The Orange One
New member
Looks Awesome Mate! Can't wait for the next update!
Watercooled Desk Project
- Thread starter PBaines
- Start date
Ross_Kirkbright
New member
Looking good 
yassarikhan786
New member
Looking stellar
I always enjoy following desk builds
I always enjoy following desk builds
son of spanner
New member
im loveing this what i like the most is how your useing wood its like the new and old new tech and old school wood work craft very cool
seumasbeathan
Banned
Looking lovely
Gamepro105
New member
WOW this is inspirational i hope it turns out well you have put allot of effort into this and it is one of the best unfinished builds i have seen!
PBaines
New member
Right, it has been a while. Basically been waiting for my glass to be done, taking it back, yelling at them for doing a shit job and making them do it with a bit of class instead of giving me some glass that looks like someone has used a rock to sand the edges q-
so here we started the big cut out for the small glass front to sit in, followed by a router to make it all square and THEN a rebate so that the glass could be glued onto the recess
This was how I routered the rebate for the glass to sit in, aswell a very well put together professional looking base for the router to sit flush on.
We are left with a perfect recess!
Now, with my PPCS gear arriving it was time to get my 480 radiator holes sorted out. I got everything measured up and got some low adhesive tap and plopped the rad grill on and traced around it.
what we first start off with is making some guideline holes so that we are able to do better cuts with the jigsaw allowing us to change angles easily.
Mid way cutting.
now time to lay it on, and all is good.
a wild cat appears! "hmmmm, can i fit through here?"
"Why yes! of course I can!"
marking out the other side, and repeating the process
both sides have been completed and look very nice. they are BOTH yet to be routered so that the grill sits in flush. but that is next days off job.
I quickly decided that I would do my 5.25" holes, one for a Blu Ray drive (basically just incase i need it for whatever case. And no, I couldn't be bothered getting a USB one), and also will be fitted with a Fan Controller too.
Here is the plan...
Holes done
all cut out
with a bit of extra little rasping (wood equivalent of a file) they fit nice and snug! Though like the rad grills. Will router a recess for them to sit flush in. If some may notice, the drives are sitting lower then centre, this is because I will probably put my power/reset buttons above the 5.25" area.
and ps, yes I know the middle piece between each 5.25" slot is weak as hell, and I understand that. If it breaks it breaks, if it doesn't it doesn't! it looks nicer with it though
Oh, and this is the glass installed
easy to remove to, simply put fingers between the two glass sheets and lift the top one up! the front bit is siliconed in place
Next update will be Wednesday of everything routered
and then theres only two holes left to do (PSU, I/O shield) and its time to d-d-d-d-d-drop the hardware in!!
so here we started the big cut out for the small glass front to sit in, followed by a router to make it all square and THEN a rebate so that the glass could be glued onto the recess
This was how I routered the rebate for the glass to sit in, aswell a very well put together professional looking base for the router to sit flush on.
We are left with a perfect recess!
Now, with my PPCS gear arriving it was time to get my 480 radiator holes sorted out. I got everything measured up and got some low adhesive tap and plopped the rad grill on and traced around it.
what we first start off with is making some guideline holes so that we are able to do better cuts with the jigsaw allowing us to change angles easily.
Mid way cutting.
now time to lay it on, and all is good.
a wild cat appears! "hmmmm, can i fit through here?"
"Why yes! of course I can!"
marking out the other side, and repeating the process
both sides have been completed and look very nice. they are BOTH yet to be routered so that the grill sits in flush. but that is next days off job.
I quickly decided that I would do my 5.25" holes, one for a Blu Ray drive (basically just incase i need it for whatever case. And no, I couldn't be bothered getting a USB one), and also will be fitted with a Fan Controller too.
Here is the plan...
Holes done
all cut out
with a bit of extra little rasping (wood equivalent of a file) they fit nice and snug! Though like the rad grills. Will router a recess for them to sit flush in. If some may notice, the drives are sitting lower then centre, this is because I will probably put my power/reset buttons above the 5.25" area.
and ps, yes I know the middle piece between each 5.25" slot is weak as hell, and I understand that. If it breaks it breaks, if it doesn't it doesn't! it looks nicer with it though
Oh, and this is the glass installed
easy to remove to, simply put fingers between the two glass sheets and lift the top one up! the front bit is siliconed in place
Next update will be Wednesday of everything routered
and then theres only two holes left to do (PSU, I/O shield) and its time to d-d-d-d-d-drop the hardware in!!
fatherc0stas
New member
Very nice buildlog mate...alot of imangination... Subscribed and waiting for updates
PBaines
New member
Right, so yes I apologise for how long it has taken me to get an update out, but roll on the pictures!
Here is how I will be spacing my UP7 to the desk itself. just a few rubber spacers, that will be screwed into the desk, will have to go find some nice long thin srews while I think about it!
We start with the routering of the 480 grill rebate, so that the grill can sit nice and flush
The middle bits had to be done also, and were very difficult too as after a few cm's the router wasn't sitting flush anymore so would 'dip' as you can see in the picture where it dipped a little bit. but that's okay! it's not seen
Thinking about how I could find a packer to use that allowed an extra bit of width... duh, why not use the template to rest the router on!
Now, this is what it looked like! the rebate for the grill was done, and also i further rebated in a rectangle for the actual little hex-hole grills to sit in too
Then there was about a 2 week period where I did nothing in life but work/sleep. UNTIL my parts arrived! and I will also be getting another GTX 680 4GB too
After thinking and googling, I figured a way that I could mount my power supply tidily, by making a metal template I guess you'd call it. where you would screw the thin sheet steel to the desk so you could then be able to screw the psu in!
