PetrolHead247
New member
Wow those Scythe GT's in white look amazing!
Project: Watercooling 600T
- Thread starter Roverno
- Start date
UPDATE
So before i mentioned i screwed up my spray paint. I worked out that it must have been because the spray caught my finger on the way out the can and thus caused a drip on the can, this then dried and block it. Bit of a daft mistake but this is my first attempt at spraying/modding etc so its all a bit , 'have a go and see what happens' kinda ethos.
The deliveries include:
Plastikote- my choice of easy spray paint that doesn't require much prep and is fairly durable.
Cheap Tube cutters- Just go slow and they work a treat.
White electrical tape- Dont need this rubbish anymore, it was awful tape anyway.
Fittings- Some fittings that i used to test some different loops. (more on this later)
So here are the new deliveries:
Silencer- Dispite, as i said before, not using this 'silencer' for the front fan, this is what it looks like fitted and sprayed black.
The large gap it forms
Tubing, routing, piping, testing
So it has got to the point now where the case is fairly well prep'd for accepting some cooling components. At this stage i was still planning on only cooling the CPU. Hopefully it will become clear why i eventually chose to cool the GPU as well. So, at this stage, i only had a 360mm rad to fit. The in/out holes are both at the same end which is pretty standard and i always though that having that end at the front of the case, hidden in the drive bays, would be most tidy. As it works out, that is actually a fairly messy way of doing it for me because it means running the hose out and round the bottom of the bays. This looked fairly ugly in testing so I opted to have the in//out at the rear of the case.
(Looking back a this part of the build is fairly embarrassing for me because some of the ideas i had are simply horrendous and ugly and i can't believe i even considered them but bare with me, it gets better I promise.)
Rad i/o at the back of the case
Some initial pump ideas
Some foam for damping
All fairly ugly i think you'll agree. With only two screws on the white plastic it was pretty wobbly too. I also forgot about the HDD cage which sits just in front of this area and sitting as it is in the last picture, the cage wouldn't fit.
Scrapping the awful plastic, i found a piece of spare mesh from my project where i put a ps3 and xbox into a pc case. (It was infact hush 2, TTL's favourite case! LOL) I thought it might look a little better sat in the bottom of the case but low and behold, still ugly as hell.
Next onto Tubing
So here is a little creative splash i made at my house at uni. Had a tonne of ideas and most were fairly bad but i wanted the front of the case as free from tubing as possible so i can see the expensive stuff.
Another 'artsy' shot for good measure
Through most of this testing process i tried to avoid cutting the tube because i didn't want to end up with bits that were too short. The idea of trying to keep the tubing away from the front side meant trying to hide one half of the route around the sides or back of the case.
So from the rad it goes up, to hide at the top of the case
Round the top and front- Excuse the toilet shot, complete accident.
Then would come to the pump. (into not past the pump)
The whole image- Assuming the cut out is cpu.
Once the door is on, the long tubing route would be invisible so it does hide it nicely. But when the door is off, it just isn't practical. Im sure anyone that has done this before can tell this is just an awful idea in so many ways.
The Return Journey.
At this stage i had some external input and in came the revolution of trying to get the return journey hidden behind the 5.25 bays or behind the motherboard.
Lots of fitting (and increased leak chance) were required to get the tube back behind the bays and hidden away.
Up the hidden side front of the case
Through a cut out that fits the tubing perfectly.
Many more fittings to receive the tubing again.
This 'alternate route' is, again, very impractical and just generally useless.
At this point i needed and excuse as to why i couldn't get a decent route going. And the reason is...
My Pump/Res
This has caused me problems like never before because it doesn't seem to have been manufactured quite right. Normally the input and output come out the same side but on mine they come out opposite, or if i turn the black section upside down, at 90 degrees to each other. As it turns out, this came to be quite a nice feature of my case IMO, and it works nicely with the way i have set up my rig.
With a half decent excuse under my belt i decided to have another go.
The 5.25 method.
The idea here was to have a vertical raise from the pump and go straight up into the 5.25 bays. By having the rad turned the other way round (i/o in the 5.25 bays) i could go straight into the rad from the pump. The pump may be a little crooked but it would be straight if i actually used this method. I would need another hole if i did this and i would be sacrificing some the of the bays but that doesn't matter too much.
Straight into the bays.
From the front
And into the rad. I would have got a better fitting to go here if i used this method. But i didnt in the end.
