My son's birthday is coming up fast and as promised he's getting a new PC. He's always wanted me to build him a custom case so last year when OCZ announced that they would have a PhaseChage for around $300 I decided that I'd build him a case similar to mine with a PhaseChange.

Well that was 9 months ago and I still haven't seen this OCZ frozen wonder ....so the plans have changed.

I had set aside a set amount of funds for his new PC so with time running out I had to rethink the entire project and get to work on it fast. Since I still wanted the guts of the PC to be somewhat of a surprise the only thing I discussed with my son was the case. There just wasn't going to be enough time to build a complete new case before his B-day so I told him to pick out any case he wanted and I would mod it the best I could in the little time available.

To my surprise he decided he wanted a CoolerMaster WaveMaster case......I love this case....I still think it's one of the best looking cases ever built and CoolerMaster....no matter how hard they've tried....has never been able to top it (My Opinion). It's not perfect though...I built a PC for a friend with one and although the craftsmanship is first rate the PC just doesn't cool very well. In short the airflow through the case, as designed by CoolerMaster, S*cks Going to need alot of work on this thing to get it to work with the guts I want to put in it

Here's the setup.....Please keep in mind that I was going for the most bang for the buck so I put together a lot of different hardware combo's before I finally decided on this one.

Case: CoolerMaster WaveMaster (I found a brand new one still in an unopened box on E-bay that I picked up for $80)

CPU: AMD 64 X2 4600+ Socket AM2 (Yea I know....the Conroe's are coming! the Conroe's are coming! Well I'll never be able to afford the fastest PC on the planet so I'm willing to settle for just fast.....besides as far as I know the only dual GPU card setup available at launch was going to be the ATI's.....freaking expensive!....and now you probably can't even have that since Intel had their childish hissy-fit and pulled ATI's license when they merged with AMD....the only other option is the nVidia 7950....also freaking expensive!)

Mobo: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 590 SLI-Dual X16 PCI-E)

Memory: Corsair DDR2 Twin2X-2048 6400C4 Pro 1Gigx2 (NewEgg was out of the standard 6400C4...so I had to get the Pro version)

Video: 2 EVGA 7900GT (These were recertified by EVGA to not have the memory problems that some people were having and repackaged by EVGA with the full warranty.....NewEgg had them on sale for $199.00 ea....guess I'll find out soon enough if they aren't right )

Sound Card: Audigy2 ZS

Hard Drives: 2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling Silencer 610 EPS 12V

Water Cooling: All Swiftech-CPU/GPU/Pump/Resevoir/Radiator(all copper)/2 Panaflo's/Tygon tubing 1/2"

Time to go to work

Here's the case.



I stripped the case down as far as I could without removing rivets (yet) so I could figure out how to mount the radiator. (the case is upside down)



In order to fit the radiator in the top of the case all the ports that are in the top of the case have to go...which would leave a big hole in the top....so I'm going to just cut out most of the top and replace it with an aluminum plate that will also double as the fan grills (when it's done)



As you can see the front plate that holds the case door won't sit flush on the case because it sits on part of the aluminum plate.....so I'm going to have to cut it to fit around the plate.....time to fire up the vertical mill



Here it is after the mill work....now it fits around the plate nicely



That's as far as I am so far...but this build is going to go fast so I'll have more pics real soon.

You are absolutely amazing fueler! And you have one lucky boy lol.

i hate you Fueler lol... i wish i had a bloody workshop... i'm having trouble finishing my case because i don't have anywhere to do the work unless i put plastic sheets EVERYWHERE and rig up my own paint fume extractor

i love the WaveMaster too, but don't have one for the exact reasons you mark it down for - the cooling... that's why i have the Tt Tsunami instead for the 120 back n front...

that radiator setup looks familiar hehe

you know what... with the case stripped down, it looks alarmingly similar in build to your own cases anyway

looking forward to seeing what you get up to with this case, although i'll also be slightly annoyed that you will have knocked up three full case mods (media server, car pc, and now this) in the time it's taken for me to do like 80% of one case mod

looks good fueler

You noticed that huh Yea it's out of my son's old case



Well I hate to tell you this but you're going to be even more annoyed......I've started Nerms case too!

