ElAwesome Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 FINALLY FINISHED! Head over to page 2 for the other final pictures Hey guys, I've been reading here a lot now, and I wanted to share my current project with you. Meanwhile playing with the software, I was planning this build. Enjoy! My biggest inspiration was l3p's d3sk, I absolutely love it. So I decided to build something similar The name is made up from desk and Macintosh (Macintosh because I'm gonna dual-boot Win7 and OS X from it), just in case you wonder. Further down in this post you'll see an image of the desk where I'm going to place all the stuff. What do I want? -It has to be silent. Really silent. That's why I'm spending all this money on a water cooling setup. -It has to be really good looking. Another reason why I spent all this money on a water cooling setup. -It has to be really fast. I'm a semi-professional graphic designer, so I'm doing a lot of video editing, which takes up every bit of power you can throw at it. Another reason why I spent all this money on a water cooling setup, to overclock the last little bit out of it LGA2011 wasn't worth the money for me, Ivy Bridge will do fine. I rather got an excellent GPU for some nice gaming evenings -It's gotta run OS X on it - For working, I really prefer it over Windows. And even running on a PC's hardware, it's more stable than Windows... This is the first time that I build a PC by myself, I've only been using Macs before. So please be kind So, let's begin: First package arrived, with some hardware in it: Intel i7 3770k ASUS Sabertooth Z77 EVGA GTX680 SuperClocked 2x Corsair Dominator 1600MHZ 8GB (16 in total) 2x Samsung 830 128GB SSD Seasonic X-750 750W power supply Had 3 WD 1TB drives and a slot-load DVD drive previously used. Quickly installed everything to boot it up for the first time Building a PC is far easier than I thought. Next package from AquaTuning Switzerland: A hell lot of stuff.... Water blocks: EK Supremacy Plexi CSQ Ek Dominator Plexi CSQ EK FC-680 GTX+ Plexi CSQ Rest: Phobya Xtreme 1080 NOVA radiator (lol, huge thing) Alphacool D5 with preinstalled pump top Phobya 250mm reservoir 2x BeQuiet SilentWing2 fans 4x Phobya 180mm Slim fans for the rad Some tubing and a few fittings, some sleeve and sleeving tools And a lot of cables.. Another package arrived: I orded a Lian Li PC-7HX to strip and reuse its internal parts. Stripping was done quickly: Looks pretty naked ___________________________________________ Let's get to the building!! I started off installing the rad and the pump. For this, I'm going to use a spare PowerMac G5 case as an external radiator housing, to save some space in the desk. Radiator with fans and pump: Fits like a glove! Didn't had to screw/glue anything, just firmly push the pump inside, and everything sits perfectly. Made my evening No metalwork necessary at all The G5 is still by far the most beautiful case out there... Moving on: This is where I will put the hardware. Those are two pieces of glass, extra stable ones. I'm going to install it in the lower left corner, already placed the stuff in the picture. In the front, I'm going to insert another piece of glass, while on the sides and the back I'm place some black mesh metal. More on that to follow. Just for you to know what this is all about. Also did some other small things: The Lian Li HDD rack: And after 15min of working, it's now equipped with a spare 120mm fan: And installed HDDs: I was amazed how much the fan improved my HDD temps, they used to be something like 35-40°C, now they dropped to about 30°. The fans is running at about 800RPM, you can't really hear it. Started to sleeve some cables: First time ever that I sleeved a cable, I'm actually quite happy with it. With a spare MacBook power button, I pmrovised a little power button for this rig: I find it much nicer than the usual Lamptron vandal switches (I've got one) and it also feels nicer. Just a small detail, I know... Next, the mobo tray was on my list: I took it form the Lian Li case, and glues some nice feet on it. I think it looks really cool! And last but not least, I installed all the waterblocks on their components: Started with the GPU: Also installed the backplate: CPU followed: And RAM: I'm really in love with EKWB's Plexi CSQ blocks! I think they look totally awesome! I have some Mayhems Pastel Blue, it's going to look pretty cool Mounted the SSDs on the HDD rack. I wanted to mount them on top, but there weren't any screwholes, so I just took a strip of extra strong mounting tape on both sides, and it worked perfectly. I need to re-sleeve those cables :/ Fits nice Overall I wasn't quite happy with the result, so I took everything apart and rebuild the cage, but differently. I put the fan on the bottom on four nice little feet, then turned the cage vertical and mounted the SSDs in front: Looks much nicer now, doesen't it? Also placed a little Apple sticker on one of the SSDs, not just for the optics, but when I remove them I know which OS is installed on which SSD. HDD rack in place, also test-fitted the res: I bended the copper tubes today. It was way harder than I imagined, and my father had to help me a little But anyway, I like the result. I haven't leak-tested it yet, I hope it's fine... Next time I'm just gonna use regular PVC tubing... But at least it looks great I still can't decide whether it was really worth it, probabaly gonna see after the leak test. Pictures: Put it into place and took some nice photos: LED strips arrive tomorrow together with some more sleeving material Hope you enjoyed it so far! I really want to thank AquaTuning Switzerland for the outstanding support!! That's it for now, thanks for watching! As I said, it's my first mod, but until now, things went quite well... See you! