Cosmos II X79 Tri-Fire

[frozensnail]

After seeing the new Cosmos II for the first time & studying it in the flesh, I felt this was a great new chassis to carry on the Cosmos line & Cooler Master’s repetition in this product.

Previously I’ve modified several Cosmos 1000 and Cosmos S chassis’s over the years for PC Format & events including CeBIT, Gadget Show etc & was keen to get started on the new case mod.

Thankfully I managed to get sponsorship from a few manufacturers for the case mod. Hats off to everyone who has become interested in the project, without manufacturers and retailers coming forward to support the modding community this kind of work would not be possibleïŠ

The sponsors in this project include, Intel, Cooler Master, Sapphire Technology, Kingston Technology, Bitspower, EK Water Blocks, Hardware Labs, Special Tech, Phyoba, Alphacool & Bitfenix.

Concept:

The Cosmos II case mod is going to carry the original look of the chassis enhancing certain areas externally and internally.

Ideas to date are to repaint the outer plastic surrounds and side panels in a metal flake plasma electric metallic blue, with enough lacquer so it looks like glass! (same colour as my Kawasaki ZX12-R)

The four black rails and the centre section of the Cosmos II, I intend to keep black to tie in with the colour scheme of the bike.

The plasma electric blue looks really sweet and again tie’s in nicely with Intel, Sapphire, Kingston alike, as the system will be a flying machine in its own right.

The case mod will have some of the latest hardware, e.g Sapphire X79 Motherboard

3x HD7950 graphics cards (Tri-Fire)

Intel 3960x CPU, Kingston Hyper X 256GB SSD, 16GB HyperX DDR3 memory, all powered by a Cooler Master Silent Pro 1200w PSU!

The Water Cooling is mainly to the thanks of Bitspower, EK Blocks, Hardware Labs and Special Tech.

Cooling for the mod will be two cooling loops, first on the 360mm radiator for the CPU etc and the second on a 240mm radiator for the 3x HD7950’s. I can’t thank Hardware Labs enough for the top quality radiators to keep the system cool.

Bitspower have been great in supplying the majority of the cooling components, e.g. the dual D5 pump housing, two reservoirs and enough carbon coloured compression fittings to make a great job of the hosing.

Special Tech have been wonderful is supplying the latest Koolance HD7950/70 full coverage water blocks for the two cards and matching CPU block so the cooling components should look really good being matching.

[frozensnail]

Stage 1:

Studying the Cosmos II chassis, one word springs to mind ‘Huge’. Upon removing both side panels, the size becomes apparent! Offering up a standard ATX motherboard it’s dwarfed in the vast internal area of the Cosmos II. A dual CPU motherboard like a SR-2 or Intel Skulltrail / Shady Cove would fill the void within the case nicely.

However the Sapphire X79 coupled with the Intel 3960x CPU is not to be sniffed at by any means, I’m sure it will give the above mentioned a go run for their money in benchmarks?

The internal colour of the chassis being black suits well and saves my usual trip to the local powder coater to satin black the internals.

Stage 2:

Stripping the case down went smoothly and it sure weighs enough, shame it was not completely built from aluminium. But I can understand that the use of aluminium would have hiked the retail price even more.

Once the top section / radiator cover is removed, the top & bottom rails are easily disassembled, allowing the plastic surrounds to be taken off.

Eventually with all the plastic parts removed the Cosmos II looks like at large steel chassis.

Stage 3:

The chassis just about lends itself to water cooling. The top of the case takes the 360mm radiator no probs. One thing to mention is that if using a fat or deep radiator the motherboard ends up very close to the radiator! In the bottom of the chassis once the mass of hard drive caddy’s are removed (Does it think it’s a server?). There is then plenty of room to mount a 240mm radiator or even one each side as I may have to do in my build.

Stage 4:

Taking a look at the Bitspower dual D5 pump body the quality of the unit becomes apparent. Together with the Bitspower Modded pump covers the unit is very tidy. Two D5’s are coupled together to feed both cooling systems, it’s a different approach from having two fully independent cooling loops but should be no problem.

