I know I sound like the boy that cried wolf, but the additional components from Thermaltake and Scan UK should be with me very soon. So in preparation for that, I decided over the weekend to get some other things in order first.

First on the agenda was the AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 graphics card from Asus, which comes with the reference blower cooler and no backplate.



Disassembly was a fairly straightforward affair, with only minimal residue left over by some of the thermal pads.



As you can see, the Pacific V-RX 5700 waterblock from Thermaltake will be getting installed onto the card, but before that we have some minor detail work to be done first.

Now each to their own and all that, but one thing that drives me crazy is when I see someone slap a beautiful block on a graphics card, but do nothing with the stock bracket:



The unpainted bare metal sticks out like a sort thumb, unless of course that is the look you are going for. For Project SparklePony however, something had to be done about this eyesore. Whilst you can of course purchase aftermarket single-slot brackets, which are usually painted or powder-coated, I am a cheapskate; so giving it a good paint was the 'thrifty' option 😉



A few coats of primer followed by some gloss black and clear lacquer...



Ahh, much better.

Now on to the next pet-peeve of mine. So many graphic cards have that irritating burnt orange/rust edge on them, in your average build it isn't the end of the world; but when you are trying to make a build as aesthetically pleasing as possible, something has to be done.



Nothing that a Sharpie can't fix of course 😀



The Sharpie trick is an ancient technique that has been passed down throughout the generations, works really well for any random silver screws you have as well as those silly little coloured wires on your front panel connectors/audio header.

Once that was all prepped, it was time to put the block on.



If weight is a sign of quality, then this thing is top-notch. Feels really solid and installation was very straightforward.



I look forward to finding out how all the temps are with it, especially since the card has been flashed and will of course be overclocked.

The backplate that comes with the block is also a really solid piece of kit, whilst it won't be on show much due to mounting the card vertically; it still serves the important function of giving the assembly some rigidity.



With that all sorted, next up was ditching the stock cooler that came with the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and installing the waterblock.



I was really impressed with the backplate that comes with the Thermaltake Pacific W4 Plus RGB CPU block. Really sturdy but also a very nice premium finish.




I wasn't sure how I would feel about the look of a circular block, PCs are usually full of right angles. But actually I quite like the look of it.



With that installed it was then time to get the graphics card in as well, just to get an idea of how/where everything is going to align.



From this angle below, you can see that the minor tweaks of painting the bracket and busting out the Sharpie has accomplished exactly what I wanted it to. If there was a rusty edge around the graphics card, your eye would be naturally drawn to it; whereas now you'd really have to go looking for it. The devil is in the details after all.



Once the rest of the LCS components from Thermaltake arrive, I'll be installing it all so I can see exactly what I need to do in regards to bends as well as my acrylic work.

Then once I'm happy with what all needs to be done, everything will be removed so I can work on the case. A combination of more cutting, grinding, and painting are on the menu; as well as a few other things.

In the meantime, stay home and stay safe folks!

Before the modding begins, I wanted to do some tweaking first.

First item on the list was of course flashing the 5700 with an XT BIOS. I haven’t touched clocks yet, as the stock blower is still on the card. But later down the road I’ll see how far it’ll go once on liquid.

No comprehensive benchmark comparison I’m afraid, just a cheeky little before and after with the in-game benchmark of The Division 2.

87 to 94 is not bad for ‘free’ performance. 😉

I’ll be interested to see how it performs at 3440x1440 when everything is done.

Anyone that has experience with the Ryzen platform and 4 sticks of RAM likely knows it can be somewhat of a headache.

D.O.C.P. profiles are usually validated for only 2 sticks, and stability tends to be heavily reliant on the motherboard/BIOS.

This system was no different. The 3000MHz TOUGHRAM from Thermaltake, or rather the Strix 570-F Gaming from Asus, did not like running at the D.O.C.P. settings.
Well actually it ran just fine (games/memtest/etc.), but would often hang during boot.

Since 3600Mhz tends to be the sweet spot for Ryzen 3xxx, I decided to try and give that a shot instead.

Whilst I haven’t dialled in the timings perfectly just yet, it seems to be at a decent starting point. The system is also currently stable AND boots every time now.

Right, so the majority of my raw materials are here, I will have to clear my workspace up and lay them all out for photos in the near future. For components however, due to the current 'world situation' those are slightly delayed 😢

I have however slightly began on an area that does not require the other stuff to come in:



Originally I was just going to cut out at a square (before actually getting my hands on the View 51), but after seeing the clearance between the PSU and the back panel:



I just did not feel comfortable potentially restricting the airflow there. Whilst I know a lot of mods out there don't really care about actual functionality, this setup is going to be used all the time: gaming, art, potentially college (no pressure on her at all 😉), etc. So I decided to leave that little section of grill down there and I'll trim the included magnetic dust filter to fit there.

