Finale

The overall finished product turned out pretty nice for my first water-cooled theme PC build. It was a lot of work, a lot of time, but a great learning experience. Any modding I do in the future will seem so easy compared to this project. But it's nice to have went through the experience. It was just a shame that Star Wars: The Old Republic that I built the PC for was such a disappointment.

Assembly Time

Once all the parts had been powder coated, the wiring sleeved, water blocks attached, and all other modifications done, it was time to assemble the entire project. Having done the assemble along the way to make sure everything fit properly, the final assembly went fairly easy.

Wiring & Sleeving

One of the hardest parts of the entire build was sleeving. I did a lot of rewiring, including shortening cables and building my own SATA cable. It was a definite learning experience and something that you get better at the more you do it. These days they sell some nicely pre-built cables like these, or you can get a professional to do them if you have lots of money. Great experience, but not sure one I'd want to do again.

Red LEDs

Why does everything seem to come with blue LEDs? Luckily it isn't hard to unsolder the blue ones and attach some red LEDs to match the cases theme.

Custom Sith Empire Logo Plates

For the fans and back of the pump motor I created some custom Sith Empire logo plates. I was impressed that the water-jet cutting could do such small detail. They came out quite nicely. I used some red plastic from a binder as the backing.

HDD Mounting & Drive Bays

I purchased some mounting trays for the SSD & HDD, although they needed to be modified slightly to fit where I needed them. Used the old lipstick trick to line up holes. Re-used to old bay covers to create mounting points for the new custom front plate.

CPU Lapping

This is something I had never done before, so I thought it would be fun to do. After all, if you are going crazy, why not go all the way. Ended up sanding off the tips of my fingers in the learning process. Overall though came out gorgeous.