Decided to buy some more stuff this morning, after buying another project car.... A fun day for me!

XSPC 240mm x 50mm rad.... £20 new from WCUK (yes, £20!!!)
16/10 fittings, 45s etc. Mostly Barrow, as I refuse to spend more watercooling on this than my main PC!
Alphacool Eisfach dual 5.25" bay reservoir with a D5 Vario pump
Hose
Inhibitor and deionised water
Chipset block

Basically, everything I need for a good day of plumbing

On top of that, I bought all the connectors and wire to make EVERY power connector for the PSU, in the right "old school ATX" colour. Unfortunately, I damaged the ATX12v cable taking it out - think it's had a bit too much abuse over the years, so figured now is the opportunity to make it look as period correct as possible, as well as beef up the power delivery to the board. It's also something new for me. I've made plenty of car ECU looms before with my crimps, but I've never tried making my own modular PSU loom. Plenty of spare cable and pins to make mistakes with... I am just trying not to think about how tedious it is going to be, crimping probably 150+ pins...

So you may ask, am I beefing up the power delivery? Well, I can safely say the old P4 connector measures at 2mm OD, which I would estimate as 18AWG. I am going to swap it for 16AWG, my logic being that it's a 4-pin connector powering 2x Bartons overclocked, it needs as much power as it can get without getting hot (and voltage droop over resistance).

The ATX12v connector has some sense wires the PSU uses for its voltage regulation feedback loop circuitry, so I've accounted for that.

I've also started thinking about how I'm going to mount this XSPC rad. I am going to go with the option of mounting it above the PSU, eventually venting out of the side panel (when I figure out how or who I'm going to use to cut it). Very simply, I am going to get some 1.2mm steel laser cut, then drill and tap some M3 screw holes to mount it in situ. It will mean DVD drives won't be mounted at the top, which is fine, as I need to show off my bay reservoir. Picture with some scrap steel to show the concept. It will screw to the PSU bracket and the inside of the drive cage very easily. It does give me an option for draining the system, as I am still unsure whether to cool the GPU, which would make it easy for me to T off and have a ball valve. Albeit more cumbersome, I can dismount the radiator and drain it from the back side.

Clever money tells me that I will "just fit" the radiator horizontally and have ample space vertically. (I've measured 6 times). Here's a concept with a bit of scrap steel:

While I was ordering connectors from CPC, I saw the main power cap on the X-Fi was looking a little bit sad. I've ordered a Panasonic FR series for it. In the same thought of "pushing things to their limit", I did also get some caps for the 7800GS, although they are Unicon and probably fine, so I will leave them until they are not fine. One of the decouplers looks a bit sad, so that is getting swapped (Rubycon for Rubycon).

shevalier wrote on Yesterday, 04:23:

Chifteс now makes different shapes of cutouts.
Sawing two small holes instead of one large one seems a bit odd, especially considering the steel is about 1 mm thick.

Always work on the principle that it's easier to remove metal than add metal. I made the cuts with my angle grinder out of impatience, which (as we always know) will end up too big and wrong. As such, I kept cutting and filing by eye until I got rid of my cut marks, which ironically gave me one mid-size hole. What I should've done in hindsight is employ some patience and get my plasma cutter out of my workshop and dig out my straight edges. Alas, got a hole and it's functional, and hasn't removed too much rigidity from the case. I have sprayed some clear lacquer on for now to prevent any flash rusting since I live by the coast, with a view that I will paint the entire thing at some point in the future. I will get some PVC trim to make it look a bit less horrid. The concept works well, though, with plenty of access to solder some wire in from the back while it's screwed together.

My rad arrived today, which meant I could do some further mocking up and triple-check my measurements. Just as well, I needed to shift the rad over another 5mm, due to the bungs at the end. The bottom of the rad sits with about 2mm of clearance from the top of the PSU.

I did get some cursory quotes to get the template laser-cut. However, looking at the cost, I think I'll be getting my jigsaw and metal blade out... I have some contact adhesive and have remembered how to export my CAD designs onto paper 1:1, so guess what I am going to be doing.

This is what the radiator mounting panel looks like at the moment. I haven't done holes for tapping on the design intentionally; I intend to clamp it in place, then drill and tap it in situ, so I don't have the difficulty of making holes line up.

I have also been thinking about the side panel in the same context. At first, I modelled a full-size window with a 30mm offset. I'm now contemplating whether to do a 20mm offset to allow a little bit more airflow from the rad out of the side of the case. Either way, it will be a bit of an arduous process lining up 8x sheets of paper and trimming the overlaps to fit, but nothing I haven't done before. Unless I can find someone nearby with an A3 printer to make it a few less sheets....

Not going to drill screw holes for the window. Sikaflex can hold a windscreen to steel so it should be alright at holding something like this together, for a cleaner look and easier assembly.

Here's the 30mm offset variant with 30mm radials.

Repaired my X-Fi too, happy bunny.