Project Prism - A Lian-Li PC-v2000 Worklog

[wra18th]

Can't wait to see the final paint. I'm painting a Lian Li this summer.

 

[SoFGR]

bathed it in cutting oil to make sure I had a good clean cut:

nice job anyways, always had a thing for V2000 <3

 

[Noblesoft]

Lol! I know, it was overkill. Blame it on being OCD about perfect clean cuts.

 

[LT_Horn]

This looks amazing!.

I have the same case and am doing an overhaul over the next few months.

Here is my plan:
140.3 rad in the bottom with a push pull that is going to be passing through the case on both sides. I will cut the side pannels to allow air to flow directly through the rad without entering the rest of the case. will be fabing some kind of hood soo that there is a seal between the case door and the rad setup.

No fancy lights for me or anything like that just getting the interior powder coated by a local company.

I look forward to seeing this completed again its fantastic and really gets me to think about what I should do with my case.

LT

 

[Noblesoft]

Thanks!

Sounds like a good plan with the hoods and whatnot. I thought about doing it for this build, and may still, but it's not a priority yet. Then again, with two rows of fans and two radiators, My fans are so close to the case sides that it hardly matters.

If I were starting over, I would probably powder coat mine as well... painting is nice and all, but I think it ends up being more expensive and far more labor intensive on my part. But I guess that's what a first time is good for... showing you what to do next time!

Good luck on your build!

 

[KindredCone]

reading your build log was like watching a Discovery tv show awesome stuff bro good luck with the rest

 

[Noblesoft]

So I got a little distracted with my other project (Gemini, the HTPC build), but I finally have some progress to post!

First of all, my workshop had fallen into a bit of disrepair since I started the other project... too many home projects like installing new lights in my house and replacing my water heater... gotta clean it up, so I can focus on my work!

With that out of the way, time to recap where I left off! Last time, I had finished putting a coat or two of paint on the case walls and PSU/bottom plates. I went over the finish with some 2000 grit sandpaper (wet, of course) one more time to clean off some of the dust that had accumulated and re-evaluate the paint job. I found a few spots that I wasn't quite satisfied with yet, so I put them back in the booth and gave them one more coat. 24 hours of drying in the booth later...

Some of the pieces came out looking great, like the PSU plate:

Others look a bit 'blotchy' around the edges, which I am not quite sure how fix just yet... perhaps more aggressive sanding?

Anyway, I put those aside for now to keep working on all the other pieces... back to the workbench!

As for the other pieces, I put some coats of primer on my radiators, the case housing, and the motherboard tray (really packing the paint booth to make some headway! ):

Afterward, I wet sanded the pieces with P1500, flushed them with clean water, toweled them off, and hung them out to dry:

One thing I forgot to do before priming the midplate was cut the holes for the reservoir and pass-through ports from the motherboard to the lower chamber where the radiators/pump will be. I started off by using the bottom piece of my reservoir to measure out where the holes would be :

As you may notice... the bottom of the reservoir is no longer attached to the reservoir. In fact, the reservoir got completely disassembled thanks to my clumsiness. I accidentally bumped it off the counter after cleaning and testing it, and somehow it landed just right and both the top and bottom popped off, surprisingly enough. The fact that it came off from just a 3 foot drop means it probably wasn't very well adhered anyway... so I'm going to have to reconsider my gluing methods, or try another adhesive. Many sources online said IPS weld-on #3 was the way to go, but I'm second guessing it now. It seemed solid, but I guess I'd rather it come off now than after fully assembled!

Anyway, back to the midplate... I made some crude markings to get a rough location, then drew a more exact box around it to give myself some slack.

My thought is that I am going to fit the reservoir in place, then screw the fittings into it from the bottom of the midplate, so they will essentially hang through the midplate without actually screwing on to it. This greatly simplifies the design I was originally considering, which I'm all for.

The box ended up being 25mm, which was almost exactly right for using a quarter to round off the edges... so that's what I did.

A little bit of work with the Dremmel later, and I had my rough cut:

Now, I just need to work on it a bit with the files to clean it up... but I'll save that for another day.

Next, I took some measurements on the midplate for the PSU, cabling, and through ports, and marked off the area where I would drill the ports. In case it isn't clear, these ports will allow the water to flow from the bottom chamber with the radiators and pumps up to the top chamber where the motherboard and blocks will be, and then back down into the reservoir:

To make these cuts, I decided to go with my drill press and the handy Unibit. I also got a hold of some new cutting oil that is technically for cutting threads, but also supposedly works well for machine bits.

I expected this stuff to be pretty much like WD-40... but eww... it's weird. It's like a slug made of foam!

The fortunate part of this weird lubricant foam was that it stuck to the sides of the bit perfectly, making it super easy to apply without over-applying (like the last time I used cutting oil to cut the holes in my reservoir... ). A few presses later:

Now this piece is ready to clean, re-prime, and paint I think!

Speaking of paint...

I put the first few coats on the case shell, and it's drying for 24 hours now. I still have to do the 'inside' of each piece, wet sand it, put down a second set of coats, wet sand it, and see if it needs a third or not. Painting takes a long time!


Anyway, that's all for now! Good to be back!

 

[FelixJongleur]

I'm glad to see this case coming together - I remember when I first saw it as a concept on here and knew if you pulled it off it would be amazing and it looks like you're close =)

 

[Noblesoft]

Progress report time!

I spent a day or two this past week focused on painting, and was able to make some nice headway! I started by cleaning up the holes that I cut in the midplate from last time, which will allow the reservoir and pass-through fittings to go between the top area of the case and the bottom area. I just used some fine metal files, followed by some 600 grit sandpaper to smooth the edges:

Next, I wet-sanded down the midplate to clear up some of the cutting oil residue and whatnot, in preparation for giving it a re-coat of primer:

Double checked the cuts with the fittings to make sure they lined up the way I intended (you're looking at the underside of the midplate at the moment):

... and back in the booth for some more priming!

