Project Blackout (56k warning)

**YMAA** · 08-18-2012, 05:39 PM

Haven't done one of these in a while, primarily because I haven't felt the need to upgrade to Ivy Bridge and redo my system entirely. However, I have wanted to upgrade my case for a while. The HAF 932 is a great case, definitely up there on the list of cases I've owned. But it's growing a bit long in the tooth and I just want something new.

I looked at a few options, including the Pinnacle 24 from Mountain Mods (yes, Tool, I gave some serious thought to buying yours) and decided against it because while it is a very sturdy and monstrous case that can theoretically hold anything I chuck into it something about the interior layout just threw me off...mostly the mediocre cable routing ability and the fact that I didn't want to mount my hard drives to my fans. I also did look at some of CaseLabs' offerings and balked at the price. The only tower they offer would be over $500, which is far more than I want to spend on just the case. By far the most expensive case I've ever bought was the Qmicra v2 from PCDLabs at ~$350, and I'm not looking to repeat that purchase just yet.

Given my fairly light radiator demands (room for at least a PA120.3 with prospects for more rads with some modding), at least 5 hard drives (two of which are 2.5" drives), decent cable routing/hiding ability, and classy looks, the case I kept coming back to was the Obsidian 800D. There aren't really any mods I'll have to do to get everything installed, at least that I know of ahead of time. About the only thing that will be difficult to fit in there is my bay reservoir/pump combo, but other people have used that with this case before with little trouble. I haven't ordered the case yet, probably going to wait till early-mid September to pull the trigger on it. But I have started collecting some of the parts I need to build and pretty much everything is getting moved over from my HAF anyway.

It'll pretty much end up being my sig rig in a new case, but here's the guts of the machine anyway:

EVGA P67 FTW
i5 2500k
4x4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600
EVGA GTX 680 (awaiting Step Up)
Corsair TX850

And for the watercooling:

Swiftech Apogee XT
XSPC dual bay pump/reservoir combo, with an MCP655 mounted
Thermochill PA120.3
PrimoFlex LRT, black
Monsoon Free Center Compression fittings, black chrome

On the subject of the fittings, here's a teaser:

These fittings are a bit cheaper than the Bitspower ones everyone goes ape**** over. I bought a pack of 6 that comes with a tool to tighten the fitting and the nut for under $40 from FrozenCPU, whereas the Bitspower ones are $10 each. Plus, I think these look cooler. The lighting isn't great in my room but these are the black chrome version for 1/2" ID 3/4" OD tubing. I thought they'd be darker and at first I was disappointed but when I thought about it some more the contrast with the black PrimoFlex tubing I'll be using will be nice. Possibly even necessary.

There are a few reviews of these fittings out there on the interwebs and everyone seems to like them, especially given the (comparatively) low price tag. So I decided to pick some up and give them a shot.

Another first with this build is sleeving. My plan is to sleeve all the PSU and case cables with 550 paracord (cheaper than buying actual sleeving but with a similar look) to give everything a cohesive appearance. It'll be a pain in the *** but worth it once it's done. I first thought about doing black with a few strands of red but decided that if I want to keep using this case and power supply through other builds that aren't black/red then I don't want to have to redo them in other colors, so all the cables are going to be black. I ordered 100' of black and 50' of red paracord for under $20 from Amazon. For ease of working with the heatshrink I ordered a heatgun as well.

As new developments arise I'll post them here.

**Mandrake** · 08-18-2012, 08:44 PM

You'll love the 800D case.

I have the 700D and the only differences are the lack of a side window on the 700D and the hot swappable drive bays that the 800D has.

**YMAA** · 09-05-2012, 09:03 PM

Just ordered the 800D. I was originally going to order it from Amazon as they have it for $244 rather than $274, but they wanted to charge sales tax so it ended up being about the same. However, Newegg also has a $25 rebate on the case so it will end up being cheaper. Plus Newegg will ship way faster, not that it matters since I won't start migrating to the new case until I send my GTX 570 back to eVGA for step up. It'll be a few more weeks of waiting till I can start actually building the machine but at least I can get started on sleeving the interior wires and such. The real time consuming part will be sleeving the power supply, but again I won't do that until I tear down my rig after I send the 570 back.

