Third attempt however was looking promising:

And so when it checked out I decided to practice the glue on this piece before doing any more:

This was glued up and you can see how transparent the end result should be - bubbles are definitely bad! Always remember to tape up your lockrings before glueing the end caps on though. Finished:

Woohoo - all of that for one bent piece of tube! One thing I realized though was that section of tube was not quite horizontal. While the Monsoon measuring devices make measuring easy you want to check that any horizontal sections are actually horizontal as even with perfect 90 degree bends you can end up being off. First I took the spirit level:

And then shored up the south end of the board with paper until the memory block was horizontal:

Good enough! Now let's check that section of tube we already did:

Yikes! Not really good enough - however after doing three of the same I decided to move on and possibly replace this one later!
Moving on to the next section I discovered that it was already too short a link to use the mandrels in the way I already had. I could set them up so as to do each bend individually without firmly fixing the other bend. This felt against the whole point of the mandrel kit which was to get perfect repeatable bends. The real problem was that the extra material around the mandrels which ensured good straight lines after the bend also stopped the next mandrel from getting close. My solution was to chop the 180 degree mandrel in half - I now had a 90 degree mandrel with zero straight edge meaning I could now do much tighter u bends than the two individual mandrels would allow.

You can see my cutting was a bit jagged because I was cutting from the far side with a jigsaw which are notorious for not cutting straight. Still it was good enough for my purposes:

That was the setup for the 2nd bend, and this was the one for the third bend with the tube post bend:

Now the last shot of the day with those two extra pieces in place double checking alignment. I'm a little nervous that the final piece may rub against the other tube coming out of the cpu block, It looks but I may add in a third bend on that section just to kink it over. That's it for now!

The dye even stained the clear primochill lrt advanced a surprising amount:

So it was now time to change the backplate:

Elmy had upgraded to dual 295x2's like a boss and sold me his custom chrome plated backplates for the 7990s so it was time to swap out the originals:

This is nice because I can keep warranty intact while getting a cleaner and much sexier look. The shot here doesn't show just how mirrored they are - you'll see that in a bit. I ordered replacement screws as the EK ones are black and I wanted to match the backplate better than that. I ordered two different types from mcmaster with the same head type and thread but different finish:

The left one matches the mirrored finish better even though the color isn't perfect:

Sadly I forgot that two of the screws are longer so as to attach to a nut on the far side of the PCB - I'll have to order some longer matching ones:

Time to replace the thermal pads:

All done:

 




Dat spaghetti:


Time to finish the hard tubing runs:

dayumngirl:

Bottom fittings are for soft tube to run to QDCs panel mounted to the walls of the motherboard chamber.

As always a big thanks to sponsors - shown today: CaseLabs, Corsair, EK, Monsoon!

One rad done with the exception of screws:

Checking that I could fit the two flexbay mounts into the 18 bays:

I then started drilling the front panels and countersinking the holes for the new screws so that the panels could be secured. Previously they were held up by the outer clip on panel. Hardly ideal:

Mounting two 360s leaves no maneovering room to get them in or out. Ideally you'd take the front frame panel off to get them in easily, but I refused to do that. Instead I put the case on it's back, attached the flexbay mount with temporary screws, and attempted to screw rad and fans in while balancing them with the other hand.

One side done:



The rad clearance:

After finishing the rad sleeving, I went on to the back panelling. I had bought some thin MDF from home depot the other day:

Got out the big scary saw:

Ripped it to shape:

Now time to carve out the section for the motherboard:

All marked up:

Time for the jigsaw:

and done:

Test fit:

Well yes, getting wood normally does make a difference! I ordered two different veneers - one was two leaves of birdseye maple, which is a famous type of burl. A burl is kinda like a tumor on a tree that distorts the grain and makes it more fabulous and more desirable. It's a pain to work with though, but veneer makes life a little easier.

I also got a big sheet of ebony for the dark side. The ebony is kinda cheating - for those that don't know ebony comes in real thin sections so if you're veneering you have to join lots of sections together which is a nightmare. I wanted an easy life seeing as this was the first time I did any veneer work since I left high school. So this ebony is man made from ebony offcuts. Yeah not ideal, but it should still look good. The other bonus is that it's about 1/4 to 1/6 the price, and the rest of the huge sheet can be used to back the boards. You want to apply veneer to both sides of the board so that the glue drying doesn't cause the board to warp.
For the ebony I wanted the stripes running vertically, which means I will still have to do one join, I might be able to get away with leaving the end bare though as that section of board may not be seen behind the radiator:

I pencilled in how I wanted to use the maple - whacked the contrast out to try and show you - but it's hard to see;

Before we can use it though we need to flatten it a bit more. Burls are usually warped in a bubbly fashion and require a bit of pre work before use.

Essentially you get your wood nice and wet by rubbing it down with a damp cloth, then get a bigger piece of wood and put it on top:

Once the two woods are touching, then you can muscle up and add some iron:

Now my wood has been squished and is nice and flat:

 
They will be put back to back so as to create a reflection effect:

Test fit:

The join in the middle wasn't perfectly straight so I had to trim it down. To do this I again lined up the pieces back to back and put the questionable edge just peeking out from two pieces of MDF held down with dumbells:

It was then ready to be planed with a block plane which is more tolerant of wild grain:

The edges then lined up better:

One other thing I had bought was real veneer tape. When I was a lad we just used masking tape, but veneer tape is easier to use and as it dries will pull the two pieces of wood together. Then to remove just get it wet for a bit and it will come off. It was not time to prep for glueing both veneers to the board:

I stacked up three 3/4" plywood pieces and topped off with a 3/8" MDF board to give a nice perfect surface to squish the veneer with. I then layered clingfilm/wrap on it so that the glue wouldn't stick my panel to the MDF. Above the panel would get the same treatment, MDF followed by plywood and then the weights to give the clamping force. Tools ready:

Water and paper towel to dampen the non glued side, roller to spread glue, glue and more clingwrap for the top side. Then do the dirty deed and leave for 24 hours with a bunch of iron on top:

And now my watch begins...

