Stuffing a small box:Corsair Carbide Air 240 build

[Bartacus]

I just realized I never put up any pics of my backup system build. I had bought a pile of stuff from MRDCanadian around Xmas to build a backup system (ITX board with Bitspower full board block / i5-3570K / 8GB RAM in a Bitfenix Prodigy). I decided I didn't much like the Prodigy and needed something bigger. So on impulse I picked up one of these:



I then made a contribution to Daz' retirement / yacht fund, and bought the following:

Darkside LP240 slim rad x 2
EK X-RES 100 CSQ pump top / res (MRDs rig came with a D5 strong)
Darkside 4-1 fan splitter cable (white)
Darkside white sleeved SATA cables x 3

I already had a ton of other stuff laying around the house not being used, which included:

10ft of blue UV Primochill Advanced LRT tube (3/8 5/8)
Various 3/8 5/8 fittings (Bitspower, XPSC, etc)
Darkside UV LED strips x 4 (6" long ones, gotta replace those with a pair of 12")
A ton of random fans
A 3.5" fan controller (30W x 3)
2 120GB SSDs and a 1TB HDD
A Sapphire Radeon 7950 with Heatkiller block / back plate

I also bought a Mushkin 128GB SSD for this rig long ago, and later due to a really good sale, I ended up buying a pair of 256GB SSDs for my main rig to replace it's 120GB pair, which meant I suddenly had 2 120GB SSDs rendered useless, so they all went into this one, since it has a really nice triple 2.5" SSD cage. It also has a triple 3.5" cage, into which I tossed a spare 1TB HDD and a fan controller (more on that below). Throw all that together in a small cube, stir, shred your hands to pieces from working in tight spaces, and you get this:



You can stuff a lot of crap in this little thing:


But I did have a small hiccup. The ITX mobo only has 2 fan headers, and this case has no bays at all for fan controllers (no 3.5" / 5.5" bays at all actually). So I went the ghetto route, and through the magic of velcro, you get this:


Sunbeam 30Wx3 fan controller nicely tucked away in the tool-less HDD cage:


Thank god for Daz 4-way fan splitters. Love those things! All 4 rad fans run off channel one. The second channel runs the UV lighting, which I totally overdosed on by using four Darkside UV LED strips. I had bought those for another project months ago, but never ended up using them (happy accident #1). I even bought the blue Primochill tubing NOT knowing it was UV (happy accident #2). But this cube does have one weird ugly quirk: there isn't a 120mm rear fan option, it's 2 80mm instead. So I picked up a pair of Fractal Design Silent Series R2 80mm fans, which just happened to have nice white blades that glow well under gargantuan doses of UV light (happy accident #3), so all of this UV crap was a complete accident of fate. And I think it worked out ok:




Sitting on top of his big brother:


Tweaks will be coming. I just blew about $50 on impulse and came home with 4 Gelid blue UV fans for this baby. Right now, I'm using 2 fans that came with the case for one rad (yuck), and a pair of Cougars which aren't bad at all. Another tweak is reduce the number of Darkside LED strips from 4 small ones to 2 longer ones, maybe 3, we shall see. So the plan now is:

1) make Daz richer and buy longer LED strips
2) make Daz richer and buy clear UV coolant (since I have this big mobo block that could be glowing, and the res). Anyone know if this UV dye is cool being mixed with Dazmode Protector?: https://www.dazmode.com/store/produc...ye_-_uv_clear/
3) make Daz richer and buy a clear stop plug with a 5mm UV LED (because overkill is underrated)

I'm also flirting with spray painting the thing into a blue / white color scheme, because Snefs beautiful blue build is permanently etched into my brain. But that's probably not a good idea in a filthy unheated garage at -20C. Comments welcomed (bad ones especially). I'll be tearing this sucker down for the above improvements, so if you see something I can be doing better / smarter, speak up! Keep in mind the PSU is only partially modular, so there won't be any sleeving.

Bart

[Hero1]

That's one pretty backup system Barts.
Keep at it

[bungwirez]

so many happy co-incidences in your design.

[vieuxchnock]

Very nice accidents.

