Arcygenical00 Cubed

Arcygenical00 Cubed

It seems like every fall I get the urge to upgrade or modify my perfectly working system. Fortunately for me, a large electrical storm knocked out much of my older C2Q system, so an updgrade - this year - was a forced necessity. I've always wanted a small, quiet and fast mATX gaming system... I don't game all that much any longer, so a single card, CPU only watercooling loop system will work just fine. No riced out bling case for me either, something smaller but classy.

As such, I picked the Lian Li PC-V351B case for modding. Since it's not the USB3 model, I got it at a great price point, of around 55$ shipped .

You can all go ahead and search for pictures of the Lian Li PC-V351B on the internet. I'm not going to bore you with stock pictures of the case. I will say that this case lacked the typical LL quality I was used to. Side panels were thin, not the 3mm aluminum I was used to. Nonetheless, the anodized finish was top quality, which made for some very easy painting later on.

I don't have any pictures of the case being gutted, but I simply drilled out rivets and removed the internal support structure. You can use your imagination there . What you can see, is the motherboard tray. It was painted rubberized black, to help dampen some of the inevitable vibrations the case will experience from the water pump mounting.


Here's the motherboard try with the Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z mounted. You can see my painted Dtek Fuzion V1 with a modified retention bracket to support the 1155 socket. This block performs very well. Over 3mm of copper has been removed from the base through lapping, and other modifications (such as internal O rings and a larger base O ring for a bowed base) have been installed. As such, it makes no sense to drop 50-70$ on a new block for 3-4c.


The first custom piece being made is a support for the dual radiator. It's made from gorgeous 1/2" Lucite.


Here's the piece finished and polished. There are mounting holes drilled in the top and bottom sides of the piece, as it will be installed vertically in place of the stock aluminum dual fan bracket. This version is much wider, and it provides a better seal for the front air plenum.


A few pictures of the case painting fallout. As you can see, the theme is white and black. The white is pearlescent. It's really a nice color. Yes, I'm Canadian, so having a snowblower and canoe paddle is very normal for me.


Hard to see, two painted fan guards... And a very ruined piece of large 2x2' lego base board (don't fret, the business side is paint free). The paint is hammered black over the rubberized black. Gives a really cool wrought iron finish that contrasts very nicely with the semi transparent lucite.


You can see them better here, installed onto the lucite radiator mount, with the radiator and fans mounted behind it.


The beginnings of the case plumbing. A stock, MCP355 painted white is mounted on the side of the motherboard tray. I'll be using a brass T line for filling.


That's it for now, gotta wait for the paint to dry

Alright, well the paint has dried to the touch... That's the thing with professional grade enamel, it dries to the touch, nice and glossy in 60m... The best thing about this industrial quality paint, other than the fact that the rattle can comes with a double-thick nozzle (sprays twice as wide and thick as usual paint cans) and is a full 250ml larger than normal cans... Is how well a thick coat of enamel responds to baking.


Baking paint after it's dried to the touch is a fantastic way to get an incredibly good quality coat. After the paint has mostly de-gassed (aka much of the VOC's have evaporated, meaning it's beginning to enter the hard stage, after the tacky stage - baking it earlier may cause bubbles in the finish) preheat an oven to 350f. After it reaches this temperature, turn the oven off, let it rest for 1m, then allow the work piece to sit in it until the oven has cooled. It has now successfully cured, and will be as durable as a weeks worth of air drying.

Time to get baked


As always, exercise good safety precautions and give your oven a very good self cleaning cycle afterwards, to make sure any VOC's are burnt off.

Aaand, this is what you end up with. A very high glossy, hard coat.

Cool, I like the finish. Looking forward to seeing more!

So I sanded down the paint with 320g sandpaper to get it nice and flat, and applied a second coat of acrylic enamel last night.

It's orange peeling like crazy, which honestly,is what I want. It means the layers are thick enough to be sanded with 800g paper and polished... Though I may wait another week and do a final third coat just to make sure I don't polish through to the anodized layer below...

Decisions decisions... That's the issue with enamel paint. It goes on extremely flat, hardens to a rock hard finish, and is glossy and self-leveling... But it takes forever to dry. Over a month in still air... Or 3-4 days after an afternoon in the oven.

I'm going for that MNPC tech mirror finish... But with white, so it will be extra hard to look at

Love the look of the paint. You are off to a good start. Makes me want to paint my next case white! White is the new black

Orange peeling?!? Dang... With such a high-end build, I wonder if you wouldn't be better off getting it powder coated. A high gloss white shouldn't run you too much.

Powdercoating services don't offer the high gloss I'm looking for... and cost around 150$ in Canada. Considering the paint costs me 18$, this is much more economically feasable as well. I'm also using a pearl white paint, which would take 2 powdercoat layers, throwing the cost up substantially.

Check out MNPC's enamel painting guide to see the mirror like finish a properly polished and waxed enamel surface can offer

And orange peeling isn't bad at all at this stage, considering it needs to be flattened heavily and polished. Orange peeling is just extra paint depth.

where did you get a v351b for $55

Hope you have a power sander for the sanding

I admire anyone with the patience for a proper paint job. Keep it up man. It really does take a ton of prep, care and time to get a nice smooth finish with a rattle can. I've always done matte finishes or textured finished for ease and powder coating for durability.

And as far as a power sander; I would imagine he'll be doing that kind of graceful work by hand w/ some fine grit paper; maybe even wet sanding. A power sander is a great way to remove all the hard work you just laid down, haha

Bbq said:

where did you get a v351b for $55

Hope you have a power sander for the sanding

Click to expand...

Used from CL XD.

I also don't use power tools for my mods... All hand tools...

I MAY cheat and use an electric buffer for the wax/polish simply because I have no idea how to apply these by hand, lol!

After a week of curing after the third coat (goes on tonight) and daily bakings I'll sand with 600g, then wet sand with 800g before polishing, removing polishing residue with mineral spirits, and spraying with pearlescent clear coat.

This will be a relatively slow mod it seems, for this reason alone.

You should post some completed pictures! Great job btw, now if only you had put this much effort into my computer... >.< (p.s. I wasn't sure about it being solid white but it looks very sleek and modern)!

nice!

Always beautiful dude, and I hear you on the modding bug, I just started redoing the mod I started a couple of months ago, cant wait to see how yours comes out.