[Scratch][in progress] Zee Fresh: a Caribbean Watercooler!

[Xtrafresh]

A big carribbean welcome to everyone! I am Joost, a Dutchman emigrated to the warm and sunny island of Sint Maarten.

I emigrated 2 years ago, and though I don't regret it one bit (sun! bikinis! beach! mountains! more sun!), I did kind of have to give up on my casemodding addiction. It's pretty safe to say that I am the only casemodder on the island, and the only one sporting a watercooled PC

Warning! wall-o-text incoming. All this is the background of this particular case. Feel free to scroll down and skip to the pictures

Just before I left for the island, now almost 2 years ago, I re-built my computer so I could take it with me as handluggage, but also just to do one final mod before I had to give it up. The result:

What you see is hacked-up Silverstone case with a home-made golden "crown" that houses a fan and a 200mm radiator.

The design worked great, but I never had time to quite finish it to a grade that was publishable. The whole crown was actually held in place by the tubing of the radiator! Ghetto modding FTW

So I arrived at the airport, started living the tropical life, and kind of forgot about my poor computer for while...

Fast-forward to this summer, when I flew back to Holland to attend the boundlessly awesome Campzone LAN. Ofcourse, I brought my pretty flightcase... but it did not survive!

The case was fine, but sadly, my trusty Maximus III Gene was dead in the water. Bootloops, you all know the drill. I tested with another CPU, no luck, it's truly gone to the happy motherboard Valhalla. There was no time to mourn though, I was at a LAN, and had gaming to do! So, it was forced upgrade time! I got myself a good deal on a P8Z77I-Deluxe and a 2500K CPU. ITX! SWEET! Problem: my case is too big. Solution: build a new one!

I finished the LAN on a naked setup (run the mobo sitting on the mobobox, like all the pros do), and made a nice new design. I spent my last few days in Holland at a buddy's house, rush-building this rather ambitious scratchbuild design. It really was a case of "cut ALL the corners" to make the deadline, but we did make it! A very unglamorous picture of it:

It's basically two 8mm thick sidewalls, a mobotray and a rad tray, all glued together. I was a little skeptical about the strength of the glue, but it has been holding up fantasticly. The top panel is part of an old Danger Den Waterbox I had laying around. The Z-shape is not really intentional, it just came out this way as I was playing around with visually attractive and thermally effective ways to mount the radiator. Th cooling on that GPU is a very old solution I made out of a universal GPU block and a VRM block for I have no idea what motherboard

I had an awesome time building this, and my modder's blood started boiling! During the build, I got so many awesome ideas, that would just never be possible without more time and tools. Some day though... some day I was going to unleash them all!

Well, that day is today! I have to give a big thank you to CoolerMaster for organising this awesome competition year after year, giving me the final push to get off my lazy behind and get this mod going.

So guys, what to expect? Look at the above picture as a casestudy (lame pun fully intentional), a starting point for the upcoming build. I'll rethink the entire setup, replace and upgrade some components, and add loads of exciting features that you wouldn't think fit inside an ITX build. As ITX builds go, this will definately not be one of the smallest, but it will still be small enough to fit international carry-on luggage restraints, allowing me to carry it with me without having to spend a fortune on packaging.

Also, I would really like to show that modding on a (hopefully) decent level can be done on a tight budget, and a relatively low skillset.

My first update (should be today) will just show you the building of the current build, and from there on, I ill start design and work on the real deal. Thanks for reading, and mod on!