While waiting for that coat of primer to dry, I went on to re-evaluate the coat on my case walls. There are some strange effects going on that are hard to capture... I think part of it is that the brushed aluminum pattern from the case wall is showing through the primer and paint, giving it a striped appearance that you can kind of see in the center of the picture here:

I re-sanded the pieces to try and get rid of some of the blotchy-ness from the first few coats that I think was ultimately due to being too stingy with the top coat, and I will be laying down another few layers of paint on these pieces to try and clean that up.

In the meantime, the primer coats on the internal pieces completed drying, and I moved on to painting them as well. These pieces are what I refer to as "internal" parts, in that they are not visible from the outside of the case (for the most part) when it is completely assembled. For these pieces, I decided to paint them with a "flat black" paint from Duplicolor that ends up drying to look just barely not black... almost a really dark grey. Darker grey than MDPC Shade 19. The look is subtle, and I probably won't have the photography skills to capture the difference adequately... but it looks nice.

Here's the radiators in the booth, getting their top coats:

The process I followed was to first put down a light dusting... just enough to cover the primer, but you can still see the primer through it. After 10-15 minutes, I would put down another coat moving in the opposite direction (so up/down if the last coat was left/right), this time with a bit more paint. Finally, I would lay down a third coat, this time with much more paint ensuring full coverage, but not so much that it pooled or ran or anything... just overlapping about 50% of the previous line to get a nice continuous coat. After the top coat dried (I gave these pieces over an hour, which is all the directions on the can recommended) I looked over the coats to make sure there weren't any defects, lightly clean off any dust that settled with a tack cloth, the put it back in the booth for the clear coat.

To clear coat, instead of using spray cans, I ended up using a compressor and a spray gun. The primary reason being, I wanted to use a matte clear coat for these pieces to keep the matte appearance, and I couldn't find any good matte spray cans for Duplicolor paints. Fortunately, my dad had both a spray gun and a compressor to borrow... but the gun is old school, and I'm considering getting my own:

I also have my own compressor, but it's smaller and has a hard time keeping up with extended spray sessions, so I borrowed his (which is massive.) Only issue with this one is that the lowest pressure setting is 40 PSI, which is the maximum rated for the clear coat I'm using.

For putting on the clear coat, I used 3 passes, much like the paint; the first coat was light, the second medium, and the third heavier with a 50% overlap.

I noticed a little ways into laying down the first coat that for some reason, I was getting a lot of little white specks on the clear coat... it looked like residue from the gun or something. I cleaned the gun out well with water and dried it / ran it empty before putting in clear coat... my only thought was that maybe the pressure given by the compressor was too high:

I went ahead and switched it out for my compressor, but it didn't seem to make a lot of difference:

I wonder what's wrong?

The only way I found to counter it really was to lightly rub it down with a tack cloth after waiting 10 minutes for each coat to dry... which got rid of most of the white dots, but a few still remained. I'm probably going to have to lightly wet-sand these coats to try and get rid of the dots, and see where I am from there. If I need to put another coat on, I will probably get my own HVLP air guns and try again. If it ends up looking good after a light wet-sanding though, I may just call it good.

Anyway, some of the pieces came out actually looking pretty good... others (like the motherboard tray and midplate) have a lot of white dots and will need to be redone I think. I took some pictures, regardless.

Here's the midplate... you can see a few of the white specks. Granted, a motherboard will be obscuring the entire plate from corner to corner... so you wouldn't see it... but I'll probably still redo this one. I'm obsessive like that.

Here's the hard drive holders... which really aren't hard drive holders anymore, as the whole area will be taken up by the reservoir. They're more of "structural integrity" pieces now. I managed to clean up the white dots on them pretty well, so I think these are keepers.

The radiators came out fairly nicely as well, so fortunately I won't have to redo them. They also will be mostly obscured by the radiator housing I built earlier on... all but the top edge, that shows "XSPC". Why did I go to all the trouble of painting them? Because!

And finally, the midplate... which is too large for my ghetto little photo booth... so it gets a 'kitchen counter' picture instead.

Next up... cleaning up the white speck issue somehow on these pieces, a few additional coats on the "exterior" pieces of the case, clear coats for them, and re-assembly! Until next time!

 

[Noblesoft]

Hello Hello!

It's been far too long since my last post... unfortunately work has gotten crazy the last month or two, and it's leaving very little time for hobby fun. Alas, sometimes you must do what you have to in order to do what you want to... which is modding! Fortunately, my overbearing work schedule hasn't completely prevented me from making some progress! So much painting to do... it feels like it never ends!


So, when we last left off, I had put down some matte clear coat on my matte black "inside pieces", and I had a weird issue with white specks being embedded in the surface. After some searching around online, I ultimately concluded that it had everything to do with my cleaning process... which was to follow some very poor advice online and just spray thinner through the gun and call it a day. Needless to say, that wasn't sufficient... but at that time, I was a spray gun novice, and didn't know any better. Proper research showed that if you will be setting the gun down for any more than a few hours, it's best to completely tear it down and clean each individual piece with paint thinner, then leave it disassembled to dry. I put this to good practice with my new toy:

It's not an overly expensive setup, but it's better than the old unknown spraygun that my grandfather originally purchased to spray his farm equipment with.

The spray gun kit came with two such guns... one small HVLP version for doing finishing work and small stuff, and one large HVLP version for doing higher volume stuff. It also came with many "nice to have" items like a cleaning kit, some disposable paint cups, and multiple nozzle sizes from 1.2 up to 1.8. It was a real steal at the local hardware store, too. I researched the gun a bit online first, and it appears to be a very popular one commonly referred to as "the purple gun" which is cheap and medium-low quality by default... but with a bit of customization and TLC ends up being a great gun!

Most of the modifications included replacing the plastic washers (or in many cases, non-existent washers) with some nice new nitrile washers, and replacing a lot of the spray-on thread goop with some nice quality teflon tape. $5 in spare parts with a little labor to turn a chump into a champ? Absolutely!

The other piece I bought for this outfit was a pressure regulator and air filter / water remover kit... which greatly improves the quality of the job by tightly regulating air flow and removing any contaminants and moisture in the air supply.

