[Build Log] Batgirl

[diluzio91]

That's right... Another mod... This time it's for my wife's PC. It's going to be a little simpler, but it's still going to be Liquid cooled, and should be pretty sweet when it's all finished. The colors and themes are all picked and approved by my wife, so yall just sit back and enjoy the ride

The case:

NZXT Noctis 450 in black. The lighting on this case is pretty crazy, and we're going to be using almost none of it.

The Inspiration:

Bat girl is one of my wife's all time favorite super heros, and after seeing my Iron Man build she got a little jealous, and challenged me to design a Bat Girl themed build for her.

The break down is like this.

The build will be taking advantage of the "armor" look of the noctis 450 case, and will bring in elements from the bat family franchise. The "armor" will be coated in 3m Carbon Fiber vinyl on the outside, while the interior will be done in Metallic purple. Various Die cut vinyl and other bits and bobs will be added as the build unfolds.

The top panel of the case taken off

The Armor stripped off and ready for the Vinyl to be applied when it arrives.

Finally the mesh is removed from the panels as part of the prep work on the case.

Since the parts for this build will be coming from my old desktop I can confidently share the specs of this build as follows:

i7 3770@4ghz
Asrock Z77 Board
16gb Memory
Corsair HX850 PSU
EVGA Classified 780Ti
Full liquid loop
2x 250gb SSD's

[diluzio91]

Got some more work done today.

Step one, Remove the front side of the HDD cage

Now we need to cover that hole...

Convient placement of the screw holes makes it easy to secure the new back plane to it's holder.

Modification to the PSU cover to make it look a little more complete

And bending the cover to shape... Easier than it looks with a good heat gun XD

A better view of how it will look here.

Here's what it looks like now... All the guts have dissapeared!!!

Guts in the garage for paint, Primer done in this photo

First coat of the purple laid down

It's pretty dark out so I tried to get a good image with my cell phone's flash of the purple paint. It's deeper in person and sparkles like crazy. My wife came out in a mask to check the paint but threatened physical harm if I took a picture of her doing QA for her build.

And last but not least I got the first part wrapped with the grey CF. My black and yellow vinyls are in the mail, so it'll be a bit before I can start doing the big panels.

Thanks for watching!!

[TheMainMan]

I think the purple will make a pretty cool accent colour, definitely not a colour that is commonly seen on PCs. How do you bend your acrylic? Just heat it in place?

[Zenator]

Love that case. Look forward to seeing what you do with it.

[diluzio91]

Lots of work got done today.

First up, everything was riveted back together.

Then we Marked out the lines for the new enlarged window

Did a quick repair with some epoxy where I slipped with my cut off wheel.

My assistant met the UPS guy and brought up the vinyl for this case. Now we're getting started for real.

First, the window panel got covered (Bubbles have been worked out by now, it takes about an hour after application for any bubbles to go away on their own.)

Armor Plates wrapped up

And installed again with the Mesh filters

All plates and panels covered and installed on the case

Front shot of the effect

At this point my assistant got bored and watched some videos on how to make cupcakes...

Next we tackled the front panel...

Bat girl action in progress!

The decal is split on the two different plates, the effect is actually pretty cool.

Now time to work on the back panel. The Batgirl Silhouette started in this picture.

My Assistant (wife in case you didn't guess) decided she didn't like the letters so she removed them.

Closer to being finished, but it's missing something...

Adding bats completes the look for sure.

Floor plate is installed now

and I'll leave you with a shot of where we left off until we have some more parts come in.

Thanks as always for watching guys! If you have any questions let me know!

[diluzio91]

Just a small update today.

I need to figure out how to cover the blue Alpha Cool Logo and the Blue Ram...

[OvRiDe]

Well you could paint the RAM with the purple paint, but I don't know how advisable that really is. I have seen it done, but never seen any conclusive evidence if it affects the performance of the RAM cooling. If you have any of the carbon fiber film left, you could cut out a bat shape with it and cover the Alphacool logo. Stealthy but still fits the theme if its spotted.

[diluzio91]

I actually tried the bat girl logo, the problem is the low point of the bat would hang off... I think I'm gonna try to make the Alphacool logo up on my vinyl cutter about 2% larger and redo the logo with yellow that way. Should be interesting if nothing else.

For the memory I've decided to do a light coat of plastidip since it's non conductive, and if it causes problems I can remove it easily...

[diluzio91]

Got a ton of work done today including all the cable management for what I have... But first things first.

This looks easier than it was, but look! Yellow Alphacool Logos!!

To achieve this I took a picture of the logo on the radiator (the logos I found online were slightly different dimensions) photoshopped everrything but the blue away, then imported it into illustrator. After pulling it into illustrator and cleaning up the vectors I exported it to a Gigantic .png file (the only file my vinyl cutter can use that's not it's own format) and after measuring the logos I printed up 4 sets, starting at .255 inches and increasing by .01 inch incriments. then it was just a matter of finding the best match for the original lettering.

Here's the result

Next I put the Memory into a sacrificial motherboard and hit it up with some plasti dip.

While the dip was drying I installed the floor for the pump to mount to.

permanently attached the pump and res at the same time my phone's camera forgot how to focus.

Lots of bending... I found out that a jigsaw with a metal blade on it makes cutting PETG tubing stupidly easy...

One crazy looking bend per build is going to be my new motto.

with the bend in place

I re-arranged the loop for a little cleaner run on the tubing.

Then I started on the back... Now the point of this build was to re-use parts I had on hand.... Part of that was my Non modular PSU... Cable management time!!!

I used yellow zip ties... they work with the theme

zip zip zip zip...

SSD's mounted to the back, all the cables tied in place, LED controller tucked away at the back.

Finally the front view. Lights installed, tubes installed... now we're just waiting on the drain system, fluid, another front fan, and cable extensions.

That reminds me... I have to get the window to the laser cutter...

[OvRiDe]

That came out great!