Lumière Noire by E.E.L. Ambiense

Side Panels

The window panel on the case is a carry-over from the last rig. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, so I figured I’d save the pennies and apply it toward something else on the rig.

The side panel’s acrylic was cut out of smoke gray acrylic, like the rest of the acrylic used in the mod, and I simply installed it onto an identical side panel from Lian Li since the previous panel was powder coated and I was going with brushed aluminum this time.

For the panel’s design itself, I followed the stock panel opening’s curves so it gave it that beveled, natural look like it belongs there. I used large black oxide socket-cap screws on Lumière Noire because they tend to give it an industrial look to things, and normal screws just wouldn’t work. I also tend to use socket-cap screws with just about every project I’m involved in, so this is nothing new.


Like the other panel, I'm also carrying the motherboard side panel’s acrylic over from the previous build because there's nothing wrong with it. I figured the rest of the case is getting attention so I wouldn't want the other side-panel to feel entirely left out and ignored!

Motherboard

The stock motherboard was probably okay, but I decided I was going to upgrade the cooling on it. There’s really nothing quite like voiding your warranty, right? The Northbridge cooler provided by DFI just wasn’t going to cut it for me. I wanted the Northbridge in one of the loops, but at the time there wasn’t anything available for the X38 chipset as far as water cooling blocks, and ones that fit it now aren’t very attractive to me.


But, I really wanted to add this to one of the loops at the time. I sent an email to Eddy at EK Water Blocks to see if he had anything in the works for the DFI boards in particular. He replied promptly as he always does, but unfortunately he did not have anything brewing at the time of this build. So, I decided I’d try something else. I had a couple of older EK chipset blocks laying around from a previous build and they weren’t going to be used for anything else. I figured I’d experiment.


Since DFI decided to be a bit different and only use two mount points for the X38 chipsets on their boards, I decided I would make a new top for one of these blocks. I started designing and came up with this for starters.

I ended up cutting it out of 3/8in black acrylic, which gave it plenty of strength for mounting once it was installed. I tapped the holes previously lasered at the right size for G1/4in threads and screwed in some barbs. Testing of the block resulted in excellent temps on the chipset; considerably lower than other reported temps on air for that particular motherboard/chipset, which would be expected using water cooling.