One thing I did notice of course was the upside-down logo on the PSU (due to the orientation of the View 51):



That was a whole 2 second job, but is now rectified.

That's it, that is all I managed to get around to doing I'm afraid. Handed in my disseration last week, I just had a final exam this week, I have one more the week after next; as well as an essay to complete as well.

Once those last 2 tasks are out of the way, then I can really get my teeth into it. Hopefully the other goodies will be here by then as well!

In the meantime, thanks once again for stopping by.

Stay home, stay safe!

Not much to report this week I'm afraid, still awaiting delivery of the remaining components from Thermaltake. It has worked out well however, as I was able to finish up all of my academic work without any distraction; just sitting my last exam yesterday.

So now I am done with everything and just waiting for my results!

As soon as the rest of the parts arrive, I will finally be able to really get stuck in; so this past weekend I decided to do a few preliminary things to get the ball rolling.

Since the weather was nice I decided to take a stab at cutting my first piece of acrylic:



This particular sheet is actually gloss white, but comes with a protective blue film on both sides. The film is quite handy for plotting your guidelines, as well as providing some surface tension to prevent cracks or splintering. I just used a cheap jigsaw (nothing fancy) but with a high-quality metal-cutting blade. As long as you keep the speed slow and with no articulation, cutting acrylic this way is fairly straightforward. Just remember not to go too fast, otherwise it will melt back together.

The radiator/fan brackets also needed a little bit of cutting with a dremel:



Just little slots to allow the acrylic sheet to be flush with the frame. An alternative option would have been to put notches in the acrylic, but doing it that way would require pinpoint precision; whereas this way I could basially 'eyeball' it.



Not bad for a first test-fit.



I will need to trim the top bracket a little bit more, as the acrylic isn't perfectly perpindicular at that top-left corner. Plenty of other little bits of cutting to do as well, for cable and tubing access; as well as more acrylic pieces to measure and cut for the rest of the inside. Unfortunately I can't do that until the rest of the cooling parts come, as I need the exact measurements.



It is nice and bare back here for now, but once all of the power/argb/fan cables are in, it is going to be a nightmare to tidy up.

Well that's it for now, weather permitting I will do a little more acrylic work over the weekend. Now that all my academic work is out of the way I plan on making steady progress relatively quickly. The sooner I get everything assembled and mocked up, it will be much easier for my step-daughter to plan out the 'artsy' stuff. She has plenty of ideas, but it can be difficult to visualise without having the blank canvas set up to see how everything will look/fit.

In the meantime, take care folks.

The eagerly anticipated second delivery came in this week!



A few fittings unfortunately came in chrome rather than black, which I imagine is due to issues with stock; which is completely understandable given current events. The extra-thick radiator did however really catch me by surprise. My intent was to install a 2nd Pacific C360 radiator at the front, for a total of 2 radiators (top and front).

After a good couple of days trying different layouts, I finally settled on just the thicc boi up top. A 2nd radiator on either the front or bottom was causing issues, fairly confident the single 360x64mm should be enough.

I slapped some quick bends in there to test the parts AMD make sure the D5 was fine as well ensuring the radiator hadn’t been damaged in shipping.

With that out of the way (everything was fine) next on the agenda was to start sorting out the interior acrylic.

The first try didn’t go too well, my holes were slightly off and I also cracked a bit at the last minute. On the bright side, it will serve nicely as a template for the 2nd try.

The plan is to get all the acrylic work done this week, so I can strip the case and get started on paint!
I’ll also be able to give the acrylic panels to my step-daughter so she can start hashing out her artwork.

Ooft, what a week. (This update is not from the past week, but the week before; forgot to upload!)

So picking up where I left off, plan for this past week was to get all of the acrylic pieces hashed out. I wanted to get that out of the way, since it was going to be one of the more tricky items on the agenda. Sure enough, it was fairly tricky.

The holes for attempt #1 were slightly off, but nothing a little moulding/edging wouldn't be able to hide; same with the cutout for the pump and drain port. Unfortunately I had a bit of an accident when I was drilling the last hole, my step bit had got stuck and I accidentally applied to much pressure when trying to get it unstuck.

Which resulted in a crack; whilst only apparent when you get up close and personal, I knew I would have to try again.

I decided to take a short break from redoing that particular panel and started working on the rear and bottom. Ended up reusing the broken panel for the rear bit and did a test fit with the edging, fairly happy with it. Bottom still needs a fair bit of tweaking, but I was ready to dive back in to getting the big piece sorted.

Got everything cut and drilled, was looking better than the first attempt. If you look closely however, you will likely notice a large crack above the fittings. That crack happened whilst I was dusting off the acrylic, couldn't believe it; another significant amount of time down the drain.

On the plus side, it gave me some food for thought and I decided that I would make some tweaks for Attempt #3.

