Introducing Patina, Rust's sister build.

The @yuel_beast Motif Monument is a steel chassis. This is my second Monument build, and I just love the simplicity of it. If you have the opportunity I recommend checking out their website. I had the chassis electroplated with copper and then covered with a clear coat. It looks great mostly but there are a few things that I learnt from the experience that I'll take away for next time.  1. Electroplating and weld seams don't like each other. This can show as poor adherence and black discolouration.  2. If you want to electroplate start with stainless steel not mild-steel as mild-steel can have acid leaching issues that look like dark spots. 3. Get your chassis to the right finish before bending. If you can't get your tools into the corners then there is going to be variation in the final finish. In this case the external faces are more gloss and the internal faces closer to satin.  Still, this backplate looks amazing. It's going to be hard for me to put this in the mail and send it away.

The @silverstonetek SX 600-G has been wrapped in a cream denim and given an aluminium cuff of to match the cream colour of the rest of the build and the aluminium cuff around the @noctua_at  NF A-14 PWM fan. But first I had to disassemble the PSU, remove the internals and paint the psu shell so that it would match the denim. The great thing about Silverstone PSU's is that the pinout is a lot simpler if you are making your own cables from scratch. I didn't have to do any splits. I just wish they would change the blue plugs.

The CPU cooler has been painted with a flat white primer on all outward facing surfaces and then painted with a cream top coat on all surfaces that are visible once the fans are in place. (The pipes as well as the top and sides of the cooler.) The internal surfaces of the fin stack and the internal heat pipes have been left unpainted. The Noctua NF A-14 fans have been painted with a flat white primer and a cream top coat. Most of the heavy cream coat is confined to the beige frame. The front rotor has been painted with the flat white primer which is quite thin and I was extra careful to ensure that the cream top coat was just enough to change the hue from pure white to cream without leaving a heavy residue. The rear fan rotor has been left its original brown. The aluminium cuff is just a piece of aluminium siding from a hardware store bent into shape.

The GPU is the MSI RTX 2060 Super Aero ITX. As you can see, I removed the fan shroud and plastic back plate and painted them cream to match the rest of the build. When I built Rust it had an intel 8700k in it which is slightly higher on the motherbard. This meant that when I switched to AM4 the cooler sat too low and interefered with the GPU. To rectify this, I had to drill holes through the backplate and insert silicone bumpers to keep the heatpipes away from the back plate. As you can see I had just enough room as the fan and CPU cooler sits flush with the GPU. Tight.

I replaced the Yuel Beast Motif Monument’s black power switch with a chrome plated LED switch. I also replaced the black hex head screws with stainless steel equivalents to match everything else on the case. You can see here the copper plating turned out well on the backplate reflecting details of the Rotaqua Book of the Dead deskmat.

I made the cream and charcoal/cream tweedish cables from scratch. The 15 AWG wire, pins, plugs, shrink-wrap and tools came from MDPCX. The paracord sleeving came from Paracord Galaxy. I really like the tweedish line of paracord. I feel it has a nice texture that can make a build stand out. I have it in a few colours so I’m looking forward to using it again on another build. The cable combs are αcool cable combs from ModmyMods.

Cuffing and painting the front Noctua 140mm fan was tricky. The Noctua frames aren’t actually flat on all 4 sides. There’s a little extra room where the vibration pads are so that you can put the fans together flush in a radiator setup. This meant that I had to take the fan and sand it down flat on a piece of sandpaper so the aluminium cuff would sit flush to the frame. I had also originally intended to have a cuff on both fans but there just wasn’t enough space on the rear fan. It’s not perfect. Still, I’m happy with how this turned out and I’ll be saving this little trick for future builds.

Last picture. Patina with Betty in the background