This stuff probably cost me no more than $20 at the local hardware store, too. Well worth it! Anyway, more on this gun later.


The other issue I was having last post was that I could see some 'patterns' in the shiny black pieces that gave the finish an odd effect... one that certainly wouldn't work out well for the mirror finish I wanted to achieve on my case exterior! I ultimately determined that the issue with these patterns showing up was that I was a bit too stingy on the amount of paint I was using. Everyone says to put only multiple light coats on... but I think perhaps my version of "light" was closer to "transparent". Anyway, I upped the quantity of paint laid on by slowing down the spray cans as I passed from left to right, and moved the cans in closer to 6-8 inches instead of 8-10 as I was using before. The result was immediately and obviously apparent:

Almost no more lines, and a much healthier "shiny-er" black. This was just the first pass, and I did two more passes of similar weight switching from up/down to left/right each time. I let that business dry in the paint booth for about 30 minutes before moving on to the next step... clear coat!

Here's the first couple coats of gloss clear drying on the case doors:

Of course, a few specks of dust settled on the surface despite my booth and all the precautions I took... but these easily came off with a wipe of a rag after I let the parts dry for 24 hours, so no big deal. I let the parts dry for about an hour or so in the booth until they were no longer tacky, then lightly took them out and set them on the bench to dry for a day or two.

My camera skills don't really reveal, but the spray gun so far has done an excellent job of laying down a nice smooth finish. There is orange peel, of course, but I've come to understand that orange peel is just a reality of painting.

I went on to lay down paint and clear on the remaining pieces, and stood them up around my garage wherever I had room:

Things were going so well... but of course, the very last piece had an issue. I saw it happen in slow motion... spraying a sweep of clear over the last (and of course, most important/visible) part of the case, a lonely strand of hair floated between the piece and the spray gun, and it was adhered to the surface deep under a layer of clear. I couldn't leave it there, or it would dry between the clear and color coat... giving very little chance of rescuing the finish. I didn't want to have to re-do the whole piece, so I did my best to pull the hair out of the clear... but unfortunately, it messed up the color coat anyway:

It's always the last piece! Oh well, no saving it now. I let the piece dry as is for a day, then set to work sanding it back down to prepare for another few coats of color.

Of course, I spent the time breaking down and properly cleaning my gun in preparation for another long day to come!

The next day, I sanded the affected area down to flat using some P600 wet sand paper, trying to avoid going all the way back to bare metal, which would require me to start over with the primer coat again.

I then went on to lay down another triple-set of color coat, followed by a set of clear coat. Fortunately, it completed safely this time without any stray hairs. In addition to this marred piece, I decided to redo my midplate as it had too much of that white speckled stuff to save. I sanded it back down to bare metal and re-primed it.

I briefly checked on the other pieces to see how they were drying... partly to remind myself that the extra effort makes it worth it. Drying nicely...

The following weekend, I decided to work on sanding down the orange peel in preparation for that long sought-after mirror finish. I set up my sanding table and blocks for what I hoped to be a short day:

I started out with some 2000 grit sandpaper, water, and a dab of soap for 15-20 passes lightly... barely any pressure, more letting the block slide than anything:

Only enough to scratch the surface. All the shiny spots are pits that need to be sanded down. And this is only one small piece of the case. I have a looooong day ahead of me. The sanding with 2000 was taking too long, so I decided to back down to 1500 to get some more cutting action and save myself a few sheets of sandpaper (not to mention some time and a lot of effort). Here we are with 15 minutes of effort or so at 1500:

Some spots are there... but still tons of tiny speckles. After a lot more careful sanding at 1500 to get rid of all the pits, I switched to 2000 and changed directions as well:

Note, I left the orange peel along the edges for now. In this shot, I was just focusing on the center and making sure my process was going to work right. You can see that the right side that has been done by 2000 grit is starting to get a little shiny, where the left that was done by 1500 only is just hazy. I sanded a bunch more with 2000 grit until I could no longer see the horizontal lines from the 1500, then went to work with a microfiber cloth and some polishing compound meant for cars:

Getting there! The left is after a hardy polishing, the right is just from the 2000 grit. We're approaching that mirror finish... but this took a LOT of polishing compound and effort. I'm thinking I need some "buffing compound" first that is a higher grit to remove more of the cuts... and once that is done, I follow it up with the polishing compound. I'll see what I can find at the auto shop.


Needless to say, I have a lot of sanding and polishing to do. Until next time!

 

[Noblesoft]

A little off topic... but Bitspower notified me that they are releasing a new DDC top that's clear/frosted acrylic with a tube reservoir built into the top. Check it out here. I got notified early via my sponsorship, so I figured I would share the news.

I've always thought about picking up something like this for a HTPC project or smaller case, where there really isn't much room to be putting in a reservoir or something. I take something like this, mount it to a desk or more visible surface, and run tubes back to the case (which rarely moves anyway) where it would hook into some quick-disconnect thru-ports or something...

I really should stop thinking about more mod projects while I still have so much left to do on this one...

 

[Robertmarcus]

one mod at a time my friend.

 

[Noblesoft]

one mod at a time my friend.

Lol, tell me about it. My wife would kill me.

 

[cyberjihad]

this build inspired me a lot. i saw a v2000b case on cragslist and couldnt pass it up! (paid 40 bucks)

debated on letting you know i had it but i know you will take the mod in a better direction

couple of pages there... i was like whoa.... shakin my head really bad. felt horrible. but then you made the prizm look really good and this mod looks really good again. there was some real doh shit moments hahaha

 

[Noblesoft]

this build inspired me a lot. i saw a v2000b case on cragslist and couldnt pass it up! (paid 40 bucks)

debated on letting you know i had it but i know you will take the mod in a better direction

couple of pages there... i was like whoa.... shakin my head really bad. felt horrible. but then you made the prizm look really good and this mod looks really good again. there was some real doh shit moments hahaha

Thanks! Yea, there's always "Doh. Shit!" moments when trying something new. As long as you are patient and relentless in the pursuit of perfection, you'll eventually get it right!

Good luck with your build! The v2000b is a great case for modding!

