Project :: Silver Shadow

Mmmm, this reminds me - I need to get some pics up of my mod (not as extensive as this, though, unfortunately i don't have enough money for a damn processor, let alone a 3-waterblock high flow rate watercooling system with LEDs :D). Thinking about it though, i may have to wait and see if CPC want to take it first - they might want exclusivity on the job, i dunno if it applies to forums too
 
Wally said:
Mmmm, this reminds me - I need to get some pics up of my mod (not as extensive as this, though, unfortunately i don't have enough money for a damn processor, let alone a 3-waterblock high flow rate watercooling system with LEDs :D). Thinking about it though, i may have to wait and see if CPC want to take it first - they might want exclusivity on the job, i dunno if it applies to forums too
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Cheers :) Look forward to seeing your mod. I'm also eager to see if CPC will publish this, i've got nothing to loose. Need to get cracking or i'll never get it finished. Thanks again for the kind words.

Due to head injury a while ago i've not been up to much (rock + head), I did however get the panels cut before it happened.

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Just need to get them filed down, sanded and they're ready for painting :D Should be easy going from there, just setting up the water cooling and what have you.

Enjoy ;)
 
I’m sure most of you have seen these pictures, here they are again anyway.

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Here’s the cut side panel, the cuts were made with a jigsaw. I asked at the school workshops to borrow one but they didn’t want to for safety reasons, I ended up biting the bullet and buying one :)

All the cutting went well; the area around the handle needs a little filing to round it off.

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Here’s the cut top panel. Sorry for no progress pictures, I got slightly carried away and got them finished in the one night ;)

In the last update I began to countersink the 4 outer holes of the Aquatube mounting plate, a 5mm hole still wasn’t big enough for the bolts to sit flush. I went down to the local DIY store and got a countersinking drill bit and got the holes properly done. Only problem was the vice made quite a mess of the surface as I never thought to mask it up, my only option was to sand down a layer.

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My weapon of choice, I didn’t fancy using a sanding block as stainless steel is so damn hard. I began sanding with 400 grit and worked my way up to 1200. I took my photos outside for a change as it was a nice day :)

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You can see after 400 grit the surface begins to look much better :D
 
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Up next was some polishing with Autosol.

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Check out the shine :D

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Here’s some finishing pictures with the bolts, I’m fairly glad the Aqua Computer writing is still there as I like it.

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From another angle.
 
wicked modding you got there. Keep looking at my old P2 case i got here and thinking I could do some of the stuff you've done.

Looking into maybe doing W/C too as I like your setup too. Havent got a clue about W/C at the moment so I'm reading up all over the place.

Subscribed to this thread too, also like that you show the tools you use to do things as I've always wondering what things to use to polish ect all the time to get my stuff better. anyways keep up the good work fellow UK Modder

:peace:
 
Just stumbled onto this project and read the whole thing, and I must say it is looking amazing so far. I like how you plan to stick with a color scheme and not just mix a bunch of crappy colors together. Blue and silver are amazing. Makes me want to post my mod once it's done, even though it'll be nowhere near as cool as this.
 
Thanks guys I appreciate it ;) Making alot of progress recently, aiming to get it finished in the summer holidays :)
Post your worklog even if you think it doesn't look very good, it's all about giving the next person inspiration in my books :D
 
I seem to be on a bit of a roll, may aswell keep on going ;)

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I de-riveted the bottom panel; this will need to be painted as it can be seen on the case.

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The cuts I made to the top and side panels were filed. I used needle files on the corners and then sanded all the cuts with 600 grit sandpaper.

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My next task was to get the panels sanded down in preparation for painting. I used 80 then 220 grit on the electric sander.

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A picture my dad took of me sanding :p
 
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Managed to catch the sun going down on these shots. The panels (mostly) down to the bare metal, I couldn’t apply pressure with the sander on some of the cut areas so they had to be done by hand. What matters is that the bumps of the textured paint are now smooth :)

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From another angle.

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A shot to show how smooth the cuts are after extensive sanding :D
The panels are off to a local painters to be painted silver properly, should have them back this week and I can begin setting up the water cooling.
 
Very nice !

Way too much shine tho. You need some dust, scratches, random strangly coloured stains and animal fur to really make it look real. :D
 
Sorry for the downtime on the pictures :( Hoping they will be back up shortly.

Here's a teaser for your patients :D

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Painted in Ford Moondust silver, the new inspiration for the project name :D
 
I arrived home from school on the last day to find these beauties waiting for me in my room :D I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

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:D

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The two side panels in detail.

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A shot from the other side.

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Reflection of the rest of my room :D

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I took the panels outside to see if I could get any better pictures but due to the light, I managed to snap up this one though :cool:

I’m off to a local stocker of Perspex on Monday to hopefully pick up some smoked grey/ silver stuff for the panels and then I can get the cooling setup.
 
My hunt for Perspex took me to an industrial estate next to the Tyne Tunnel, Bay Plastics to be accurate ;)

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This is what I came back with. I couldn’t find any smoked stuff in grey/ silver, what I did find was some 3mm thick nice subtle blue stuff.

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I then drilled the holes for the bolts and cut a square in the centre to allow the Aquatube to into case. The cut was made with a coping saw and the edges were sanded and polished.

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The protective layer was then peeled off.

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I then fitted the Perspex and Aquatube mounting plate to the top of the case.

