Trapped by the Machine

My god man, that looks amazing! Great job. I will be watching this one for sure. I love the artwork involved.

oe i like the idea fir the grills!

Nice work on the fan grills. Very subtle, and I'm sure it's gonna add to the overall cool factor of this mod! Keep up the great work!

I can't believe how sexy that case looks in black...:lick:

:: secretly lusting after your case ::

I need a smoke! :eek:

I wish I had better photography skills. I'm telling you--It's like looking into a black mirror. I almost don't want to put the side panels on the thing now that the interior case is done...

That paint looks fantastic. Top notch work. Will fit in with the mod perfectly.

Update

Finished my side panel today by installing the blue LED lights.

I went to Radio Shack and bought a couple of LED's that cost me around $3.50 a piece. I thought that was ridiculous price for LED's so I went over to the local Target and bought a string of blue LED christmas lights and took the string apart. 70 LED's for $14.99!

Next I did a test wiring of four. I am using a 12V input and the LED's are 3V a piece so I wired 4 in a series.

After that I put together 4 series of 4 LED's a piece and hot glued them down.

It's pretty messy back there, but the results are worth it-

I also solved my upside-down wording problem on my PSU. I sanded of the old logo, repainted the side, printed wording out on white sticker material, spent some tedious hours cutting them out with an X-acto knife, and stuck them in place.

Slowly but surely this thing is getting finished.

Byendor

Project Update

Well I started putting things together finally over the holiday break. Everything was going well until today. I had a catastrophic failure of my homemade reservoir.

Before I go into the failure, some update pictures on the stuff that went well.

First things first-I put the wheels back on the bottom of the case.

After the wheels, I put the PSU in place and mounted the two water pumps.

Next I installed the CPU, CPU Water block, and the RAM on the motherboard and installed that into the case.

Next came the graphics cards and their water blocks and into the case they went.

After that came the three Raptors and the DVD Writer.

Wire Management was a real pain with 13 fans, two fan controllers, lights, pumps, etc, etc, etc...

Next I did some test fitting of the front and sides. I also finished the top fan guards and the front radiator grill.

After all that it was time to test the cooling components and run the tubing. I leak tested each of the components individually prior to installation and all went well. I even did a quick test fit on the figurine to make sure she fit.

Next I prepped for a leak test of the whole system using distilled water.

I even made myself a custom funnel to fill the reservoir. Reminds me of my younger days and lunch time beer bongs.

All was well until I got about 3/4 of a gallon of water into the system. One of the reservoir fittings started shooting water from around the seal. I tried to tighten it and do some repair work on it, but nothing worked.
I said screw it and bought a couple of DD 5 1/4 reservoirs that should be here in a couple of days. I will use them instead with a custom etched top panel.

I obviously need to improve my Plexiglass construction skills.

I was hoping to have this done by the Jan 1st. Looks like it is going to take just a bit longer before I can enjoy the games my son got me for Christmas...

That's one mean machine. I like the faces coming through the mesh, looks fantastic.

Final Post! The thing is done!

I finally finished this monster today and I couldn't be happier with it. It is running fast and smooth. Can't wait to start playing some games.

First though--my reservoir replacement.

The DD reservoirs during leak testing...

and in place...

Next I repainted my sculpture to match the overall theme.

After that it was just a matter of finishing up the side panel and buttoning it all up.

Here is a series of pictures of the final results.

The cooling system is keeping things nice and cold. The highest temp I've registered on the cpu is 83F. Can't wait to see what the performance is under the load of a game.

So Final Specs:

Case: Lian Li PC-343
CPU: Intel Quad Core 6600
Mainboard: ASUS Striker Extreme
Ram: 3GB Corsair Dominator 2
HDD: 3 x 150GB WD Raptors
Graphics Card(s): 2 X EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB PCIe in SLI mode
Audio: ASUS Supreme FX Audio
Display: Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP-HC 24" Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor
Speakers: Logitech X-540
Cooling System: DD Pumps, Blocks, and Res's
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2
Input Devices: Razer Tarantula Keyboard and Death Adder Mouse

This has been a great experience for me. I truly appreciate you all allowing me to share my build with you and allowing me to be a tiny part of this very talented community. Thank you all for your advice and suggestions. They helped tremendously throughout this process.

Byendor

Congrats man!

Congrats on the front page.

Wow! Thanks for the front page.
I don't know what to say except thanks! I am grateful for the recognition and for the kind words.