 

[Noblesoft]

Hello Everyone!

Last time we left off... I made a few "minor" mistakes in trying to achieve my mirror finish on my exterior pieces, cutting all the way through my base coat in one or two places. Whoops.

Anyway, I went on to repair the pieces by sanding down a few layers of the clear coat, and in the mistake areas all the way back to the primer.

After that, I laid down a new base coat, followed by a heavy re-coat of clear. Hopefully this will give me a bit more of a buffer of clear that I can cut through to get rid of all the orange peel. Now, I just had to wait a week for the clear to dry again.

... and of course, I cleaned out my spray gun again. I picked up some different cleaner (lacquer thinner instead of mineral spirits, works much better...) and a few extra tools like a solvent-proof spray bottle to help with cleaning.

One week later (this weekend!) I finally got to make another shot at wet-sanding the exterior pieces. I started off with the bottom plate of my case... which will actually not be visible... but I figured it's a good piece to test on.

First, I filled a painting tray (one of those plastic things you use with a paint roller to paint a house) with water and a dab of soap, and put all of my sandpaper in to soak for a few minutes. Once soaked, I started with 1000 grit as I had a lot of orange peel to cut through. This part took the longest, I had to be very careful not to cut through edges, but had to smooth out every single little dot. After about an hour of working on the piece with 1000 grit, I ended up with a finish like this:

It took a bit of experimenting, but the process I worked out that more or less "guaranteed" that I didn't cut through the edges was to use my fingers along the edges like a "bumper" of sorts... like so:

The other thing I did was make sure that I never pushed the sanding block over an edge that wasn't parallel to the direction I was sanding. So this is fine:

And this, is not!

Next, I switched to 1500 grit and changed directions. I went over the entire piece until I could no longer see the side to side marks from the previous sanding job with 1000 grit, meaning I had leveled out all the deep cuts.

No more cuts visible from the 1000 grit going side to side means I'm ready to move on:

Next, I went over the whole piece again in 2000 grit, once again switching directions. You can see that I am starting to get a good reflection going at this point... but we're nowhere near done yet!

Once all the lines from 1500 were gone and only 2000 grit lines were left, it was time to move on to 2500 grit. I also switched from a rubber sanding block to a sponge with the sandpaper wrapped around. This helped cut down on the depth of the lines... but as a result took many more passes to get rid of all the 2000 grit lines:

Looking even closer! Now, I moved on to some rubbing compound meant for renewing your finish on your car:

The rubbing compound has a bit more grit to it than the polishing compound, and does a better job of removing the scratches from the 2500 grit with less material required. I switched directions while using the rubbing compound one more time, going back and forth until no lines were visible from the 2500 grit. I used a microfiber cloth that I picked up at the automotive store I bought the rubbing compound and such from. I also used 'color coded' cloths so that I didn't mix up the cloth I used for rubbing compound from the one I used for polishing. I used one orange cloth to apply the the rubbing compound, and another clean orange one to remove the compound. I then used one blue to apply the polishing compound, and another blue one to remove the compound. The result:

Perfect!

Hello there!

(It looks a little hazy, but that's because my shutter length / ISO wasn't quite right on my camera or something... it was hard to capture this picture... )

I then went on to give the same exact treatment to the top of my case:

Hooray! All that work is finally paying off. All in all, these two pieces took me about 6-7 hours. It's quite an extensive process, but most of what took so long was dealing with the complicated angles in the top of my case and such... it was very slow work trying to clean up all the edges in the design without cutting through. If you have a plain surface, it should go much faster!

Now, I just have to give the same treatment to the two case doors, the other half of the case shell, and the PSU bracket. I'm hoping I'll get them all done next weekend, or maybe sometime into the week after! I have some time off, and I know what I'll be doing with it.

Until next time!

 

[wra18th]

That turned out great! I'm taking notes for when I try doing the same.

 

[Noblesoft]

That turned out great! I'm taking notes for when I try doing the same.

Glad I could help someone else out! The process I followed was more or less an "average" of the processes that many other people outlined on the net... so I can't take all the credit... but my process isn't quite like what anyone else specifically wrote either... so in that sense it's uniquely mine.

 

[cyberjihad]

this build inspired me a lot. i saw a v2000b case on cragslist and couldnt pass it up! (paid 40 bucks)

debated on letting you know i had it but i know you will take the mod in a better direction

couple of pages there... i was like whoa.... shakin my head really bad. felt horrible. but then you made the prizm look really good and this mod looks really good again. there was some real doh shit moments hahaha

Yep I had my share of fun jacking up an Antec-900 before I chop into this... and the only reason I bought that case was because of this thread.

OH MUH GAW THAT REFLECTION! I knew with all the effort you were putting into painting this thing it would turn out amazing... can't wait to see the whole thing glossed and put together

 

[Noblesoft]

Yep I had my share of fun jacking up an Antec-900 before I chop into this... and the only reason I bought that case was because of this thread.

OH MUH GAW THAT REFLECTION! I knew with all the effort you were putting into painting this thing it would turn out amazing... can't wait to see the whole thing glossed and put together

It's a great case. I had some serious reservations about cutting into it in the first place, just because I liked it as it was and knew it would be hard (if not impossible) to find a replacement.

I'm eager to see what it looks like all put together as well... hope it looks as good as it does in my head.

 

[Noblesoft]

Hello Everybody!

Man... it's been a hell of a month. This is quite literally my first day off... in fact, my first 8 hours in a row off... since I got back from vacation in the middle of last month! Work has been absolutely insane. But, I finally have a little time to myself... and where else would I spend it, but with updating everyone on my progress!

As I eluded to last time, I was going to work quite a bit more on giving my remaining exterior pieces the mirror finish they deserve. These pieces were absolutely brutal to complete without screwing up. Took a very long time, especially the parts with perforation. I'll just jump right into the pictures and let you enjoy the outcome... not many words necessary!

*phew* Nice to have all that done!

