Last week many packages arrived but before having a chance to properly unbox them I had to head away to Beauleiu for the weekend. But on the plus side I did encounter several relevant cars in the motor museum so once again lets start with some automotive inspiration, this time my pics too! Firstly this 2010 McLaren Mercedes MP4/21 in it's very German livery.
 

 
Also relatively recent was this straight six Honda CBX motorcycle, I disapprove of the philips head screws however the castings, chrome, bright silver paint and black frame were an instant reminder.
 

 
Perhaps sharing the most similarities was the 1930 Bentley 4.5 Litre Supercharged with it's humongous blower and drum brakes, no doubt slightly on the heavy side knowing British engineering of that period.
 

 
By far my favourite car on display this 1935 Auburn 851 Speedster, maybe followed up by the Gulf 917.
 

 
Just wandering among the former land speed record holders when the lights came up over this 1920 Sunbeam 350hp and I noticed the fan positioned ahead of the radiator. How original that fitment is i'm not sure, at speed it would seem redundant but an instant trigger back to the land of PC's.
 

 
And of course what was waiting for me to open when I returned home.
 

 

 
Just like in other EK-Kits i've had lots of normal retail boxes and some rather more interesting mystery boxes.
 

 
Like this spooky water block.
 

 
And the unmarked box of many things.
 

 

 
The second layer was just a bit more eventful with this awesome Alu Supremacy, not quite an MX duplicate I was pleasantly surprised.
 

 
Cheeky SPC always welcome, these things are so quiet and compact.
 

 
Right, what's left. What haven't we seen yet...
 

 
Ooooh a block and a backplate!
 

 
Many many things from just one of these little boxes. Each piece so neatly formed.
 

 

 
Right lets take a look at the stuff with the board, whiiich is about the only thing I have, no CPU 
 

 
An epic match though.
 

 

 

 
Right time to get a whole lot more abstract with the photography as we explore this new GPU block. I mean, all the other parts are excellent but this really is a significant and impressive piece of engineering. I saw a prototype many months ago, I liked it instantly but didn't look too hard, the cavities were interesting and the compound angles achieved on the edges were really special. But it wasn't until I looked straight through that I realized it was an extrusion, no parallel boxes but epicly inclined planes and edges... take a really close look.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Also really could not match the board finish and style any better at all.
 

 

 

 
One minor oddity were the little acetal stop plugs, I expected aluminium versions of the conventional EK plug but also pleased they were slotted, just in case I do end up using them.
 

 
So much hype now, I just want all the bits!
 

 
Just to accelerate things I found all my old parts and cleaned them up.
 

 
Perfect gold, another accent for the plethora of metals on show. I've had it so long now little parts of the coating are wearing where it fits into cases, looks just like it's been through a season of races.
 

 

 
One thing that became increasingly apparent today was that everything is very black, perhaps a disproportionate amount of silver so something my have to get re-finished or remade. Essence shroud, IO shroud and GPU backplates are likely candidates. I'll keep a close eye on the overall balance of things. It's quite easy to add bright plated items but some rough cast textures will be needed.
 

 
And two Aquaero 5 LT's equipped with heatsinks, how i'll use both i'm not sure, maybe I won't. But they are ready when needed, the de-stickered look certainly helps too.
 

 

 
And finally some much needed rough alu on the heatsinks.
 

 
Lastly a little MDPC-X, well. You know how it is if you get over 3 times more than you actually need in the hypothetical scenario where you decide to do every wire all one colour. Plus it's a great price per metre and one day it could be very useful. So 100m of Copper Brown, 100m of Shade 19 and 100m of Black. Not gonna lie, MDPC-X is just the best retail therapy possible after becoming hardened to new hardware releases.
 

 
Well that's a whole load more stuff than I had last week, lets see what comes this week!
 
JR

 

Many thanks to Nvidia USA for these big graphics doggos and Nvidia UK for passing them on, I was quite surprised when they arrived at Parvum on Friday morning! It now feels like i'm well past half way to acquiring all of the parts now, such progress.
 

 

 

 

 
Oh not you again FE!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Many many microscopic screws later...
 

 

 
Very much like my Titan X Pascal, aside an absent memory IC and DVI, however great to see all of the power phases filled in with VRM's.
 

 

 
Time to build it back up lighter and faster...
 

 

 

 

 
We'll take a much better look at the blocked cards soon, I got a new phone on Saturday so bartering with EE and playing with that put me a day behind on taking pics. Hopefully I can build some things up in the case and start developing a plan tomorrow.
 
JR

 
 
Time for a very peculiar installment, I was hoping to have a little more design work done but i've been relentlessly busy with work away from home. Sooo instead just lots of weird stuff. Last weekend Dave from bit-tech came over to nosey around my place and chat modding (go find the article on my social media). Anyway he was desperate to play with my lathe so I set him up doing something useful!
 

 
For now the ACF style 10/13mm fittings are EK's only aluminium offering, 13mm OD was a limitation I really didn't want on this project as EK don't have a ZMT that small and it's just too thin walled for my liking. So my plan was to turn off the compression ring threads and use them as simple barbs.
 

 
Off to the shed me and Dave went! Using an old pass through fitting to easily hold them true in the chuck without risk of damaging the 1/4" threads.
 

 

 
With and without threads removed. I didn't take off all the material purposefully to make sure the tubing didn't flare over the taper and bunch back in.
 

