Keir Graham

You can submit your builds for the next competition thankfully though.

It maybe because the final submission deadline has past now, the dates are on here: https://community.coolermaster.com/cmws/cmws22/submit/

All internal I think, the judges are listed here: https://community.coolermaster.com/cmws/cmws22/judges/

That is a great use for an old heater, and you get a awesome custom radiator out of it too, looks very cool. What where the temps you got out of it?

Sorry about the quality of the pics, they seem to get compressed when I upload them Thermals wise it gets rather toasty under synthetic loads, the GPU is fine, but the CPU starts to throttle at 90c in this test. This is a worse case scenario though, and games wont utilise anywhere near 100% CPU. Even under VR stress on Half Life alyx the CPU ends up in the high 70s to low 80s without throttling, so I'll call it a win

And now with the LEDs on

Thanks Here's the final results:

Ah nice, seems we took similar inspiration and colour preference

And with the computer component tray installed: Its all a very tight fit, barely any spare space expect a bit on the left and right, there fittings were a pain to get on, but just about managed with some log pliers. My measurements of lining up the SLI waterblock extender fittings seems to have been spot on as well I've pressure tested the whole system without the pump and its all good thank god. I created some 3d print/foam spaces to fit between the heatsink and the fan housing to seal it to make sure the air only goes through the heatsinks: I then fully assembled the fan and mounted it in place: And stuck on some foam on the feet for vibration damping: Here's the pump all assembled: Pressure test time again I connected a res to the 2 inlet pipes to bleed the air. I can bend the tube to make it either go around the res more or the main system, it took a while, but got there eventually:

I then tapped the holes, and milled flat the surfaces. then sanded it all: Then started investigating surface finishes for the main body. I tried for a quite a while to find a company within 150 miles that would black chrome plate aluminium, as a one off but I had to give up the end. I then tried various black chrome paints, and tints but I wasn't happy with any that I found. So its pains me to say it, but after all that polishing I ended up with just going for a super glossy polished black car paint. Not what I originally wanted however I think its still turned out very nice. I also got back the rest of the inner parts which had been ceramic coated with Cerakote. Sorry about the fuzzy pictures of these black ones, my phone camera didn't like it. I then chopped up more of those Surface Pro back lights to sticky tape to the back of these panels, however annoyingly I forgot to take a picture, but you get the idea from the previous light panels I did, I then stuck LED strips down the edges: then added the heatsinks: Next up I glued in the magnets that will keep the top panel vents in place, so they can be easily removed for cleaning (there will be filter foam on the inner side soon): and finally we get some computer hardware in this thing: Specs are Zotac 3070 Twin Edge with waterblock, 16gb ram, Ryzen 7 5800x, 1tb NVME SSD under the heatsink and a 500gb one on the back, 4tb HDD, Gigabyte B550 I AORUS PRO AX motherboard, 600W Corsair SF600 SFX PSU Tape on the PSU as I almost dropped a bolt in it lol. The HDD is mounted using a rubber pad on the screw side, and an O ring on the other so the vibration is dampened. JB welded, and super glued some small HDMI/Display port extenders to the GPU IO plate: Installed here, and also connected up the Cooler Master Master Accessories RGB Fan Controller, which will run all the RGB LED strips More wiring for more RGB I also changed the 3d printed brackets that hold the RGB panel in behind the coolant pipes to some bracket/strip combos that I could attach the RGB strips to:

And here's the result, its still needs a final polish to remove some of the streaks but its almost there: Then onto finishing the fan. The edges are 3D printed with soft fabric glued onto the sides: Here is it in the bottom of the case: I've finished the polishing of the case shell and top by this point, however the apodizers are concerned about being able to get an even black tint across both the sheet, and milled parts, soooooo, my next idea was to get it clear lacquered instead, with a "candy" tint to keep the mirror effect but have a black tint. I found this lacquer online: https://www.cerakote.co.uk/shop/cerakote-coatings/performance-clears/clear-aluminium-mc-5100/ this Which seems to be super tough, sticks to polished aluminium, and a company near me sprays it, but they hadn't tinted it before though, so I was waiting for them to test tinting it, before they give me a price. Anyway onto the build.... I managed to find an arbour for polishing wheels that fits my grinder, so this made things alot easier to finish the polishing: Next up was sanding and polishing the blades for the vents in the top and bottom in each corner: I then realised all the hex's I had laser cut all had a little bit sticking out so I had to file them all off, took ages: I then sticky taped them to a peice of wood, then sanded and polished them: I then glued them all to a 1mm polycarbonate sheet, along with the rest of the panel and using a 3d printed holder to get them centred. Each of these will be cut off this sheet later. The battery was to press the hex part out of the 3d print holder: That was then set aside, while I modded some G1/4 plugs: It passed the pressure test I also found these sweet fittings from Barrow, that have RGB LEDs built into the compression fitting, which Ill be using with these water function blocks: I then polished and hand bent the 1mm alu panels that go behind the tubes on the outside of the case: For the backlight, I thought about using a Tv backlight, but it didn't have the light spreading ability I was looking for unfortunately: So I've had to resort to Surface Pro LCD back light sheets: I wore gloves for this as the sheets mark very easily: I glued, and taped the edges onto the back of the panel, I'll probably stick some fabric or something on the back as well to cover it all: This is how it will look, for this test its just a small RGB strip on one side, when its complete it will be a strip on both sides, and it will be the length of the whole side: I had the water distro block for the GPU 3D Printed via HP Multi Jet Fusion, so its water/air tight:

Thanks Timpelay, yeah it took a ton of hours, and I haven't even included all the little bits here and there of failed experiments, and design changes. After a ton of small adjustments here and there, I finally managed to get the rads to fit perfectly. I wanted to get the mounts to sit perfectly as I'm planning on having a bit of thermal paste between the rads and the case, to essentially use the rads and the entire case itself as surface area to get rid of the heat: I've also started playing around with different fans. I tried a PS3 blower fan first, and man those things are powerful on full, way over the top of what this needs I think, so I took the blower fan of a GTX 970 and cut the fins off: I then 3d printed a 140mm blower fan blades peice: I found a company in China for getting all the main CNC bits done: https://www.rapiddirect.com/ they gave quotes very fast, and responded to every question within an hour (during their work hours), and they gave a rapid turn around and delivery to the UK. All the following parts came to USD 898.50, which given the complexity I thought was pretty good Before I sent off the files for CNC I needed to make sure the 3D model would exactly match the shell, given it was made by bending aluminium sheet, and its complex shape, to the eye it looks perfect, but there a slight variations which would mean the CNC'd tops wouldn't fit flush with the edge all the way around. My first idea was to use a robot arm and trace around the perimeter of the shell: but unfortunately for some reason it didn't work out that accurate, even though when the path was re-traced on the arm to looked perfect. So I resorted to getting an A3 scan of the end of the shell, and using that as a canvas to draw on in Fusion360, I then 3D printed out a template from the model, then adjusted the 3D model based on how it fit, and repeated, over and over and over until it matched perfectly: I then sent the model to RapidDirect and they have sent back these impressive quality parts: The raw finish of the CNC is very smooth too, so there wasn't much sanding to do. The tabs on the inside I'll need to mill down a little though, as I forgot to account for the raised stub at the base of the threaded studs, so they didn't quite fit on the case perfectly at the moment. I also had the pump housing re-done as well, so I can use a normal DDC, because I made the original one in a mirror image: I was amazed how smooth they got this downward slope, with barely any rounded edges at the bottom: So thats all ready for polishing I also had an aluminium impeller made as well for the pump, rather than the 3D Printed one I had before: This took me longer to figure out than I care to admit lol, but eventually managed to clamp the top panels in a way that I could trim down the mounting tabs a bit: All the bits arrived from the laser cutters too Next up was a hellish amount of polishing, this must have taken me about 18 hours all together, as I had to start off with 80 grit sand paper to get out the deep dents in the aluminium where the bends were, and a few deep scratches. I started off with an orbital sander and discs from 80 - 800 grit, then swapped over to foam sanding discs with WD-40, then finally a polishing disc for a polishing grinder and the brown metal polishing compound. For the tricky to reach spots I used a multitool with the sanding head Then I stuck some foam to the blade attachment (Didnt work without the foam from the pic above), and stuck some wet and dry to get the areas I couldnt fit the normal sanding head in.

