IceBox (Blue and White Acrylic mATX Build)

[Frozen.Q]

Many of you who have been following the Companion Cube case thread know my girlfriend had decided she wanted something a little less thematic. (No worries, the Companion Cube is still an active project and will be completed shortly). Now that SteveO2400's "Power Overwhelming" case is out of the shop I can move on to this.

8/22 - Initial Ideas and Design
8/23 - More Designing
8/29 - Laser Cute Panels and Initial Assembly
9/5 - Outer detail panels and waterfall res
9/10 - Assembly!
9/15 - Final Pictures

Since money is short for us both, we want to reuse as many parts from what was to go into the Companion Cube.

Here are the specs.

AMD X4 965BE CPU
Gigabyte GA-MA78LM-S2H mATX Board
4GB (2x2GB) Kingston HyperX 1066 DDR2
EVGA SC GTX280 GPU
1x 250GB WD HDD's
Possible SSD
550W Antec PSU

XSPC Full Coverage GTX 280 Waterblock
HW Labs Black Ice Xtreme II 240 Radiator
MCP655 Pump
FQPCMods Cold Fusion Waterblock
Custom Waterfall Reservoir


The goal of the build is to create something that will sit easily on the right side of her college desk, and sit no more than 16 inches high. So far it looks the dimensions of this build will be 12"x12"x15.5", which is not bad considering the hardware to fit inside.

We want to stick with an icy theme, using all white acrylic, and blue LED's coolant and components. The motherboard is blue with light blue accents, and the memory is also blue which compliments the build well.

The base of the case will be holding the PSU in the very back, the HDD's to its right, and the pump to its left. I intend for the small angled portion of the front to act as the actual front.

You might be able to tell in the below picture, there is a 1/16" gap on the front, left and right of the base. Here I'll be inserting a 1/16" fine laser cut acrylic piece with a custom design on it. She will be coming up with something in photoshop for me to cut out.

In the top back there is a complete concealed box for the dual radiator and two 120mm blue LED fans. The grill design is going to change, the open circles are mere place holders.

The motherboard tray to the left is pretty self explanatory.

To the right is what is going to be a waterfall reservoir. Basically it will have a frosted panel dividing the center lengthwise, which will have two blue cathodes behind it to help give them a soft glow, not so much a bright shining. The water will collect in a top portion (yet to be designed) and then trickle over a lip in the front falling towards the bottom. I'm hoping to search from some sort of corrugated frosted plastic for the water to run down. If I tilt that at about a 5 degree angle, the water will fall slowly and it should give it a unique rippling effect.



The real kicker is....25 days to go....

[Frozen.Q]

Did a little more designing today.

I added the mounting and air hole for the PSU, the mounting for the HDD brackets, as well as the nut slots to mount the walls together.

[Frozen.Q]

Alright, so we finally got the laser back up and running. So I had a little bit of time the past few nights to get to work on the case.

Made some pretty good progress so far.


Black Ice GTX240. Soon to get a white paint job.




Base turned out pretty nice. After this point I made a new back panel to move the hard drives left more to sit flush against the PSU. This way there is room for the coolant return to the right of them. I also have an 80mm fan in here to suck the hot air out of the base. Since the rest of the base is pretty much encapsulated, this is a must.


Base from the back.




Here is the entire base setup as it will be in the end. I have the PSU shredded up here. It's going to get a nice white single braid sleeving job.


Here is the top portion almost done. Just need to build the shroud for the radiator and the waterfall reservoir.

[OC Maximus]

Coming along nicely there Frozen.

[rjkoneill]

looks great, totally outside the box thinking there

i like it!

[Frozen.Q]

Got a lot more done, and I'm still on par to get this finished before she leaves.

Only 11 days left I believe.



Just an image of the glow through the white acrylic from the blue cathodes. This is crucial to the effect I'm after.



Majority of the frame of the case with masking removed.



Frame of case with blue lighting inside.



1/16" ABS plastic laser cut in a design that she created. This turned out absolutely perfect. In person it gives it the silhouette feel I was going for.



Case from the front, I still need to laser cut a black piece for the switch panel.





Waterfall reservoir upon almost full completion.



I used "cracked ice" polystyrene light panels for drop ceilings to make the portion the water travels down. This produces an excellent scattering effect from the light.





Whats done so far

[Huww]

Great job so far. I love the way it all glows.

[Elpy]

Indeed. I love glowy stuff. Gonna keep watching this.

[GangstarrapeR]

Very nice, I've never seen something like that before... Cool! I'll keep my eye on it.

[Frozen.Q]

Got a nice big update for everyone today. The case is near completion, only a few minor details and issues left to take care of.

I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.



Main PSU cables sleeved. I opted for the regular sleeving over the good Clean-Cut Techflex because of cost and time. This was the only thing readily available at the time. So the colors of the wires bleed through slightly, but in the end you'll see it looks pretty good.



Radiator enclosure with holes drilled for fan cables, also sleeved in white.



All of the switch cables sleeved and crimped with spade connectors.



Case as it was a few hours ago.



XFX 5770 with the EK full coverage block installed.



Modified Enzotech Sapphire I picked up from Tank on the FS section.



Modified Enzotech Sapphire after I had my way with it



Sorry for the fail picture, I'll be doing better shots later. The brass bracket was powder coated in gloss white and the copper top coated in blue ice explosion.



Top portion with mounted motherboard.



Waterblock installed.











Not too happy with the way the tube from the pump to the GPU kinks, so I'm going to do something to work this out tomorrow.





Another kinking issue, however this is easy to fix with another 90 degree fitting. Unfortunately I only purchased 4, when I guess I needed 5. I'll be ordering another on Monday.





And there you have it, almost complete. The only other thing I didn't mention is I have a little bit of work for making the detailed black trims from the front fit better, and also making the illuminated plate to fit in the hole there in the middle.

[OC Maximus]

Overall, pretty build. I'm sure you'll work out the bugs soon enough. Nice work Q!

OCM

[ScottALot]

Damn, that Sapphire block turned out beautiful! That should be a mass-produced color choice.

[Raiden]

Amazing work FrozenQ , congratulations

[ViViD]

Nice Design

[Aedubber]

Cool! WOuld be a cool present for a chick!

[Frozen.Q]

Cool! WOuld be a cool present for a chick!

Well, it is

[Johnny87au]

looks good mate! my little sisters would love something like this hehe, all in all how much did it cost in materials?

[Frozen.Q]

Materials for the build were actually less than $100.

[GangstarrapeR]

Nice work Dude.

Do you will do a video when you finish it?

[Frozen.Q]

Nice work Dude.

Do you will do a video when you finish it?

Yes, I'll be doing a video to post to my YouTube channel as well as some more professional photos.

[Kanabanoid]

hope you have gotten that kink out

[Frozen.Q]

hope you have gotten that kink out

I did actually, I'll post more pictures this evening. I drilled a new hole for the pump outlet, so that it points right up into the graphics card using only a straight barb. Then I used that 90 degree barb up on the CPU waterblock to fix that issue.

[Frozen.Q]

Another case finished. I finished the build up the night before she left, just in time. I am very, very pleased with the way it turned out, seeing as how the entire thing was built in just under 3 weeks.

I fixed the two kinking issues very easily just by drilling a new hole for the pump so the line would come up straight into the graphics card, then I used that 90 fitting up on the CPU block to fix the issue there.

I did find out unfortunately that the main hard drive went bad, so I ordered in a new 320GB WD Caviar Blue that was on sale for $40 on the Egg for her to use.

Sadly, the memory is also being a PITA. The RAM is actually G.Skill 1000Mhz memory. At 1066Mhz I get every single BSOD you could think of, but on 800 I have smooth sailing. The Gigabyte motherboard though does not allow for individually tuning the memory frequency. Raising the core clock doesn't work either because it still blue screens.

Lesson learned, not a good board for overclocking.

Enjoy the pictures!

[SnW]

Really cool man

[OC Maximus]

A work of art!