And then there she was. the template to cut out the... template :B
Mid way cutting it out, realised I shouldn't have cut the paper up so much as it was so hard to get the small rectangle square again!
And there it is. Not the tidiest and 100% most beautiful, but it will be painted, not seen. It will serve the purpose it was made to do _b
Time to mark out where the IO shield will be put, and also where my PSU hole will be too.
Time to do my preliminary guide holes for the jigsaw
And there it is, all nice and square!
The PSU Template works well too
Now, the one thing that bugged me the most... The PCI holes. How do do them? Do I rebate them? Do I cut out one big hole instead? I will do it individually instead and rebate me thinks..
I then proceeded to use the smallest router bit I had and rebate the groove for the PCI brackets to sit in.
Also, the top L piece of the bracket needed somewhere to sit in, so I marked the lowest point the bracket could sit, otherwise the card when in the motherboard will be on a lean and could have a dodgy connection to the PCI/E Lane
Making sure my depth was correct, I used a test bit of wood to make sure that when it came to the final piece, it was done properly.
A Perfect fit!
Just a FYI, to prevent any scratching this is how I lay the top down to do any cutting/routering etc
Now that the first PCI slots had been cut, it was time to finish the rest off
Here is how I measured the spacings for where the slots went, just an old case I chopped up!
All cuts done
Next, to square all the holes out I figured, what better way to do that, than with a Router! Least that's what I thought
the insertion of the bit went well, as soon as I itched it to the right BOOM. the middle piece of the PCI slots just snapped off.. I said a naughty word beginning with F. the next one began with C. hehe
It was time to resort to Plan B. Cut the whole damn thing out and chop the PCI bracket bit out of that old case that was in the pic above
it looks a lot tidier this way anyway, so while I am not happy the slot snapped out, I am happy with the result I guess!
So after cutting the PCI Bracket out, i gave it a quick sand and a quick paint with orange and will continue to polish it up over the next week but just wanted to test it out for the time being to make sure all was well... Guess I was just impatient and wanted to see if when everything was laid out in the desk it would all look pretty is more appropriate
PS- Hello Vita! (sheep)
After the day, I moved everything to it's little box. and covered it. Until tomorrow
Here is a video I hope you guys also enjoy
Here is how I will be spacing my UP7 to the desk itself. just a few rubber spacers, that will be screwed into the desk, will have to go find some nice long thin srews while I think about it!
We start with the routering of the 480 grill rebate, so that the grill can sit nice and flush
The middle bits had to be done also, and were very difficult too as after a few cm's the router wasn't sitting flush anymore so would 'dip' as you can see in the picture where it dipped a little bit. but that's okay! it's not seen
Thinking about how I could find a packer to use that allowed an extra bit of width... duh, why not use the template to rest the router on!
Now, this is what it looked like! the rebate for the grill was done, and also i further rebated in a rectangle for the actual little hex-hole grills to sit in too
Then there was about a 2 week period where I did nothing in life but work/sleep. UNTIL my parts arrived! and I will also be getting another GTX 680 4GB too
After thinking and googling, I figured a way that I could mount my power supply tidily, by making a metal template I guess you'd call it. where you would screw the thin sheet steel to the desk so you could then be able to screw the psu in!
And then there she was. the template to cut out the... template :B
Mid way cutting it out, realised I shouldn't have cut the paper up so much as it was so hard to get the small rectangle square again!
And there it is. Not the tidiest and 100% most beautiful, but it will be painted, not seen. It will serve the purpose it was made to do _b
Time to mark out where the IO shield will be put, and also where my PSU hole will be too.
Time to do my preliminary guide holes for the jigsaw
And there it is, all nice and square!
The PSU Template works well too
Now, the one thing that bugged me the most... The PCI holes. How do do them? Do I rebate them? Do I cut out one big hole instead? I will do it individually instead and rebate me thinks..
I then proceeded to use the smallest router bit I had and rebate the groove for the PCI brackets to sit in.
Also, the top L piece of the bracket needed somewhere to sit in, so I marked the lowest point the bracket could sit, otherwise the card when in the motherboard will be on a lean and could have a dodgy connection to the PCI/E Lane
Making sure my depth was correct, I used a test bit of wood to make sure that when it came to the final piece, it was done properly.
A Perfect fit!
Just a FYI, to prevent any scratching this is how I lay the top down to do any cutting/routering etc
Now that the first PCI slots had been cut, it was time to finish the rest off
Here is how I measured the spacings for where the slots went, just an old case I chopped up!
All cuts done
Next, to square all the holes out I figured, what better way to do that, than with a Router! Least that's what I thought
the insertion of the bit went well, as soon as I itched it to the right BOOM. the middle piece of the PCI slots just snapped off.. I said a naughty word beginning with F. the next one began with C. hehe
It was time to resort to Plan B. Cut the whole damn thing out and chop the PCI bracket bit out of that old case that was in the pic above
it looks a lot tidier this way anyway, so while I am not happy the slot snapped out, I am happy with the result I guess!
So after cutting the PCI Bracket out, i gave it a quick sand and a quick paint with orange and will continue to polish it up over the next week but just wanted to test it out for the time being to make sure all was well... Guess I was just impatient and wanted to see if when everything was laid out in the desk it would all look pretty is more appropriate
PS- Hello Vita! (sheep)
After the day, I moved everything to it's little box. and covered it. Until tomorrow
Here is a video I hope you guys also enjoy
