Hi guys, new to the forums so I thought I would upload one of my more recent modding projects here 
Her name is Project Direct and the scope of the build was to be my first try at Direct on die cooling and Acrylic tubing. While I've done a fair amount of Delids before I've never run a waterblock directly on the CPU Die, so it was a great learning experience for me Since completion I have sold the build to a guy living in sydney and have also installed a Gigabyte Windforce GTX780 in there for him.
System specs at the time of build are
Silverstone PS07
Intel Core i7 4770k @ 4.6Ghz
8Gb Corsair LP memory running 1600Mhz, 9-9-924 and 1.35v
Asrock Z87M Extreme4
Gigabyte Windforce HD7870 OC edition (Later swapped for a 780)
256Gb SanDisk SSD
2Tb WD Green HDD
Silverstone ST60F-P 600w PSU
Coolgate 60mm thick rads, 240mm in front, 120mm in rear
EK Supremacy Copper Plexi CPU block
Noiseblocker ELoop 1300rpm fans all round
So anyways, I don't have many photos from early on in the build (parts testing etc) because I was never really intending to upload a build log anywhere, but I have a few pics of the case prep. Here I had masked up where I was going to make cuts to the motherboard tray for cable management as well as figuring out pump placement
The cut in the motherboard tray is because I had made up an Acrylic panel the would sit between the motherboard and the motherboard tray which would serve for cable management, I also sanded down the panel and put a LED light strip behind it to give some nice lighting effects in the back of the case.
Of course in order to run Direct on Die cooling one has to delid the CPU
And remove the latch on the socket to accomodate the modified CPU/Block mounting system
With the Acrylic panel sanded down I placed the front rad in there so I could play around with some of the lighting in the front of the case as well as for the panel itself
I'm actually quite dissapointed in the result of the sleeving here, I've used paracord for the longest of times with great results, but I've never used white paracord before on stock cables so didn't realize there would be colour leakage. From the front it isn't noticable, but in the back of the case it looks horrible. Lesson learned I suppose
With the Case mods all done and the Cables ready to go I mounted the Motherboard and Rear Radiator and it finally started to look like a PC, Then in went the 7870 and it started to look real good
Now for the tubing!
I had originally ordered both clear and white versions of PrimoChills Acrylic Tube, But both orders came and were blue. To start with this annoyed me quite a lot, but up until this point the entire rig was either black or white, so I thought introducing some colour would liven things up abit in there
I decided after MANY different tubing configs that plain ol straight lines just looks boring in this build. I really wanted to show off the Acrylic tubing and the boldness of the blue against the black and white everywhere else. So I got one of my bends that didn't turn out that great and reworked it into this There was no real planning behind this tubing routing except for bending it where ever I could make it fit and the end result is something I think is pretty unique looking
I cut out the side panel and put a window in there and this is the end result of the modding! I must say I loved working with the hard tubing and I wont be going back to soft tubing ever again
So with the build done, all that was left to do is to fire it up, OC and benchmark it
Temp results with Direct on die cooling were outstanding, 4.6Ghz @ 1.37v was giving me 53c average temps.
The 4770k Scored 10.03 in Cinebench which I was happy with
Overall I loved this little rig, I spent about 2 weeks with it before a gent saw my build log and offered to purchase it and put a GTX780 in there. So the PC is no longer with me but the gent is thrilled with it. So now it's time to move on to my next projects which I'll be starting to upload build logs of in the coming weeks Hope you guys all enjoyed it!
Her name is Project Direct and the scope of the build was to be my first try at Direct on die cooling and Acrylic tubing. While I've done a fair amount of Delids before I've never run a waterblock directly on the CPU Die, so it was a great learning experience for me
Since completion I have sold the build to a guy living in sydney and have also installed a Gigabyte Windforce GTX780 in there for him.System specs at the time of build are
Silverstone PS07
Intel Core i7 4770k @ 4.6Ghz
8Gb Corsair LP memory running 1600Mhz, 9-9-924 and 1.35v
Asrock Z87M Extreme4
Gigabyte Windforce HD7870 OC edition (Later swapped for a 780)
256Gb SanDisk SSD
2Tb WD Green HDD
Silverstone ST60F-P 600w PSU
Coolgate 60mm thick rads, 240mm in front, 120mm in rear
EK Supremacy Copper Plexi CPU block
Noiseblocker ELoop 1300rpm fans all round
So anyways, I don't have many photos from early on in the build (parts testing etc) because I was never really intending to upload a build log anywhere, but I have a few pics of the case prep. Here I had masked up where I was going to make cuts to the motherboard tray for cable management as well as figuring out pump placement
The cut in the motherboard tray is because I had made up an Acrylic panel the would sit between the motherboard and the motherboard tray which would serve for cable management, I also sanded down the panel and put a LED light strip behind it to give some nice lighting effects in the back of the case.
Of course in order to run Direct on Die cooling one has to delid the CPU
And remove the latch on the socket to accomodate the modified CPU/Block mounting system
With the Acrylic panel sanded down I placed the front rad in there so I could play around with some of the lighting in the front of the case as well as for the panel itself
I'm actually quite dissapointed in the result of the sleeving here, I've used paracord for the longest of times with great results, but I've never used white paracord before on stock cables so didn't realize there would be colour leakage. From the front it isn't noticable, but in the back of the case it looks horrible. Lesson learned I suppose
With the Case mods all done and the Cables ready to go I mounted the Motherboard and Rear Radiator and it finally started to look like a PC, Then in went the 7870 and it started to look real good
Now for the tubing!
I had originally ordered both clear and white versions of PrimoChills Acrylic Tube, But both orders came and were blue. To start with this annoyed me quite a lot, but up until this point the entire rig was either black or white, so I thought introducing some colour would liven things up abit in there
I decided after MANY different tubing configs that plain ol straight lines just looks boring in this build. I really wanted to show off the Acrylic tubing and the boldness of the blue against the black and white everywhere else. So I got one of my bends that didn't turn out that great and reworked it into this
There was no real planning behind this tubing routing except for bending it where ever I could make it fit and the end result is something I think is pretty unique looking
I cut out the side panel and put a window in there and this is the end result of the modding! I must say I loved working with the hard tubing and I wont be going back to soft tubing ever again
So with the build done, all that was left to do is to fire it up, OC and benchmark it
Temp results with Direct on die cooling were outstanding, 4.6Ghz @ 1.37v was giving me 53c average temps.
The 4770k Scored 10.03 in Cinebench which I was happy with
Overall I loved this little rig, I spent about 2 weeks with it before a gent saw my build log and offered to purchase it and put a GTX780 in there. So the PC is no longer with me but the gent is thrilled with it. So now it's time to move on to my next projects which I'll be starting to upload build logs of in the coming weeks
Hope you guys all enjoyed it!