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Aduro Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 very clever use of the G5 case If you have a way to measure decibal levels I'd be interested in how quiet those fans are, looking for some case fans myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baudouin Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Very nice job, specially the metal tubes. The Aquatuning waterblocks are beautifull. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted February 22, 2013 Author Share Posted February 22, 2013 very clever use of the G5 case If you have a way to measure decibal levels I'd be interested in how quiet those fans are, looking for some case fans myself. I guess you mean the 140mm BeQuiet fans? Didn't have the chance to test them yet, but I heard from other people that even under full speed you can't hear them. I have no idea about the 180mm Phobya rad fans, but I'm gonna run them on 5v anyway. Very nice job, specially the metal tubes. The Aquatuning waterblocks are beautifull. Thank you very much! The blocks themselves are made by EK waterblocks, I ordered them via AquaTuning. Can really recommend this shop! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baudouin Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Thank you very much! The blocks themselves are made by EK waterblocks, I ordered them via AquaTuning. Can really recommend this shop! I have already looked at them many times at a Belgian online shop. But for the moment I won't change mine. I bought them from aqua-computer.de and there are EK waterblocks too. I know what it takes to bend the metal tubes, I used copper tubes for my watercooling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhatTheTech Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Nice job so far! Not a bad budget for your first PC build Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted February 22, 2013 Author Share Posted February 22, 2013 Thanks! Yeah, the hardware I used is quite good Let's just hope I didn't break anything... Doing the leak test at the moment. Had a small leak at the CPU block, but just because I didn't screw in one of the fittings correctly. Works now. I'm a little worried with the pump: It seems that the water is flowing, but the pump is unbelievably loud! There is still a lot of air in the loop, could that be the reason? I'm adding pictures later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SirKeldon Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Did you try to shake/turn (always carefully) the PowerMac G5 Case where the radiator is? You should see a lot of air bubbles coming out from it. Tell me if it gets better! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted February 23, 2013 Author Share Posted February 23, 2013 Thanks, I will do that! I wanted to continiue working today, but Friday night striked me and today I wasn't able to do anything... Tomorrow I'll have some time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted March 4, 2013 Author Share Posted March 4, 2013 I'm currently waiting for some LED stuff to arrive, so I can't to a lot now., I'll hav to take it apart anyway again. Anway, here are some pictures of how I leak-tested everything: The loop is already drained again. I'm going to use Mayhems Pastel next time Meanwhile, I place the parts where I want to have them to check if everything works out so far. It did. On both sides, I will have BeQuiet 140mm fans pushing air through the case. On the left, I'll have the mobo, HDD cage and res in the middle, PSU and drive bay on the right hand side. This is all done very roughly, when I'm gonna do the final assembly, I will hide the stuff better! I hope to be able to deliver you more updates soon! See you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.D. Posted March 4, 2013 Share Posted March 4, 2013 looks like a pretty sweet rig that you'll have! While I am sad to see the G5 being used only for cooling - I am happy to see the G5 being used for something other than landfill space! Keep up the pictures and the updates! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted March 4, 2013 Author Share Posted March 4, 2013 looks like a pretty sweet rig that you'll have! While I am sad to see the G5 being used only for cooling - I am happy to see the G5 being used for something other than landfill space! Keep up the pictures and the updates! Thank you! I can understand you... but I got the G5 as a whole machine for a very nice price, I actually made profit stripping the internals and selling them. So I had this case laying around, and before it ended up in the cave, I though I'm gonna use it. I think I found a nice way to hide this huge radiator. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted March 30, 2013 Author Share Posted March 30, 2013 Hey guys, I finally found some time over the holidays to continiue working on this. Had some trouble with the LEDs before, which had cost me a lot of time. I'm going to post an update later on. Just one thing I saw: My CPU block looks somehow strange - it stayed for quite a while now almost empty. I leak-tested it with distilled water, and afterwards drained the loop again. While draining, I only got most of the water out of the loop, not all water. I left it lake that for about 3 weeks now (since the last update). Maybe this is just trapped evaporated water, but I'm worried that there is some kind of damage on the block? It didn't leak there, and I installed the block exaclte as shown in the instructions, I didn't open it or anything else. Could you help me a little? Here a picture: Thanks