Leaderboard

Been a while since I've posted a project log, so for those who don't know me, or don't remember, Hi, I'm Mosquito, also known as Chris, and I'm a case modding enthusiast A coworker and I were talking about some of the case mods I've done in the past, and as a result wanted to try watercooling his BitFenix Portal case. He thought switching back to the Wraith cooler for the CPU, and doing a custom loop with a 120mm radiator for just the GPU would be all he'd get. I told him I bet I could fit a 240mm radiator in there, so that's what we've decided to go after... It actually took a lot less modding than I thought it might, as we got relatively lucky with the radiator just clearing the GPU block, but we'll get into that more later. First things first, this is the Bit Befnix Portal, for those who are not familiar Something that makes things a little weird, is that the chassis slides out of the main shell, so we had to make sure we allowed that to continue working through all this. This is what the 'stock' build consisted of. ASRock B350 ITX, Ryzen 1600X, and an RX Vega 56. First things first, gotta tear that down. With the case empty this is, roughly speaking, what we intend to make happen. Removing the back fascia gives a pretty compact little chassis. Though with some indexing pins on the bottom, it doesn't sit on the workbench very well! Next up, remove the drive cage. I'm not sure why this wasn't easily removable, as the bottom is mostly held in place by some sliding connections, but never the less there were 6 rivets to drill out After some fiddling around, we realized that it was going to be a lot more work to get the radiator mounted on the outside of the case, so we would have to make fans in front work instead. Next up, we'll have to get it to fit both fans up front, so stay tuned for that, and please ask questions, post comments, and let me know what you think. Forums are about community, whether we all agree or not

Hey Guys! Been a while since I posted a new worklog. I guess time really flies when you are that busy. But anyway, I've got another project, and I wanted to give a huge shout out to EVGA, Thermaltake and Zadak for supporting this project again. Being a huge fan of Mini ITX systems, it's about time for me to start a new mITX project. Been a while since I did one, I think the last time that I did was a scratch build 4 years ago. Back then, when I built my very first mini ITX system, I was using a Bitfenix prodigy computer case. I was happy at first when I completed the build, but then I still wanted something smaller or slimmer than the prodigy. A few months after I finished my build, EVGA released they very first mITX case, the Hadron Air. After seeing a teaser video of it, I immediately grabbed one thinking that I'll try to chop it off and do a full, custom water loop system inside of it. I did started the project but ended up shoving it under the carpet for a little bit since my brain changed and wanted to do a scratch build first. So I had the Hadron Air computer case for quite a while now. The poor thing was collecting dust for years, so I decided it's time to get it done. First off, EVGA was kind enough to send me some awesome goodies that I will be using in this project. A year or two ago, EVGA sent me one of their Hadron Hydro computer case. When I got the case, that was the time when I remembered I still have my Hadron Air in the basement. I then decided to keep the Hydro and continue the work on the Air. One of the main reasons why I grabbed this computer case before was that it had a different power supply form factor included. My curiosity got tickled more since I was only used to seeing atx and sfx power supplies. Now, this was the Hadron Air computer case that I was talking about. I kinda dismantled it years ago and just left it like that. So after taking some dimensions for the case, I then proceeded on making a render drawing for it. I ended up coming up with an of tearing the front and back panel out, make a new one and completely changer the internal layout of the case to accommodate a full custom water loop inside. Original plan was to use the included power supply but it'll not work as I have originally thought. So I went back to the drawing board and altered some parts of the back panel to fit a sfx power supply. So after taking the dimensions, making a drawing out of it, time to throw some aluminum sheet and my not-so-leveled-bed CNC. Wasted a lot of sheet on this one, but it was all worth it in the end. Top (left) and bottom (right) panel. Front and back panel. Sometimes, since the bed is not leveled correctly, i'll end up murdering a cutting bit in the middle of the cutting job. Which means, i'll end up with a broken cutting bit and a wasted portion of the aluminum sheet. Sometimes, when the machine only needs to do 2 more passes to finish the cut, the cutting bit will break. Which means i'll need to cut out whatever I was cutting manually and hand filing the edges. Which is not that bad. Aaaaand, time to chop the Hadron Air off a little bit more. Test Fit time! That's all for this update for me right now. Next update, MORE chopping! See you on the next update! Ciao! P.S Here's a few of the photos that I was able to find when I was attempting to do a case mod for the Hadron Air years ago. Sleeved power supply Bending a piece of sheet metal to become the front panel Was trying to bend the metal sheet using a bed frame. Don't ask me why because I don't know either. Top panel attempt And for some reason, I ended up doing the top panel in acrylic. I think that was the time when I stopped and decided to shove the Hadron air somewhere in our basement.

EGAD! That's a month of soldering and swearing for me. You should have been a surgeon... Are you a surgeon?

Thank you. Lots of acrylic work for sure. I didn't realize just how many pieces there was until I started painting everything.

Sleeving Pump Cables & Passthrough: I ended up choosing a combination of 3 colors for the pumps cable colors. They are a bit tricky to sleeve as the cables comes up to a flat piece on the back so there's no room for error. I won't heatshrink the pump side as it doesn't look as good. Since the plug side won't be seen I'll heatshrink it to keep it in place. Final Hinged Mounted Front Panels: I decided to mount The angled front panels on hinges because it not only allows me to adjust the angle but it also allows me to fold them inward which saves a considerable amount during shipping. It also helps then to stay protected during shipping as well. It took more effort to do it this way but the benefits outweigh the effort and cost.

