Bombshell

[Sir Meowric]

When Antec released the Striker, I knew I had to build in it. It just needed a splash of colour. My plan was to paint some of the outer plates, but otherwise run a straight-forward build.

Years of distro-hopping, dual booting, and incrementally upgrading my storage drives has left my PC a mess of partitions. Bombshell will exclusively run desktop-Linux, and take over all software development from my now-gaming PC.

System
CPU - AMD Ryzen 3900X
GPU - AMD Radeon 5700 XT
Mobo - Asus Strix X570-I
PSU - Seasonic Prime Ultra 850[W]
RAM - G.Skill Trident Z Neo 3600 2x16Gi[B]
SSD1 - Samsung 970 Pro 1T[B]
SSD2 - Samsung 970 Evo 500G[B]

I wanted orange lighting on the inside, and something dark on the outside to complement it. That finally gives me an opportunity to paint something regal purple.



Well, that's... not a wrap. My plan (or lack thereof) called for a bit of purple to look done, but since it replaced all the white, the whole case was now too dark. I also hadn't given much thought to the tube routing, and realized the reservoir, tubes, and power cables weren't going to fit. It's going to be a real project!

[Sir Meowric]

To achieve a glowing interior but dark shell, the exterior needs more purple, and the interior needs to reflect lighting with orange or white paint. I was sceptical orange paint could ever look good on it, but thankfully GIMP exists to rotate colours.


The design looks a bit odd with so much orange in the middle, but I was confident that with enough PC parts on top, and /RGB ON/, it would look awesome. Let's get to work.



I dremeled away material to fit a 24pin cable, GPU power, reservoir struts + top, and D5 pump + fittings. The coarse sanding helps primer stick to metal, especially on edges and large open areas. Antec used a mix of incredibly soft aluminum, soft steel, and hard steel for this case, so the scratches aren't consistent.




I used automotive primer with a normal white airbrush primer on top. I shaded the cracks in the fittings by hand, hoping that would be enough shading to airbrush the rest of the way (it wasn't).



The orange was too bright after just the basecoat. Normally I like to start dark and work up, but here I had to darken and re-highlight the most visible edges.

[Sir Meowric]

I clearcoated everything except the reservoir struts (they're behind a glass plate, so varnish should suffice).




Lastly, satin varnish.



Reservoir assembly. The Striker has two attachment points for its drive cage, which nicely fit the Heatkiller mounting kit.



First POST, half-assembled. I chose pink sleeving to contrast with the purple, not realizing how dominant the orange would be. However, I should have built the power cables after painting. I could have used dummy cables for all the measurements and cutting, and sleeved after painting.

Those stock coolers are eyesores. Lots left to do! The front panel connectors are all way too long, and I have no idea what to do about them (especially the USB3). The mobo doesn't even have an internal USB type C connector. If anyone has advice, I'm all ears.

[Hooded]

Nice Build.
Welcome to the competition.

Images should now be viewable by guest users.

[Bartacus]

An all-AMD build running Linux, I like it!

[Sir Meowric]

Started work on the tubing. More fittings and some longer tubes arriving soon.



Most of the tubes will have quite a few bends, so I'll probably make each one twice.

[Kaidis86]

Looking good! Love the colour scheme!

[Danny79-Qc]

Feels like an amusement park!! very nice job!

[Sir Meowric]

Glad you guys like the style!

I finished the tubes, so here's a wip quickie. It was raining, so I'll save the photo gallery for next update. The tube with 6 bends from GPU to CPU is acrylic, while the rest are PETG. I didn't notice much difference between the two, except the acrylic took more heat. They even look the same up close. The glass isn't on the sides yet, but it's tight tolerance to fit the tubing underneath. I have about 1mm to spare on each side of the case.



The PCIe riser cable only supports gen 3, which led to hard-freezes and intermittent POSTs. It took over a day of troubleshooting to figure out what the problem was. The toggle for gen 4 isn't under the PCIe subsystem section of the BIOS, or I would have learned about it sooner, but eventually I discovered the option from a YouTube video.

The 12V RGB for some reason always has a little bit of green on, and if I plug both the reservoir and graphics card in, the RGB turns off. At least the 5V RGB works! My last build had the RGB hard-wired to red, but I'll troubleshoot it a bit more before resorting to something so drastic.

I still need to modify the drive bay, buy some 2.5" drives, manage the cables, and add some decals. At least now I can use it!

[C0LLARD]

I love the colors and the look of your build. I never seen this Antec case before, I like it. Your tubes are well bend, you done a great job, specially with the 6 bend one!

[Danny79-Qc]

Yup. Very well executed!

[Grinder]

6 bends in one tube

[Danny79-Qc]

6 bends in one tube

Haha you're right. Not always easy to do. Did one run with 7 like 1 month ago and it wasn't easy at all haha. Great job here!

[bungwirez]

ah man. I tried a four bender (once... at band camp). inevitably went to soft.

[Danny79-Qc]

Wasn't completed but only picture of it I have. I say over 3 bends it starts getting hard lol