the holes left in the side panel and put some trim on it to dress it up a bit then hot-glued it into place.


I also got a bunch of random parts soldered to the ProtoStack dev board to make it look more industrial-ish. All I need to do is wire up the LEDs that this board will be controlling.


Thanks again to NZXT for sending me a 2M red LED strip!! I removed the module from it's PCI slot bracket and mounted it to a spare standoff hole on the backside of the motherboard.


Then I removed the motherboard and hot-glued the LED strip to the case under it.


Looks pretty sweet


I also tested the fans and my fan controller and found that for some reason the Sentry 2 wouldn't even get the Turbine Master fans to even start spinning. :? If you tapped the blades by hand they'd spin right up, but not from a dead stop. So I replaced them with a pair of Gentle Typhoons and a sweet ACRyan radgrill


I also got my Indigo Extreme TIM installed on the CPU


Next up I got all the UV LEDs sleeved. I started with the 2 3mm ones that go into the CPU block, then did the 5mm one in the res and also swapped out the 2 3mm blue ones in the flow meter with 2 3mm UV ones. The camera makes the UV look super bright, but with the coolant I'll be running it should look perfect.


I also got 3 more WD Caviar Black 500GB drives to go with the one in my current rig. I plan to put the OS onto the 96GB SSD then do a RAID 1+0 with the 4 500GB drives.


I got the SATA cables sleeved with the copper sleeving from MDPC-X. I must say, their sleeve is THE BEST! Dirt cheap and looks great!


Speaking of sleeving, I did the PSU. I wasn't going to, but I had to. I did it with a mix of the copper brown and tungsten gray from MDPC-X. I did ALL the wires. I ended up cutting and extending the 8-pin CPU wires so they'd reach without needing the adapter that Tt included with the case. I also cut off the un-needed cables and heatshrunk the ends inside the PSU to keep things clean. Enjoy

That's all for now!

LOL @ the water bottle I didn't even notice it. I'm liquid cooling the PSU...that's what it's there for!!

Here's the thing with CES...I was going to go...and this was going to come with and be displayed at Tt's booth. Hell Ramsom even invited me to stay win the Tt suite AND truck (not ship) the mod there and back for me as well. Only problem is that I don't have the money for the plane ticket and spending money while I'm there. I wanted so bad to go and show this bad boy off, unfortunately I can't I'd send the mod by itself, but it's my primary rig so not having it for a week or more (with trucking) can't happen lol.

Same here, I was looking forward to meeting so many people

where do you find the wire sleeves at?

Plague wrote: looking very cool. I need look at modding my PSU that way. Can't wait to see it all together and running.

Thanks man! It's my second time doing uni-sleeving. It's not hard, just VERY time consuming. But it gets a much nicer result as well

Arxon wrote: where do you find the wire sleeves at?

The stuff I used I got from www.mdpc-x.com. He's out of Germany and it's some of THE BEST sleeving you can get. www.performance-pcs.com also has a ton of sleeving, but it's less dense and you can see the wire colors through the sleeving, unlike the MDPC-X stuff. The MDPC-X stuff is only like $0.20USD/foot as well, so it's cheap.

I put some zip ties on the PCI-e cables to clean them up a bit


I also picked up these sweet aluminum hose clamps for all the 3/8" tubing. I wanted the same ones for the 1/4" but they were all out, so I got the standard plastic clamps


I picked up this Bitspower radgrill for the rear fan


But the green wasn't cutting it so I painted it to match the rest


I also got a pair of Lian Li blank 5.25" drive covers and some military switches.


I taped, marked, drilled and mounted everything


The other holds a 16x2 LCD and a Bulgin button.


I decided to go with a single LCD versus the 2 for simplicity's sake, and the fact that I only really needed one anyways. I also painted both panels to match as well.


Now I figured I'd do something different with the 1/4" clear tubing for the RAM. I wanted them to do something rather than just be there. So I tried some different routing setups and settled on this one. I cut up some spare plexi I had laying around, sanded, drilled and painted, and here is the end result. This will look sick once the fluid is in there

That's all for now. I've been working a lot with the coding for everything lately. All that's left to do really is finish the switch wiring, finish the airbrushing and integrate the flow meter into the coding one the system is up and running!

It's not metal it's plexi lol. Translucent green plexi that I painted with the same color I painted the case with. The paint does have metal flake in it though and I was worried, but a quick check with the multimeter showed no continuity anywhere, so I think I'm good. I've been looking at an EK backplate too though...hmmm...

Finally someone did water cooling right. Usually the loop tubes are strung all over and it looks like ass. I like the way that you used the looms for the tubing, reminds me of the wiring that I have to do at work.

Very neat and tidy.

Thanks man, appreciate the feedback

I've seen lots of mods with tubing everywhere, and while some of them look good (like the messiness is part of the mod or theme), most look bad with tubes going everywhere. I spent a solid week going over the tubing layout before I settled on one that both works and is neat and tidy (for the most part). I also wanted some showing to get the industrial piping effect. Had I been able to get more fittings I may have done it differently, but this setup works.

I also read a lot into loop design and component orders. I came to the conclusion that for the most part it really doesn't matter what order the parts are in because the loop will eventually be at equilibrium and have a steady temp throughout. I used that knowledge to simplify the tubing

I like that idea for the tubing. I might try something like that for all the cables in my pc.

I did something similar with my cables on my Red Comet mod, check it out here:

www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24464

Another update

I designed, etched and assembled the 2 circuit boards I'll be needing now that I'm only using 1 LCD. One board will house the ATMega328 and all it's associated components as well as have all the I/O pins for the accessories. The second board will mount to the LCD directly and allow me to use a 2x5 ribbon cable instead of the breadboard-friendly layout as the LCDs come.

I used Fritzing to create the layouts and the PCBs.

I started off by laying out everything in the breadboard view.


I used that to create the PCB layouts as seen here. From the breadboard point to the ready-to-print PCB point was about 2 hours. This consisted of moving parts around the boards to get the best possible layout.


Next I created etchable .pdf's (done with Fritzing) so I can print out the boards. You'll notice one side is mirrored. This is because when you transfer the image it'll come out oriented correctly.


Here the boards are printed out and cut out. They are printed with a laser printer onto inkjet photo paper. The reason for this is that the toner, which is plastic, will not adhere to the inkjet photo paper. This will allow it to be transferred to the copper clad with an iron.


Here are the top sides all transferred.


Here I've drilled a set of holes and inserted pins through them. I use these pins to line up the back side traces for transferring.


Fast forward a few steps and you've got a pair of freshly-etched and drilled boards ready for assembly! The blobby-ness on the traces is from a sharpie. If you get mostly good transfer but have a few little patches where it didn't stick you simply use a sharpie to draw it in. It works as an etch resist almost as good as the toner itself.


And here we have the pair of completed boards. I still need to test these to make sure they're working 100%

That's all for now!

It's aliiiiiive!!!!!

After doing the reflow procedure for the Indigo Extreme TIM Temps are VERY nice I'm getting ~34ºC idle and topping out at ~48ºC under Hyper Pi, OCCT and Prime95.

All that's left to do is finish the coding and the wiring! Also, my coolant will be here this week, stay tuned

Minor update!

I painted the CPU retention bracket to match the rest of the case


I also got a pair of 12" UV cathodes installed the the side door. I ended up reusing the touch connector that came with the case for this. it simplifies the wiring a lot


Next up I wired up 4 LEDs and hot-glued them into the top part of the front side window. The LEDs are all warm white colored.


And it's now finished! But you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the good pics. In the meantime here's a few teaser shots