From another angle
SUMMARY
So that just about concludes all my poor attempts of tubing. I know they are all pretty naff but this is my first attempt and it was just not a great day for ideas. I think it was around this stage i decided to go ahead and watercool my GPU as well. This means the loop will be much more standard as 'The Return Journey' will come back through the gpu, and i have another rad to take out the pile of rubbish plastic I put in the front of the case.
I hope you are all enjoying the log so far an thanks very much to those that are commenting. I am rewriting the whole log so it takes some motivation from extra comments to keep me going
Til next time...
So before i mentioned i screwed up my spray paint. I worked out that it must have been because the spray caught my finger on the way out the can and thus caused a drip on the can, this then dried and block it. Bit of a daft mistake but this is my first attempt at spraying/modding etc so its all a bit , 'have a go and see what happens' kinda ethos.
The deliveries include:
Plastikote- my choice of easy spray paint that doesn't require much prep and is fairly durable.
Cheap Tube cutters- Just go slow and they work a treat.
White electrical tape- Dont need this rubbish anymore, it was awful tape anyway.
Fittings- Some fittings that i used to test some different loops. (more on this later)
So here are the new deliveries:
Silencer- Dispite, as i said before, not using this 'silencer' for the front fan, this is what it looks like fitted and sprayed black.
The large gap it forms
Tubing, routing, piping, testing
So it has got to the point now where the case is fairly well prep'd for accepting some cooling components. At this stage i was still planning on only cooling the CPU. Hopefully it will become clear why i eventually chose to cool the GPU as well. So, at this stage, i only had a 360mm rad to fit. The in/out holes are both at the same end which is pretty standard and i always though that having that end at the front of the case, hidden in the drive bays, would be most tidy. As it works out, that is actually a fairly messy way of doing it for me because it means running the hose out and round the bottom of the bays. This looked fairly ugly in testing so I opted to have the in//out at the rear of the case.
(Looking back a this part of the build is fairly embarrassing for me because some of the ideas i had are simply horrendous and ugly and i can't believe i even considered them but bare with me, it gets better I promise.)
Rad i/o at the back of the case
Some initial pump ideas
Some foam for damping
All fairly ugly i think you'll agree. With only two screws on the white plastic it was pretty wobbly too. I also forgot about the HDD cage which sits just in front of this area and sitting as it is in the last picture, the cage wouldn't fit.
Scrapping the awful plastic, i found a piece of spare mesh from my project where i put a ps3 and xbox into a pc case. (It was infact hush 2, TTL's favourite case! LOL) I thought it might look a little better sat in the bottom of the case but low and behold, still ugly as hell.
Next onto Tubing
So here is a little creative splash i made at my house at uni. Had a tonne of ideas and most were fairly bad but i wanted the front of the case as free from tubing as possible so i can see the expensive stuff.
Another 'artsy' shot for good measure
Through most of this testing process i tried to avoid cutting the tube because i didn't want to end up with bits that were too short. The idea of trying to keep the tubing away from the front side meant trying to hide one half of the route around the sides or back of the case.
So from the rad it goes up, to hide at the top of the case
Round the top and front- Excuse the toilet shot, complete accident.
Then would come to the pump. (into not past the pump)
The whole image- Assuming the cut out is cpu.
Once the door is on, the long tubing route would be invisible so it does hide it nicely. But when the door is off, it just isn't practical. Im sure anyone that has done this before can tell this is just an awful idea in so many ways.
The Return Journey.
At this stage i had some external input and in came the revolution of trying to get the return journey hidden behind the 5.25 bays or behind the motherboard.
Lots of fitting (and increased leak chance) were required to get the tube back behind the bays and hidden away.
Up the hidden side front of the case
Through a cut out that fits the tubing perfectly.
Many more fittings to receive the tubing again.
This 'alternate route' is, again, very impractical and just generally useless.
At this point i needed and excuse as to why i couldn't get a decent route going. And the reason is...
My Pump/Res
This has caused me problems like never before because it doesn't seem to have been manufactured quite right. Normally the input and output come out the same side but on mine they come out opposite, or if i turn the black section upside down, at 90 degrees to each other. As it turns out, this came to be quite a nice feature of my case IMO, and it works nicely with the way i have set up my rig.
With a half decent excuse under my belt i decided to have another go.
The 5.25 method.
The idea here was to have a vertical raise from the pump and go straight up into the 5.25 bays. By having the rad turned the other way round (i/o in the 5.25 bays) i could go straight into the rad from the pump. The pump may be a little crooked but it would be straight if i actually used this method. I would need another hole if i did this and i would be sacrificing some the of the bays but that doesn't matter too much.