Once all the exterior "clam shell" pieces were completed (the parts that make up the frame of the case) I went on to doing the doors. If you will recall, these doors had quite a bit of custom Dremel work done on them, making them an extremely difficult piece. Couple that with the fact that I wanted them to be absolutely flawless since they will be the 'star of the show' so to speak, and you end up with a heck of a lot of care and effort going into getting the finish just right.

I'll go through the exact process I followed, just in case anyone wants to duplicate my steps. Sharing knowledge about the build experience is what this log is all about, anyway!


To give you an idea of where I start from, here's the piece after drying for a few weeks without any sanding or modification done:

You can see it's a literal "sea" of orange peel... everything is blurry like you are looking through security glass. It's probably a combination of my painting skills (or lack thereof! ) and my paint gun that produce this... I'm not really sure if you can get a paint job without this level of orange peel... but fortunately a bit of effort will clear it all up!

I start out with P1000 sandpaper from 3M. I pick up mine in the paint section of my local automotive shop... but I am sure you can find it elsewhere. They have a nice "kit" of sandpaper that has 1000, 1500, 2000, and 2500 all together for pretty cheap. I also have some rubber sanding blocks that have little flaps with spikes in them, so that you can tuck the sandpaper around the block and lock it in place. That makes sanding flat surfaces SO much easier than trying to evenly distribute the weight of your hand or anything like that.

I also get a painters tray with a couple of cups of water, put a single dot of common dish soap in it, and stir it a little to distribute the soap. This helps the sanding block glide a bit better by reducing the surface tension of the water between the block and the surface of the material. I then throw all my sandpaper in there and let it soak for at least a good 15 minutes before using it, so that there isn't any dry paper left.

Finally, I have a large bag of color-coded microfiber rags that I use so that I know what rags I used on each step of the process, and I can avoid using the wrong rags with the wrong grit of sandpaper/polish, thus producing larger scratches than intended while cleaning off the surface to check that orange peel is gone.

Now that all the setup is out of the way, I start by sanding in one direction (we'll say left to right) across the entire piece as much as possible. Sometimes I have to switch directions on detail pieces or corners, but the more you can stick to one direction, the easier it is later on. Every 20 or so passes on a spot, I will stop sanding, flush the area with water and dry it with a rag, and then check to see if all the orange peel is gone. This helps me ensure that I go no deeper through the clear coat than I have to, which will help make sure I don't go all the way through into the color coat by accident, since I am sanding this so many times!

Here's one of the case doors after the first pass with 1000. This part definitely takes the longest because you have to sand the entire surface until all of the orange peel is completely gone... leaving a hazy (but scratched up) clean surface.

You can see, if you look very very closely in that slightly more white section in the center of the picture, there is a tiny extra deep pock-mark of orange peel. All that has to be gone, or it will be extremely obvious in the final finish! This first pass is also the most dangerous pass, because P1000 sandpaper has a lot of removal action... so if you grind on one place for too long, you'll go right through your clear coat and be back at square one! I've done it a few times... it's painful.

You have to be extremely careful along edges and corners while using P1000 also. I would do no more than 10-15 passes when sanding "over the edge", as you remove way more material from edges than you do from surfaces. I use my fingers along the edges I am sanding to create a sort of "bumper" that will keep the sanding block from going off the edge of the surface, which keeps it from digging in too deep and removing too much material. The problem is, orange peel likes to hide at the edges... so I usually have to sand "along" the edge even if that isn't the direction I am sanding... and once I'm satisfied that I've sanded down the previous layer enough, I go over it a few more times in the correct direction to get everything uniform.

After all the orange peel is gone, you switch to the next level of sandpaper (1500) and switch directions (up/down now). This pass also takes quite a bit of work, because P1000 leaves fairly deep grooves in your clear coat, requiring many passes to remove it all. You can see at the center/bottom edge of this shot where I haven't quite gotten rid of all the "side to side" scratches. Gotta get every single one!

These little groves along the edge of the case wall were a disaster waiting to happen, too... you can kinda see that the clear coat and paint is slightly risen compared to the rest of the surface... which is very easy to grind through by accident! Not to mention, every little ridge is like it's own corner... so the edge of this case panel was extremely hazardous to sand. I honestly expected to screw it up... but I got lucky! Here we are, done with 1500. You can see the shine starting to show through!

Now on to 2000 grit, changing directions yet again! As the grit gets higher, it gets easier and less passes are required. I'd say that 1000 took as long as 1500, 2000, and 2500 combined. All you have to do is sand until the scratches from the previous direction are no longer visible, and then you are on to the next grit!

And finally... 2500 grit. For this level of grit, I switched from a rubber sanding block to a sponge. The reason I switched, was that I felt like it was a bit softer and less likely to cause deep grooves from trapped material or whatnot. I would flush off the piece much more often at this level, and try not to push down at all... just let the weight of the sponge do all the work, and use many many many light passes.

Now that all the sanding is done... on to the rubbing compound. This stuff is almost like a soupy toothpaste, that has tiny bits of grit inside it. I would always use a particular color of microfiber cloth that I didn't use for anything else, because the grit gets caught in the cloth and you don't want to accidentally use it on a piece that you are polishing instead. I would lay a ribbon of compound onto a small area I was going to work on, maybe 6 inches x 6 inches, and use the cloth with my hand in it to "buff" in the opposite direction of the 2500 grit fairly hard... maybe 50 or so passes over each area, giving a fairly strong downward force to really work out the 2500 scratches. I didn't need to use a lot of rubbing compound because I went to the 2500 level with sandpaper. Previously , I was stopping at 2000, and it took a lot of rubbing compound. Once I had gone over an area with rubbing compound, I would use a cloth of the same color to wipe off the area and get rid of the extra residue.

Looks pretty much done, right? Nope! Still have polishing to do! Unfortunately, the difference wasn't easily capturable by my camera... it's a very subtle nuance. But it's worth doing the polish layer afterward!

To polish the piece, I would use yet another color of cloth, another similar ribbon of polishing compound, and go in a swirling motion instead of an up/down or left/right. This makes it very obvious if there are any scratches left from either direction that need to be worked on. Sometimes, if I uncovered a rough patch, I would go back to rubbing compound and work on it a bit more to get rid of any residual scratches... especially on corners, where I was more careful with sanding. After polishing an area, I would get another cloth of the same color as my polishing cloth to clear/clean the area and validate that no scratches were visible anymore.