WoW! Nice job mate!

Can you build me one lol hehe

Ut oh! Fueler is at it again!

Look forward to seeing the finished thing!

he finally told you what he wanted huh

you should make Nerm a case that looks like a clown car with a clown horn on it



... PARP PARP!

I saw one done up like a clown.......jeeez it was hideous.....looked like a square Ronald MacDonald.

Found a little time to post a few more pics....so here we go.

I taped up the top of the case with masking tape so I could draw out where I want to cut. I wanted to make the opening big enough that the radiator could be installed and removed from the top of the case without having to remove anything else. (besides the hoses and coolant )



I drilled a hole at each of the corners then whacked it out with a jigsaw.



I left just enough of an edge (about a 1/2") all the way around so that the plate could be bolted to the top of the case.



Now here's where the real fun begins I used the fans as a drill guide and drilled the mounting holes for the fans. Once that was done I was able to draw out where the grills would be whacked out. I used 4 different size slots for the grills to make them look a little different.



Here's the grill plate, fans and radiator all assembled. If you were wondering what the little squiggly thing in the middle is.....I couldn't just run the slots the full length of the radiator because they could bend too easily but I didn't just want a straight line across the middle... so I tried to match the curve of the front of the case as best as I could and I also off centered it a little.



Gotta go again....grass needs mowing

That looks really good, keep it up. I wish I had the ability to do things like that... maybe in the future.

Im sure your son will love it.

These are some great father son bonding projects, if only my dad knew how to do half the things you did

fueler. you really do rival some of the very best case modders - it's a breath of fresh air having you here!

that case looks like it's going to be something else. i'll be keeping my eye on this one for sure!

OMG Flueler is at it again.lol. lookn good. that is one lucky son.

Nice job thats amazing

Fueler you are teh r0x0rz, your cases always make me drool! Sure wish my dad was into this sorta thing!

The PC is up and running (getting OC'd at the moment) but I'm a little behind on the pics. I have some ready to go now and will try to have the rest later today but it may run into tomorrow.

The Swiftech resevoir that I am using is very small and the fill port at the top is just plain tiny.....so I bought one of those DangerDen fill ports that mount in the top of the case and figured I could run a tube down to the top of the resevoir. Yea.....Great Idea......I forgot that there is no room left in the top of the case to install a fill port The only thing I could do was mount it outside the case behind the bay door and then cut a hole through one of the bay covers to run the fill tube back into the case but at least I can fill it and top it off when needed without taking it all apart.



Nothing is sacred in my book...so for the sake of better airflow, the need for a place to mount a pump, wire management and the number of optical/hard drives being installed both sides of the drive bays were unriveted and whacked up good in my mill. Not even the drive bay covers are going to escape unscathed



The old fan mounts were tossed in favor of one that would seal the case better (I always install case filters, having to always clean out dust bunnies is just a pain in the a**)



I think I removed every rivet in this case at least once if not more. The power supply cage had to be removed and modified to fit the PSU. The tabs in the bottom had to go and some material had to be removed from the front for the wires to fit through.



Normally I void the warranty on my power supplies almost immediatly.....I've never had a problem going in there whacking off wires and putting them back the way I want them but when they start getting up into that $170 (including freight) range....it's time to reconsider that practice. I thought about this one a long time and decided I better keep the warranty intact until I knew everything was going to work. So I'm going to have to do the hide the wire thing. Jeeez look at this monster it's like trying to tame a giant squid



Mounting the pump was pretty easy after all the cutting and hacking I did earlier. I just used a piece of 1/2" plexi and made a plate to mount the pump and installed it in the hard drive bay



Gotta run....more in a little bit

i'm amazed you even buy cases you know...!

OH MY GOD

This case seems to get better and better Now that the tube goes outside the case - it looks even UBERer!!!

