Although I can't do much building right now, I can strip out the four 120mm Lian Li stock fans and the drive cages, none of which are required...


You might notice that each of the feet have an acrylic spacer...


One common mod to these cases that I've seen exploits this feature by the addition of LEDs, and, on removal of one foot I can see that that might not even involve drilling out any holes in the case because, very conveniently, each foot placement has four holes around it that are the perfect size to accept 3mm discrete LEDs. And, I just happen to have a box of those. So all that I really need to do is drill holes to match in the acrylic spacers and wire up some LEDs to fit.

One challenge to overcome is that I want to separate the basement from the main section of the case which I plan to do using an acrylic "light floor" (see the start of this log for credits/links for that) but there's a shift in levels between the existing floor in the rear half of the case and the top of the basement side cover (i.e. the piece with the fan cover in it) of a few (5-ish?) millimeters. When I take into account the likely thickness of the floor that I need to fabricate the difference in height is going to be quite noticeable if I take it out level...

A few small updates to make on component selection and ideas/inspiration.

Having taken a look at the case and made a few measurements I now think that I'm better off going with a 420 (~40mm thick) in the top as the top cover vent holes are setout for a 420 and not a 480.
For the basement rad I'm going to go with 60mm thick 480.
Accordingly I've now ordered the following fans:
4 x Noctua NF-F12 PWM Chromax (for the 480 rad)
3 x Noctua NF-A14 PWM Chromax (for the 420 rad)
4 x Noctua NF-S12A PWM Chromax (case fans - three at the front, one at the rear)
Other components that are now on order:
1 x Samsung970 PRO 512GB NVME M.2 (for the OS / C: drive)
4 x Phanteks Halos LUX RGB Fan Frame (for the basement fans)
1 x Phanteks RGB Digital Controller Hub (which I hope to use for both the Halos and the V3000WX front panel)
2 x 4-port PCI-E to USB 3.0 cards (I have a lot of USB peripherals, including a Rift, HOTAS, Peddles, etc.)

On the ideas/inspiration front I very much like the "light floor" as seen in another V3000 build called Greenhorn Dragon -> https://youtu.be/UY9WMm8exaQ

I broke the soldering iron out and knocked up a board to power some of the lighting. In summary it takes the 12V and 5V supply from a MOLEX connector and allows each one to be regulated so as to adjust the brightness of the LEDs that are plugged into it. The plan is that the four individual LEDs shall light up the feet of the case and the LED strip shall light up the "light floor". Please note that the bare wires/connections that you can see in the picture are temporary, simply for the purpose of testing.


Feet lit up:


Testing the light floor concept (this version doesn't have the bend in it that I need):


With regards the final light panel, I need to fabricate something like this:

I love Noctua fans, even more so now that they've launched the Chromax range. The one obvious downside is that they don't have RGB variants, so I've also bought four of Phanteks ARGB halos for the fans in the basement - they'll be driven by the Aquacomputer Farbwerk 360.


As an after thought I dropped Noctua a line to see if I could get hold of one of their metalic case badges (I remembered getting one with one of my very first purchases from them many moons ago). They were very obliging and I ended up receiving a very nice goody bag from them:

Things continue to tick along quite slowly on this build recently the PSU that I selected has arrived - the 1200W Dark Power Pro 12 from be quiet. I appreciate that 1200W is somewhat overkill for the build but it's the smallest unit that they make in this range and it ticks so many other boxes for me (not least of all being that I was able to get hold of one!), including the fact that it comes with a full and extensive set of cables that are all individually sleeved. As of right now I'm still undecided as to whether I keep all the cable sets as they are (all black) or whether I add some accents by resleeving one or two individual cables. Either way I won't have the additional expenses of buying custom cables or the massive time sink of building my own custom cables (which is satisfying but, having done it once, daunting)...

Test fit of the various Aquacomputer components all mounted to a 3mm aluminium plate which is in turn then mounted using M3 screws to four existing threaded holes in the case:


The Aquacomputer components are:

1x Aquaero 6 LT as the central hub and to take care of case fans, ambient temp monitoring, etc
2x Quadro - one for CPU loop monitoring and fan/pump control; one for GPU loop monitoring and fan/pump control
1x Farbwerk 360 - ARGB control
1x Splitty9 - internal USB hub
1x Hubby7 - Aquabus hub

BTW the observant might notice that I've got the Farbwerk board connected to the Aquabus despite the fact that this presently doesn't serve any real purpose. I hadn't realised that at the time that I connected things up but, for now at least, I've elected to leave it connected on the off chance that a future firmware update might bring this into play.

It seems that the Zen 3 architecture has raised the bar a little with respect to the potential for clocking DDR4 at slightly faster speeds through some improvements of IPC. On that basis I'm taking a punt on a 4000MHz kit from Team Group. The advertised timings aren't exactly stellar at 18-18-18-38 (at 1.35V) but I have it on good authority that these can be tightened up (and the kit has been binned) so my challenge shall be to find the right balance between clock speed and timing.

The specific kit I'm getting is: Team Group Xtreem 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-32000C18 4000MHz Quad Channel Kit

It's also worth noting that there's no RGB with this kit - that's a very deliberate decision.

I still need a whole bunch of components to arrive but with the graphics card's arrival this morning it feels like things are starting to get very real...


And then, 30mins later, the Bitspower tubing shows up too...

One aspect of be quiet's Dark Power Pro 12 PSU that appealed to me was that the included cables were all individually sleeved and came with cable combs. What I hadn't appreciated, until just now, was that the included cable combs have been very neatly tailored to how the 24 pin plug is wired up, i.e. the combs make allowance for the fact that four of the pins each have two cables crimped to them by having additional space for those specific runs...

