Project: Subtlety

[guitarslingerchris]

Ok, so I've been meaning to build this case for about 4 years now, and over time the design has evolved. What hasn't changed was that it would be built around a Lian-Li PC-71 chassis and made to suit my tastes and be totally badass in a subtle way.


Being the person I am, I regrettably forgot to carry my camera around during the intial stages of the build, which was mostly deconstruction anyways, but starting now I will try to document it as well as possible.



This is where I am after my first try with Bondo ever. The idea was to fill in all of the stock vent holes for the dual 80mm fans in the front as well as the LED cutouts and fan controller switch cutout and logo and sand it all perfectly smooth. As you can also see in the picture I dremeled myself new vents for the front fans to draw from. I picked up some modder's mesh off FrozenCPU to use as grills on both sides of the front panel.



In a little bit I can get to sanding down the excess bondo and upload pics of the new and improved front panel that's ready for paint.

Hopefully my next post will have some more visual content, I should get the frame and other components back from Powder Coating Specialties on Monday or Tuesday, and if all goes well I can send some of my outer panels to paint this coming week as well.


Build specs:
Intel Core i7 920
2x eVGA GTX 285 SLI
Corsair Dominator DDR3 PC12800 @ 8-8-8-24
CoolerMaster 1100w UCP Ultimate PSU

The rig will be watercooled, but components on that are not set in stone yet. So far we're looking at:
Swiftech Apogee GTZ cpu block
2x eVGA Hydro Copper gpu blocks
Bitspower Black Freezer chipset block
3x120mm radiator mounted from the top panel or 2x120mm radiator mounted behind the front panel

 

[jpm804]

I'll be interested to see how this turns out...Nice to see another fellow Lian Li PC-71'er around .... Rebuilding mine also.

Great case and tons of room to work with... I'd be interested on what you decide on the rad mount in front or on top.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Finally got some time last night and today to finish up sanding and re-bondo'ing my mistakes and then sanding that down again. Having not used bondo before, I definitely see an ungodly amount of potential, I just need to get a little bit more experience with it.






As you can see, I got everything filled in that I wanted and I bored out the small reset button hole so it can hold the second bulgin vandal switch I have planned for it.

So far it's almost imperceptible to the touch when you run your hand across the panel when you go from aluminum to bondo but I'm a little worried that it will show through the paint. If anyone has some tips for what I can do to make the front panel "seamless", for lack of a better term, I'm all ears. I should be able to find my painter tomorrow and get their opinion on the situation as well.


P.S. It seems that the powder coat shop had written my cell # down wrong, so I'm hoping to get them on the phone tomorrow and head down to Golden, Colorado to pick up my frame and the rest of the internals of the case.


Ninja Edit: Vandal switches are here... I'm hopeful for the ringed one, the solid circle not so much at this point, but I'll have to see them both lit up before I pass final judgement.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Today is a day of days... Seriously, it feels like Christmas! About 9:45 this morning UPS rolled up at my office with my new mobo/cpu/ram and new sidepanel. Then 8 minutes later as I'm unpacking it all I get a call telling me that my powder coating is done and I can pick it up.

Needless to say I rushed down to Golden and picked it up and just got back and I'm inspecting it all and aside from a very few minor qualms it all looks excellent, and I'm very happy with it. I went with a 10% gloss fine texture black for the coat and it's exactly what I was going for and should match my CoolerMaster UCP 1100w Ultimate well.











This is the side panel I ordered. I had been hoping that it would fit just right with my PC-71 and it does! I believe this panel is a W-75BT.




Will post more pics as I begin to reassemble the case and put the machine together. Unfortunately it will likely be next month before the watercooling arrives

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Christmas day 2! Today the UPS man brought me a brand new G5, a G15 a 900w UPS, my new Blu-Ray drive and a spiffy new X-Fi Titanium Pro. Also snapped some pics of the half-together case and my ghetto-rigged setup to make sure everything was in working order.





Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, this is one beast of a PSU... It's gigantic even in a case this size!

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Long overdue update! Well, plans changed alot, I went from GTX 285 SLI to, soon arriving GTX 295 SLI. I also went from almost-ordering all of my watercooling supplies to finding a new job and hopefully moving back to Oklahoma. Anyways, to the update!