Stage 5:

I’ve marked, drilled & fitted the Hardware Labs 240mm radiator in place with some good quality stainless steel Allen cap screws & the 360mm radiator alike. The Bitspower dual D5 unit has also been secured with matching fasteners.

The chosen fans are Cooler Master ‘sickle flow’ running these at full speed they are noisy without question. Now hooked up to the fan controller on the auto setting the fans are running at between 800-1100 R.P.M and are now very quiet compared to running at 2000 R.P.M +.

Thanks for looking

[frozensnail]

Stage 6:

Back to planning the cooling system and looking at places for the reservoirs, a Bitspower 5 ¼ UV blue single bay res is looking the best option for the first cooling loop. For the second loop I managed to get a couple of Phoyba and Bitspower cylinder type reservoirs to choose from. The Phoyba is 250mm in length and a bit of a struggle to fit in the chassis nicely. Turning to the Bitspower 150mm length reservoir seems to be my best bet and does fit in the area far more comfortably.

I’ve decided to mount the super fast Kingston SSD on a piece of 5mm UV reactive acrylic for a little added affect & to tie in with the overall look of the system.

UV live edge acrylic is a great material to enhance the look of a component, either backlit by a UV tube or with 3mm UV LED’s drilled in along the edge.

The Bitspower 150mm cylindrical reservoir has been mounted against the slab of 5mm UV acrylic and fits nicely under the Kingston SSD.

Stage 7:

The Sapphire X79 is next to be fitted into the chassis, nice looking motherboard & better still the Sapphire colour scheme fits in with the scheme of the case mod.

The Tygon tubing in conjunction with the Bitspower carbon compression fittings look great and should allow to achieve some neat loops within the chassis.

I’ve used a pair of HD6950 cards & hosed the system up. The reason for this is that unfortunately the Koolance HD7950/70 water block did not fit the Sapphire HD7950 graphics card. Although the Sapphire card is apparently reference the Koolance block managed to collide with some capacitors on the card.

Not being put off by this, I turned to the Milling machine in my workshop, only to admit defeat after several hours of machining.

I can’t thank Special Tech enough for getting the Koolance CPU & Graphics card blocks out to me so quickly, just a shame I was unable to use the graphics card water blocksïŒ

Stage 8:

With the system fully hosed up and leak tested on its temporary graphics cards, I’ve installed windows 7 64 bit very quickly on the super fast Kingston Hyper X SSD. Coupled together with the Intel 3960 extreme CPU and 16GB of Kinston Hyper X memory, the bases of a strong quick system are in place. Once I’ve managed to source the appropriate water blocks for the HD7950 Tri-Fire setup the system should be graphically very good indeed? With a couple of 30cm UV tubes fitted in the top & bottom of the main viewing area, the hosing filled with EK UV Blue coolant comes to life as the dusk falls.

Thanks for looking

[frozensnail]

Stage 9:

The paintwork is now finished and looks spot on. Special thanks go out to a mate for the use of his spray booth. This allowed me to make a professional job of the Cosmos II panels, although I’ve managed a fairly good results spray painting in nothing more than a farm shed!

I’ve turned to reassemble the doors using double sided sticky tape to re-fit the extremely thin aluminium panels to the plastic doors. A quick polish to remove my finger prints and the Kawasaki Plasma Blue paint job looks sweet and I’m more than happy with the results.

Stage 10:

Thankfully EK Water Blocks have manufactured blocks for the HD7950. The three Sapphire HD7950 sat on the dining room table can now be put to use & give the Cosmos II case mod a real graphical punch.

In the fray of all this going on, I receive a full coverage water block set for the X79 motherboard from Bitspower, also two sets of universal memory water blocks and one of Bitspower’s new CPU blocks. The blocks are of outstanding quality and I can’t wait to fit them in the near future. But for now the mod is pretty much finished and to pull the motherboard out again would be a backwards step at the moment. So for now a few almost finished photos follow below. I will update the project log once the full coverage and memory water blocks are fitted.

Again thanks for looking & always appreciate comments

Thanks again for looking, as the mod develops further posts will follow.

[pureblack]

Congratulations for your case!

The painting was spectacular!