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(Actual shot of side panel above)

To start, the name of the project is pronounced the same as "reflection," just with an X, instead. I came up with the project name based on a particular theme that I had in mind and then thought, “You know, what would really set it off is to spell it a little different, and hey, my name fits perfectly!”

To get the wheels turning, I designed a logo and custom graphic specifically for this project that captures part of my vision for it. The theme is galaxies and the reflection of light. I have always been fascinated by the stars, and with a little help from a buddy of mine, the theme was born. With this, I believe I have some unique concepts in mind that will give this project both life and a personality. Some of these concepts, which I feel are unique and have not seen done before, I will not be sharing until the later stages in the project. But I promise to keep this worklog interesting and will try to provide updates regularly. In addition, I want this worklog to be a two-way exchange. All constructive feedback and ideas are more than welcome as that’s how we learn.

I'll briefly state my objective with this latest build before I get into the meat of the project.


My objective: To build a machine that pulses with life and personality and that exudes excellence.

My personal belief is that the ceiling of creativity in this hobby hasn't even been approached yet. My intention is to show a PC's artistic possibilities, to give it a name and a likeness. An identity, if you will. To accomplish this, I plan to inject some of my ideas, have them blend with a particular theme, and then to execute that theme through precise and risky modding. I believe that both can be accomplished, so my goal is to build a machine that's both edgy and refined.

So without further delay, I give you:

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Sponsored by:

Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos S
Side Panel: Custom Waterjet
Front Panel: Custom Waterjet
Interior: "Zero Gravity Chamber" (custom SSD and pump mounting device)

Hardware:
Intel i7 950
Foxconn Flaming Blade X58 (may change)
ATI HD5970 CrossfireX (4 GPUs)
SSD Raid0 x 4 (OCZ Vertex SSD x 4)
Corsair HX1000W PSU

Cooling:
Dual MCP350 Swiftech H20 system, dual-loop design
Swiftech MCR220 x 2
XSPC Reservoir DDC Top x 2
DangerDen Waterblocks (CPU, Chipset, GPUs)
Coolant: Fezer Clear (UV), Fezer Black (UV)
Tubing: 7/16" Tygon
Fittings: BP Rotary, DangerDen Compression

Apologies in advance, but this project has been going on for two months, so I'm going to move over all the work as best I can. There may be a few consecutive posts until I can bring everything up to date. Thanks.

The side panel was a custom design made in 3dsMax and is composed of around 350 vertices. It was a work in progress with over 80 hours of design time in order to get the perspective and smoothness of the image to a level that would look as if it was professionally manufactured, which I hope it does.

Below are some photos taken of the waterjetting in action, along with the finished product.

So with the exterior down, I began work on the interior by modeling different possibilities in Max.

I needed to see if I could be successful in blending two themes together. A space theme, as the galaxy image on the side panel shows, and reflective qualities. As you can see below, backing the side panel graphic is an acrylic mirror:

In general, it can be tricky when you're trying to carry more than one theme, but in this case, I believed that it could be done. In fact, I believed that adding the mirroring quality to the theme would add some "sexiness" to the overall design of the build.

Given the reflecting quality that I wanted to carry through to the end as well, I decided to design the interior around both a space theme and a reflective quality.

In various builds that I've seen, I've always hated looking at the drive cage. So I wanted to remove it completely and install something attractive in its place (I can do this since I'll be using external optical drives and lightweight SSDs.)

Along the way, I began to term this custom device the "Zero Gravity Chamber." In my mind, it would house dual water pumps, 4 solid state drives and the PSU. I would remove the stock mount for the PSU and mount it towards the opposite end of the case (front) for two reasons. One - to clean up the overall look of the build, and two - to make room for a second radiator to be installed in the bottom of the case.

Enough blabbing; here is what I mean:

The custom structure (Zero-G chamber) would have two shelves inside to hold the pumps/res in a vertical alignment, giving it a reflective property.

The inside of the chamber:

So the idea was to drill 4 holes in the chamber. Two exit holes for the pumps and two return holes, one for each res.

Somewhere along the way I figured, "You know, instead of just building a custom mount for the SSDs that can't be seen, I should show them off with an effect that fits the overall theme of the build.

This is when I came up with idea of "Zero Gravity" for the drives.

The idea, as may be obvious, was to give the drives a weightless appearance as if they are suspended in mid-air, like out in space. I would accomplish this by mounting the drives to a piece of plexiglass that was cut to size so that it was hidden behind the chamber windows.

With windows cut in the chamber to an exact size, if the plexi was large enough so as not to see the edges from the outside, then the drives would appear on a perfectly transparent background, thus giving them a weightless appearance.

This is a very cool project!
And some very nice renders.

Also, Welcome to TBCS, we hope you enjoy your stay.

So then I went to work on the Zero-G drive concept.

First step was to figure out a neat way to cut the plexiglass to size. I ended up using the least likely tool of all, a sheet metal brake.

I didn't have much luck cutting the plexi with either a jigsaw or a hacksaw with fine-toothed blades, but with a brake, I could simply score the plexi along the straight-edge steel brace and bend right at the score/seam for a perfectly straight and smooth cut.

Some shots of the plexi cutting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Trace

This is a very cool project!
And some very nice renders.

Also, Welcome to TBCS, we hope you enjoy your stay.

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Thanks for that warm welcome, Trace. Glad to be here. :)

I just discovered this place a few days ago.. had trouble finding it as it wasn't coming up in a search engine. Hard to believe it took me so long to find such a great community of creative minds.

I usually frequent XtremeSystems and bit-tech. I'll have to spend more and more time over here, though, as I've been very impressed by the projects that I've seen this way.

The projects, the people, the community here are all great.

So the next step was to trial mount the drives to the plexiglass. I found drilling through the plexi to be a little tricky at first but soon figured out how to keep it from cracking.

Here's the effect on a spare piece of plexi that was used for testing.

The full-size plexi windows have been cut and are ready to be drilled. There will be two mounting brackets attached to the plexi, one for mounting the part to the shelf and one for mounting it above the chamber window to brace it for stability. The brackets have already been cut and filed; they just need to be drilled.

More on that later.