Straight into the bays.
From the front
And into the rad. I would have got a better fitting to go here if i used this method. But i didnt in the end.
From another angle
SUMMARY
So that just about concludes all my poor attempts of tubing. I know they are all pretty naff but this is my first attempt and it was just not a great day for ideas. I think it was around this stage i decided to go ahead and watercool my GPU as well. This means the loop will be much more standard as 'The Return Journey' will come back through the gpu, and i have another rad to take out the pile of rubbish plastic I put in the front of the case.
I hope you are all enjoying the log so far an thanks very much to those that are commenting. I am rewriting the whole log so it takes some motivation from extra comments to keep me going
Til next time...
giannakos23
New member
Love it till now !!! Best of luck with the rest of your work !!!
The Orange One
New member
I've seen much worse tubing mate. Good L;uck with the rest if the build
yassarikhan786
New member
Toilet shot was awesome
. Seriously though, can't wait to see more
UPDATE
Time again for another update. This time i'm going to be covering my touch up with the black paint, some new hardware, some cable braiding and maybe a couple of other random things that popped up around this point in time. No point chatting too much about it, lets get stuck in.
The small pot of paint i had been waiting an absolute age for has finally arrived. The idea of this was purely to patch up the areas that would appear metallic due to being cut. Although the paint on the case is actually a powder coat, the matt paint actually matches fairly well and since it will not really be visible, it will work out well.
No more shiny
Bought a bitspower stopper for two reason. One is so i can replace the fill port cap on the res for a black one, and secondly i can use the female thread barb fitting to put my temp sensor in. (i didnt end up using the barb but it could have been a nice idea.)
Braiding
At this stage in the build i wanted to get started colouring up my cables and seeing how many might be black and how many would be white. I had a little test with the braiding i had which was meant to be high quality. The white looked absolutely awful and was extremely stiff, the black was equally stiff but at least covered the coloured cables.
Awful White
Better Black
Trial on the USB- looks ok, good to continue...
Front i/o all done as well
Gave them all a test in my rig to see what they were like. Tbh i didn't really like it, they are far too stiff, far too shiny, and just generally not really happy with it.
Time for a shake up
I really was not happy with the braid i had so it was time to sort it out. I came across a video on YT of braiding using paracord and instantly fell in love. This stuff, for anybody that doesn't know, is still made of plastic, but is much more similar in appearance to fabric. So the best comparisson is bitfenix Alchemy cables. I bought about 400ft of the stuff and was it expensive? hell no! £20. So i was pretty happy at this stage and fairly excited about a full set of parabraided cables.
All 400ft
The process of para-cord braiding is fairly simply but does involve repetitive touching of molten nylon which, suffice to say, is fairly hot. I burnt my fingers and thumbs pretty badly over the couple of days that it took me to braid the entire lot. Couple this will the raser sharp connectors and pins and you really have a recipe for disaster here. It wasn't a walk in the park but i am very happy with the results. They are truly beautiful imo. The results are as follows
Re braided the front panel connectors as well. I love this stuff so much.
New Hardware
Bunch of new things to go in my build. Now that i have fully decided that i will be water cooling the GPU along with the processor there are several things that i need in addition to what i already have. I actually bought some random bits and bobs too but they are too boring to use and didn't use most of them so i will just show you the decent stuff.
Xonar DG to power my Beyerdynamic DT770 PROs.
7970 Waterblock
Phobya 200mm Rad
Bought the wrong backplate too! Epic fail by me here, but some lovely shots anyway.
Little story behind my GPU
I always wanted a black PCB as the current blue one on my 6970 really annoys me. it is just so ugly. When i purchased the card i emailed the relevant customer services to check it was black as the pictures were not particularly clear that i could find.
DARN IT!
So i had to send it back and ended up buying an XFX Card. No pictures because i was too excited. Oops.
SUMMARY
Well i hope you like the cable braiding as much as i do, it took forever! Updates from now will be fitting the block and fitting some hardware to the case. I did skip over a few bits because they are simply quite boring. But if you want some more pictures or details on the braiding i'll be happy to help.
Till Next time...
Time again for another update. This time i'm going to be covering my touch up with the black paint, some new hardware, some cable braiding and maybe a couple of other random things that popped up around this point in time. No point chatting too much about it, lets get stuck in.
The small pot of paint i had been waiting an absolute age for has finally arrived. The idea of this was purely to patch up the areas that would appear metallic due to being cut. Although the paint on the case is actually a powder coat, the matt paint actually matches fairly well and since it will not really be visible, it will work out well.
