Legit Reviews

DJ Tucker wrote:2-3 years is a long time, but worth it in my opinion. really looking forward to the final put together and see how it looks and performs

Haha, it is a very long time, but I've just about come to accept that I'm horrible at consistently working on something. ;)
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It almost feels like I've missed out on a trick by not naming this build something Tron themed...



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In bad news for the mod, good news for me, I get married tomorrow, so finding time to continue this project might be a little harder than normal! >_<

Congratulations!

Congratulations to you. I have all that to look forward to haha

DJ Tucker wrote:Congratulations to you. I have all that to look forward to haha

kenc51 wrote:Congratulations!

Cheers guys :D

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Stole some time away from my new bride (while she was out with her parents) to install my EK FC R9-290X waterblock.

Stripped and cleaned the card, including all the permanent marker scrawled on every capacitor.



I chose this block for the looks, and damn it is sexy!



This block is going to work perfectly with my RGB lights too, it's already pre-frosted on the edges so I don't have to do anything to spoil it.



Now to just play the waiting game before I can get time to work on it again. >_<

I didn't think to take any pictures of the LED/Res combo before installing it, and it's now as good as a permanent fixture in my case, so you'll just have to make do with a picture of the res installed and lit up...



Nice, eh?

I picked up some rubber trim this time (instead of PVC), and it was flexible enough to be able to trim the 90º corners in one continuous piece, compared to the four separate strips before (which was an unexpected bonus!).

A proper fill port for this res is something I sorely missed when I installed it the first time round, so this will make things a lot easier. I used a QDC and a T-line before this, and it was a nightmare.

Hooking up the fill port up to the res proved to be trickier than I'd anticipated, as I couldn't find a good way to tighten the fittings all at once. I got there in the end (after a fairly big leak from a loose fitting on my test fill), and it fits inside the case like so...



The case holes lined up perfectly, and the res-to-fill-port gap was bridged with a bitspower 22-31mm adjustable SLI fitting.

Next up is lighting up the GPU block, then I think I'm ready to start wiring some of the final stage cables. :D

Superb job
I admire your attention to detail & patience - I would have just bought the parts, bung them together and be done with it

kenc51 wrote:Superb job
I admire your attention to detail & patience - I would have just bought the parts, bung them together and be done with it

Haha, I'd like to see you try and just 'bung' a 420mm Alphacool Monsta Radiator into a P182.

Even I'm starting to get impatient to see it finished, but having done it over so long, I have had the advantage of being able to take my time to mull over any problems for as long as it took. Like that tron-esque light bar around the motherboard; I didn't originally intend to have the perspex part, but due to the case and mobo being black, the LEDs under there weren't giving out enough light, and over the course of the next week I realised I could 'channel' it with a bunch of perspex. Ended up looking amazing.

So this mod might have taken 5 years, but it really is a culmination of all the "what if's" and idle musing throughout that time. Trying to plan and then tackle everything I've done in a continuous short stretch probably wouldn't have worked out anywhere near as good for me.

The led's around the board frame everything perfect. The cpu block led's remind me of a flux capacitor :-D

(a little florescent in the coolant may be?)

Managed to get the RGB LEDs hooked up to my GPU waterblock today, it looks so good I don't know why EK don't offer LED holes in their blocks as standard!



The RGB strip is just stuck to the block's acrylic with double sided tape, and the RGB wires are soldered a quarter of the way along. I'll take a picture before I install it if anyone is interested.

But once I get time to solder and hook up a custom RGB cable for the graphics card, I'll actually be able to start installing things for real. :D

Al I can say right now is...daamn

Looks effin awesome Dan.

InspectahACE wrote:Al I can say right now is...daamn

Looks effin awesome Dan.

Thanks man!

Forgive me for bragging, but I think it's going to make some pretty spectacular end photos when I get my proper photo gear out. ;)

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The last bit of structural work to my case was to hide the cable holes from the original P182 design, with the help of an aluminium blanking plate.

Before...



After...



And now my rig is finally at a point where I can start installing stuff!

I didn't take a photo of it, but I had to sand down little cable holes on the edge of the acrylic 'light shield' as the shield was so close to the edge of the case there wasn't any room to pass the cables through.

Here's all the motherboard cables prepped under the mobo area...



And here's the motherboard and GPU finally installed for real!



I know I'm teasing the lighting a lot, but I really can't wait to get all the components wired up and lit up at the same time...



I've started cabling up things in the case now, but still have a few custom cables to make and others to sleeve, so there's quite a bit to do yet, but that now looks like this...