Side note, I got the rest of the sleeving supplies and tools a few weeks ago. If you ever decide to do any amount of sleeving with heatshrink, do yourself a favor and get a heatgun. It's way easier than using a lighter and you don't run the risk of scorching or leaving residue on the heatshrink.

**tool_462** · 09-06-2012, 01:01 AM

Give you a deal on the Pinnacle 24!

Need this thing outta my room since it's empty.

**Eurasianman** · 09-06-2012, 05:25 AM

People still use 56k?

On a side note, can't wait to see the final product. I've seen aquariaz, korben43, and tool_462 work and it's all been ridiculous. Let's see how yours competes

**YMAA** · 09-08-2012, 12:59 PM

Thanks Dave. I'm itching to get to work on it.

The case arrived yesterday. It's absolutely massive. I did a quick once-over and everything seems fine with the case. No dents or scratches that I could see. The panels fit solidly together with no rattling. Build quality overall is excellent.

I have Wednesday and Thursday off next week so I'll start the sleeving then. Hopefully I'll have some more pics up soon!

**YMAA** · 09-11-2012, 03:02 PM

Decided to buy another 100 feet of black paracord to make sure I'd have enough.

I also decided to get a couple new radiator fans, Arctic Cooling F12.

Amazon.com: Arctic Cooling ARCTIC F12 PWM 120mm Case Fan with 4 Pin Connector: Computers & Accessories

MartinM at XS rated these pretty highly. They're slightly better than Yate Loon Mediums and they look cooler to boot. Since I'm going to use a PA120.3 and most likely a PA120.1 as well (depending on how I decide to mount it) I ordered 4 of them. We'll see how they do.

**tool_462** · 09-12-2012, 10:35 PM

**YMAA** · 09-13-2012, 10:25 AM

Sadly there's just not much to do at this point. The case's internal wires are already black. I suppose I could remove the connectors and resleeve them but I don't really see the point. I did sleeve the one stock case fan I'll be using but I must have broken one of the wires while doing so. Once I find my soldering iron I'll fix it.

I'll have more to do once the rest of my fans arrive, then once I send the GTX 570 back for Step Up I'll work on the PSU and getting everything moved into the new case. May snap some pics of the case as a teaser though

**YMAA** · 09-21-2012, 07:16 PM

UPDATES!! And pictures!

Before I go on, I must give major, major props to Lutro0 of OCN forums for his amazing sleeving tutorials both on OCN and on Youtube. These are by far the best guides around for sleeving just about any computer part and I'll be using his methods for the rest of the build as well. His guide can be found here.

The F12 fans arrived today. They do look pretty nice, I definitely agree with that sentiment.

Unfortunately, these fans have some of the worst wiring I've ever seen or used personally. For some reason, Arctic Cooling decided to put the PWM wire (yellow) on its own plug that connects to another plug that connects to the actual 4-pin plug that goes to the power source.

I have NO idea why they decided to do it that way, but fortunately it's an easy fix. Because I don't want to sleeve the extension and PWM wire separately and instead just make it all one wire, I will cut off the extension from the main wire (red/blue/black), remove the plug from the PWM wire, and simply put the PWM wire on the main plug. No muss, no fuss.

I could have completely removed the pin from the doubled wires, take off the excess wire, and recrimp it, but honestly it'll be covered by sleeve and heatshrink and having it there won't cause any problems or make it look any different.

And the result:

The other mod I had to do to the fan (aside from the sleeving) is to cut the fan guides to ensure that the wire with the sleeving on it will fit in the guides. Used my trusty Black and Decker RTX rotary tool to cut these out.

Stock:

Modded:

Not the best cutting job, but it won't really be visible once they're installed in the case. And here's the finished product:

Not too shabby for my first sleeving attempt. The others will probably go easier. I have 3 more of these and the stock Corsair 140mm fan to sleeve as well. More updates to come later!

**YMAA** · 09-24-2012, 09:11 PM

I have successfully sleeved all 4 of the F12 fans and the lone Corsair fan I'm using. However, in the process of shrinking the heatshrink with the lighter them one or two of them had some small scorch marks on the sticker back of the fan. I removed the stickers by heating it up with my heat gun set to low until the glue became less sticky and then carefully peeled off the sticker. To get any additional glue residue from the sticker off I simply sprayed a little WD-40 on some paper towel and rubbed it off. I tried acetone first but all that did was spread it around. WD-40 did the job way easier. Did that to all 5 fans for consistency. I don't mind the look of the F12 sticker (pictured above) so for the time being I'll leave them but I may remove them in the future.

