[REDACTED]: The CaseLabs Magnum SMA8 Build

I have marked out the mounting points for my reservoir. Will be drilling the holes tomorrow and doing a test mount.

Test mount because the plates I am mounting to are the 120mm fan hole covers that came with the case, which conveniently can mount to the reservoir plate space on the dividing panel of the case (the panel that the motherboard tray slots into). I am waiting for the actual mounting plate to get here.

Got a bunch of stuff coming this week. A small, weaksauce PSU for running the pump during filling, 90 degree rotary fittings, radiator gaskets, etc.

You check out the singularity mounts?

Yeah he makes a nice reservoir, but it's a little too clean for what I'm going for.

Went with Monsoon's Modular Reservoir System. I like it. Has a nice industrial/scientific feel to it.

You should get someone to laser cut your rez outside to have some cool stuff on it.

The mount has UV lights built in.

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Got the reservoir mounted. Going to wait until I start bending pipe and get the 90 degree fittings to mount the pump.

Edit: Reservoir, not radiator. It was a late night last night.

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I like that Res, nice choice.

Thank you.

It was a pain in the ass to get it in there. The UV lights that hide behind the reservoir are held in place by two spacers. Trying to get them to stay on the screws, while holding the light bars in the prefect spot, and lining up the reservoir to the screws, just flat out requires 6 hands.

I'm sure it will be worth the juggling, I used UV LEDs on mine & they don't really do much. The light bars should give a great effect.

I'm using plain distilled water and a UV reactive dye that's invisible until you turn the UV on.

I need two more light bars, so the rest of the case gets lit up, but I don't want them visible. Currently trying to find a plastic material that can act as a shroud and as a light diffuser.

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led lighting diffusers

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That's my plan for when I finally get around to putting my system together. I love looking at UV reactive fluids.

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As do I.

At first I was thinking a green coolant would be better, but I remembered that Cherenkov radiation is blue, And my theme is a military/industrial theme, the motherboard being called "Super Carrier" afterall. So the blue kind of works.

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Totally didn't completely steal @kewldude007's gif from The Lounge
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Got some tubing runs completed. PETG is fun to work with. I did mess up and forget to take the silicon out of a tube before cutting it. So now I'm going to have to have a damned 90 degree rotary fitting in the CPU block. Because the silicon isn't long enough for me to bend the longest tube in the way that I was planning to bend it.

I'm taking a break and having a sandwhich. I hope to fill her tomorrow and run just the pump until monday, then try powering the entire thing on.

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Done bending. I was going to put in a permanent fill port with a cap and everything, but I'm freaking tired and a plain old barbed fitting will do just fine for now. Same thing for the drain port.

It's not perfect. Not everything is straight. I eyeballed the entire thing, making sure every fitting was as snug and spot on as possible.

Tomorrow, we shall find out if it leaks, at least once I've rinsed everything out and put the entire system back together.

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Have to start somewhere. Shrugs ?

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Probably gonna redo a lot of it after like 6 months or so when I change out the water. Right now I just want the fucking thing up and running.

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Just a quick picture of me buttoning everything back up. I need to get some cable combs and a single 6 pin PSU cable (I hate that Cablemods only included a single 8 pin GPU cable, with a bunch of them having extra connectors hanging off the side. Who wants that shit?).

The piece of black rubber tubing is there because I ran out of plastic locking rings for the hard tubing, and didn't feel like waiting.

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I love this power strip. I can now plug in all the things and not have to worry about spacing.

insert unlimited power meme here

Right now I am pretty much done with this build other than some beauty stuff. I'll probably do some work on the tubing the next time I drain and refill the system. I think my issue with bending was that I was using little preset mandrels that came with the monsoon kit. This was rather difficult to do and when watching Jay of JayzTwoCents, I see that he does them free hand.

All in all, this has been a mix of fun, infuriating, and a great learning experience for me. Now I just need to learn how to do custom PSU cables.

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Not the final board I ended up using, obviously.

Would have been ridiculous to keep it in there lol