Cold Winter: Part 3

In part 2 of this buildlog I showed what version 2 of Cold Winter was about. However, I was never really satisfied with that build and I also wanted to do custom water-cooling in this case, not only a all-in-one liquid-cooler.

So in this last part of the buildlog I will show you how I did the last and third version of Cold Winter.

This was how Cold Winter looked empty. I was not really satisfied with the earlier versions as there were a lot of unused space and it also did not come close to my vision of this build.

So in the third version I removed everything except the case and started over, this time with a SFX power-supply and a DCP pump from EKWB in the bottom of the case.

The right side of the case is where everything was mounted on the inside, so if you looked at that side you only saw behind the hardware, which did not look good. So what I did was to mask off everything else and paint the inside of the right side black.

As you see on this photo, the acrylic part of the case was a bit too big, so I had to cut it down to fit better.

Much better now! As I were using a Pico-PSU before I also had to cut out a hole for the SFX power-supply.

In the backpanel there were a 92mm fan installed, but when I measured I found out that a 120mm fan could fit without a problem, so I made that hole bigger.

The PSU and pump in the bottom of the case was something I wanted to hide, so I made a coverplate out of acrylic that I painted black as well as the left side of the case.

In the front the LCD and power-switch is installed the same way as before, however, there is now a 120mm EKWB XT radiator installed here, which is also connected to the pump with tubing.

The tube-reservoir is installed in the top of the case, with tubes going down to both the CPU-block and the pump.

Motherboard is installed on the right side of the case as before. The sleeving is actually extensions this time from Bitfenix, white and black. The loop was filled with Mayhems Pastel White.

I got a nice acrylic CNC-milled fangrill from MNPCTech that lights up very nice with the LED-fans. The fans, Enermax Cluster really worked out good in this build. With the SFX power-supply I also got much more stable power and with the 120mm fan in the back also got the noise down a bit.

With this third version I felt satisfied for the first time, there is still stuff I would like to change, but not in the same way as before.

I hope you enjoyed this buildlog, if you want to see more photos check out the project-page for Cold Winter.