Also, after looking around at waterblocks for the GTX 680 I ended up going with the Koolance VID-AR680. I don't know why EK went with their current design but it just looks bad IMO. I also ordered an M20 to G1/4 adapter so I can put a regular barb on the fillport for the reservoir. Still debating on whether to drill a fillport into the top of the case or just let the fillport tube stand up straight. Plenty of time to think about it.

As of this writing I'm at position #92 in the GTX 680 Step Up queue so it'll probably be about two weeks before I send back the 570, at which point I'll start tearing down my current rig to sleeve the PSU and clean out my WC gear. It's been a while since I've done a good cleaning inside the CPU block/radiators/reservoir and they kinda need it. The tubing I'm using now is clear but for some reason it's stained red. Must be some dye in the blocks/radiator leftover from the Primoflex LRT red tube I used before. I doubt I'll use Primoflex red anymore but I've used the green and black from them before with no issues.

**halbhh** · 09-24-2012, 09:49 PM

heh heh...may be nicer than our house when you are done.

**YMAA** · 09-28-2012, 08:37 AM

Originally Posted by halbhh

heh heh...may be nicer than our house when you are done.

Can't live in a computer though. At least not one this size. >_>

Last night I decided to replace my aging TX850 power supply with an AX850, both to get a bit more power efficiency out of my PC and to get one that's fully modular. I briefly considered the AX1200 but I wouldn't need that much power even if down the road I decided to do dual GTX 680s (unlikely).

The PSU should be here Monday, meaning that I can start sleeving those cables next week to get a head start. The PSU will be the bulk of the work but I won't need to sleeve every single cable since I'll be using the SATA backplane included with the 800D.

**YMAA** · 10-02-2012, 09:22 PM

Updates! I'll post pics of what I've done so far sometime tomorrow; I'm too tired tonight to try and make my camera focus.

So far I've sleeved the 8-pin EPS12v cable and half of the 24-pin ATX12v cable. The pin layout of the AX series power supplies is an absolute pain in the *** to sleeve. Here's the AX850 pinout that someone very helpfully posted on the OCN forums (albeit in German, but it's still very readable):

http://server.sgservicegroup.de/Mass...n-Belegung.jpg

By far the hardest part of sleeving this is all the double wires...a few of the pins have two wires in the same crimped pin instead of just one, so this isn't a 1:1 pinout. The best way to deal with these is to remove one of the wires from the crimp to make a single wire and recrimp it, make a hole in the insulation of one wire (preferably somewhere on the wire where it can be hidden, like behind the motherboard tray), cut the second wire and remove some insulation so you can insert it into the hole in the main wire, solder them together, and cover the hole with heatshrink so it looks like a Y, then sleeve the whole thing and reinsert the pins.

While I do have the equipment to do that and it would give the cleanest result, I didn't really feel like cutting any of the wires. What I did instead was leave the wires doubly crimped, sleeve over both wires to a point somewhere in the middle, then sleeve the other ends so they meet (I used crazy glue to make sure all three paracord lengths would stay where I wanted on the wires), then heatshrunk all three ends and put them back in the connectors. It looks alright, but getting the double crimp plus the heatshrink back into the pin hole on the connector was a real pain. I wasted more of my heatshrink wires than I wanted, but I have more on the way anyway once I realized I wouldn't have enough.

On a side note, I ordered some stuff for lighting as well. Since the interior is going to be mostly black with some white, I wasn't sure what color to get. Red has been done to death but it's the only other color I have in the case (aside from indicator lights on the motherboard, that is). I ended up going with white, figuring it would work best to accent everything else.

BitFenix Alchemy Connect™ 15 LED Light Strip - 300mm - White (BFA-ACL-30WK15-RP) - FrozenCPU.com

I also ordered a baybus to control the lights. I'll probably put my radiator fans on there as well even though they'll stay on as long as the computer is.