@Cheapskate Thanks for the explanations my friend & sorry for the misunderstood ... I'll follow your advice ...I'll try another approach testing different products from the less harmful to the most harsh ones. 😉

I think something was lost in translation. I'm NOT an expert. :D Lysol toilet cleaner works for sterilizing, and it is very rough on copper. If you have a bacteria problem, it's great. The mix might be a little different there, since our stuff will turn copper RED if left on to long. I wasn't naming any particular useful item for your problem. I merely wanted to get you thinking about a different approach to the problem. Strong acids didn't work, so maybe try a soap or detergent. -Anyway, The stuff inside the radiator shouldn't be too big of a problem. The dye might tint your coolant again, but that's all.

The CNC plasma table is basically a huge 2d plotter with a plasma torch. It simply heats compressed air to about 30000°C which cuts through pretty much anything. The problem is setting up the sheet stock, uploading the files, picking up and cleaning the parts after cutting and painting them takes a lot of time, which costs a lot in wages and could be used more efficiently. The worst case was when he needed just a few parts; had an employee done them in-house, they would've cost hundreds of euros. When ordered from a laser cutting company, they were about €3 each, painted. He actually had the most profits off it using it as indeed a plotter with a permanent marker for a client needing enormous cardboard templates.

Sorry for the slight off topic, but this reminded me of a very paradoxal situation; a friend of mine built a CNC plasma table when he started his machine/engineering shop business, and now he says it's far too labour intensive, ie. expensive to use professionally 😁 Anyway, have you looked at the chinese CNC routers? They are not expensive but do require a bit of tinkering though once set up properly they should be very useful for cutting aluminium and acrylic sheets.

:D Toilet cleaner is a one second cleaner for copper. Any longer than that turns it dark. I use it to sterilize the system. Yes it's crude and heavy-handed, but I haven't had to flush one of my rigs for eight years now. You may be stuck with it. Dye is really tenacious stuff. All of the cleaning solutions you mentioned are acid-related. I'd look into stain removing soaps or even chemical solvents like alcohol.

That's some proper dedication! Nice work on the surface finish.

That will work. :D I switched to CNC because I can't SEE little stuff like this anymore.

He cleaned out the print reel market, and has probably resorted to using weed trimmer line by now.

Hi guys here my last project, and recycled PC enjoy!! . CPU INTEL QUADCORE Q9300 SCHEDA MADRE ASUS P5N73-AM 4 GB RAM NVIDIA FX 3500 256 MB 2 HD WD 500 GB

One of the rotary tool's biggest problems is that the fan venting is exactly where you hold it. I think this is why so many of them burn up.

Alright, now that we've proven that we should be able to make the radiator and fans fit in the front of this thing, we had to cut open the front to make room for those fans... (This was his first time using a rotary tool, for the record) We trimmed out the cross brace, and made the opening a little wider to line up with the OEM fan opening. Also trimmed the fan opening a little taller towards the top as well. We did a test fit with both fans and the radiator, and realized at that point we needed to make the opening a little larger, so out came the rotary tool again Now things fit quite nicely. Ports on the top, because we'd have to cut out even more to flip it, and we had planned the loop out to run one of the lines straight between GPU and radiator. We're starting a new way to do Push-Pull with a single layer of fans on your 240mm radiator 😛 We also drilled a set of 4 holes in the bottom of the case to install a 2.5" drive (in addition to the M.2 SSD) And don't forget to paint your freshly cut edges Weirdly, that's about it for the actual modifications to the case. Next up, we'll be working on the watercooling part of it...

@kaisounovsky thanks. Yup am thinking of only using sanding. Good to know that fast work can crack blocks (wasn’t aware). If looking at the rear photos of https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-fb-asus-rog-r6e-monoblock-nickel I am reducing the size of the VRM part which is the star stepping thin rectangles (the kit kats furthest away from the RGB cable). So this sounds like it should work if I work slowly. Am using a 0.1mm precision measuring tool for this as my micrometer won’t fit perfectly. Then 400, 800, 2000 and 3000 grit - followed by 40, 30, 20, 10, 5, 3, 0.5 micron paper to restore a mirror finish.

Here's the pump PCB: The failed diode is D3, at nine o'clock position. It's a huge component, really easy to work on. I'll post the part # as soon as I've received the new diodes. I resoldered all the wires, they had the worst cold joint blobs I've seen awhile. On the other hand the PCB was coated, which was a nice touch, and there is a rectifier diode for reverse polarity protection. The pump is going to be better than new with this operation :-)

That's Adobe Illustrator. It and Photoshop have accurate print options, including mosaic printing huge pictures over multiple pages.

Close, they're the EK Vader clones of the Gentle Typhoons. Still pretty good. I think it will do alright, there's actually more airflow than you'd think, even if not as much as we'd like 😄

A very small update this time. It was freaking hot here and it stil is so did a little bit of work. I start working on the wheel and tire. Thats done and then i cut some stainless steel to start working on the mounts for the half wheels. More to come.

Here we go again. Its time to do some work again.First i cutt the pieces i needed and started with the mobotray. Thats finished but i had the feeling there was missing something so i made the pieces that were missing imo. Im happy with the end result and this is how it looks. More to come.