For us, it’s time to start a new project. It all evolves around the OWL case from Phobya, which was especially designed as watercooling case. Our case is completely white – hence the project name “SNOW OWL”.

We already have a couple of ideas what we will do with the case – we will present them to you in the next posting. But one thing we have already decided: In this project, we will work with acrylic tubes – that will be a first for us. But we are sure that this will work out just fine. In any case, we will document all ideas and steps in this worklog.

Aquatuning supports our project with the products from the brands Phobya and Alphacool.

No watercooled PC works without the computer hardware. Thus, we like to thank the following companies: Intel, ASUS, Crucial und Sea Sonic.

In the next post, we will introduce our first ideas with the help of a CGI – we hope, you will stop by then.

A white PC case, the product name “OWL”, the character “Snow” from the series “Once upon a Time” and some brainstorming … these are the ingredients and the recipe from which our project name “Snow Owl” is made of.

By the way, the OWL cases is also available in black, but it had been clear to us from the start, that we would use the white one for our project.

In addition to the project name, we also wanted to have a logo. Images of a bird of prey with outstretched wings served as an inspiration for Monk-Trader. He did several drafts to find the right look for the wings and to make it not look too much like the emblem of the “Romulan Empire”.

Here is the final version – our logo for the project “Snow Owl”:

Monk-Trader did the first drafts with an app called „Inkpad” on the iPad. He then created the finished version on the desktop computer using Adobe Illustrator.

The outstretched wings enclose the letters of the project name, which is held by the claws. The colors are inspired to the Phobya logo, the manufacturer of the case. And these are the two colors, in which the case is available.

Black, white and red will also be the colors we want to primarily use in our rig: For example, the radiators are black, the interior of the case is also white and we will add red fans and some red pastel fluid.

We have started planning the interior of the case. To do that, we use a visualization with SketchUp.

From our experience this is always very practical and helpful: Before you set up a list of watercooling components, you can see on your screen how they fit in the case. It also helps you to identify any pitfalls that a case might have and find out if the tubing you have in mind really works. Some cases come with assembly points for components like radiators or pumps, which doesn’t mean that you cannot consider other possibilities.

But now back to the OWL case: Before we were able to place virtual radiators or waterblocks there, we first had to create the case itself. Some cases can be downloaded as a 3D model from site like http://scc.jezmckean.com or https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com. That’s very comfortable, of course. But our Phobya OWL case was not available as 3 D model. Therefore, Monk-Trader from our team had the build the model from scratch. In order to easily transfer the most important dimensions and the overall shape of the case, he used the images from the Aquatuning website as a template.

Fullscreen view (new window)

He created many details from the interior of the case with the help of photos. Therefore, a big “thank you” goes to the team of hardwaremax.net, who did a detailed review of the OWL case including many photos. Certain parts of our 3D model are therefore just drawn by eye. It would have been easier and probably more accurate, to take measurements of the case itself and apply them to the SketchUp model. But unfortunately, we did not have a case available yet.

After Monk-Trader had completed the model of the case itself, the next step was to add the hardware. To make this as easy as possible, Monk-Trader used models from the two websites mentioned above. Therefore, most of the hardware components in the following renderings are to be seen as simple placeholders.

Fullscreen view (new window)

As you can see, we plan to use an Aquaero in the front. Also planned are things like a flowmeter and an illumination with some LED. But these are not yet included in the current draft. For the two radiators and the pump we use the assembly points provided by the case.

The tubing reservoir proved to be greatest challenge. We want to use a tubing reservoir, because we like it better from a visual point-of-view. A bayres reservoir can be installed in the front drive bay. The case provides some mounting holes for the reservoir clips at the back, parallel to the PCI slots from the motherboard. To us, this doesn’t seem to be very practicable: You can no longer remove or install any PCI components. And because we work with acrylic hard tubes, we cannot remove the reservoir temporarily in order to access the PCI slots.

So, we had to come up with a different solution. As you can see below, we have found a place for the tubing reservoir. We will place it at the right side of the motherboard. This way, the cooling loop will lead directly from the reservoir to the pump below. We have a feeling that it could be close call with the tubing reservoir. As already said, our 3D model of the case is not completely accurate. Once the case has arrived, we will know for sure.

Fullscreen view (new window)

So much for our design at the moment. The next step for us is to complete our hardware list together with our partners.