Custom carbon fibre case

Show off your quiet rig.

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Mr Evil
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Custom carbon fibre case

Post by Mr Evil » Wed Apr 15, 2015 3:31 pm

I have been wanting to try my hand at building a case for a long time. When I was motivated enough to actually do it, I thought I should go all-out. This is the result.

The main features are that it is constructed from a frame of aluminium extrusions, with carbon fibre panels. The motherboard is rotated 90° (like a SilverStone Raven), and it has three 140mm intake fans. It's fairly quiet with the fans idling at ~300rpm, and they can keep the CPU cool under load at that speed, only needing to spin faster when the GPU is also working.

The CPU heatsink is a fanless Thermalright Macho Zero, which I am quite impressed with. I still have the stock cooler on the GPU (XFX R9 280X). I would like to replace it at some point, as it is by far the loudest part of the system, though it's not too bad for a stock cooler.

You can read a more extensive description on my website.
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Cistron
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by Cistron » Wed Apr 15, 2015 11:08 pm

Nice idea with the aluminium profiles. Where these the 20mm ones?

Mr Evil
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by Mr Evil » Thu Apr 16, 2015 12:16 am

30mm. I would have used 20mm, but the availability was poor. Specifically, I couldn't find 20mm T-connectors (the parts used to join profiles in the middle).

Irrelevant
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by Irrelevant » Thu Apr 16, 2015 12:24 am

Sweet! I've been wanting to build a custom case for a long time, too, and it's nice to see another SPCR'er go the custom route.

BTW, if you do end up buying an aftermarket GPU heatsink, the 90-degree mobo orientation is going to make selection tricky. Even the best heatpipes under-perform once the heat source is more than a couple inches above the cooling region and some will fail almost entirely, and fin orientation is a huge deal if you attempt to go fully passive (should be parallel to gravity). As a result, heatsinks that work great in typical orientations might suck enormously in your case. For example, I would strongly advise against the Accelero Xtreme, as its fins are oriented badly, its heatpipes will have to pump a looong ways against gravity, and those heatpipes are unlikely to have powder/sintered cores, since they're more expensive. Your safest bets would be the Thermalright Spitfire or a liquid cooler, though the Mk.26 might work with a fan, since it has gargantuan heatipes with sintered cores.

Mr Evil
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by Mr Evil » Sun Apr 19, 2015 10:23 am

Good point about the heatpipe orientation. I have seen some tests relating to that before, and heatsinks with sintered heatpipes did pretty well upside-down.

The closest to a suitable fanless heatink I found was the ARCTIC Accelero S3. The fins are oriented appropriately, and it's big, but with a rating of 135W fanless and 200W with a fan, it's not quite big enough. Can't tell what sort of wick the heatpipes have either. I don't think anyone else makes anything close to big enough.

Matthew9226
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by Matthew9226 » Tue Apr 21, 2015 11:29 pm

Nice looking case! Good job :)

And on the topic of the GPU cooler, your current card also has the heatpipes like the Accelero Xtreme has and the fins in the "wrong" direction.
I'd consider going with 140mm AIO route + beefier heatsinks to VRM and VRAM.

Mr Evil
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by Mr Evil » Tue Jul 21, 2015 3:29 pm

Matthew9226 wrote:...I'd consider going with 140mm AIO route + beefier heatsinks to VRM and VRAM.
I liked this idea, so I very nearly bought a water-cooled Fury X, but then I saw reviews of the Sapphire Fury (non-X) which measured it being even quieter, so I bought one of those.

It is really very quiet. The fans stop spinning at idle, and only reach about 800rpm when gaming. I had to take the side off my case and make sure the fans were actually spinning under load, because I can't hear them over the case fans.
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xan_user
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by xan_user » Tue Jul 21, 2015 7:44 pm

Mr Evil wrote: ....because I can't hear them over the case fans.
Sounds like its time to tweak those case fans! :D

AgustF
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Re: Custom carbon fibre case

Post by AgustF » Wed Aug 26, 2015 5:59 am

Really nice build you made congratz made ! Hope you are very satisfied with the end results.

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