No more shiny
Bought a bitspower stopper for two reason. One is so i can replace the fill port cap on the res for a black one, and secondly i can use the female thread barb fitting to put my temp sensor in. (i didnt end up using the barb but it could have been a nice idea.)
Braiding
At this stage in the build i wanted to get started colouring up my cables and seeing how many might be black and how many would be white. I had a little test with the braiding i had which was meant to be high quality. The white looked absolutely awful and was extremely stiff, the black was equally stiff but at least covered the coloured cables.
Awful White
Better Black
Trial on the USB- looks ok, good to continue...
Front i/o all done as well
Gave them all a test in my rig to see what they were like. Tbh i didn't really like it, they are far too stiff, far too shiny, and just generally not really happy with it.
Time for a shake up
I really was not happy with the braid i had so it was time to sort it out. I came across a video on YT of braiding using paracord and instantly fell in love. This stuff, for anybody that doesn't know, is still made of plastic, but is much more similar in appearance to fabric. So the best comparisson is bitfenix Alchemy cables. I bought about 400ft of the stuff and was it expensive? hell no! £20. So i was pretty happy at this stage and fairly excited about a full set of parabraided cables.
All 400ft
The process of para-cord braiding is fairly simply but does involve repetitive touching of molten nylon which, suffice to say, is fairly hot. I burnt my fingers and thumbs pretty badly over the couple of days that it took me to braid the entire lot. Couple this will the raser sharp connectors and pins and you really have a recipe for disaster here. It wasn't a walk in the park but i am very happy with the results. They are truly beautiful imo. The results are as follows
Re braided the front panel connectors as well. I love this stuff so much.
New Hardware
Bunch of new things to go in my build. Now that i have fully decided that i will be water cooling the GPU along with the processor there are several things that i need in addition to what i already have. I actually bought some random bits and bobs too but they are too boring to use and didn't use most of them so i will just show you the decent stuff.
Xonar DG to power my Beyerdynamic DT770 PROs.
7970 Waterblock
Phobya 200mm Rad
Bought the wrong backplate too! Epic fail by me here, but some lovely shots anyway.
Little story behind my GPU
I always wanted a black PCB as the current blue one on my 6970 really annoys me. it is just so ugly. When i purchased the card i emailed the relevant customer services to check it was black as the pictures were not particularly clear that i could find.
DARN IT!
So i had to send it back and ended up buying an XFX Card. No pictures because i was too excited. Oops.
SUMMARY
Well i hope you like the cable braiding as much as i do, it took forever! Updates from now will be fitting the block and fitting some hardware to the case. I did skip over a few bits because they are simply quite boring. But if you want some more pictures or details on the braiding i'll be happy to help.
Till Next time...
Really liking the effort going in here matey. Kudos from me.
Thanks TLL means a lot coming from you. Cheers.
I can't really take ownership of the idea but it is certainly something special. I dont know what PSU you have, but corsair can provide replacement cables. I know their support is amazing so i knew i could count on them to help is i did do something wrong. As it happens i did accidentally take out two cables at once while i was doing it which is pretty bad because they are all black. Luckily i got hold of the plans got them wired correctly.
Thanks very much, appreciate it
Liking the paracord, you must have godly patience
I would like to think it was passion rather than patience. I did it the two days following my last exam from my second year engineering degree. It was nice to take my mind of maths for a little while!
giannakos23
New member
I believe that the end result would be astonishing !!! Keep up the good work mate and keep us up to date !!!
UPDATE
We will start off by filling in with this picture that i missed last time and summarise what else it relates to. The pictures is fairly obviously of a PCI bracket and it is for my 7970. The reason it is important is because i have sprayed all the brackets of my PCI components black to match the case. The black paint i have works amazingly well for this as it is about the same shininess as the powder coat is is indistinguishable when in the case.
Slight Modifications
So at this stage i was starting to think about mounting the components into the case but i had a couple of issues with the 200mm rad because, it doesn't actually fit. I was expecting it to be an easy fit and it is really, but it doesn't fit 'out of the box' so i need to make a couple of modifications to get it to sit properly.
Here you might be able to see something that was completely unexpected. When trying to put the rad in the front of the case i realised that the case holes, rad holes, and fan holes don't actually line up. They are all 200mm spacing but they are fairly inaccurate and in this case, didn't line up enough to get the screws through. i used my trusty glass engraving cutting piece on my Dremel to expand the holes in the spectre PRO fan slightly
Misaligned Holes
The next issue was with the little screw at the top of the 200mm rad that is used to bleed the rad. I wanted the in/out holes at the bottom because i didn't want to hack my case apart too much as i needed the strength. Having the holes at the bottom should also be more beneficial when it comes to tubing. The rad no only had the little screw at the top that needed access but when it was mounted on the default screw holes it sat a little too high. Had to cut a little off the case as you can see here. This was filed and painted just like the other section of the case.