I then flipped over the block and tilted the miller head the other way to mill out the opposite side: This took about 16 hours to get this far!, as I was getting more and more nervous about messing up as I went along, so the work got slower and slower, as I was triple checking each cut. Here's the results before I cut the sides off and trim down the bottom so it actually fits: I then milled off the sides and end of the back panel: Then milled the hole for the power button: I then sanded the panel down with an orbital sander but the forgot to take a pic of it before the next step. I rented a capacitor discharge Spot Welder from www.taylor-studwelding.com: I couldn't get in to all the areas I needed threaded studs with the big gun, so I also rented this mini gun that goes into the end of the big one: I tried a few, then found the best technique was to press a blunt center punch into the alu to make a very shallow dent, that the little pip on the bottom of the stud just about sits into, then give it a quick sand: I also spent hours marking out all these spots to put the studs onto, then welded them all on: You get a fair amount of splatter, these are M3 threaded studs: Next up I started making the new water junction blocks for the outer coolant pipe section. I'm going to have to scrap the cast ones I did, since I found castings don't anodise very well, and colour wise your stuck with grey. New vise too I then used the belt sander to curve the edges, I still need to finish it by hand sanding to match the chamfer: During this work, I've come to the conclusion that those DIYINHK DDC pwm coolant pump boards are crap, this thing is sooo loud now. I thought I had messed up somehow but after reading online it seems that these boards are just noisy af. Sooo I'm gonna have to get another acrylic piece CNC'd and use the standard control board I think. Anyway I finished off the bevelled edges on the new water junction blocks with a small file: After tapping the holes, these were ready and waiting for the final surface finishing at the end of the build: I had to drill a hole all the way through from the side to connect all the holes, then I'll make some plugs to screw into the ends to seal off this side hole. The tapping was done straight after the drilling with the tap in the milling machine, and the gears in neutral so I could manually turn it, so as to get the tap dead centre. I then spent most of that weekend milling out the bar mounts for each heatsink. Two of the mounts will also be the mounts for the back panel as well: There is tons more to come, but its getting late now, so I'll post the rest tomorrow