Good Luck m8! (Can you be my dad ? )

it's very hard to distinguish the added/modded parts from what looks to be original... that would be a compliment in case you were wondering

i'm a bit surprised to see you left the rear single 80mm fan as it is, but i guess with the cpu and both gpu's cooled by water, there's not going to be a whole lot of heat in the case anyway...

i don't know why, but i think the fillport is my favourite part so far, it's just so neat and unique... i wish i had fill and drain ports on my rig...

coming along nicely... wondering what you're going to end up doing with the front bezel/door and side panels (and windows?)

Here's some more.

You almost have to have a fan bus of some sort with a water cooled rig but there are very few (if any) that will fit behind the door on a WaveMaster case. My fan bus of choice has always been the Zalman ZM-MFC1.
It has four fan speed controls with led indicators that have a high enough wattage rating to handle two fans each. It also has two threeway switches 12v/off/5v which come in handy for handling lights and in this case a pump that seems to work pretty good even at 5v as long as the cpu/gpu load isn't over 50% or there abouts. I decided early on to mount it inside the case where you could see in through the side window. Once everything is set to where you want it there isn't really much reason to have to have easy access to the fanbus (and pulling out 2 thumbscrews to get to it isn't THAT hard). This was also an area that I gave a lot of thought to because I saw an opportunity to have the area behind the fanbus become a hiding place for all those freaking wires that I wasn't going to be using. I used one of the spare drive bay covers and made a top plate from acrylic (I never had to work so hard and make so many wierd cuts to get something to fit before...that little plate was a major pain) I don't have the fans or lights wired in yet but you can still get the idea.



I mounted the resevoir on the side of the hard drive bay



You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why this case doesn't cool very well.....just look at the size of the air intake holes! and those are the ONLY air intake in the entire case. I made them a little bigger.....you know ...like about 4 times as big but that still won't be enough for those Panaflo's in the top of the case.



The Wave Master case ships with an optional fanmount/grill w/filter thet you can use to replace the input port assy in the top of the case (in other words you can put in a blowhole but give up your ports). I already have a PSU sucking air out of the case and 120x2 panaflo's so the last thing I needed was another fan trying to pull air out of the case. I attached the fanmount/grill thingy to the rear exhaust fan and turned it around so that it blows air into the case. It was also nice of ASUS to provide a fan for the mobo if you are going to watercool the cpu!



Here's a pic of the Swiftech CPU & GPU water blocks....I polished them up a bit before they were installed.



The CPU and GPU water blocks installed. I want you to pay particular attention to the copper memory cooling heatsinks that ship as a set with the GPU water blocks. See the two that are cut down under each of the water blocks for clearance?....they don't come that way ....you have to cut them down yourself and it's HARD because the pins keep bending. The other thing I want you to notice is that I couldn't even get these things to stick to the memory long enough to take a picture....two minutes after I took this picture they had all fallen off!!! I couldn't get these things to stick to save my a** and I tried everything including a heatgun to try and cook them on!!!! In a fit of rage I peeled the adheasive off of them, cleaned them up with alcohol, broke out a fresh batch of JB WELD, mixed the two components together, spread a p*ss thin layer onto each heatsink and permanently epoxyed those little sob's to the memory chips. (of course after my little fit I thought....well...that was insanely stupid....but as it turns out.... it works good....I mean really really good)



Like I said earlier the PC is basically finished. The only thing I have left to do (to finish the case) is make the side panel, which has been taking awhile because I can't decide exactly how I want to do it. I should have it done in a day or so though.

In the meantime here's some pic's of the complete case so far, sorry some of the pic's aren't that clear.









I'll finish up in a day or so

Dude.... just wow

looking sweet Fueler! i can't get over how fast you work lol...

i know what you mean about the ramsinks... you'd think some of the companies would make a version of the ramsinks with 2 out of the 8 being low-profile to fit under the gpu block's barbs/tubing... but no, lol, obviously no one has any sense!

i had to mess about in much the same way: http://benchaddix.invisionzone.com/index.p...post&p=8283

next time you do ramsinks, you might want to try a drop of superglue at each corner of the ram module, then a small blob of AS5 at the centre, spread it out a touch, but not mixing with the superglue, then press the ramsink down for 30 seconds... holds it on there nice and solid and works really well at cooling, but the difference is you CAN remove the ramsinks with a bit of force, unlike epoxy where the risk of ripping of the ramsinks is a lot higher...

see, i had to move the low-profile ramsinks over to another pair when i realised the interlink between the gpu blocks had to be a 270° bend and not a short 180° hairpin kink...

no issue if you don't want to ever remove the ramsinks, but in my case, i'm glad i didn't epoxy/weld them down else i'd have to file/sand 2 more of the ramsinks in place ON THE CARD lol...

you need some uv dye in the water tho uv blue revealing is kinda cool, clear until uv hits it, bright blue then

still in awe of your speed...