Lamptron Hummer 5 Port Military Switch Baybus - Black - FrozenCPU.com

Now I have to decide how to mount the LED strip without just sticking it to the case (I don't want the adhesive material on the case). My current thought is to get a wooden dowel and spraypaint it black, then stick it to that with the adhesive strips and use zip ties or something else to mount it to the case.

Any suggestions?

**YMAA** · 10-10-2012, 07:26 PM

More updates! It's been slow going but I finally started doing some (minor) mods to the 800D and I (mostly) tore down the HAF to clean/prep/massage the WC equipment.

The PA120.3 is going up top, obviously. The 120.1 is going to be mounted to the mesh on the floor of the case next to the hard drive bays. When I did a test fit of the radiator it will physically fit there fine with plenty of room but while one side of the rad will screw in fine using the holes in the mesh as screw holes, the other side will not. Oh well, let's cut some metal!

At first I tried using my nibbler to cut the metal but it wouldn't fit in the holes (if I had a nickel...). So I used my trusty B&D RTX to cut it instead.

First I marked the area I would need to cut with a magic marker. Apologies, it didn't show up well on the camera.

I put some masking tape around the surrounding area to prevent scratches. I would have preferred a smaller cutting disc but I worked with what I had.

I would show a closeup of the one cut, but I wasn't happy with how blurry the pictures were (macro photography is my nemesis). Here's the finished product:

I'll do a test fit tomorrow once I get some washers, now that I have an idea of how wide they'll need to be. The next thing I'll have to do is figure out how to get the dust filter over the washers and screws.

I also worked out the lighting situation. Bought a dowel and some black matte spraypaint from the hardware store, and ended up with this:

Cut it to fit with some garden shears, then cleaned it up with the rotary tool.

I left it long on one side to leave room for the wires. To mount it, I ziptied it to the top bar to which the side panel latches. I'll put up a pic of that tomorrow, camera ran out of battery before I could get a pic.

**YMAA** · 10-11-2012, 08:07 PM

Got another update!

I picked up some washers from Ace and did a test fit with the PA120.1. I was nervous that the washers wouldn't fit (I got multiple sizes that looked close) but the largest ones I got fit perfectly. It's secure enough.

I was a little nervous about the filter not fitting over the washers and screws but with some massaging it fit fine with no mods. The filter had more flex than I thought it would.

And a shot of the LED strip mounted. Apologies for the dark/blurry pic; the lighting wasn't great in my kitchen. You get the idea though.

My MDPC sleeving came a few days ago from Nils in Germany (ordered 30m of small sleeve and 5m of SATA sleeve, plus some SATA heatshrink). Nils' trademark is to include a personalized hand-drawn picture with each order:

I'll do the SATA cables soon, but I figured I'd sleeve my MCP655 pump with it to compare it to the paracord. Unfortunately I didn't see any easy way to open up the pump to put the sleeve inside the pump housing for a neater look but it's not too bad as is.

(sorry, I should have marked this thread NSFW...topless pump

)

Now after having used both, MDPC kicks the absolute **** out of paracord. It's not even close. MDPC sleeve goes over the wire easier, it doesn't snag so you don't need to tape the connectors like you do with paracord, and it grips onto the heatshrink better so it goes into the molex connectors way easier. If I'd known this stuff was so much better I might have just swallowed the price difference and gone with this instead of the paracord from the beginning. Per foot it would have been more expensive but I wouldn't have had to redo as many. Live and learn, I suppose. When I sleeve the switch wires for the baybus I'll be using the MDPC.

So at this point all I have left to sleeve for this project is the baybus switch wires and the SATA cables. I may sleeve the other Corsair molex power cable but since I'm lazy I'll probably wait and see if I can get away without it. With the molex extension cables I have I should be ok without it but we'll see.

I also did a test fit of the XSPC D5 reservoir in the case and it fits fine in the 5.25" bays without having to trim some metal from the case. I did have one minor issue where the slider used to control the tool-less part of the bay fell off, but after some finagling I was able to get it back on. It seemed to hold ok with just the tool-less aparatus holding it in place but I may screw it in just to be safe/cut down on vibration from the pump.