Done!

Here's a quick before/after I took. The piece on the left is after clear coat without being modified at all. The piece on the right is after it's first polish pass letting it "rest" for a week. You can see a couple of scratches visible on the right piece, particularly in the bright areas. I noticed that if I let the piece sit for a few days/weeks after polishing, some "ghost scratches" would start to come back. I intend to go over the pieces one more time with rubbing compound and polishing compound to stamp those out. My guess is that the compound would get in the scratches making them disappear... but once the compound dried or got wiped off, it became visible again. I'm betting another pass will get rid of those!

Anyway... now that all the months of painting are coming to a close... time to get back to the bench for the real fun stuff... reassembly!

I started off by cutting some more custom-length M3 screws with my metric wire strippers. I needed about 8 of these to reassemble the bottom of the case and casters. The original screws wouldn't work anymore, as I added the bottom plate and acrylic piece (for a future feature!) to the stack, making them too short. I measured out the needed length, then cut each screw to be the same.

Here we are, screwing the casters back on to the bottom plate:

Good! We're back on wheels again!

Next, I put the other half of the clam shell back on, and assembled the drain plug through the whole business:

Alas, that's as far as I got!

Hopefully some more time soon, as work starts to slow down again! Can't wait to get everything re-assembled so I can start to sleeve all my components! See you next time!

 

[Robertmarcus]

That reflection is sweet.
What hardware is being put in this?

 

[Noblesoft]

That reflection is sweet.
What hardware is being put in this?

Thanks!

So far, I'll be putting in the same hardware that's listed at the first post... over a year old at this point, but still pretty good!

For a recap:

Case: Lian-Li PC-v2000b
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K
Motherboard: EVGA z77 FTW
Graphics: EVGA GTX 680 SC+
RAM: 16GB of Samsung MV-3V4G3D/US
PSU: Corsair AX850 Gold
Storage: OCZ Agility 3 SSD, 2x 2TB WD Caviar drives (Raid 1)

As for the cooling components:
Radiators: 2x XSPC RX480 Quad Radiators
CPU Block: Swiftech Apogee HD
GPU Block: EK-Waterblocks GTX680 full cover Nickel-plated
Reservoir: Custom
Fans: 10x Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP-15's (8 on radiators, 2 misc)
Pumps: EK-DDC Dual v2 top with two Swiftech MCP35X pumps
Fittings: Tons of Bitspower Shining Silver compression fittings, and some Monsoon free-center fittings

 

[MouseTrap]

Very nice work!
How many hours to you think you have in the prep and paint so far?

 

[Stevennoland]

Your patience is amazing. Super job on the paint. Looks fantastic!

 

[Noblesoft]

Very nice work!
How many hours to you think you have in the prep and paint so far?

Thanks!

As far as how long I've spent on painting... dear god, I shudder to even think. Easily over 100 hours. Probably closer to 200 hours...

Granted, I was over-cautious most of the time as I had zero painting experience going into this... so a lot of research, testing, re-testing, making mistakes, and fixing mistakes. I'd wager that if I had to start over with bare aluminum right now, I could probably repeat everything I did in around 40 hours, spread over several weeks (to allow for drying time, etc.)

Your patience is amazing. Super job on the paint. Looks fantastic!

Thank you! Indeed, uncanny patience is required, especially while sanding all the perforated parts and corners. The urge to just go at it with a belt sander was uncontrollable by the last pieces.

The only things that kept me going were loud music, a lot of coffee, many gaming breaks, and being able to see my reflection in the first piece I did, which I placed near the entrance/exit to my garage, so I had to look at it every time I went by.

 

[blaze2210]

I created an account here just to compliment you on the build. I spent about 2 days reading through this log, and am impressed with the amount of care that you are putting into this build. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished project!!

 

[Noblesoft]

I created an account here just to compliment you on the build. I spent about 2 days reading through this log, and am impressed with the amount of care that you are putting into this build. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished project!!

Thanks!

Also, on a side note, got a notice that Bitspower has released new full cover blocks for the Nvidia Titan... can anyone say "upgrade"?

So beautiful.

 

[Robertmarcus]

Damn. that chrome one.

 

[blaze2210]

That black one with the window in the dragon looks f'in sweet!!!!

 

[Noblesoft]

Hello everyone!

Picking up where I left off last time, I was starting to reassemble my case. Last time, it was just the clamshell that was really put together... only a few tabs fitting into slots, and a few screws to put the wheels on. Now, it's time for some rivets. Sorry in advance for the terrible photo quality. It was 110F outside, so far too hot to work in the garage... thus I had to work inside, where the light is not so good.


Here's an initial shot with the rivets just set in place while I tried to remember how this whole thing went back together... man, more complicated than I remember. Fortunately, I took a lot of pictures before I disassembled it... which helped greatly in remembering which pieces went together in what order. Like a giant 3D puzzle.

It took quite a bit of doing, but I finally got the power button all reassembled and attached to the midplate again...

You can see the midplate is just a little wavy from the welding/warping... but fortunately, this area will be completely covered by the reservoir, so it will not be noticeable.

Next, I started riveting using a trick I picked up a while ago while reading forums on the proper way to use these black rivets without scraping all the paint off. I put two layers of masking tape over the "nut" on the front of the rivet gun, so that when it presses against the face of the rivet it has a bit of cushion:

I replaced this tape after every rivet to make sure that each one went perfect. Maybe a bit overboard, but it worked perfectly.

Looking good!

Got the motherboard plate reattached to the midplate and case clamshell. These were a pain in the butt to do... upside down, with not enough room to put the rivet gun head flat against the surface. Luckily, it came out good.

Next, I started putting some of the Bitspower hardware back into the case. In the midplate, I decided to use these fill ports as a sort of "pass through" port, rather than routing a tube through a blank hole. I thought it looked a little more "professional" that way... plus, it gave me an excuse to liven up the otherwise plain midplate area with some nice shiny chrome hardware.

