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doggeh
Hello all and welcome to the first post of my first plog!
This is also my first modding project so please leave comments and advice etc. as you see fit.
Recently I aquired a decent amount of water cooling kit which has inspired this project: to build a (large) fully custom case using fibreglass. The case needs to be big enough to accomodate the following water cooling kit:-
- 2x Thermochill 120.3 Radiators
- 2x D-Tek DB1 Pumps
- 2x Swiftech Micro Reservoirs
- D-Tek Fusion CPU Waterblock
- Swiftech MCW60 GPU Waterblock
- Swiftech MCW30 Chipset Waterblock
- 1/2″ ID Tubing
and of course all the other components that make up the PC.
You can see that the radiators are rather large!
I started off with some rough sketches of various component layouts which tried to minimise the space needed and would also allow the most efficient routing of the tubing. I wanted the motherboard to be mounted horizontally at the top of the case for ease of access and because I’ll be tinkering with it a lot while overclocking my rig (more on that in a later post).
Once I had a vague idea of the component layout that would work best I hit the internet and downloaded several pre-drawn Google Sketchup Components which I could then arrange to see if my sketches were feasible.
With a few modifications I ended up with the layouts you can see here.
This layout gives a 450mm cube case and also good airflow across the hard drives (a big concern as i have 6 of them!) and provides two distinct thermal chambers. The water cooling components are confined to the top half of the case which also makes the tubing and general access a fair bit easier.
Now we move on to the actual fabrication of the case. It is at this point that I must say a huge thankyou to my dad who is a fibreglass engineer by trade and who volunteered to make the actual case.
The first step (which is currently as far as this project has progressed) was to build a ‘plug’ from which a mould could be taken. The mould will then have the fibreglass layed into it to create the finished case.
We chose to use MDF as the material for the plug because it is very easy to work with and is relatively cheap in the quantity that we will require. The basic cube was very quick and easy to knock together and is currently drying off in my dads workshop (we glued it together last night).
Once the glue has set the corners and edges will be rounded off and the fan holes will be cut in the front for the two radiators. The fan holes will also be rounded back to give a nice clean finish and should also help the air intake.
Well thats it so far. The glue should be set fully by monday so hopefully I’ll have another update for you monday evening after a session with a router and some sandpaper! Cheers for reading.
Doggeh.
Looks like it’s going to be a stunner and an impressive number of drives too! Looking forward to seeing it develop.
looking good mate! would of loved to see it in carbon fibre though!