Here is an artist's detailed rendering with the wrong colors of the paint scheme for the case. Replace the red with purple and the white misspelled lettering with glossy black and the black with flat black/matte black and this is what it will look like.

I have put the watercooling on hold for a couple months until after I've moved back to Oklahoma which will hopefully be soon.

I did however make a new order at SVC for a TRUE 120 Black edition heatsink which is just... gigantic. I think there's less than 1/4" between the top of the heatsink and my side panel. Full-size image linked for crazy-size effect to sink in. This TRUE 120 Black is MASSIVE

Here's a little taste of what I've been working on until a check clears for the 2nd GTX 285 I just sold. I absolutely LOATHE sleeving cables, and as I found out I hate sleeving SATA cables ALOT more. Finally, I hate sleeving power supplies that are already sleeved and were done shittily, granted not by most people's standards, but for mine and this build.

Crappy iPhone pics incoming:


Here are my Power/Reset and HDD/Power LED cables, and one so far unused SATA cable, that will run to my Bulgin Vandal switches. After sleeving them I'm glad I went with the heavier gauge wire to fill up the sleeving, but I foresee these being a pain in the ass to make them look nice.

Here's a closeup of my HDD cable management which I personally think looks good. I may go for a bit more minimalistic look and get left-angle SATA cables to plug into the hard drives and head straight back, but I really like seeing the sleeved cables. Looking for input here on whether or not you guys like seeing the SATA cables.

This is my big concern at the moment. I know I am redoing the sleeving on the main 24-pin mobo connector, the question is how. I am really leaning towards resleeving it the way it currently is done, and where it stops, I continue to sleeve each individual wire all the way into the molex connector. So it would be one giant sleeve exiting the PSU until approximately 2-3 inches short of the molex connector where it splits into 24 individually sleeved wires. If you are familiar with the "murdermod style" of sleeving, this is very similar, but I do not like the prospect of sleeving the entire length of cable that style, I think it's much cleaner overall and easier to deal with when you only sleeve the last few lengths of the cables.

Here's a nightshot of the case in it's current condition, unfortunately it will remain blacked out until I get watercooling inside where the plan is to have only the water tubes glow, and of course the fans that you see in the picture.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

More crappy iPhone pics!

Well, Thursday I packed up my remaining GTX 285 and shipped it off, Friday I dismantled the whole machine again and then Saturday it was back to working on it.

I got a couple new holes drilled in the front of the case to facilitate the depth of the bulgin vandal switches, I primed and painted my PCI rear slot covers along with the one off of my X-Fi sound card. More importantly however, I started re-sleeving my PSU to get what I wanted out of it.


First pics below are of my new SATA power cables for my 2 74gb Raptors in RAID 0. I had considered making this 3 long to accomodate my 300gb VelociRaptor but decided I would rather space it out to keep heat to a minimum.

I definitely need a better soldering iron but I always find other ways to spend that money. My only remaining task for sleeving the PSU is to work on the 24-pin mobo wires. To be 100% honest I've never un-sleeved one of these before, just snipped off the ends and crimped on new ones so if anyone has some tips that don't involve buying a $10 tool to remove the pins I'm all ears... Otherwise I guess I've got to find some staples and do it the hard way.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Well I got majorly sidetracked. I was upgrading the cpu on my old desktop and ended up trading my old cpu and a new mobo for watercooling parts for it. That turned into me wanting to work on my old case, PC-65, and make it not look like total ass since it hasn't been taken care of since 2005.

I'll skip alot of the worklog for it until later, but these pics I took tonight will have to suffice. This is the case missing 1 side panel and the front while I'm leak testing the new parts.

