PROJECT: MoonStone

[Paulie]

hopefully quite a lot...

So this is my new project case, well mini project as I'll be honest there's only a small amount of modding going into this one but it is a small case so hopefully it'll result in something quite different from the norm.

Some eagle eyed people may have caught glimpse of my last modding spree back in january when i started rebuilding my lian li pc350, it was going to based on a Phenom II cpu with a MSI g65 motherboard but right around the time i got finished with the case the sandy bridge b3 revision boards started hitting the market. So i put that on hold, bought an Asus p8p67 M Pro and a 2600k, threw it on the test bench and started having a play. Wasnt long before i broke it, so a 10 week RMA to asus.nl gave me plenty of time to think what to do with this beast of a cpu.

Along came the FT03 and I was intrigued, so had to get one but then I saw the price, extremely fortunate for me one popped up on ebay which included a slot loading dvd-RW and a 120mm noiseblocker fan no less, worked out an absolute bargain and I must say, now I'm totaly in love with the case

I'll stop boring you all now with my drivel and get on with all the stuff you want to know - Specs and lots of pics!!

Specs:

Case:

Silverstone Fortress FT03 Black



PC:

Intel I7 2600k Sandy bridge

Asus p8p67 M Pro B3

8gb Corsair Dominator Cl8

2 x MSI 460GTX 768mb

Asus Xonar Essence STX

Corsiar AX850



I've got the PC up and running now and I'm uploading pics as I write this, so should have a some added fairly soon.

The PC is going to be completely watercooled, and everythign will be internal, i'm not using anything corsair/antec/coolit cooling wise as thats NOT water cooling imho. Its a full custom setup using EK blocks, HWlabs rads and a laing ddc pump.

More to come soon....

The Board

The gear

The Beast

 

[S_I_N]

cool cant wait to see more

and to answer the question in the title no matter how much .....its never enough

I like ur test bench bro wher'd ya get it???? would love to find something like that . hell looking at it I can prolly make one lol. but its sweet looking no doubt

 

[Paulie]

cheers man and in response to you answer... how very true, but i'm gonna try

the bench is a banchetto 101, had it for a few years now, got it from aquatuning, even in its bare bones it still looks so dam sexy!!

 

[AxJaWz]

nice. I agree with S_I_N we cant wait to see more!

 

[Paulie]

Well I forgot to take pics of the case straight out of the box so I've borrowed a couple form silverstone just incase anyone wasnt sure what the case looks like

So a few mods I had to do to allow internal rad mounts.

Theres a 120 fan in the roof so perfect for a 120 rad but, simply they wont fit unless your willign to break out a dremel, I would guess this applies to all the h50 and all other lookalike coolers, even mounted with the barbs near the pci brackets the bottom well of any rad would foul this corner support bracket

In the bottom of the case theres 2 80mm fans mounts but they are hard up against the motherboard tray so again no t enough space to mount a rad

With a small amount of dremel work you can easily work roudn these minor issues. I trimed the top corner support bracket so it resembled more of a L bracket, note i was able to do this without having to remove any of the four rivets. Then I measured and cut a square hole on the bottom of the motherboard tray to allow mounting a rad in the bottom of the case. Again I was able to do this without having to comprimise any of the original rivets.

the end result was a EK 120 rad in the roof and a HW labs GTX M160 in the bottom of the case

 

[Paulie]

nice. I agree with S_I_N we cant wait to see more!

cheers m8, I' havent taking any pics of rig rig up and running yet as the lights a bit crap now so hopefully get a few nice shots tomorrow.

Although the cooling is all installed, leak tested and nothign broken hardware wise its far from complete, I've got a couple more small but important mods to do and probably about a months worth of cable tidying so wish me luck

 

[S_I_N]

cheers man and in response to you answer... how very true, but i'm gonna try

the bench is a banchetto 101, had it for a few years now, got it from aquatuning, even in its bare bones it still looks so dam sexy!!

cool thanks for that info I googled it and I see theres more to it than in ur pics. Guess I'll just go buy an el cheapo case to house my SB rig while I plan out more mods for the sniper. First in my list is getting rid of some metal

and seeing where I can mount wc'n at for best looks/performance scenario

lovin ur buid so far

MOAR PICS

 

[Paulie]

in all the excitement of it all working yesterday I just relaised i posted this in the wrong forum, if a mod reads this could you kindly move it to the build logs section please

 

[Paulie]

Cooling Component List.