guys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted April 20, 2013 Author Share Posted April 20, 2013 Finally, another update! The project isn't dead, I've been doing a lot of work in the past few days! I changed the plans a little bit. Instead of mounting everything directly on the desk, I'll mount the stuff onto another plate of glass which I'm going to put in the desk That keeps the desk a bit independent, and if I have to move it some time later, this will make it a lot easier... I started with building a case. Here is all the stuff I used: Measuring, slowly starting to get somewhere: Back panel and side panels done: And the front: The white stuff is velcro, so that I can take off the front panel to access the hardware. It doesen't look very nice, but I'm going to hide it later on! Marking the parts where I need to cut: Done! Motherboard riveted in place: Yep, that fits! Fan in place (I love those fans!) Reservoir also in place: I actually had to redo the pipe from the GPU to the res, mostly because it was too long so I didn't have enough space for the HDD cage, but also because it was a bit collapsed.. the new one looks perfect Placed it on my desk: Then I mounted the PSU and the HDD cage: I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... Still to do: -Tidy up those cables a bit -Connect the case with the rad/pump -Fill the loop I hope to finish this one soon! Thanks for watching & stay tuned 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baudouin Posted April 21, 2013 Share Posted April 21, 2013 Bravo !!! Nice touch to imagine and realizing to build his own system cage for your Hackintosh . And to do it right. Congratz. I love it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwisincebirth Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 Hi ElAwesome. I have been following your build on "TMX86", and it seems to have been removed? What gives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted April 22, 2013 Author Share Posted April 22, 2013 Bravo !!! Nice touch to imagine and realizing to build his own system cage for your Hackintosh . And to do it right. Congratz. I love it. Thank you! I just finished some little tests on the lightning, now it looks even better.. I'm gonna post some pics soon Hi ElAwesome. I have been following your build on "TMX86", and it seems to have been removed? What gives? I wrote the admin, he thinks the images broke the formatting... the thread is back up again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BALDY_MAN Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 Very Enervative build Well done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted April 23, 2013 Author Share Posted April 23, 2013 Very Enervative build Well done Thanks!! Little update: I've been playing with the lightning today. Here are some pics: On the pictures it looks way more purple than it actually is. Really, it's just blue, no purple at all... I just fitted a small RGB LED strip inside, just to test how it works: I like it! Probably gonna place a larger RGB LED strip there, need to solder one... I still need to get another fitting to finally finish the loop, I need just one more -.- It looks like the Bitspower C47 are sold out in every shop near Switzerland, next one would be Highflow in Netherlands... I'm probably gonna visit some plumbing shops and check what they have! See you! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted April 30, 2013 Author Share Posted April 30, 2013 Put some thermometers in place: Filling the loop Mayhems Blue Pastel - I really like it! Fits exactly the color of my sleeve.. Loop filled: Had actually quite a lot of leaks - no idea where all of them came from?? Anyway, got all of them done. I'll leave it overnight and check tomorrow again. Now on to some EKWB/Mayhems awesomeness: This is how the two parts are connected: A shot from underneath: I have something really cool in mind for the front. I don' really like it the way it is. Went to shop yesterday, they should be done by thursday And soon I'll get my new DSLR (Canon 60D with a 24-105mm f/4 L lens), that will allow me to take some better photos I'm almost done here, stay tuned! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted May 5, 2013 Author Share Posted May 5, 2013 Hey there, I got another upadet ready! The idea I got for the front was this one: I bought a acrylic plate that has a special foil on the inside. If there is some light behind the foil, it lets the light pass through. If there is no light, the foil acts as a mirror (I got this idea from another build, it was called Prodigy Mirror). That keeps my LEDs from lighting up the whole room, just the inside of my cage Some pics (I already put the upper glass plate on the cage): With the light on: The Deskintosh is finished now! I'm actually typing this post from it I'm gonna do the final shots soon! Waiting for my new camera body to arrive Anyway, have some teasers: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baudouin Posted May 5, 2013 Share Posted May 5, 2013 Deskintosh glowing in the dark . Great job. Nicely done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElAwesome Posted May 7, 2013 Author Share Posted May 7, 2013 Thanks Baudouin! Final pictures Thanks for watching! Finally got this done 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonym323 Posted May 7, 2013 Share Posted May 7, 2013 WoW. You got my vote! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baudouin Posted May 7, 2013 Share Posted May 7, 2013 Anonym323 is right, you should present your build for the context of the month of April. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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