[Grinder]

Looks nice Bart You aren't nearly as mod challenged as you let on, I like the fan controller tucked in there. Love the shot of it sitting on big brother!

[10e]

Looking good. I'm sure this was easier to build than the Prodigy. I don't know why Corsair markets this as a Micro ATX case. Officially only if you are using a front mounted AIO or a passive top mounted radiator like WiSK did.

But AIO? This isn't madness, it's Dazmode!!!

Nice build, and yes with all the storage this case begs to be a NAS/Backup box. I have the white one and this is exactly what I have it slated for. All water cooled of course!

[Bartacus]

Thanks gents!

10e: I have seen dual vid card builds with this case, but as expected, you lose the entire 2x120mm bottom area. Plus with this case, there is a major shortfall: you CANNOT put a rad + fans in the roof. You only have enough room for EITHER a rad OR fans, but not nearly enough room for both. For a home NAS, the Prodigy actually holds more HDDs (4 x 3.5"), but you'd have no room at all for a loop if you used the HDD cages. You'd pretty much be AIO only, unless you did nutty things to mod the case, but even with modding, it's hard to add space to a case that small. But I won't bash the Prodigy, it's a great little case with some very cool features. It just didn't have enough space for the rad overkill I wanted.

Now if only Daz would get in here and let me know if that UV dye I want can be used with distilled water + Dazmode Protector.

[Hooded]

Little brother looks good bart.
Nice build.

[DazMode]

That's tight! Great build.

[Bartacus]

That's tight! Great build.

Thanks Daz! It's running distilled + Dazmode Protector. So can I add that clear UV dye (https://www.dazmode.com/store/produc...ye_-_uv_clear/) to this loop? I've had that dye in my Dazmode cart for a week now, but I need to know if it's ok with Protector before I send you more money.

[DazMode]

Yes, protector is fully compatible with all TFC dyes.

[Bartacus]

Sweet! Order placed for more UV stuff!!

[DazMode]

It also compatible with all PC-Cooling liquids.

[Bartacus]

So I've been tearing this thing down and rebuilding it lately, several times over. It just didn't feel right having the EK pump top facing backwards like that.

First I tried this (glamorous HDR shot) :


Meh, didn't like it. But I was impressed as hell with Primochill tube and it's bending capabilities. That's a hard S bend below the pump and it was a pain to do, but the tube never collapsed. It actually helped hold the pump top up. But I didn't like that ugly tube run. When I found a way to slide the pump top out toward the front of the case a bit more, I was able to put fittings BEHIND the pump. Wasn't able to do that before (3 cheers for a really modular 120mm mounting bracket).

So I finally found a use for this crazy fitting I bought from Daz a while back:


It's ugly, but it works, and it can't really be seen. I couldn't use a regular 90 degree fitting since the tube would have to bend around the memory chips. Even with low profile RAM, there ain't much room to play with here. So I ended up with this:


Getting the pump top flipped around lead to another benefit. Darkside FTW!


Another glamorous HDR shot:


Now this looks much better to me:


Added some UV coolant from Daz too. It lights up in the reservoir, but not in the CPU block:


Jake the Snake fitting turned out to be quite useful, and I was able to twist him into something even neater IMHO. I think this is the cleanest tube run yet:


The top part:


The mess in behind the pump top:


The mess in the back that no one ever shows you. Take note of the lovely Darkside 4-to-1 fan splitter running the rad fans to the fan controller ghettoed into the 3.5" bay, and the equally lovely Darkside sleeved SATA cables. There's also a 3-pin power PCB (8 ports). That runs the UV light strips (12" x 2, 6" x 2).


When she's all buttoned back up, it looks rather neat, even if the pump top sits a bit high:


Unfortunately I had to ditch the Darkside stop plug. It can't be used on this particular pump top due to the sunken ports on it. The fitting doesn't fit fully into the recess, so it leaks. Not the fittings fault obviously. So now as it stands, it looks like this:

[bungwirez]

wow Bart.

the Darkside plugs really look great under UV.

but the real deal here is your attention to creativity.
so much effort in making the best of a tight situation.
I don't think I've seen such small space work since Father Fuzzy did his Anarchy Prodigy

your final pics make it all look aquarium. So Cool Bart. Well done!