I now had a really good template for what I needed to do, and can report that everything went perfectly! Holes are spot on, edges straight and most importantly NO #### CRACKS. In retrospect, the cracks were of course my fault; but valuable lessons were learned.

Next on the agenda were the acrylic pieces for the top and front. The top didn't cause me any real issues, just some minor tweaking was required to get it to fit snugly. Not convinced I'm 100% happy with it, so may have to revisit later.

The front part though, that was interesting; and required the use of a 200mm hole saw cutter.

What an absolute beast of a unit, considerably heavy as well! It definitely does the job, you just have to take it nice and slowly; ensuring not to force it too much. The problem however was that whilst the scrap piece of acrylic (the circle or 'donut hole' if you will) was 200mm in diameter, the piece I was using ended up being larger. Which is of course due to the width of the saw bit itself.

This meant that once I trimmed the piece to fit in the front section, I was left with 3 separate pieces (very slight tolerances on the sides) that didn't actually line up well with the fans themselves.

So I ended up having to cut the pieces up even more (into 6 pieces) and try to fit them together like some kind of jigsaw puzzle.

In its current state, it clearly looks like crap. The curvature of the circles is off, edges don't line up, etc...

I've got a few plans up my sleeve to achieve the end result that I want, just a case of some more experimentation. It has made me reconsider trying to achieve the raw acrylic finish on the front and top though, as I think it will look much cleaner if the panels are paint-matched to the rest of the case; with the seams all removed so it looks like 1 piece of plastic.

So whilst it was a frustrating week for me (1 day of work, 2 days of sciatic pain afterwards, rinse/repeat), it has also been a great learning experience for me.

I'm going to take the weekend off so I can relax and recuperate, but full steam ahead next week; time for some dremel work and get started on paint!

Thanks for stopping by folks, take care and stay safe!

Hey there folks, been a little while since my last update.

I had originally planned to get a fair bit done last weekend and have an update for Monday, but things didn't work out that way. But anyway, what progress has been made since the last time?

The front and top panels were not going to plan, which is definitely my own fault. I think I misjudged just how tricky doing the things I wanted to with the acrylic would end up being! After seeing how the first run ended up looking, it also made me realise that I would end up painting those bits anyway; as the raw acrylic would look slightly out of place.

So I decided to try a different material:


Yep, that is going to work a lot better. Need to do some finishing work to it of course, fill in the gaps and sand smooth. But at least this mock-up gives you an idea of what my plan was for these areas. Hopefully the final product will look alright!

I had ran out of supplies, so just put those pieces to the side for now. With the holes all lined up I could now turn my attention to the fan/radiator brackets:


I trimmed off some of the front fan mount so it's less busy, then gave both mounts the usual primer then paint. Unfortunately I was out of clear and couldn't purchase any locally, so had to wait until this Friday until I could give them a few coats of that.

Since that was on hold, I turned my attention to the interior of the case. I figured that whilst I have a lot of exterior work to complete yet, I could potentially get the inside sorted in the meantime. So that is exactly what I started on:


The rubber moulding/trim isn't quite perfect at the moment, but is lined up fairly well for now. Whilst all of my measurements for the acrylic panels were fine, once I popped all the bits in I soon found that I needed to sand some of the edges down a little more. It was definitely a tight fit.

Speaking of tight fits, it took me ages to get the GPU in; I'm still amazed I didn't crack the acrylic in the process. I really should have put that in before the rear acrylic piece, but oh well:


Before I get bombarded with comments about having the exhaust at the bottom and the 'but heat rises' argument, yes I know. I am no stranger to the concepts of cooling a PC, and the decision to have all the fans orientated the way they are is purely aesthetic. Whlst the 200mm Riing Trios have lighting on the front and rear, the 120mm Riing Quads do not. So they needed to be orientated this way to provide the lighting necessary for the other acrylic pieces yet to be installed. But with that being said, the airflow that will be present within the case is more than enough to overcome the mechanics of convection.

I installed a single fan guard on the fan underneath the GPU, so as not to catch the riser cable. Those fans won't be visible anyway, so no biggie.

Just today I managed to apply clear coat to the fan mounts as well as the small front panel, so the plan is to get those installed tomorrow so I can carry on with the interior. Once the rest of the fans are installed, then I can start on some cable management around the back:


Whilst I will naturally try to make things as neat as possible back here, most of it will end up being covered anyway in order to faciliate the plan for the rear side panel.

I also wanted to add a little easter egg for my stepdaughter. Even so so already has a PC (which I made from old bits several years ago), this will be a proper PCMR build; so plopped a cheeky sticker on the unused drain cap for her:


So whilst I wait on things to dry before moving on, I thought I would start working on something else:


That's all for now, thanks once again to everyone that has been stopping by or keeping tabs on my progress; the support is greatly appreciated. Hopefully the next update will be the interior all sorted out.