After trying to fit the top panel back in place I realised that the top of the 5 ¼” bays was stopping it, this was because the Perspex added 3mm more thickness to the panel.

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My only option was to trim just enough off the drive bays, too much would mean I could no longer fit a drive into the top bay. The cuts were made with a hacksaw and then lined with blowhole trim.

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The top panel and Aquatube were then fitted to the case, here’s a (poor) shot from the top.

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A shot from the side.

Stay tuned, with realiable hosting the project is back on track :D
 
And one more for good measure :p

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Here’s the fan controller I’ve picked up recently, it’s a Vantec Nexus NXP-201.

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The bezel itself is aluminium and the backlighting is blue, matches my colour theme pretty well, but as always I’m not putting it in un-modded :D

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Here it is when it arrived from the front.

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From the back.

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Here’s the part of the unit I’m interested in at the minute, the electronics. As you can see the lighting is provided by 5 3mm LED’s drilled into some Perspex.

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Here is the unit powered up, as much as I like the blue backlight I feel in modding projects it can be easily overused. I decided to swap the LED’s out for white ones to contrast with several other white and blue items that will be on the front bezel.

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It was then off to the garage for some soldering, I changed the right LED first and powered the unit up again to make sure I had the polarity right.

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I then got the other 4 changed, it seems such a simple process but it’s such a damn fiddle.

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Here’s the fan controller re-assembled, much better :D
 
Looking great...One suggestion, are you going to get rid of all the "Nexus" and "Vantec" writing on the fan controller? I think it'd look a lot better without it...
 
Hexus0 said:
Looking great...One suggestion, are you going to get rid of all the "Nexus" and "Vantec" writing on the fan controller? I think it'd look a lot better without it...
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Cheers for the kind comments everyone. The writing will definately be going, it'll get sanded and taken to the painters with the front bezel very soon :D
 
great job on this. I'm starting on my project soon and I was wondering where you got the round stuff in this picture that's lining the top there. It's exactly what I need to cover a plastic edge. Whats the name of it as well.

again, great work.

 
LunchboX3904 said:
great job on this. I'm starting on my project soon and I was wondering where you got the round stuff in this picture that's lining the top there. It's exactly what I need to cover a plastic edge. Whats the name of it as well.

again, great work.
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Woaw, cheers to everyone for the comments. It's greatly appreciated :D

The stuff is called blowhole trim, it's primarily used for lining blowholes as the name suggests. I got mine from here.

Hope this helps :)
 
Leeum.

Your going to get banned for posting innappropriate images. These images are just that sexy.

/kiddingaboutbanning.
 
KrakenGuy said:
Leeum.

Your going to get banned for posting innappropriate images. These images are just that sexy.

/kiddingaboutbanning.
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hahaha, I'm glad you like them :D Cheers for all your comments in the thread KrackenGuy, tis greatly appreciated :)
 
cant believe i never clicked into this before tonight.....great buildup you have going.

SUBSCRIBED.
 
Wow, thanks for everyone’s comments. I've been overwhelmed with response :D

I'll have an update tomorrow, sit tight ;)
 
The lad was painting a Ford Focus at the same time, I'd guess he got it direct from Ford themselves.
 
I had now progressed far enough in the project to finally get the water cooling set up.

First task was to remove everything from the temporary case along with the air cooling ready for some water block action. All the blocks were installed using AS5.

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Here’s the hardware mounted into the case.

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I then installed the rest of the water cooling before blowing all the dust off it (I’ve had the stuff for over a year)

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I then got the tubes all cut to size and clamped to the barbs. The setup goes: Pump > Radiator > CPU > GPU > NB > Reservoir > Pump.

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It was then time to fill it up with de-ionised water and hope everything was watertight, everything looked ok…apart from the water.

Shortly after the picture I had some problems with pump, every time I switched the pump off and then back on the impeller would jam, it seems this is a common problem with some L30’s. Hydor's quality control isn't up to scratch so the shafts are manufactured slightly too thick, as the pump gets hotter the tolerance gets tighter to the point where the magnet seizes.

I attempted to fix it myself by rubbing the shaft down with wet and dry sandpaper but I snapped the plastic part of the impeller in the process. Hydor UK kindly had a look in their warehouse for a replacement impeller to no avail, they instead kindly sent me a replacement L30! It was then a case of swapping the impellers over and getting the loop filled again.

However, I still had the frothing water problem. It seems the reservoir was not functioning as an air-trap and was pulling the bubbles back into the loop. Out of desperation, I stuck a sponge that came with pump in the reservoir and to my surprise, it did the trick!

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I took this picture shortly after putting the sponge in the reservoir. It was then just a case of bleeding the bubbles out the loop.

Now the loop was leak tested and ready to go, I then fitted the rest of the hardware. As the case no longer has HDD cages, my next task was to find a different method of mounting it.

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I then took a pair of HDD mounts, gave them a sand with wet and dry and a polish up to remove the rust.

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Screw a hard drive and a pair of Chieftec mounting rails and we’re getting somewhere.

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Once installed, nobody is none the wiser ;)

Now that everything was installed and ready to go, I plugged everything in to make sure it was going to run. Another case of press the power button and hope…

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It’s alive :D
 
man i thought you dyed the water milk white at first lol, i SO woulda kept it had it not been air bubbles :( but its looking good :)
 
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