Morphosis

Nicholas Falzone · October 3, 2019

With the corner brackets made, I could drill holes in the windows for the bolts. I taped the acrylic window to the aluminum piece underneath ti ensure the holes would line up:

_9292972 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_9292970 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_9292982 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I then drilled holes into each support piece and tapped threads into each piece.

The second window is going to be made out of 3/16 inch aluminum. I wanted a brushed finish to match the rest of the case so I needed to use my drumsander again to achieve this.

Before:

_9262915 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

After:

_9292940 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

More on this piece later.

Nicholas Falzone · October 3, 2019

I was not originally going to use mesh over the fan grills but I decided to try it out and see how it would look:

IMG_6602 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

This is A.C. Ryan silver mesh. It is steel so it was not very easy to cut. I'm glad I tried this though because I think it turned out great. It really makes the grill design pop:

IMG_6603 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

IMG_6606 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I put it over the top grill too:

IMG_6608 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I also installed the LED strip into the top, making it ready to be put into the case:

IMG_6610 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

IMG_6611 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A020021 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Next, I wanted to make covers for the holes around the motherboard to help with cable management. I had some veneered aluminum still so I cut some of that to make a board around the motherboard. I can then mill these pieces to fit the cable design later:

I started with the mitered corner:

IMG_6596 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

And I cut the rest to fit from there:

IMG_6598 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_9300004 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

They are in sections so I can mill some of them without having to take it all apart. They screw into the motherboard tray and cover holes behind them which will also be used for cable management.

I made one for the CPU power hole too:

IMG_6601 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The power supply mount is also getting an upgrade. I'm doubling up the support bracket so I can mount a cover on top of that:

IMG_6600 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The cover piece will look something like this and get bolted on:

IMG_6597 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_9300013 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I wanted to finish of the cover pieces to match the rest of the case so I brushed the edges of the aluminum and gave them a chamfer:

_A030057 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A030047 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Nicholas Falzone · October 3, 2019

I can finally start some of the final assembly for the case. After finishing the pump/reservoir room panels, they are installed in the case:

_A020023 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I have a sneak peek of the plumbing also. I'm using all Barrow fittings and 12mm chrome copper tubing:

_A020025 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I wanted to make a support bracket for the GPU. I chose to make it out of a heavy aluminum bar stock I had laying around:

_A020028 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I cut it to length, gave it a miter and screwed it into the aluminum bracket:

_A020027 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A020029 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Here it is installed in the case so far. I'll be adding to this soon:

_A020033 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A020034 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

A bit more plumbing:

_A030035 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A030037 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

A shot from the back:

_A020031 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Nicholas Falzone · October 4, 2019

For the other case window, I wanted to mirror the design of the acrylic window but instead machine it out of solid aluminum. I made a file, and got to cutting. I will probably run one more finishing pass on the base of the cut to clean up the lines a bit more:

Started off as a blank slate:

_A030039 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A030041 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A030042 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I used an adaptive toolpath on this cut meaning it keep and even load on the cutter. This also helps me take a deeper cut.

_A030043 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A030048 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Starting the finishing pass:

_A030050 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A030052 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

All done! I'll probably take off another .1mm from the floor to make the mill marks more even but I'm happy with the result so far. I'll be chamfering the edges of this panel once its complete.

_A030054 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Nicholas Falzone · October 9, 2019

Time for more watercooling plumbing. I installed the processor and waterblock and started connecting the dots from there:

_A040059 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A040062 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050113 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050084 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050097 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050108 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Everything is mocked up at this point but not connected:

_A050091 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

After everything was finally connected, I got ready for leak testing:

_A050115 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A060120 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

After a few issues were resolved, I had the loop filled and running properly:

_A060121 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Its finally coming together:

_A060130 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Nicholas Falzone · October 9, 2019

Back to the Power supply mounting and cover. I had the power supply mounted so I could make the cover plate for the mount:

_A050087 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050078 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

I drilled out space for the bolt heads below to fit into:

_A050079 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Much cleaner than before:

_A050081 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050091 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The sharp corner on the GPU mount was bugging me so I decided to chamfer it:

Before:

_A050093 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

After:

_A050096 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Next, I wanted to machine the name of the case mod into the GPU bracket piece. I used a thin piece of walnut and make a file to V carve:

_A050069 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050071 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Cut to fit:

_A050075 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A050076 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

With some finish on it:

_A060122 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Nicholas Falzone · October 9, 2019

With the watercooling loop done and most of the machining settled I turned my attention to the cabling and cable management. My plan was to individually sleeve each cable with custom sleeving. I can see why after doing this, that most people buy them because it took forever but it was a rewarding experience in the end.

First I made pinouts of all the cables:

_A060134 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Heres the sleeving I'll be using. Silver and Black Teleios sleeving from Mainframe Customs:

_A060136 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Pins and tools:

_A060135 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The plan is to melt the sleeving using the heatshrink. Clear heatshrink enables me to see how melted it is:

_A060141 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A060138 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The cpu power cable is all done:

_A060143 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Working on the 14 pin cables for the GPU. This is where the pinout becomes super important.

_A060147 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Half ish done:

_A060152 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Somehow I had screwed up my pinouts so I had my smarter than I wife redo them for me:

_A060156 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The pretty side of the cable is all done:

_A060155 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Trying to tame this rats nest of cables:

_A060159 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

GPU cables installed, Its looking pretty clean:

_A060162 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A060163 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The back however needs some more work:

_A070170 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

Next came the 24 pin cable which was more like 27 pins counting all the double connections. This took an extra level of patience to complete.

_A070165 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

About 3 hours later, its all done:

_A070172 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The last thing to machine were the covers for the wires on the motherboard tray to help keep everything organized. This took only a few minutes on the CNC to complete:

_A080181 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A080182 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

The case is built and ready for final photos:

_A080178 by greensabbath911, on Flickr

_A080175 by greensabbath911, on Flickr