I'm leery to do much else with the case since I'm going to want to take almost everything out of the case (sans fans and lighting) when I drill the hole for the fillport in the top. I should be able to do that at some point this weekend, weather permitting. I'll also see where I want to route cables and make some holes in the back to mount the cable clips.

Quick shots of the rads:

In the words of Scooter from Borderlands, they're not the prettiest girls at the dance but they'll put out the second you ask 'em. Now that the rads are cleaned the only thing I have to do is retap the rest of the mounting holes for M4 thread. I have some 30mm black M4 screws on the way for mounting the fans to the rads. Already have some matching shorter M4 screws to mount the rads to the case directly.

Oh, and yesterday while I was thoroughly cleaning my rads and blocks I found the reason why my clear tubing turned pink...when I was scrubbing the Apogee XT internal pins with a toothbrush and some 90% isopropyl alcohol the bristles were turning a light shade of red. Just as I suspected, the dye from my old red tubing got stuck in the pins. I scrubbed carefully until the brush came away clean so I must have gotten all of it. Fortunately when I was flushing the radiators with hot water + alcohol that water came out clear. There's a little bit of pink left inside the reservoir near the top but I figure if it didn't come off during cleaning it won't come off at all.

TL;DR: Avoid Primoflex LRT red unless you don't mind cleaning your blocks afterward.

**YMAA** · 10-12-2012, 08:45 PM

Tiny update. Tonight I sleeved the wires for the baybus switches and 4 SATA cables. I'll probably do one more in case I end up using both my current 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 and a new 240GB Corsair Force GS 3 I bought a few days ago, for a total of 5 sleeved SATA cables. I'll get a pic of that up at some point.

Sometime this weekend I should be able to drill the hole for the fillport in the 800D, as well as mounting holes for the cable clips behind the motherboard tray. Just have to figure out where I want to route the cables.

My GTX 570 should arrive at EVGA headquarters this coming Tuesday. There's a slim chance I'll have the GTX 680 in hand by next Friday, but more likely the following Monday.

**halbhh** · 10-13-2012, 12:45 PM

Enjoyed these photos. Makes me more and more curious to see the interior layout when you are to that point.

**YMAA** · 10-13-2012, 07:58 PM

Thanks Hal. I'm anxious to get to building it too.

Anyhoo, I finally drilled the hole for the fillport tonight. As I probably mentioned before, I used a 1" holesaw to make the hole. I've heard that some people have used holesaws made for wood successfully on metal, but I decided to get one made for metal just to be safe.

I thought about putting the fillport in the middle but it would have interfered with the front panel wires. The port in the reservoir is off center anyway, so I figured there'd be no harm in putting the fillport to the left rather than dead center. To drill the hole, I simply covered the area with masking tape and marked the area where I wanted to drill.

(The mark shown in the picture is not where I actually drilled, because I stupidly made the mark right over where the 5.25" drive cage meets the top of the case. I remarked it half an inch to the right, pretty much right where that circular mark ends.)

I then used a small bit to drill a hole for the pilot bit, then attached the holesaw and drilled out the hole. No pics of this, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Here's the finished hole.

I didn't have a round file that would fit in there, but it doesn't really need to be filed much. The hole is smooth enough and it's gonna be covered up by the fillport anyway. Speaking of, here's the finished product:

(You can kinda see the holesaw I used in the 2nd picture...it's the white looking tube thing on the left. The pilot bit is next to it.)

So that's the majority of the drilling I'll have to do. I'll do a test fit with everything early this coming week and see where I want to route cables behind the motherboard tray before I go drilling holes willy-nilly.

Couple more random shots. Here's the cable clips I'll be using. 1/2" on the left, 1/4" on the right.

Here are the Corsair SATA cables, sleeved with MDPC SATA sleeve. These were actually kind of a pain to sleeve because the sleeve was just large enough to fit over the connectors (the straight ones...no way I would have been able to get the sleeve over the right angled ones). Apologies for the blurry pics.

This is a 4-pin molex to 5x 3-pin adapter. Basically, I'm gonna use these to connect groups of fans to one channel of the Lamptron baybus. The 4 radiator fans will go on one and the case fans on another. I could have just gotten multi-headed cables to connect multiple fans to one cable, but these just looked cool for some reason.

And that's about all I've got for now. I'll have more to post later this week after a test fit.