Waterblocks:

EK Nickel Supreme HF v1, 2 slot mid plate installed (IC diamond 24 carat Tim)

EK GTX460 FC nickel plexi x2

EK GTX460 backplate nickel x2

EK Dominator nickel plexi

EK Asus 3a mosfet blocks custom nickel plated by Tom @ Chilledpc (Legend) x2

Radiators:

EK XT120

HWlabs GTX m160 gen2

Pump:

DDC Laing ultra pump

Koolance ddc AC400 case and heatsink

PT gel stuff x2

Reservoir:

EK Multioption res100



Fittings:

Feser 3/8" compression fittings

Bitspower 45 rotaries Shiny silver

Bitspower 25mm D plugs

Bitspower stops

Koolance no spill QDC VL3N



Monitoring:

Aquaero 4.0

Aqua computer Poweradjust 2 Ultra

Koolance ins FM17 flowmeter

Phoyba 2 pin extension (to convert the INS FM17 to 3 pin fan header on poweradjust without using the crappy module that comes with the flowmeter)

Aqua computer inline temp sensor

Phoyba in line temp sensor

Fans:

Scythe GT typhoon 1850rpm 120mm

Noctua NF-R8 80mm

Enermax 80mm (I'll probably swap these, just the only 80mm fans I own atm)

A few fitting, ooou shiny

Porn...

More to come soon....

 

[S_I_N]

looking good bro and as far as moving it to rig section might have better luck pm'n a mod for it.

 

[Paulie]

loads more photos of the pump & res installed and the loop filled (im using good old Halfords battery top up water with mayhems deep blue dye)

!!!!!!!!!!!WARNING - CABLE MANAGEMENT UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!​

Oh my days...

 

[dipzy]

Brilliant build, im loving it

What are the temps like with this kind of setup?

 

[sheroo]

Love it

That is one of the best builds I've seen recently. How quiet is it?

 

[Paulie]

Brilliant build, im loving it What are the temps like with this kind of setup?

Thank you, temps are not to bad, the cpu is clocked at 4.8ghz speedstep disabled, so under prime its hitting around mid 70'ish, the main thing is under full load both gpus dont go much above 40.

One thing I have had to change this morning was the GT typhoon in the roof, it was pushing air into the case and the 2 80mm were in a pull config, so all the fans were intakes with the idea of creating positive pressure to help keep dust out and let the hot air exhaust naturaly in the various vents dotted around the case, 30 mins playing crysis 2 on dx11 mode didnt go to well, the water temp rose as high as 48'C

Swapped it to pull so its now an exhaust fan like silverstone originally intended and it knocked 5 degrees off the temp, also temps dropped alot faster when back at idle so

I've been taking loads of sreen prints of with hwmonitor and afterburner rec'in temps while benchign over the weekend so I'll get some posted soon.

Love it

That is one of the best builds I've seen recently. How quiet is it?

Cheers matey, its fairly quiet as the GT typhoon isnt very loud even at 1850rpm, loudest fan is definitely the enermax 80 mm, it spins upto 2300rpm and is quite audible. I've just got in the post 2 80mm blue noiseblocker X2, so depending how well they perform on the rad I hope to use these to fit with the blue theme and also they supposedly only 8-18db. So I'll wait and see.

I also have an aquaero 4.0 controller to install some how that will control all fans speeds based on water temperature.

Thankfully the pump is already silent due to the pt gel stuff

 

[jonowee]

I don't even....

 

[tinytomlogan]

Really like the look of this

 

[SieB]

Never thought i'd see a watercooled FT03 build, nice job, it looks awesome

 

[S_I_N]

awesome bro and those temps are good considering its just a small rad

 

[KiiYzOo]

looks good m8

 

[Aurus_OC]

Looking really nice dude! Love what you can fit in such a neat and small case