Case: Modded Fractal Design ARC Mini R2
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus V Gene
CPU: Intel i7 3770K
GPU: nVidia GTX 970 SLI (still need to acquire)
RAM: 4 x 4GB Corsair Dominator GTs 2133Mhz
SSD: undecided
HDD: undecided
PSU: Corsair AX860

Cables: Icemodz custom sleeved white and green cables

Radiators: Alphacool NexXxoS Full Copper Monsta 240mm, Alphacool NexXxoS Full Copper ST30 360mm
Fans: 7 x Gelid Wing Green
Pump: Swiftech MCP35X with Koolance casing and heatsink
Reservoir: Bitspower Water Tank Z-Multi 150 Full Acrylic
Fittings: Primochill Rigid Ghost Green fittings, various Bitspower matte black extensions and angle fittings
Tubing: Primochill Rigid Clear
CPU Block: EK-Supremacy CSQ Polished Nickel Plexi
GPU Block: 2 x EK-FC670 CSQ Nickel Acetal (reusing old blocks that will fit on some GTX 970 reference cards)
RAM Block: EK-RAM Monarch X4 CSQ Polished Nickel Plexi
Motherboard Block: EK-MOSFET ASUS M5G Acetal
SLI Bridge: EK-FC Bridge CSQ Polished Dual Parallel
Coolant: Mayhems UV Emerald Green

Lighting: DarkSide UV LED strips

Other: nVidia Claw SLI Bridge, Aquaero 5LT USB fan controller

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Hey guys! My name is Alex, I'm from Gold Coast, Australia and I just joined the forum.

I would like to welcome you to my new build log and what will be my second mod project.

My first mod project, the Vault Boy, has been featured here in Rig of the day, check it out here.

Hope you guys enjoy the project and pop by and say hi

This build is more of an upgrade of my system in a Fractal Design ARC Mini R2 in which I will be keeping most of the components as well as adding new ones and a lot of modding work to the case and other bits

Here is the build before disassembly and before a pretty major event happened ...







Now back to the pretty major event that went down with the build. One Saturday morning a few weeks back now, while I was still enjoying my sleep my partner wakes me up telling me there is a burning smell coming from the system, me thinking she's just making fun of me as she sometimes does, I choose to ignore her :hehe: . However as she kept insisting and telling me that it's no joke I got up and went to the other room where the system was just to be greeted by this awful smell of burnt plastic and a couple of seconds later realising that the DDC pump had burned out.

The CPU was rocking 105C according to Real Temp but was still running fine. Not sure how long it's been like that, it was running the whole night as we stream movies to our bedroom from it and before I went to sleep it was fine. I immediately turned it off by just a normal shut down and there went my day as I decided to just dismantle the thing there and then.

The aftermath is shown in the following pics as I went ahead and took everything apart, cleaned it and installed the system on my desk to test everything. Fortunately everything was fine minus a burned out DDC pump . The little guy has been pumping my liquid pretty much 24 hours straight for the past two years and a bit and it decided it's had enough of the Queensland heat. Just when I was about to mount a heat sink on it along with the upgrade of the system .

And let's start straight with the dirty stuff







As you can see the little guys burned out pretty good, I doubt I can salvage it with a new PCB from that DIYINHK site that still sell them







If I'm guessing right the fluid must have been boiling around the CPU area that caused the tube to fog up as well as deform a little bit to the touch. My partner may have woken me up just in time to save it. Not sure if the system would have shut itself off after a while or if the acrylic tube would of just melted but I think I'm lucky nothing further happened.







Here's the empty case and by the looks of things something funny happened to the label on that Corsair Force GT SSD.









And everything out on the table to be cleaned and inspected

You may also spot the new side panel that I have been working on the few days prior, finished it the night before.

Here's a better look at the side panel



The plan was to have more molecules but I managed to mess up the left side of it so decided to just make the window bigger. Still think it came out pretty good in the end, minus a few painting mess ups due to an unexpected storm that occurred as the paint was drying.



These are the molecule shapes I used as I am not good at drawing things







A better look at the finished side panel as well as the very last pic of the system running

The side panel was fully crafted by me using a Dremel rotary tool, a jig saw and lots of filing

I was also playing around with this new Aquaero 5LT controller the night before. Installed the optional heatsink but didn't get to test it out.









The modding begins !!!

First I cut a small hole in the floor which I will use as a drain from the bottom outlet of the Alphacool Monsta 240mm rad that will be going in the front of the case.



Did a cut on the MB tray as well. I will be making a shroud for the bottom so I cut the bottom right corner of the MB tray as to better help with cable management at the back.





I made a small mistake here and started cutting higher that I wanted to. However it doesn't make a difference as I will be putting some white acrylic around the MB that will cover everything.









I then got the case ready for painting

































In this last pic you can see how the brushed aluminum aspect of the front panel looks after painting.

Some parts will be going green while other will stay white.

The plan is to have the inside of the case white and the outside shell green like the side panel. Hopefully it will look good like I'm imagining it.

Here is the frame of the case assembled once the paint dried.














That's it for now. Stay tuned for more.

Cheers,

Alex

Hello Alex and welcome on our site!

Very nice worklog but man I'm sorry for your pump! I have never seen something like that! Also the tube melt down is incredible :O

No overheat protection via BIOS? Or some alarm on realtemp? I use coretemp and I set always a alarm when I reach X degress, I guess you should do the same.

BTW very interesting and I want know more now! The new color scheme will be white and green?

Quote:

Thanks for the warm welcome

Yea the tube melt is what shocked me as well. I think I woke up just in time. As for the BIOS overheat protection I'm not sure how it was set as I had to reset the BIOS before plugging everything back in to test. I didn't wanna run my 4.7GHz overclock with the stock Intel heatsink.

And yea you're exactly right, I should make sure I set an alarm with either Real Temp or Core Temp for overheating. I will be definitely doing that once the system is complete . I guess they are right when they say we learn from our own mistakes. I was very lucky to have everything else working just fine.

Yup the new colour scheme will be white and green . Thanks for showing interest in my build. I should have a new update pretty soon.

Cheers,

Alex

I have seen now your signature! We shared months ago your rig on Facebook

Quote:

Yup I remember that, thanks a lot for sharing it. I also tagged a link to it in the first post in this project too so that people can see it

Hey guys. Here's a small update of what I've been working on for the front and top panel grills of the case

I previously painted them white, I then cut some molecule shapes out of white vinyl, though any colour could have worked. I then painted green over them and after drying I took off the vinyl stickers. Very simple do to and I'm very happy with the result.





















Cheers,

Alex

looks good!

Just shared on FB

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Thanks a lot Luca! I really appreciate the support

Hi Alex!
Also a very warm welcome from my side.

Bloody hell ... tube meltdown is proper ... holy shit ... stuff. Back in the days ... like 2001 ... I had the pump on a separate 220V plug and every now and then I forgot to turn it on (I was too lazy to make switch). In that case it usually took about five minutes and CPU temperature was closing in on 100°C. Me being 18 years old and owning a AMD Thunderbird CPU, that was usually a rather shocking experience

Oh man ... but that upgrade you're working on is really turning out great! I love it that you joined our forums! That's some seriously great looking stuff you're posting here!

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Thanks a lot mate . Glad to be here and I really appreciate that you like my work

Wow, must have been a whole other world water cooling back then