...and while I'm on the path of starting to install final components, I had a go at putting the pump and a few of the fittings in...



All good so far!

Now you might think that I'm just a few power cables and WC tubes away from finishing this build, but I've hit a problem that I'm not yet sure how to solve.

The fittings that I planned on using here...



..don't actually fit.

When I measured up, there was supposed to be a tiny bit of tubing between the 90° fitting and a regular compression fitting. But with this Primochill tubing I've now got, my Alphacool compression fittings don't close completely (the tubing OD is slightly too big) and as such there isn't enough room to fit the second screw cap onto the tubing while pushing the second barb in.

So I can't screw the second compression fitting closed.

Now I have to find a new fitting/combination of fittings that will bridge this tight 90° corner.

I was so close to this all being perfect!

that's a pain in the butt. however the rig still looks awesome

DJ Tucker wrote:that's a pain in the butt. however the rig still looks awesome

Wait until you read todays update.

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I couldn't find a fitting combination that would bridge my bulkhead/reservoir gap properly, so had another play with my existing fittings.

I realised that I might have better luck with the super soft Tygon E1000 that I had left over, as at the very least I could close the fittings properly with that tubing giving me precious millimetres to work with...



...and better luck I had.

The alignment is still a few mm off, but it is now all fitted and sealed properly so I'm happy it's the best I can do.

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Rather than leave leak testing until the final step, I realised I'd have a chance to partially test my loop whilst all the power cables etc were not yet installed.

It's a good job I did, as I found a pretty substantial leak from one of the AquaComputer inline temp sensors at the top of the radiator.

Figures it was in the most inaccessible point of the loop though. :-/



I'd somewhat foolishly not left a big enough cut out to get a spanner at these fittings, and so had a fun job of trying to unscrew it with very restricted access.

I got it in the end though, and discovered the o-ring had not seated properly, so wasn't sealing.

That was corrected easily enough and then I had the equally fun job of re-attaching it to the radiator.

Only to accidentally do this just as I was finished tightening the fitting...



Absolute nightmare.

Hinges on the panel have snapped clean off, and I've somehow managed to split the door stop/top magnet bit too.

I'm hoping I might be able to drill out the remains of the plastic hinges and replace them with some small metal rods, but I don't know if it'll work. Failing that I think my only other option will be to glue the hinge in place! >_<

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Oh, and as if that wasn't annoying enough, when I filled the partial loop again to give everything one last once over I was greeted with this noise from the Flow Meter:



It's apparently a pretty common problem, but somehow I'd failed to come across it before I'd bought one.

So now have to start an RMA process to see if I can get one that doesn't have the ticking noise.

:cussing:

Guys, guys, guys! I've just found out I'm a MOTM nominee over on Bit-Tech.net!

:D

Your support and a vote for my build would be greatly appreciated in the competition.

Here's my page, and you can vote here. ;)

I realised that I'd forgotten to route the USB cable for my Aquaero, so had to strip the motherboard once again to route it under there, and then hook up the USB cable to an existing motherboard connector.

So the new under-motherboard cable routing looks like this:



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Whilst I made the GPU LED strip with a disconnect point above the motherboard, I left so little cable to keep it hidden it's a royal PITA to connect. Still, it's better than having to strip the motherboard every time I need to take the GPU out!



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Next on the project was soldering up enough LED splitter cables to turn all the lights on at once!



I love how the spill light subtly illuminates the surrounding components.

Once again, it wasn't all good news though; I hadn't hooked up a splitter wire to the reservoir LEDs, so had to run its control box from a makeshift ATX PSU > DC Jack cable and in doing so I think I shorted the DC in leads for a second (or there was some residual moisture from when I'd test filled the loop earlier) and the LEDs sparked and smoked.

They didn't completely die, but now the green channel is permanently stuck on, and it's sods law its in the least possible accessible part of my LED runs to fix. >_<



This build just doesn't want to finish up cleanly!

Good news!

Despite the LEDs smoking, and what appears to be part of the copper trace superheated (it burnt the back of the plastic strip clean off) it was only the RGB controller box that has suffered lasting damage. So using my second RGB box the LEDs work properly. :D

*Phew!*

I popped the casing off of the broken controller box, and can't see any damage to the PCB/components, so I'm suspecting the green wire inside the connector lead fused to the other ones. Fortunately I can get away with using just one RGB controller for now, and it might actually spur me on to set up an arduino RGB controller once everything is done for this phase.