 

[ekuest]

i like what you did with the tape there. im guessing thats how you did the paint job... im thinking about doing something like that if i paint my next case. anyway you got a nice setup going there with the main rig. only thing im not sure of is the cooling capacity. are you sure 120.3 is going to be enough for an i7+ 2x295s? especially on an internal rad which usually dont get as much airflow as an external would.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

i like what you did with the tape there. im guessing thats how you did the paint job... im thinking about doing something like that if i paint my next case.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I would have really liked to do a 2nd color stripe in white at about 1/2 or 1/3 the thickness of the red stripes, but my A.D.D. got ahold of me before I could find the right tape from a paint supply store. I had done a similar paint job about 5 years ago in navy blue and black and it's stuck with me as one of my favorites, inspired by Eddie's Frankenstein guitar.

anyway you got a nice setup going there with the main rig. only thing im not sure of is the cooling capacity. are you sure 120.3 is going to be enough for an i7+ 2x295s? especially on an internal rad which usually dont get as much airflow as an external would.

Well, that was something I was wondering myself. I hadn't planned on OC'ing the cards much honestly, their waterblocks would be more a formality of a system this high-end, but still that's going to be quite a lot of heat.

I'm thinking more and more while I wait for the cash to finish it that I'll do 2 seperate loops. While I've been OC'ing it on my TRUE 120 Black I'm not particularly comfortable with how hot the mosfets get and I won't exactly run out of space if I do a seperate loop for the GPUs/mosfets and CPU/chipset. Only time, and my dying wallet will tell.

 

[dystopic]

at one of my old jobs i was allowed to paint my office, and i did something a lot like what you did with that PC-65.



the woman who'd held the position before me had painted the walls that purple color. i laid down painter's tape in an evenly spaced checker pattern, applied a layer of what i called "road hazard" orange, then did a brown wash before (gently) pulling up the tape. overall it looked really good, i thought.

anyway, looking forward to more pictures.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

i laid down painter's tape in an evenly spaced checker pattern, applied a layer of what i called "road hazard" orange, then did a brown wash before (gently) pulling up the tape. overall it looked really good, i thought.

That looks great actually, I think. I had pictured something alot different until I took a closer look at the pics.

Hopefully I'll get some more done tonight and decide on fans and lighting for this monster. I'm also thinking of pulling the panels off when I'm finished and having them painted at a local body shop. I foolishly rushed the paint job and I'm not 100% satisfied with the outter paint, plus I'd like something a little bit more durable than spray paint for the outside.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Been awhile, but it's time for another update. Still haven't finished either PC, but the Intel LAN Fest Colorado was this last weekend so I decided to knock out a couple mods on Subtlety so it was a little more complete for the LAN.


Here is how she looks now, still alot of cable management and re-sleeving to do, but for the moment it still looks pretty clean with just the 24-pin and 2 leads for the GTX 295s visible.

Next up is a little closer shot of the front panel of the case. I have the mesh grills installed and the stock filter removed from the front fans. I didn't realize how much extra airflow this afforded me, but my temps with the side panel on dropped by about 8 degrees across the board.

Here's a closeup of the grill with a couple default photoshop sharpens thrown on to help you see the pattern of the mesh despite my camera's best attempts to hide it.

Probably my favorite part of the front panel so far, and by far the simplest to do. I stealthed my Blu-Ray drive. I had been waiting to do this mod until I had decided how best to affix the face plate to the drive, but I had picked up some special velcro from my brother in law's SWAT stash and it ended up working beautifully. This stuff holds like no other velcro I've ever dealt with, and the sticky side REALLY holds.

If I can decide 100% on what radiator setup to go with for the watercooling, I should be able to cut on the top panel and get the outside painted soon which will give this case a nice facelift

 

[BMFX]

Very clean job, Looks great you did some amazing wire management.
Have to say i'd be proud if i owned a case like that! haha i am kinda wishing i was talented enough to do a case like that =P

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Hey man, thanks for the comments and all the help with CoD over the weekend!

EDIT: Figured I'd post a somewhat updated spec list and get some feedback.

