Project: 63hPa

[FL630]

Time for my first build and first mod. Will be a staged build as I need to gather funds to make this into eventually a hard-tubed watercooled rig, but need to replace my current laptop quickly.

It's named as a twist of my own screen name, the altitude and air pressure in which a human can no longer survive without a space suit.

It'll be built as follows:
Stage 1: Modify the case & build a functioning PC
Stage 2: Add graphics cards!
Stage 3: Watercool

Initial Build:
Case: Undecided (Fractal Define S / NZXT H440 / Enthoo Evolv ATX)
Processor: Intel i7-4790K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming G1
RAM: Kingston HyperX 4x 4GB 2400MHz Savage DDR3 Memory
Storage: HyperX Savage 240GB
Cooler: Corsair H80i
PSU: EVGA SuperNova 750W G2

Modding:
Theme will be White Blue & Orange accents
Painting the case white, inside and out.
Painting motherboard heatsinks blue
SSD's painted blue
Radiators and fans will be painted, not sure what colour yet.
Naturally this is all subject to change!

To add in the future:
Graphics Cards: Unknown at this time. Possibly GTX 980 of some sort, but lets wait to see what AMD produce in the next month or two.
Extra Storage: An extra SSD, 2TB HDD (brand TBC.)
Cables: Trying to source the individual components to custom make and sleeve them to length.

Watercooling:
1x 420mm thin rad on top
1x 240mm thin rad on the front
D5 Pump
EKWB clear blocks
Big Tube Res
Hard tubing
Pastel Orange coolant.

I've taken a lot of inspiration from some of the fantastic projects on this forum over the last 6 months of researching and I can't wait to get started. Here's my initial plan...

 

[FL630]

I decided to go the plastidip method for paining my mobo/ram/ssd. The thought was that if things went wrong I could peel it off and return it, considering I'd like to keep the warranty on my parts.

Unfortunately it's a total pain to work with. Thanks to a friend of mine it's easy enough to spray, but the cutting and peeling to reveal logos was a lot harder than expected, and after 6 Swann-Morton blades I managed to get through to as much of it as I dared.

In another super-warranty world I'd have had it painted with proper paint and had the logos masked, but it's a bit beyond this build, maybe in the future, who knows? It was also incredibly difficult to mask the fins on the RAM heat spreaders, and as such there is a bit of red showing if you look closely.

Excuse the glare in the photos, I've not got light diffusers quite yet...