The Heatkiller 200's and the Aquacomputer D5's joined the growing pile of components today...

They look absolutely gorgeous and the sheer heft of them just oozes quality. I also like that the way the pump attaches to the res you're able to orientate the pump such that you can position the cables in the most convient place to hide them (which is kind of necessary given that the power feed is not sleeved).

Today is a good day.
This morning I received notification that the Dark Hero that I had on pre-order is shipping.
This afternoon I received notification that the 5950x that I had on pre-order is shipping.
Today is a very good day indeed.

One of the hardest pieces of this build to date has been fabricating the "light floor" that separates the basement from the main section of the case. The two main components of that challenge have been to achieve uniform lighting and bend the three layers of acrylic to fit neatly together and fit within the constraints of the case. On my third attempt I've now achieved something that I'm rather pleased with...


Edit: it's a little difficult to see the bend in the light floor when it's lit up - so here's a couple of extra pictures to try and make that clearer:


Some additional notes on how I achieved this and what I learnt along the way:

* The final implementation is made up of three layers, a sandwich if you will.
-- The bottom layer is 3mm mirror acrylic (to reflect as much light as possible upwards), this is cut to fit snugly within the case.
-- The middle layer is 4mm clear acrylic. The uppermost surface was sanded with 80 grit sandpaper across it's entire surface, and after rounding off the corners the edges were polished. This piece was cut with ~5mm gap all the way round relative to the two other pieces. The edges are wrapped with a 4mm wide LED strip (120 LEDs per meter) which is held in place by a few layers of white insulation tape to reduce the "spotting" of the LEDs around the edges, this was trimmed back to create a uniform edge.
-- The top layer is 3mm opal white acrylic and, like the mirror acrylic it is cut to fit snugly within the case.

* In this implementation I've not attempted to bond any of the pieces together as my previous attempts to do so were problematic, e.g.:
-- Bonding before bending made it difficult to bend due to the amount of material to heat up, resulting in obvious deformation of the layer closest to the heating element.
-- Bonding after bending was challenging because anything less than perfect bends on all pieces meant that the acrylic welding liquid can't be applied uniformally which resulted in "shadows" being visible at the surface.
-- With the insulation tape used to wrap the LED strip it rules out the possibility to make a bond at the edges.

* Some other random learnings/thoughts:
-- The mirrow base layer is marginly better than having white acrylic at the base for creating a uniform light at the surface but it also has the advantage that it has an opaque bottom to it so light doesn't spill into the basement.
-- Along the way I experimented quite a lot with sanding different surfaces, e.g. both sides of the clear acrylic, one/both sides of the white acrylic top layer. Ultimately what I found out was that I achieved the best result with this final implementation - i.e. only sanding the upper layer of the clear acrylic.
-- Keeping the three layers separate makes fitting the light floor into the case easier as individually they're easier to flex than one combind piece.
-- Keeping the three layers separate will make it easier in the event that I have to replace the LED strip at any point as bonded acrylic is effectively a permanent bond.

And finally, for now, I'm now contemplating in lining the entire main chamber in white as I like the effect that the light floor has on the rough white background that I've used to mark out cuts and holes. The original plan was to have a piece of black acrylic as the back plate and to leave the sides untouched.
- What do you reckon: all in on a white interior or stick to the original plan?

I can't claim this as an original idea as I first read about in another build log (over on OCUK forums) from a guy who had picked it up from EVGA forums but, never the less, I'm rather pleased with how this* came together even if it still needs a little tidy up, e.g. some dome headed nuts should look better than the protruding screws...


And the first tube run is in, as much as anything just to see how it is to work with metal tubing as this is the first build I've used this for...


* "this" being the mounting of six stick RAM block on the backplate of the full cover GPU block fitted to my 3090.

I'm aiming for a very clean, uncluttered look for this build. Despite the size of this case, that has its challenges when you're trying to squeeze in two full size reservoirs and a pair of fat rads. To help with keeping things clean and simple I've chosen to route the inlets and outlets of the pump/res combo's directly through the back panel. With that orientation it exposed a couple of mounting holes in the reservoirs that wouldn't normally be seen, which I wanted to cover up - so I wrote off to the nice folks at Watercooling.de to see if they could supply me with a pair of Heatkiller badges, and hey presto...

For the first time in a while I've had the best part of a day to dedicate to building, with a good deal of that spent on finalising the back panels: one "front of house" made from 1mm steel covered in vinyl; and one in the rear made of 0.8mm acrylic and painted to obscure the original back panel which has been chopped around quite significantly.



This picture shown here was taken in a darkened room with the only lighting coming from the custom lighting that I installed into the case, comprising of:

• Light floor (LED strip and three layers of acrylic)
  
• Back lit motherboard
  
• Back edge of top radiator is back lit
  
• LEDs fitted in all four of the feet
  

Getting ever closer to calling this a wrap...

Today I’ve finished up “front of house” with completing the tube runs in that section and the cables.



I’ve also got the CPU loop all plumbed in around the back and that’s now under pressure test. The GPU loop is under way too.



And, crucially, I’ve also proven to myself that the back panel fits on the case without obstruction - phew!

No pictures for this update.

Following on from pressure testing the CPU loop (a worthwhile step as it helped reveal a nick in one o-ring in one fitting) I've now moved on to leak testing and prep'ing that loop using Mayhem's Blitz part 2. Twenty hours in and no hint of any leak so I've drained out the Blitz and I'm now continuing to leak test as I flush the system.

As an aside I've very much appreciated the benefits of how this system is split between two loops and with having the components split between the front and back sections via pass-throughs - it's meant that I've been able to pressure test each subsection of the loop(s) before bringing it all together, building confidence at each step and making trouble shooting much simpler.