[/quote] you'd think some of the companies would make a version of the ramsinks with 2 out of the 8 being low-profile to fit under the gpu block's barbs/tubing... but no, lol, obviously no one has any sense!unlike epoxy where the risk of ripping of the ramsinks is a lot higher...see, i had to move the low-profile ramsinks over to another pair when i realised the interlink between the gpu blocks had to be a 270° bend and not a short 180° hairpin kink...you need some uv dye in the water tho uv blue revealing is kinda cool, clear until uv hits it, bright blue then [quote]

I used this stuff Fluid XP+ It doesn't react to UV as well as I would have liked but I can't complain about the cooling

Edit: What's up with this? I put what you said in quotes and what I responded is in quotes.

beautiful amazing work Fueler!

fueler...just....plain....gobsmacked....that case is barely recognizable after you butchered it.

max kudos - well done. you are in a league of your own.

hmm, maybe a forum update? or maybe all that milling has made yer brain go la-la

didn't think you'd be one to skip fitting up, or measuring twice, i meant maybe you'd think of something better later, you know changin the design a few times hehehe... <nudge <nudge

this is what i was talking about for the dye though:



the effect of normal light vs uv light on the dye: here

comparison of the various colours by the same company:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=...mp;postcount=13

i'm sure you can get the same stuff over there

That stuff certainly turns on the lights doesn't it I just wonder how it would react with the coolant I am using. It's not like it's water, you could spill it all over your circuits and it wouldn't hurt a thing because it's non conductive. It's bio degradable too, I mean you can drink the stuff...which is good to know in case I ever run out of diet coke mixer for my rum

So thats where you get these awesome ideas!!!

Yep...thoes ramsinks SUCK mine are on with the super glue method, I THOUGHT i had them on, leak tested everything, fired up the system the first time, played a few games...and it cut off. After a few mins of what the heck?!?!?! action i noiticed the pile of ramsinks at the bottom of the case and ontop of the 5200...

Anyway i got lucky and could JUST fit the tubing on the block without modification to the ramsinks. Definatly pressing againt it though (btw thoes two didnt fall off )

Worst part is I ran the card without them for a few days and get identical OC results. Oh well, they look nice

Nice work Fueler, that's one nice looking rig!

A true artist at work. Very well done sir!
By the way, being a former machinist myself I must ask this question. Is that a solid carbide coated end mill, cobalt high speed or just a high speed coated end mill that we see in one of those pics? Just curious....

Just a high speed titanium coated....solid carbide would be nice but expensive

Now i know the tool i'm missing! Great job as always.

Fueler, you are a freakin' genius with those tools. You make this stuff look so easy. And the speed at which you do this is amazing.

I constantly look forward to your next project so I can see logs like this. Great work man!

Just plain sexy! Makes me want to do something to the little wavemaster down in the basement... Unofortunately I don't have the patience or the skill to do everything so precise, so it would inevitably turnout half-assed.

I went in the same boat hardnrd did. I wanted a wavemaster for my current rig that I am using because of the looks and durability, but the cooling was hellacious so I used the TT Tsunami instead. It's an "OK" case, but the quality of the Tsunami is nothing compared to the wavemaster.

This will probably be the final update.....

When I started this I had several goals in mind:

1) It had to be able to play all the games my son currently plays at high resolutions with all the goodies turned on including antialaising

2) It had to be quiet....my son uses it to play music at a very low volumn at night when he finally hits the sack....so the PC can't sound like a NASA wind tunnel

3) It had to run reasonably cool under full load

4) It had to be rock stable even if slightly overclocked....Usually when my son is playing games he has Xfire, Teamspeak, MediaPlayer 11 (beta) running too and, if he is playing Halo, Fraps ( I haven't seen a day go by that he isn't accused of "aimboting" so he records everything just to shut them up....that's why I put over half a terabyte of disk space in this thing)

With the above thoughts in mind I made a couple last mods to the case.

Like I said earlier in this post it was nice of ASUS to include a fan to cool the motherboard mounted components....I just don't understand why they only give you one fan when there are two areas with cooling fins that need air flow over them.

I took the fan and shroud from a 6800 vid card (it has the same type of fan as the asus provided fan and is actually not loud at all) and modified it to fit the other set of Mobo mounted cooling fins. With this setup the mobo temps dropped from 39c /40c to a solid 35c under full load.

Here's the modded 6800 fan assy next to the ASUS provided unit



Installed



The 7900GT's had a tendency to droop under the weight of the watercooling so I made a support for them



Hiding wires is a pain.....here's what you don't see when the RT sidecover is on



I finally finished the side cover....in the end I just went with a simple window (I had to mount it on the outside because of clearance problems) I also cut a grill into the lower rear of the panel so that cool air could be pulled in over the video cards....no fan assist was needed ...the 2 120mm panaflo's mounted to the radiator were able to move plenty of air through this vent on their own.





The Zalman fanbus controls have a range of movement (if equated to a clock) from 12 o'clock to 9 o'clock going clockwise.....so starting on the left the 2 panaflo's are set at 2 o'clock and the front and rear fans are set at 3 o'clock. I wouldn't say it's HTPC quiet but it comes d*mn close.



A look from the front with the door open



A couple more pics





I'd post some screen shots but I'm out of pic space for this post:

Final specs: CPU 2.8Ghz @ 1.375v (in the bios) CPUz reports 1.42v
Mem 935Mhz @ 2.15v
Temps CPU 46C, Mobo 35C under full load (both cores running P95 for 24 hours)
GPU 617Mhz/Mem 800Mhz (no volt mod.....yet)

3dmark06-9126
3dmark05-14253

Hope you enjoyed the post and thanks for all the kudo's

Very, very nice job!

I noticed one difference between my wavemaster and your son's.... you put all the screws in there to hold his hardware in place . I think I have the ROMs just setting in there, and the hard drive is held in by one screw.

Lo works for British Leyland.

Fueler, that looks very nice and well thought out. You've really taken everything into concern.

Great job Fueler

wow.

That is absolutely incredible
I'd love to see what you could do with a Thermaltake Armor Jr lol

holy crap, that is one hell of a nice mod mate! dang it, i wish I had those tools/uber skillz to do one of those!

That's awesome!

Do you make and sell cases for people? How do you have all of this awesome skill?

dude , thats an awsome job i just want you to know my birthdays in jan 2007 so you may need to get started soon. thanks, from your newly adopted son.

It makes me feel as if my case is an asus vento! Really nice job man, that case looks great.

no final "night shots" ? c'mon Fueler.. after all that work you can't pull half a job on the pics!

Jeez you just gotta make me work at it don't you .....Of course I could say that at least I finish my projects Where's yours ? we're comming up on a year here chief Chop Chop

arg... easy with the salt there dude

yeah, i do have to make you work, cos you gotta workspace

i want to finish my case, but i'd have to become a hippy and not take showers because my ensuite bathroom is smaller this year so i can't use it as a workshop paint booth type thing rofl... also there's no window in there, so i can't add my cunning extractor fan...

maybe i can get it done... but it'll look like a scene out a murder investigation or alien discovery in here with floor to ceiling plastic and like a makeshift booth area n all sorts of fume extractor ducting! man, i think the men in white coats would take me away if anyone saw my room like that!

Maybe so.....but I'd kill for a video of it

Edit: About that work space......I've busted my A** for the last thirty years to finally have that work space, so don't feel bad that you don't have one...If you want it bad enough you'll get it....hopefully you'll be able to pull it off sooner than I did.