 
It's me! Doing a concentrate.
 

 
Mine and Dave's completed EK Aluminum 10mm barbs!
 

 
Conveniently enough to try out one tubing run.
 

 
Right, now the weirdness of me appearing in my own project log is over lets move on to my equally odd mail.
 

 
If memory heatsinks weren't a significant throwback today we are going way further to a style of hose clamp popular 50 or more years ago. I was inspecting the hose clamps of the Auto Unions best I could in photographs and noticed they were far from the screw/gear/srping types typically used today. The closest ones I stumbled across belonged to early Mercedes W113 SL's moments before contacting Mercedes classic parts I found these on a website in the Netherlands.
 

 
Surprisingly simple they consist of a small buckle, a cotter pin and a roll of thin steel ribbon which can be cut to any length.
 

 
With a scrap of 10/16mm ZMT I tried one out, first the ribbon is folded over the buckle. then wrapped around the tube once and under the cotter pin with the cut edge facing out.
 

 
After completing a second loop the ribbon passes back out through the split of the cotter pin ready to be trimmed down.
 

 
Trimmed....
 

 
Then simply tightened by coiling the loose end around the cotter pin.
 

 
With the method nailed down it actually proved far less fiddly than I expected on such small diameter tubing. So I unraveled my test piece and cut off two strips the correct length.
 

 
And there we have it.
 

 

 

 

 

 
I'm really enjoying this project! <3 The combination of minimalistic fittings, oversize ZMT and old school hose clamps strike the perfect balance between elegant PC hardware and the automotive inspiration. Hopefully I can tear myself away from building PC's long enough to work on building this PC a little more next week but if it all goes this well then i'm not too worried. Thanks to Dave for your work on the project and some of the shed pics.
 
JR

 

Well the build is still together on air going out to LAN's and ripping some serious frames, it will stay like that until i've finished R1.0 INDUSTRIAL, a couple weeks hopefully. But I do have a little cache of parts that i've yet to post in the thread, namely these Noctua NF-F12 industrialPPC-24V-3000 Q100 IP67 PWM. Catchy name, take note it's all important!

 

 

 

 

Now if you've scrolled through 3 fan pics and are starting to get a little bored, itching to find another thread or open facebook again in your 27th chrome tab. Please do, because you don't deserve the next part...

 

 

...what's dis...

 

 

...ahhh yee!

 

 

 

 

See I wasn't just ignoring ALUMIA! I'd been busy creating the artwork for these acid etched aluminum plates, not stickers, nor are the original Noctua plates incidentally.

 

 

Google translate as well as my German and Dutch friend tell me they make some grammatical sense, but most importantly to me they are visually just right! I went with Rascom (Noctua's parent company) because Rascom Computerdistribution was much longer!

 

Anyway, mounted in their Doppel configuration to the EK-AluStream 240.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm loving ALUMIA, can't wait to tear down the air config and play with all the Fluid Gaming kit. See you all soon on one thread or anther :D

 

JR

 

Finally I have ALUMIA back and the air cooled phase is coming to an end. It’s been to insomnia, epicLAN, LSUCS twice… stayed with Tj and Happy while I worked on APIS and K… used by Oli Sykes and an extremely white kid from the Netherlands. Quite a set of accolades for a temporary setup but it did work magnificently well, now it just needs get to quieter and prettier!

 

 

This was our LAN setup at Oli’s last weekend, Post Malone completed our 4-man PUBG squad. Oli took ALUMIA with the graphical power needed to drive 60fps to the 4k projector, I had Chocolate Box and imersa had i1.0-II both with ROG XG35’s (which are bent).

 

 

Nothing particularly special inside at this point sadly, just a hard working pair of FE’s and a little Noctua swag, D9 being just about all that fits safely inside the BH-7.

 

 

Powered by the phenomenal EVGA 1000T2, I don’t think this has made pics so far as it arrived just in time. Considerably more cable work will be needed next time lol.

 

 

I had planned to take somewhat fuller and better looking pictures of the air cooled build, but, it was dirty and frankly who cares. So instead I took it completely completely apart straight after those 3.

 

 

Wat is dis?

 

 

Literally every anodised part of the build just took a nice warm bath in Sodium Hydroxide, removing the black surface and revealing fresh aluminum.

 

 

That mystery shall return. First it’s time to attac some fittings!

 

 

These are the Fluid Gaming Multi-GPU fittings, basically an aluminum EK-HD with branding and an internal hex, exclusively black but now stripped.

 

 

So they complement the compression fittings which I changed to barbs they will also get simplified. First removing all of the knurling and branding.

 

 

Then facing off the tubing side to remove one of the o-ring seals.

 

 

So overall they are quite a bit smaller than they were originally.

 

 

Lastly a small chamfer cut between the two machined sides.

 

 

All done and assembled. New Quadro HB SLI bridge too.

 

 

 

Removing the anodising chemically meant that the stickers originally applied created stencils on the parts, definitely a welcome addition in some places, others will get removed.

 

 

 

I intentionally left some black behind in obscured areas to add some depth and variance. Right now I’m not happy with the way everything looks, it’s too bright and ‘new’ so I’ll be trying out different ideas to add patina and wear to the parts.

 

 

 

But the bigger picture is going very well, trying new things, making mistakes and moving forwards at astounding speed. Right, lots of screws and fasteners to order tomorrow!

 

JR​