When I cut the holes for these originally, I made them a very tight fit to make sure there was no vibration or anything. Well... it turns out I made them just a BIT too tight... with the primer/paint/matte coat on them, they no longer fit. Fortunately, easy enough to fix with some P400 sandpaper. I just sanded down the inside ring till I was back to bare aluminum, and the plugs fit right in.

After a long day of riveting, this is all I have to show for it:

Doesn't look like much, huh?

Here we are, somewhat reassembled!

I'm not super happy about the visibility of the weld spots on the underside of the midplate... but it's pretty difficult to see them from any angle other than this one, shot from underneath the case while it's up on a table. So I'm not too worried about it... for now. Maybe for V2 I'll look at rebuilding my own midplate... or maybe just do a scratch build while I am at it.

You can also see one of my wifes stuffed animals in the reflection... a flamingo, wearing a sombrero, named Mother Clucker. I didn't realize I caught his reflection in this shot until posting it... but thought it was funny enough to leave.

And here's the prototype radiator just set in there for effect. I still haven't cut the new bottom/top portions of it... I am just using the old ones for sizing for now.

Up next time, re-doing the reservoir with a new bottom/top, and doing some cable routing on the radiator housing... and maybe sleeve the pumps? Till next time!

 

[OofC_S7v7N]

This is coming along amazingly! Great work mate!

 

[Noblesoft]

This is coming along amazingly! Great work mate!

Thank you!

 

[Noblesoft]

Now that I had the basic reassembly completed, time to start preparing some of the components I've assembled for installation into the case!

First, I started with rebuilding my reservoir that was 'disassembled' by my cat a while back. I decided to go ahead and cut a new top/base, since the original one was a bit marred by the glue and probably wouldn't seal well. I also relocated the holes to be more central, since I'm not putting the light bar in the center of the reservoir (for this iteration, anyway... ).

Next, I used my old tapping rig that I made a few posts back to tap the two holes for G1/4 fittings to screw directly into the base:

I'm sure there's actually a tool meant for this kind of thing... but this works well enough. I did change up my process slightly to ensure a cleaner/sharper cut. I would now set the tap up like below, then shoot a small amount of cutting fluid into the hole/on top of the bit before starting. This just lubricated the blades on the bit a little more, making it cut easier.

With that done, time to glue the top and bottom back onto the tube! I changed my process here a little bit as well, after the learning experience from gluing it the last time. I started by putting the wooden guide triangle you can see in the top right of the below picture around the tube, but about 5mm away from the end. This way, I could use it to center on the acrylic triangle using my fingers, but it wouldn't pull the glue out of the seam with capillary action like it did last time.

I also glued the unit "upside down" this time, putting the tube on the table and running a small line of glue on the top of the tube, then pressing the triangle onto the top of the tube until it held. I would then flip the whole thing over and shoot glue around the outside edge of the tube where it meets the acrylic triangle, allowing capillary action to pull the glue into the seam if there were any gaps. I still wish the seal would look cleaner, but this weld-on #4 is pretty watery and hard to manage right. I could use a different glue, like Weld-on #16, but I've heard it has a white appearance when it dries, which would be even worse.

Once the "base" of the reservoir was glued to the tube, I used the reservoir housing piece as a guide for gluing the top of the reservoir onto the tube... I couldn't use the wooden guide, as it would be permanently stuck on the tube afterwards, sandwiched between the bottom and top. Glad I noticed that before I mindlessly went ahead and did it.

After that, I filled it up with water and plugged all the holes to let it sit for a few days and make sure it doesn't leak. I checked back after a few days, no water spots or leaks... dry as a bone. Just to be sure, I did a quick cheap "pressure test" by sealing a fitting onto one of the openings and blowing into a tube... just to make sure it didn't force any water out. I know there are pressure testing rigs that will do this too... but my method is cheap, and just as effective.

As I mentioned, I didn't really like the look of the seems... but I am hesitant to re-do it again in vain hopes for a better result... instead, I am thinking of a good looking way to mask it. I though about perhaps some kind of black vinyl design or something around the top and bottom of the tube, which would hide the seam area and ports, which are clearly visible. To try and fix it, I quickly threw on some electrical tape I had, just to see what it looks like:

Before and after, with the prism lit up:

Hmm... not bad... it definitely does a good job of hiding the ports and seams, but it can be better. I'll have to think. Perhaps if the vinyl 'mask' on the top and bottom is some kind of design or something...


Anyway, on to other tasks for now! There were a few modifications to the radiator housing that I had been planning in my head for a while now. I wanted to make it so the cables from all the fans were hidden, or at least better organized.

To do that, I disassembled the housing and marked off where I wanted to cut a few holes, using a wax pencil:

I clamped it down to my drill press, dabbed on some cutting oil, and put a few holes in it where marked:

Reassembled it, and fed the cables through...

Much nicer!

I also considered rotating the fans once, so that the sleeve shows a little bit (since will have that nice MDPC sleeving on it!):

Not sure which I will go with... leaning towards the second one... especially since the fourth fan at the back looks more similar to the other three, whereas in the top picture you can see the cable for the fourth fan has to 'backtrack' a bit to go to its hole. This second way, they are more uniform.

Next, time to plan out where to put all the cabling!

Hooking up 8 fans makes quite a spaghetti mess of cables. I had some cheap-o 4-way fan splitters that I picked up, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to use them or not. They end up leaving a lot of extra length of cable to deal with, and they are ugly (though they would be hidden anyway...). Meh, maybe I won't use them. Too messy. Time to think of something better...

There are these nice spaces that I left myself underneath the reservoir where I can hide power cabling for the fans and pumps, as well as an arduino controller to manage the fan speeds and such based on water temperature. My initial thought was just to cram all the cabling down there, but looking at it upside down, I thought of a better way to do it. I quickly cut out some acrylic squares to use for prototyping:

Hmm... much neater this way! All I have to do is cut some holes through the clear acrylic blocks for the fan cables to pass through, and I can make a simple PCB that will fit in the bottom area to which all the fans will connect. Then, I just have one cable going from this "daughter board" over to the arduino "main board" in the cell next to it!