Current Build Specs:
Core i7 920 @ 4.2ghz on AIR (Hoping to go a bit higher with water)
2x BFG GTX 295 Quad-SLI
Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600mhz @ 8-8-8-24
Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro
(2) 74gb Raptors RAID 0 'OS' drive
300gb VelociRaptor 'Games/Apps' drive
CoolerMaster 1100w UCP Ultimate PSU

Tentative Watercooling Specs:
Heatkiller 3.0 LT cpu block
(2) Aqua Computer aquagraFX GTX 295 gpu blocks - I'm hoping these will give me access to my extra PCI/PCI-E slots with the way the barbs extrude from the side
Bitspower Black Freezer chipset block
(2) 120.3 Swiftech MCR320-QP Stackable Radiators mounted from the top panel - fans>rad>fans>rad>rans

Can't find everything in stock right now, but I estimate it to be about $925 or so after shipping... It's doable by QuakeCon, just have to make sure I keep my eye on the prize and don't get distracted with my secondary machine again

 

[BMFX]

Haha no problem. You picked up really quick. still surprised you didn't win case mod, That's a really sweet case mod.
Was great meeting you at the lan, hope to see you at quakecon and hope your bringing the case if its finished =P

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Mini-update!

Only got about 45 minutes of sleep Sunday night so I crashed as soon as I got home tonight, thus I'm up at 3:15am playing with my Vandal switches. Finally decided to test these guys and see how they look!

Pretty hard to show with my crappy camera, but the heavier gauge wire I used to wire these up makes for a pretty big mess hanging off the end of the switches. I may or may not redo it, I like the heavier gauge wire until I have to actually deal with it, so we'll see.

-------

Also, got a couple things installed in my secondary machine over the weekend. I found a sweet deal on a VisionTek HD3850 for $45 shipped w/ retail box and everything so I picked that up and replaced my X1950 Pro which I had just recieved a couple weeks ago. I also got around to installing my new fans, the super quiet Nexus fans in the front and the very very red TT 80mm in the back.

This is what I like to call an Action Shot! In other words, I somehow have my camera set to 2.5 second exposure when I turn the flash off... No idea how to fix it and I do not care enough to find out.

In the next couple of days I should have another good update for my secondary. I ordered an ASUS P5Q Pro motherboard to replace my aging GA-965P-DS3, and it should arrive today. I also placed an order with Jab-Tech for some PrimoFlex Pro LRT UV Red Tubing - 1/2in. ID X 3/4in. OD.

If this stuff looks in real life like it does in that picture, I think I may not have to worry about mixing and matching UV dye with food coloring. It should arrive Wednesday, so I hope to have more updates by the weekend!

 

[ekuest]

that tubing is exactly what i need as well. well not need, as i have plenty of perfectly good clear tubing lying around. but i want!

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Well, since I already ordered the parts for my secondary machine it should be complete sometime soon.

Subtlety on the other hand will probably be left air-cooled for awhile since I just got laid off about 10 minutes ago... Unfortunately I was incredibly lucky to get the job I had, and I got paid well for it. So now to go get on unemployment and run around the city like crazy on a job hunt

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Well, I got my motherboard and tubing in for my secondary and put a bit of work into it tonight. Here's what I'm left with for now.

 

[guitarslingerchris]

I really should put all of this in it's own worklog, but it's too late to turn back now!

I have been pretty busy preparing to move back to Oklahoma this coming Monday, and getting ready for the Friday Night Frag Fest in Denver tonight. I decided to power through and finish the secondary machine so I could enter the case modding competition and hopefully snag something worthwhile so I set to work on the front panel grill.

Unfortunately, as I got done cutting out that design, I decided that it looked like crap and needed to change it. Since I had already cut on the front panel though my options were limited so I went through about 20 pages of notebook paper and 3 or 4 hours playing with photoshop before I decided to just do away with the whole honeycomb circle mess and make one giant grill, nice and neat.

Here's the panel freshly hand sanded to make nice and even lines and corner.

And test fitting the mesh behind it.

Since I couldn't find anything immediately available to make different width lines that would keep them straight for painting an EVH style design on my grill I grabbed my sister and had her freehand it.

Here's the test fit of it behind the front panel. I really do like the way the grill turned out, but it just doesn't fit with the front of the case.

Luckily I had plenty of mesh left over so I brought out the dremel, cut a new grill to fit. Spent about 20 minutes with soap and water to get all the sticky crap off of it and then took some epoxy to mount it on the panel.

And the finished product! Without the flash on the white fans behind it are barely visible, and I think it really keeps the stealthy look to the front of the pc and make it less gaudy than the rest of the case

 

[Elledan]

"Here's the test fit of it behind the front panel. I really do like the way the grill turned out, but it just doesn't fit with the front of the case."