Eventually got it fitted nice and snug
Another quick attempt at some tubing routes.
some more early attempts that are very complex and prone to leaking
I was hoping that this would allow me to add a short piece of tubing to go down behind the mobo and have a temp sensor in the end but it didnt reallt work out right and was OTT.
Maybe scrap the HDD cage and hide me drives somewhere else?
Pump straight into the rad via a single fitting?
More Slight Modifications
Had to decide where i was going to put the pump and it took me ages but here are the holes i cut in the case to mount it. It actually sits on a metal platform with screws that have a rubber midsection to supposedly dampen the pump. I am really a little upset that the pump is so loud as it can hear it easily above everything. I would love to get any ideas to improve the damping but the pump has to be mounted sturdily in the case as i move it quite regularly and it must not move.
Holes
Mounted plus single fitting. I did accidentally damage the fitting and stripped the paint
Fitting The Block
Fitting a waterblock was very easy as expected really and i even used the TTL tactic of using some cling film on the old cooler. Works a treat. One thing i would say is that there is not nearly enough of the thermal padding with this waterblock IMO. There was literally just enough to cover the required areas. Had i of made a mistake i would have been waiting ages to get some more, not ideal but i didn't make any mistakes so its all good.
Out with the old
And in with the new
One more thing
New motherboard and block fitting. Very easy installation.
We will start off by filling in with this picture that i missed last time and summarise what else it relates to. The pictures is fairly obviously of a PCI bracket and it is for my 7970. The reason it is important is because i have sprayed all the brackets of my PCI components black to match the case. The black paint i have works amazingly well for this as it is about the same shininess as the powder coat is is indistinguishable when in the case.
Slight Modifications
So at this stage i was starting to think about mounting the components into the case but i had a couple of issues with the 200mm rad because, it doesn't actually fit. I was expecting it to be an easy fit and it is really, but it doesn't fit 'out of the box' so i need to make a couple of modifications to get it to sit properly.
Here you might be able to see something that was completely unexpected. When trying to put the rad in the front of the case i realised that the case holes, rad holes, and fan holes don't actually line up. They are all 200mm spacing but they are fairly inaccurate and in this case, didn't line up enough to get the screws through. i used my trusty glass engraving cutting piece on my Dremel to expand the holes in the spectre PRO fan slightly
Misaligned Holes
The next issue was with the little screw at the top of the 200mm rad that is used to bleed the rad. I wanted the in/out holes at the bottom because i didn't want to hack my case apart too much as i needed the strength. Having the holes at the bottom should also be more beneficial when it comes to tubing. The rad no only had the little screw at the top that needed access but when it was mounted on the default screw holes it sat a little too high. Had to cut a little off the case as you can see here. This was filed and painted just like the other section of the case.
Eventually got it fitted nice and snug
Another quick attempt at some tubing routes.
some more early attempts that are very complex and prone to leaking
I was hoping that this would allow me to add a short piece of tubing to go down behind the mobo and have a temp sensor in the end but it didnt reallt work out right and was OTT.
Maybe scrap the HDD cage and hide me drives somewhere else?
Pump straight into the rad via a single fitting?
More Slight Modifications
Had to decide where i was going to put the pump and it took me ages but here are the holes i cut in the case to mount it. It actually sits on a metal platform with screws that have a rubber midsection to supposedly dampen the pump. I am really a little upset that the pump is so loud as it can hear it easily above everything. I would love to get any ideas to improve the damping but the pump has to be mounted sturdily in the case as i move it quite regularly and it must not move.
Holes
Mounted plus single fitting. I did accidentally damage the fitting and stripped the paint
Fitting The Block
Fitting a waterblock was very easy as expected really and i even used the TTL tactic of using some cling film on the old cooler. Works a treat. One thing i would say is that there is not nearly enough of the thermal padding with this waterblock IMO. There was literally just enough to cover the required areas. Had i of made a mistake i would have been waiting ages to get some more, not ideal but i didn't make any mistakes so its all good.
Out with the old
And in with the new
One more thing
New motherboard and block fitting. Very easy installation.
Well there aren't many options that fit my scheme so it would have to be white if any at all.