Stay safe!

Ooft, it has been over a month since I posted an update here. I realise that whilst I had posted some images, I completely forgot to write up as well.

So let us get caught up to speed!

I went into this whole contest with solely a 'theoretical' understanding of how I could use the acrylic. In my head the plan was to create a cleaner version of the View 51 Snow. Now this isn't to say that the case doesn't already look great stock, as it certainly does; but we all know how factory paint jobs can be, especially when dealing with multiple materials.

I'm now getting to the stage where I will start to see whether these ideas actually work or not!

So catching up from the last time I checked in, once all those things above had been painted and lacquered, it was time to start putting some pieces back together.

First up was the small front panel where the power switch and USB ports etc. reside, as well as getting the 200mm Riing Trios in:


I had removed as much of the fan bracket as I was comfortable with, as I still wanted it to successfully hold these monsters in place. Whilst not perfect, it definitely makes things less busy behind the fans. Some other minor things were making the Power Button and Reset Switch black, just to give it a little bit of pop.

Another reason for starting to get things like the fans and front panel in was to get started on cable management, as that would eventually be a slight pain. At least at this stage there were barely any cables:


It's a shame that the above shot doesn't show how glossy that front panel is, but I suppose that's what happens when you just take candid photos rather than lighting them properly and whatnot. Admittedly when I'm working on a PC I just want to get stuck into it, so pausing to take a pic is something I constantly have to remind myself to do!

I then put the thicc boi back in as well as the 3 Riing Quads up top, and it was time to make some new bends:


After several iterations of different bends, keeping in mind I wanted the area of acrylic on the right to not be covered up by tubing, these are how the final bends turned out:


I had considered having the CPU>Distro run travel at a 90 to the right and then straight up, but running it straight this way kept the panel nice and clear for...

...well, stuff 😉

I flushed the system several times with Distilled Water and then ran just the pump for a couple of days to make sure there were no leaks. Everything checked out, so it was then time to drain the system and put in the proper fluid, get the system filled and get out all the air bubbles, so ran the pump once again for a good couple of days:


I always love how much quieter a pump runs when you use a pre-mixed coolant compared to distilled water, just that slight change in viscosity makes a world of difference.

I briefly turned on the system fully, just to make sure everything worked. System was absolutely fine, it just took me a little while to get used to the TT RGB Plus software. But I got there in the end.

Before proceeding any further I wanted to get to work on the cables around back. I had all the intentions of making it super-clean back there, but if you recall, the rear panel was going to be modified with a lit Unicorn's Head (still the plan). In order to help facilitate this, as the actual cutout would be clear, I needed a blank canvas back there. So instead I did an alright job of running the cables fairly tidy and then slapped this in there:


Now nobody will ever know what sins lurk beneath 😉

I haven't started working on the actual panel that will go there yet, waiting on some dry weather up here as I need to cut some acrylic outside. But once I get that done I can then get it bonded to the panel frame and start working on that. So shouldn't take too long.

With the back kinda sorted out for now, it was time to return my attention to the interior of the case:


I was pleasantly surprised with how it looks in person so far, the glossy acrylic really shines; which ends up giving a nice combination of reflecting light as well as letting some through.

Next on the agenda was to start working on the basement. This is another part of the build that I wasn't sure whether it would give me the effect I wanted or not, so I just very quickly took some off-cuts and slapped them in there to give myself an idea of whether it was going to work or not:


The image probably doesn't do the visual effect much justice, but sure enough it is functioning as a lightbox fairly well. So I was very relieved it would work as intended.

So the next thing I wanted to get sorted out was the panelling/trim on the 'business side' of the case. I kind of had an idea of how I wanted it in my head, but thought it safe to try with foamboard first.

Which is just as well, since the prototype was a fair bit wonky:


But at least it served its purpose, it enable me to fine tune things a fair bit before moving on to the actual acrylic pieces.

So a little bit of jigsaw action resulted in:


So my inital thoughts were that I was at least happy with the shape and relative symmetry of it, and I like that some of the lighting was coming through the acrylic; but ultimately I decided that I would like it better if I painted it.

Which then gave me an idea. What if I put on some stars (as in the stickers we used to get at school for doing a good job), painted over it and then peeled them off? I wonder if that would work:


So slapped some primer on it and put it to one side for now, as I wanted to turn my attention to the front and top panels:


Managed to get it bonded at least, but I knew that getting the seams all smoothed out would require a little bit of elbow grease later on.


Same with the front, quite a bit messy here as I was slapping it on there a fair bit. But it was nice to see how the front would look with the panel filled in like that. Frankly I quite like the look, was exactly what I was going for!

Right, I think I will leave it at that for now; I still have more to post, but will hold off for now.
Take care folks, and stay safe!