Silverstone TJ07 Horizontal case mod

I just got finished moving my X99 system in to the Phanteks Enthoo Elite which you can see here.

Here is the original TJ07 build running a dual loop. Yep, two pumps, and three, yes three radiators. Cramming it all in there was no mean feat.



I'm not one for letting $800 cases go to waste, especially the all aluminium masterpiece that is the TJ07, the only issue is, what can I use it for?

What about a home theater PC? just one problem though, the case is massive when standing. I already dislike my, rather demure, FT03 and I wanted something that suits my home entertainment setup, like a horizontal case. I don't particularly like the cases available so I decided to mod my TJ07 in to a horizontal case.

Let the build log commence!

I'll be transferring my current HTPC build in to this, specs are:
i7 7700k
Asus Maximus VIII Gene (Z170)
32GB G.Skill TridentZ 3333
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 FE
Samsung 950 Pro M.2 500GB
Samsung 950EVO 1TB
Seasonic Platinum-1000

Updated specs:
Asus Maximus IX Formula
Samsung 960 Pro 500GB
EKWB Custom loop;
I may decide to go for a full ATX board but I am very tempted to stick with mATX and using the extra space on the 'bottom' to mount a decent sized res.

I will approach coldzero for case parts to dress it all up. The plan is to have a quad radiator in the 'bottom', possibly another dual radiator in the front and a window on the top and side. Also, after recently building with hardline tubing and seeing how drastic the difference visualy is, I am going to do another hardline build. I have already got the EKWB Evo CPU block and full cover 1080 block.

First step is to take it all apart and clean it up, I'm not quite there yet...

Update time.

This build is taking much longer than I anticipated. Too busy with work to really spend time on it. I pretty much have everything I need to finish it, I just need to clean up a few bits here and there and decide on the build order to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible.

First order of business, the order from ColdZero arrived. Here is the motherboard tray with new board installed.



Painted some parts as well even though they will not be seen, just wanted to make sure everything looks clean.



The outside of the case has also had a coat of paint to cover up blemishes and looks OK, although I'm not too happy with my hole filling job, I might have another crack at it. More pics to come.

Update time.

This build is taking a very long time. We have a new employee starting sometime in the next few weeks which means I have to progress this build, otherwise we are a PC short in the office.

Painting is complete and I have started to install various bits and pieces in to the case.



Next stage will be to install the pump and res, the mounting parts have been ordered and are in transit. Then on to PETG bending.

There are still some parts from Coldzero that need to go in such as the side panel and bottom plate covers and PSU mounting plate but at this stage it's looking very nice.

Update time.

I threw in a temporary CPU so I could get the majority of the tubing done before the final push to get it finished so the tubing is more or less done minus the GPU block.

I may redo the motherboard, res and CPU bends as I'm not sure the look is what I really wanted.

Its starting to shape up pretty nicely.

I'm also contemplating doing the power cable as pictured but I haven't decided yet.

Looks tight.

Redid the bends, I think this looks a lot cleaner. Still not what I wanted but close enough.

I can feel it getting really close to completion. That sounds dirty somehow...

Pulled the old system out and removed the Geforce 1080, installed the waterblock. The system is ready for the final two bends, than all that remains is to swap out the temp CPU for the 7700K, , install the SSD and a small cable tidy up, leak testing and windows installing. Should be able to finish it tomorrow.

Little bit of cable tidying. Looking pretty close to the finished project...

Psu installed, time for some leak testing.

Final push and this is almost done!

I had a few issues; the cables I got from cablemod were for the wrong type of PSU, it seems they don't have my older Seasonic on there I just assumed that the one I picked would be the same pin out, WRONG!

Had to jimmy up a pin extractor tool from one of my daughter's hairpins and repin a whole bunch of cables. I was shitting bricks when I turned it on, worried I might have cabled it wrong, even the 8 Pin CPU cable was inverted and I only found out because I thought to myself "I better check this with a multi-meter, just in case". Everything went fine, except one of the Vardar fans was rubbing on something, turns out it was rubbing on itself. Had to give the motor a slight nudge in one particular direction and it came right.

One final issue, one of the fan controllers I bought for this thing is DOA so I'll have to go back and get another one so at this stage 6 f the 14 fans are not functional. All fans will be controlled by the graphics card since this thing will be warmed up mainly from gaming/VR.

Still need to give the case a clean up and polish the windows but this is pretty much it. I'll post more pics later with the RGB all lit up. It looks incredible, really looks like a piece of the home theater.

Wow, OK so I am having ongoing issues with the Deepcool FH-10s I bought. As I mentioned, one of them just didn't work at all powering a measly 4 fans. The other one just refused to pass the fan speed to the motherboard for fan one no matter what I tried and at least one fan would not spin up, not an issue with the fan as I swapped some around and the issue followed the connector on the fan hub.

I popped them open for shits and giggles to see how complex these things are and to see if I can figure out what is wrong and holy shit, let this serve as a warning, these things are very badly put together.

Here is the first one which failed to power just 4 fans



And the second one that wouldn't pass fan speed to the motherboard



What the hell is all that gunk? And it looks like one of the PCB tracks is broken, the soldiering work on these is shockingly bad, even for an amatuer such as myself.

Well, this is frankly the shittest product I have ever had the 'pleasure' of owning. At $27 (about $20 USD) each I expect WAY better and I'm super pissed.

I went back to the retailer and we opened a couple more and they were no better so I got my money back. Looks like I'll have to make my own fan hub which is super disappointing as this project was very nearly finished.

Bought some strip board and threw this together in a few hours. I think my iron was a little too hot as it's not particularly tidy looking.

I still have a few wires to solder on for PWM control but it should only take me a few minutes then I'll have to figure out what to use to make it look OKish. Tested with a multimeter and as far as I can see it should be functional which is more than I can say for the Deepcool fan hubs.

I'm considering hot-gluing an old aluminium 5.25" bay cover on to the bottom to keep it tidy looking, I don't think I have anything else lying around that would look any good.

All finished. The fan hub I built worked first try so I'm very happy with that. I glued some foam on there to make it look tidyish.


And here is the completed build. First, a shot of the bottom and back with feet installed.



And finally, a short video to show it in action.



With it all complete it is fairly obvious that this level of watercooling is WAY overkill for a simple quad core, single GPU setup. I've only had time to do some very brief testing; the CPU is in the low 50C running prime95 and the GPU is cracking a rediculously low 30C while benchmarking Batman AK and overclocked to 2Ghz core, 10800Mhz mem. All while the fans are running around 350rpm. Nuts.

Final specs:
Intel i7-7700k
Asus Maximus IX Formula
Samsung 960 Pro 500GB
Samsung 950EVO 1TB
32GB G.Skill TridentZ 3333
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 FE @ 2000/10800
Seasonic Platinum-1000
Silverstone TJ07 with parts from Coldzero
Cablemod custom sleeved PSU cables
EKWB Custom loop;

Wow, those tubing bends look great! Really wanting to do Hardline myself, not sure if it would be worth the time for me however