I half expected you to change the case to fit the grill

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Heh, that definitely went through my head, but I was trying to get it done for the LAN tonight, so no time!

 

[Elledan]

Heh, that definitely went through my head, but I was trying to get it done for the LAN tonight, so no time!

Kind of a shame, might have turned out interesting

 

[guitarslingerchris]

Update time!

I've actually done a bit of work on the case since my last update. It's not done, but I'm getting there!

I had accidentally stripped out one of the PCI screw holes while attempting to extricate one of my 5970s and so I had a problem. The solution I decided on was to knock out the rest and replace them with socket cap hex head screws and nuts. I put a nut under the head of the screw to act as a washer but look better doing it and of course there is a nut on the underside holding it in.

Here's some pics of my new toys to play with! 20 feet of Tygon R-3603 1/2" ID 5/8" OD tubing, A.C. Ryan 3x120mm rad grill, Swiftech MCR-320-QP-K radiator, a bunch of Bitspower compression fittings and some fans!

I am absolutely in love with these black compression fittings, they look fantastic on everything!

Swiftech Apogee XT with the compression fittings attached, waiting to go on the motherboard

Bitspower Black Freezer with compression fittings on, waiting to go on the motherboard

This picture I included because I find it hilarious how badly I managed to autofocus out the big black pump in the middle of the picture. Also it's my modified Swiftech MCP-655.

My Bitspower Water Tank Z-Multi 150 Inline Reservoir with all fittings attached

The whole assembly, waiting for me to finish up modifying the case to accommodate the pump, radiator and reservoir so I can start leak testing.

Here are the fans attached to the radiator while I wired them into two 3-pin headers for the lot of them.

Radiator grill being traced so I could cut the hole in the top panel. ANYONE with a jigsaw is more than welcome to help me the next time I do this. Doing it with a Dremel SUCKS!

First major cuts done to the top panel.

Majority of the cutting done, panel ready to have the edges rounded and then sanded down to perfection.

Radiator grill in place, checking clearances of the cuts underneath.

Yet more top panel nonsense.

Fans, radiator and more fans mounted to the top panel and grill.

Reservoir mounted. Wasn't my first choice of locations, but I think it will look just fine.

PROBLEM! My radiator seemed to have sprung a leak, or two which presented a somewhat obvious problem where... Everything sucks and I hate it! Anyways, I ordered a new Feser XChanger Triple 120mm Xtreme Performance Radiator which arrived last week and it is absolutely fantastic!

I forgot to take a pic of the radiator before I put fans on it, but trust me when I say this thing is huge. It's exactly twice as thick as my previous Swiftech radiator and I'm in love with it. Feser makes an incredible product, I have never been this impressed with a radiator or the accessories it comes with, it's fantastic.

I also bought two 45 degree rotary fittings so I could make the proper bends in the loop. Even taking 90 degrees out of the bend from the CPU to the Chipset the tubing just barely made it since I shortened the distance it traveled. I ended up having to cut the tubing at angles so it would not kink, but it's there and it works beautifully.

Here's a shot of the pump meeting the radiator. It sits atop the BD-ROM drive attached by Velcro. You might think it's not the most secure mounting system, but it really works well and it helps dampen the pump noise.

Here is where it now sits, on the floor, leak tested for over 48 hours and all air out of the system. The positioning of the reservoir makes it a bit of a challenge to fill and bleed but overall I think it's still easier than Server's watercooling.

Well, that's it for this update. I just sold my last 5970 so I'll be surviving on my GTX 275 until Fermi comes out. My checklist of things left to do is below.

1. Fill in the 3.5" bay opening in the front panel. I plan to epoxy a piece of aluminum to the back and then fill in the space from the front with bondo and more aluminum so it looks like it was never there after it's painted.
2. Finish re-sleeving the power supply for certain parts, mainly the 24-pin connector
3. Have Subtlety logo etched into the side panel before paint. I changed my mind about the paint scheme, going to go with a single color on the outside.
4. Take the two side panels, front panel and top panel/grill to a body shop to be painted.
5. Figure out my lighting scheme so i can do my best to not illuminate the case but still making the water glow strong purple.