First, time to cut some pass-through holes for the fan cables. I planned on putting one hole through the center of each block, which should be more than enough to fit all the cables:

Now... being the cautious person I am, I pulled out one of the scrap acrylic bars that I cut too short, and used to to try out cutting the holes. These are large diameter holes through rather thick acrylic... and I have had this particular acrylic shatter on me before for no good reason... so I wanted to practice a bit and make sure I didn't ruin any of these acrylic cross-bars by breaking them.

I set up one of the scrap bars, clamped it down to the drill press, and ran a few holes through it. The first hole went fine until the last little bit, where it caught the edge and cracked the surface. Blah. I scooted the bar over, made another hole... same thing. Ugh! One more time, with more oil and a little slower... this time, the bar completely exploded, jammed on the drill press, and chopped up my hand in the process.

Stupid bar! Alas, I had to call it quits there for a while... being down one hand with an already finicky piece of acrylic could only spell disaster from here... so I stopped for the weekend to nurse my wounds and think about how best to make these holes.

Until next time!

 

[MetallicAcid]

You could make the holes first, then cut the acrylic to size

MetallicAcid

 

[Stevennoland]

Acrylic is an unforgiving bitch of a mistress. Sorry about the bar and your fingers.

 

[Noblesoft]

Well, my hand is feeling quite a bit better at this point, and the work I was doing that caused the original injury is now complete! It doesn't look like much work now that it's all together below... but it took quite a few hours to get this all done and right.

First, to make sure there were no further injuries, I went out and bought the tool I should have been using all along... a drill press vise!

Now that acrylic bar isn't going ANYWHERE. The drilling position for repeated presses is a bit more precise, too, which is always nice! The other real trick to getting clean holes this large without shattering the acrylic was to slow down how quickly I was pressing down on the bit substantially, especially as I was about to breach the other side of the bar. I was going about a millimeter every second or so before... I dialed that back to about a millimeter every 3-4 seconds... more of a 'shaving' action than a 'drilling' action at that rate... but it worked perfectly.

I did a bit more planning on how I wanted to route and separate cables down under the radiators, then went to town drilling holes on my spacer bars. I ended up deciding on three paths due to the eventual number of cables I would be sending between cells... one for power, one for sensors, and one for data/uplink. I'll be powering and controlling 8 fans from this little area, along with the sensors for water temperature and such... so lots of wires coming and going.

In addition, I needed a square hole that could fit a USB type B cable for powering and controlling the Arduino, so I got to work filing one of the holes into a square:

Perfect!

The cable will route through the end spacer of my radiator housing and directly into the Arduino, like so. The Arduino will be mounted to a thin sheet of acrylic... or perhaps in some kind of housing that will be attached via velcro to the underside of the housing... I haven't decided yet.

Here we are with most of the routing in place:

The center cell in the picture will be where a small 'power distribution' breakout board will be located. I'll have two standard 4-pin molex power lines from the PSU come down and power that board, which in turn will send power to all the fans and pumps and whatnot. That distribution board is still a work in progress... but should be together for next time! Cya then!

 

[Noblesoft]

Hello Everyone!

It's been a bit of a delay since my last update... had a few weddings to attend followed by a delightful Windows 8.1 upgrade corrupting my storage drive ... so things have been busy. Fortunately, I'm back in business now, and have make a few bits of progress on the reservoir!

In all previous photos, I just had the reservoir and housing 'sitting' on the midplate in the drive bay area, not really attached to anything as shown in this picture:

I played with a few ideas on how best to attach the reservoir, but figured the easiest method would be to have some supports attached to the sides and use the slots in the drive bay with some screws to mount it in place. First, I measured a few times and cut myself some acrylic blocks with the appropriate counter-angle to my reservoir:

There we are, nice and snug. I got the acrylic bars about where they were going to be, then marked off some spots to drill holes into them:

Tossed them in the trusty drill press / vise:

After the holes were drilled, I hammered in some of those little "press fit" screw housings so that I had some metal-threaded 'taps' into the bars, then screwed them into place on the drive cage:

A top-down view of the housing/supports as they will be once glued together:

Next, I had to 'actually' glue my housing together. As you can see from the above picture, up until this point it was in two pieces: the sides, then the top/tube/bottom. I glued them together using some of my IPS Weld-on #3 so that they would maintain a nice 'neat' seam.

After that, I sanded the face of the reservoir housing so that all the edges were even and such. I left myself some slack knowing that I would need to even up the edges as getting them perfectly exact was near impossible. As you can see below, the face sticks out just a bit pre-sanding:

The easiest way I found to get a nice even flat face was to tape a sheet of sandpaper onto a board and rub the face of the reservoir housing back and forth over it:

After the face was nice and flush, I powered up the hot glue gun and ran a few beads of hot glue on the 'angled' face of each supporting beam while it was still attached to the drive cage, then seated the completed reservoir and housing against it, making sure the face was flush with the case. After that, I ran a few beads of hot glue around the support beams to make sure they held well... this will get a bit heavy when it's full of water, and I don't want it deciding to give up the ghost under the weight after everything is all together.

The glue job is a bit ugly, but fortunately once my case is completely assembled it's impossible to see this area. In fact, I'll be hiding cables and such here, so I really don't mind if it's a little ugly in the name of stability.

A view of the mounted reservoir from the sides:

Nice and clean looking!

With the reservoir all put together, I now finally have all of the 'hardware' for my cooling loop in place! Huzzaw!

Now, I just have to do the tubing and the 'functional' part of the water loop is complete! Obviously, I won't do that until almost last... so much more to do before that!

Anyway... that killed about two weekends getting the reservoir housing done... looking at the pictures back to back it seems like about 15 minutes of work. That's how these things go, I've come to find... the small stuff takes the longest!

Anyway... on to the next big piece of my case. I'm in the planning and design phases of it now... can you guess what it is?

Until next time!

 

[somewhatdamaged]

must...have...more...

 

[FrEaKy]

Yeah this is a pretty sweet mod, more details and stuff would be awesome.