PC: Custom watercooling on gaming rig (Part 2)

OK...
Before starting out I thought of making a comparison between the CM 130 and my former SG06 :)

Not such huge difference but on the inside... it's a lot more spacey and nice.
Also I made a quick fit test with da massive rad! What a beast!

First of all, in order to put the Monsta radiator, you need to remove the 5.25" bracket in order to cut some areas where an SSD/HDD is meant to be mounted (on the lower side) that certainly gets in the way of the radiator.

In order to remove the bracket you need to remove 4x rivets that hold the 5.25 on the front. Some patience and a little drill and bracket is off :)

...and radiator fits like a glove :D

As it's a bit heavy I thought of giving a little bit of support, not to have both fans, the radiator filled with the coolant just holding by 4 thin screws.

So, I got some rubber feet from a local store which with a little sanding were a perfect fit underneath the rad. You can barely see it after trying a lot.

Perfect :) Now it was time to dremel the 5.25 bracket. With some caution the annoying bumps removed and bracket was ready to be mounted in it's place.

Going well so far \o/

Next step, was to void that GTX 970 warranty... damn that always feels like crap, but what can you do? lol

And voila... Waterblock fitted like a glove xD

Time to check it inside the case in it's full glory.

Last but not least, I thought about giving a test on how everything fits along with the PSU in place... I must say, using the right angle fitting is so ESSENTIAL!

(Also it gives a slight glimpse on the horror of cable management lol... I can't even think about it but I will certainly deal with it when time comes)

Next step... tubin' n' fittin'... stay tuned :)

X500 Evo: Stuffing da beast (Part 7)

Hey peepz,

Despite thinking that this project was finished, I always come up with something else (lol).
Following my previous article and checking why my upper shell wasn't closing as well as I expected, I decided to make a little butchering by giving a tiny bit of carving on the spot where the PicoPSU is touching the shell...

Well, it might look kinda big, but actually is okey and it's a LOT better now. Case closed without a single issue :D
I also cut the rubber fan mounters that exceeded the fan.

OK, time for more important mods hehe.
After running the X500 for quite some time now, I realized that the upper shell 50mm fans are kinda noisy for my taste, so I had to do something about it.
One solution was to replace them with more expensive ones or try and make a PWM controller.

I remembered that in the past I have seen the EPIC A1200D PPC mod of Phipscube where he also putted a custom PWM controller on his BVision.
In this post, Phipscube shared his source of inspiration which was this article on Overclockers forum.
I bought all the necessary part from my local electronics store and started building it on the veroboard.
Since I bought enough components, I thought of making 2x PWM controllers just in case it was needed :)
After some time, the circuit was ready to test...

After some troubleshooting (because I made 2 errors that I easily tracked and fixed) the units were a success :D

I tried a rather noisy fan from a Commodore A590 hard drive and then I changed the pot lower and then higher again with quite a difference.

You can listen to it as well as recorded it using my iPhone here.

After tests were successful I cut both controllers to it's final size.

Ofc you can never have a custom mod, without custom wires with connectors. Damn I hate all this stripping, soldering and tubing, but it's an essential step for clean mods.

Finally, I thought about putting some layers of a silicone dual sticky tape that I had, in order to give it more height (here you can see 3 layers of this tape).

PCB was mounted  next to the other custom PCB that I made to power the fans.

Last but not least, it was time to fine tune the pot to it's final position after checking the fans every once and a while to the desired level

Mission accomplished. Now fan noise is a LOT better without sacrificing previous CFMs :)


Btw don't forget to take a look at other people's X500's :)

• Kyle made an awesome job putting a SAM inside an X500 Evo! - Link here
• Peter is starting making his own PC inside an X500 Evo as well. Good luck mate and thanks for mentioning my blog on your Blog. \o/ -  Link here 

Stay tuned.