Looking good! Now for the dark - it had been at work mining on the 290s. I brought it home and removed the 290s to drain them and flip the bridge:

Drafted out the cuts on the substrate:

Sanity check with the R4E panel

The dark must be a little less wide than the R4E:

I was a bit more aggressive on fit around the motherboard this time as the other side had a slight gap:

Sanity check again with the R4E panel and the X79 dark:

Board would hit the VRM heatsink which we are not going to use - seemed like a good time to swap it out:

Board removed:

The bottom side fit perfectly though - on the CPU 8 pin cables I'll have to remove the clips though:

After trimming a bit more off:

Cutting the veneer - this time I want the grain to go vertically. I'm hoping to be lazy and not cover the end of the panel that will be hidden by radiators so as to not do a veneer joint:

The other question that had been on my mind was whether to use the bridge I had bought or not. I didn't like that one of the outputs had to be on the lower end of the block - I wanted both outputs to be at the top and run straight vertically up:

I could instead use crystal links to link the regular terminals and run all in parallel:

Obviously I would use the right size tube, and I'd change the fittings to black low profile ones. The downside is needing to buy about $70 more fittings, the advantage would be being able to see coolant, the disadvantage would be losing the robustness and support that the bridges bring
I'm leaning towards keeping the bridge. The next thing is to figure out where to bring the CPU connections out to in the lower chamber. The PSU mounts in the lower chamber and so blocks off a lot of space meaning the chamber pass throughs (panel mount QDCs) will need to be offset and the tubing route will be ugly :(

So this is the approximate plan:

I only just realized that my two EK 400mm reservoirs are different lengths :( Kinda mad about that. They were supposed to be the same version. Not sure how that happened.
I don't think the glue was completely dry when I removed the veneer tape so the gap between veneers widened a bit:

Did more work on the R4E panel - last time I was finishing the back side. Here it is after it dried with the first coat:

You can see it definitely needs a 2nd coat, not that it matters because it's the hidden side of the board, but still, I don't like patchy. Before that though it was time to see if my plan for individual holes for the sleeving would work with the wood. First I had to mark out where the existing cable routing holes were on to the wood panel. You can see that there are 2 per side of the motherboard. I could make more by pulling the panel to the right of the motherboard.

So I decided to do a 5mm spacing on the wires - large enough to avoid them blurring together and hopefully large enough to suffer large burnout on the veneer on either side:

On a test piece of MDF I marked out the holes and did the start of the holes by hand. The front side worked well

The back of course had more tear out:

Because it worked well I decided to go ahead with the real board. The drill was running out of batteries so a couple of them wobbled off course:

More sanding and finishing:





Testing the combs:

When I did this I realized that trying to use the existing holes in the panel was a mistake because it's almost impossible to get the panel in and out then. I should have sucked it up and made the holes where the sleeving would look best i.e. pure horizontal or vertical runs. I was also super annoyed by the joining of two of the holes for the pwr/reset switch connectors. Hopefully it won't be noticable after I'm done.
Time to pull the other panel:

Test fitting:

Sleeve update:

This side is done now, though I might need more combs to keep it under control:


Lutro0's store has had so many orders they need to close for a week to catch up on shipping. Sadly I've also run out of wire too, so that's a bummer. Hopefully the store reopens with combs and wire available soon :D
I'm not planning on sleeving the Corsair supplies - I worked out how much wire it would be to sleeve all four and it was pretty pricey and a ton of work. I'm also thinking of going back to running two PSUs. Initially I planned to us my NEX1500 on the gaming rig and an AX1200 on the workstation. Then I ended up with 2 more AX850s so thought it would be cool to utilize all four PSU mounts and run 2xAX850 on the workstation (nice because the fan turns off when using little power) and the 2xAX1200 on the gaming side. However I want to bring tube into the lower chamber where the 3/4th PSUs would be so I'd have to make the tube routing less pretty and buy more fittings to jog around where the PSUs would be. So for now I'm thinking just keep it simple. Seeing as the NEX has hugely long cables and is 1 to 1, I may end up creating custom length wires for that.


For the dark side - I did 3/4 of the GPU extensions before I ran out of 16AWG. I do have 100ft of 18AWG which I could continue with, but 18 doesn't hold the shape as well, and it's more resistive, something that matters when you're really pulling a load of current. When mining with 4x290s on the NEX1500, the power wires to the GPUs would get warm.


That's it for now. Next up will be more sleeve, res mounting and finishing tubing in the motherboard chambers. I've calculated the remaining fittings I need, so I need to get them ordered and EK have agreed to send more goodies to finish up in style :D

More sponsored parts finally arrived from EK - so much product placement today:


Even my rug is CSQ

Got some replacement x3 style reservoirs as my two X2 res's were different heights:


I already had one white D5 top, but now I had two more:

triplets:

natemandoo in the house. Time to strip her down:

nekkid:

dat port clearance:

I do wish it was bigger like the original:

I didn't have a black supremacy, so of course EK couldn't let me use a filthy Bitspower block:

Goofy style:

Got me some ram blocks too:

Because 1.5V ram needs cooling: