Project: APASF ("A Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk Future")

Right, I´m at then end of D-Day -1, tomorrow is the last day.

Now, a lot of stuff has been finished but because some where still drying I didnt want to risk mounting what I need to measure for the piping till tomorrow morning, then as I mentioned in the previous post, piping time.

Anyhow...

Rads finished.





Reservoir unmasked...



...and aged with a touch of "filth".




If all goes well, tomorrow 1 to 2 updates + final update... after that, beer and a nervous breakdown

 

Right guys, we´re at that point, this is the update before the final update (in theory aniway).

So, this morning I assembled all that needed to be in or on the case in order to do the piping.

So, rads, motherboard and other assorted pieces.





And this is what the case looked like pre-piping.





So went down to my local friendly plumbing supplies shop and with some help from the shop attendant (my mate) and later on the owner of the shop (he was intrigued on what we were doing), I put it all togueter, it was incredibly hard to measure everything up correctly, tighten all the fittings being very carefull with the fragile ones (like the plexy ones on the cpu cooler or the plastic ones on the pump and reservoir). And after almost 4 hours, got it ready.

So here is the bare essentials case (nothing is screwed in, details wise, only the liquid cooling related stuff.







I now of course have to aply all the ageing effects to the fittings and pipes.

After that I went to my actual job (as I mentioned in previous posts I took both yesterday morning and today morning off to work on the project but still had to work 4 hours in the evening.

I´ve taken the motherboard out and left the loop running to be sure there´s no leaks before I put everything togueter.

And yeah if there´s no leaks I feel optimistic about meeting the deadline but words cannot express how tired and generally exhausted I feel.

Again, thanks for reading and following the project.

 

Hi Guys,

I tried my best, I´m sure you all know from my hectic updates these last almost 3 weeks that I´ve been working every second I get free on the project. Unfortunately it was not enough. The reason for starting so late was waiting for parts to arrive and basically financially being able to buy all the materials, paints, etc I needed to make this truelly unique.

The fact is I´m about 1-3 days short worth of work on detailing, fixing some last minute issues (that always pop up) and so on to be happy with the final result.

That said, I have made it as presentable as posible to be able to participate in the competition I started this for.

As you can see some parts are missing like the wood trimmings (that´s what those holes in the metal are for), some modifications to make everything fit better, and a few other things, also theres 2 very small leaks on 2 different fittings on the radiator side of the case which I need to fix.

And a long list of "small things to do".

Goes without saying I am finishing the project, but since the hectic deadline is now over I will be taking my sweet time, and making sure everything is as perfect as my skills allow it to be.

Aniway, here are the pictures of how it looks right now.

 

wow.... did I just see this thread right!!!???


Amazing work!

 

that... is SICK AS HELL!!!

 

cheers guys : )

 

Update:

I´ve been fighting for the last two weeks with the tubing, I´m still trying to fix the leak on one of the outputs on the reservoir, the other two leaks have been fixed (I took apart those sections and reinforced the joints with teflon which seals it quite nicely, for whatever reason that doesn´t seem to be working with the reservoir.

I have a couple of options I will be trying on monday, hopefully one of them will work. Worst comes to worst I can permanently fit the joint which will fix the issue but will not allow for it to ever be taken apart again (not that its an issue as I never planned to but its nice to know I can if for whatever reason I need to).

Updates to come following that.

On another subject, I´ve been nominated for MOTM over at bit-tech, and the voting has been going on from the 6th of July. The voting ends on the 6th of Aug, i.e. tomorrow monday at 8 am. I´m currently fighting for the first place so if you feel like helping out, pop by and vote. But I´d like to stress that, only do it if you believe APASF is the best out of the 6 mods shown there. I´d greatly appreciate it : )

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=233580

 

Thank you everyone who voted for me on the Bit-Tech.net Mod of the Month June Edition Competition. I´m over the moon for winning! ^^

 

Yes Huge Grats on the Bit tech win !! and Great Build!

 

Thank you mybadomen, I was surprised you didnt get more votes than you did to be honest, mine went for you, loved your work mate! : )

 

Hi Everyone,

After almost a year since I started the project, it is now Finished.

Since October I´ve been adding paint effects, ink effects, done some detail changes, added missing details and essentially obsessed over there damned thing. Following the original idea I did 2 casings, one for the psu and one for the gpus, unfortunately I just wasn´t happy with them, I felt they changed the overall look to much. I never wanted it to look clean as it simply doesn´t fit the post-apocalyptic style so in the end I opted for a rough way around it. The last 4 PSU connectors are bare and inked cabling for the GPUs. I´m sure quite a few of you would´ve proffered casings but I feel this way is what suits the style of the project best.

I also pretty much "coated" the whole thing with a mix of inks that took me a month to get right for a more old-n-gritty feel as while I was very happy with how the faux wood effect turned out, I felt it didn´t much the rest of the oxidized copper effects, this slight effect ink helps blend these two together and really make it look like it´s been around for a hundred years. If you compare these final pictures to the previous update pictures you´ll find you can´t exactly point why, but you´ll understand what I mean (or at least I hope you will )

I also realise there´s no SLI bridge, this is simply because I´ve misplaced mine and didn´t want to wait till I ordered a new one to make the final pictures as I didn´t feel it was that important and... I really needed to end this stage of my life.

APASF is the project I´ve always wanted to do ever since I started painting and modding and while there are somethings that NOW I may have done differently, I´m extremely happy with the final outcome, I´m also relieved it´s over, it's taken a huge toll on me and in the end, it was more of an obligation and obsession rather than something I enjoyed doing as sad as that may sound.

I´d like to thank my sponsors for being so patient with it as it´s taken 6 months more than I originally thought it would and of course for being there with me all the way.

Right, without further wait, here is the final shoot of APASF "A Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk Future".

 

Thank you all for reading through this long worklog during what for me has been the hardest project I´ve ever done!

Until next time,
Luciel

 

Great build. As a novice myself at water cooling can I ask a question?

Are you using 2 rads running without fans on them...i.e. passively? What temps do you get?

 

Hi MCcawpa,

Sorry for the late-ish reply.

Yes, normally this is not recommended, really the only way I managed to get away with this is because it is only cooling the CPU, the whole loop is copper and both rads are copper, so the whole thing sort of acts as a heatsink, after a couple of hours of stress tests, temps never went over 60 or so in a 30c environment, as you can see this are not great temps, but they are acceptable. This of course would change drastically with fans on those rads.