This is the standard impeller with the top removed: I've lathed off the blades so I can JB weld on a new set of blades that will be in the reverse direction, then I'll have to figure out how to balance it: I then had a bit of set back when I discovered that aluminium castings don't anodise to an even finish, and you are restricted to only grey colours, sooo... I came up with a new plan to get the shell made from 4mm aluminium sheet instead, that's been bent on a CNC press brake. This unfortunately means I need to redesign the internals so that I can fasten everything with aluminium threaded studs welded onto the sheet instead of threaded lugs cast into the shell. While I was sorting all out that with a local company I finished off the pump. I used JB weld original to attach the 3d Printed new impeller blades: I then de-soldered the original circuit board And soldered on the new PWM controllable board. Shows you how much the tech has come along, its basically all on a single chip now Then I gave it a quick test, and it worked a treat. The pump will have a chrome around the edge, and a painted underside when its fully complete so you cant see all the way through I then received the bent alu sheet that will base the walls of the case. I first milled down the ends so that they sit flush: These two halves will be welded together like this: I then trimmed down the top and bottom edges to make them perfectly straight: Then milled a bevelled edge on the back edges which the back panel will slot in between: Then milled out the notch in the bottom edge that gives a gap for the blower fan to draw air under the case. I will also draw down from the top as well. Only the straight bit at the top is finished, the sloping ends I will file down later: Next up was milling out the pattern in the side of both halves for the coolant pipe section: I got a bit carried away and forgot to leave space for the bevel at each end grr, so I had to just go with a rounded edge design instead. I needed to recast the water junction blocks anyway, as they were designed to fit onto a casted wall, not one with welded on threaded studs. The diagonal bits will be filed down later: I then started work on the jig that will hold the parts in the correct position so I can mill the 3 corners: I gave it a quick test to see if it was going to work, it was a bit rough, but doable. The welding made the jig not quite flat anymore, so I milled it back down flat: I then re-clamped the first part down onto it, and began to mill out the large cut-out section: The middle sections that will be welded together later also fit on the jig: I then used a narrow handheld belt sander to sand down all the diagonal bits to give this result: Since I've gone this route of making this outer shell using belt sheet aluminium, I then needed to completely re-model the interior of the computer, to mount everything via threaded spot welded studs instead of cast lugs. So I decided to learn Fusion 360 and remodel it on there. I also slightly tweaked the outer design too. In order to get the model to match these parts, I used a scanner to get an image of the profile, then used that as a canvas to model from. I then 3D Printed the profile to check it matched, and made minor alterations. I then sent this shell to be welded. They did a great job of joining the two halves together. With the amount of time I spent making this part I didn't want to risk my amateur welding lol. They cut a thin slice off another scrap piece of this same alu for use as a filler rod, so that the anodising will be an even colour. Once Grinded/sanded it looks like its all once piece now: The big block of alu arrived too for the back panel so next up was to manually mill out the shape of the panel (to save some CNC cost). I gave the top and one edge a quick skim over with the face mill and end mill: Then figured out how to mount the thing as the milling table is barely wide enough, while also giving room to mill out: Also got this new toy 12.5 mill roughing end mill: Cuts through like butter, so much quicker than normal end mills, cant believe I hadn't not used one before: I then cut out the sections for the PSU and Motherboard IO, and switched back to a normal 2 flute end mill for getting a smooth edge:

At this point I was still waiting on the getting the castings done at an investment casting company, and I hadn't found another alternative, so I decided to start making the custom CPU block, as this build is going to be so compact I need a waterblock that the tubes come off at 90 degrees, and I'll be cherry picking a motherboard that doesn't have anything in the way. To start off I milled the edges of an acrylic block so I could get it into the lathe, and then rounded it off one side at a time: I then bored out a circle so that the fins from the copper plate (From a corsair block) will it into one end: Then I trimmed down the cylinder further to leave a lip on the bottom edge for the mounting bracket: I then mounted it into the milling machine and milled out the channels for the coolant to flow into the fins: Then using centering drills I made a pilot hole then drill through into the milled channels from the side: Then I milled out a ledge and tapped the holes for the water cooling fittings: I then used this rotary table to mill a 1.5mm channel for the O-ring: I then drilled the ring of holes for the self tapping screws that hold the copper plate to the acrylic: I flipped around the rotary table, and put the chuck back on it, then used it to mill out some notches for the mounting clamp to fit into: And then finally after a lot of wet and dry sanding working my way up from 600 to 3000gritt, then a polish with Turtle Wax polish while it was spinning on the lathe here are the results: The rads then arrived back from the CNC I then spent around 2hrs tapping all these holes starting with a tapered tap, and then a plugging tap to get the thread right down to the bottom of the 6mm holes. This part also arrived from the CNC, and I polished it like the waterblock with 600 up to 3000 grit wet and dry, then Turtle Wax polish. This is the pump top and it slots inside the next part, and seals with an o-ring around the bottom: This next part is the cap for the CNC'd part. This made on the lathe starting from a block of acrylic like with the waterblock, then alot of polishing: Here's some pics of how the parts fit together. The very outer edge and fitting wont be visible, and I was going to play around with various materials and lighting on the sides and bottom later: This then sits on top of the DDC pump. Eagle eyed among you may have noticed the mistake I made, the outlet is on the wrong side for a DDC pump doh, so I ordered a DIYINHK DDC control board, which are fully controllable via PWM, and I can reverse the direction of the motor. This will then be used with a custom impeller which I was planning on making anyway.