There are ready-made PC desk chassis available, but if you want a desk that fits your requirements perfectly, you will need to build it yourself, and this water-cooled Desktop PC is a great example. Built from the ground up by Jonny Anderson, this custom liquid-cooled desk PC is truly one of a kind.
Thanks to our rapidly growing PC Building Facebook page, we've seen a lot of custom gaming PCs, from mods based on existing case designs to PC builds from scratch. You can also submit your own PC for review here. Now let's talk to Jonny about how he built this hardline liquid-cooled desk PC that he calls the Omega.
PCGamesN: Let's start with your initial inspiration. What made you want to build a PC into your desk?
Johnny: It was actually an old Custom PC magazine, L3p D3sk. I liked the idea of ​​having all my hardware and wiring organized and on display, with the added bonus of not having an ATX case on the floor. But Peter Brands' engineering skills far surpass mine, so I had to design it within my capabilities.
This is not a desk chassis model readily available from manufacturers such as Lian Li. It's an incredible piece. Tell us how you designed it and what the build process was like.
Thank you! The Lian Li desk cases are works of art, but on the pricey side. I do like Lian Li's use of aluminum, though. Aluminum is strong, light, and relatively easy to work with, so it has become my go-to material.
I created this design in SketchUp by creating a square cross-section frame that the case panels and baseplate would screw to, then creating 3mm thick rectangular panels for the front, back, sides and base, then I looked in 3D Warehouse to figure out where all the components should go.
I ordered some cut to length aluminium squares, laser cut and powder coated 3mm aluminium sheet panels and custom sized 12mm Perspex tops. All of these parts were purchased from various online retailers (see my build log for details). I then had to drill around 130 holes into the frame and cut M4 thread taps, which was quite difficult and very tedious.
Given the precision required I bought a smaller pillar drill for this job, which made the job much easier. I then assembled the rest of the desk, test-fitting each panel into the frame, grinding down sections or making adjustments where possible.
How did you go about planning, measuring and cutting the hard tubing?
In my opinion, planning the route for the hard tubes is always the hardest part of the build. I've done quite a few water cooled builds and deciding how to route the tubes is always the most time consuming.
Firstly, draw a drawing on a piece of A4 paper to get a rough idea of ​​how many tubes you will need and what fittings you will need. I decided to use PETG tubes with an outer diameter of 14mm as I have worked with both this material and acrylic before.
How does the airflow system work in terms of direction and ventilation?
On the left side, three 140mm fans act as intakes to cool the hard drives and provide airflow to the motherboard, while the 420mm radiator has three 140mm fans expelling air from the bottom on the right side, with three corresponding circular cutouts underneath that act as exhausts.
Why did you decide to use hard tubes rather than soft tubes?
I wanted all the lines and right angles to be as uniform as possible, which wasn't possible with soft tubing, however, I'd never done any water cooling before so watching a bunch of YouTube videos and reading old issues of Custom PC on the subject really helped me.
The measuring and cutting wasn't too difficult, since all the components and waterblock were in place at that point, it was just a matter of trial and error. Oh, and the return loop from the graphics card is under the baseplate. Between this loop and the pipe going back to the reservoir, we also added a drain port for easier maintenance.
What do I need to consider? How does it compare to building a desktop PC versus a regular PC with an ATX case?
If you're designing a desktop PC yourself, your first order of business is to make a list of the basics: for example, the output ports of all parts that need to connect to external devices should face the rear of the case.
From there, think about clean lines, bends, and how you want the rest of the inside to look, and you'll know where you need to place the rest of your components and wiring based on what you can't move. Also, remember that with water cooling, you'll be mounting on a horizontal surface instead of a vertical one, so the highest and lowest points of your loops will be much closer together than with an ATX tower.
What's on the side front panel? An optical drive?
It's a 4K Blu-ray player with power and reset buttons, power and HD LEDs, headphone/mic jacks, and two handy USB ports.
What is the size and weight? Can it be moved?
It's 1006mm wide, 755mm deep and 775mm high including the legs. It's quite heavy, but judging by the size of the door frame I just measured, I can move it around the room it's currently in without too much trouble myself. Oops!
What's in the box area at the front?
That's where your feet go! The front panel was originally rectangular but we realised it would be terribly uncomfortable otherwise so we altered it to incorporate this space.
Where are the cables hidden, and how did they decide where to route them?
The back side of the base plate. I 3D printed some cable combs that I can attach to the back side of the base plate. Now I just need to make sure they don't interfere with each other on the way back to the PSU.
How long did it take you to complete this project?
I've been working on the PC design in SketchUp on and off for about 18 months (the main obstacles were work and personal life), but I started the actual construction phase in March of this year and finished it around the beginning of July.
Have you encountered any difficulties?
We found that even the laser cut aluminum did not match our SketchUp design perfectly without taking into account the thickness of the powder coat finish, which resulted in some edges having to have a few millimeters removed from one end of the panel so that it would not overlap the adjacent edge when screwed to the frame.
What did you learn from the build process?
Aside from mastering water cooling and metalworking, the biggest learning curve was creating the custom power cables. Each cable had to be cut to length, crimped, sleeved and terminated in the appropriate socket. I spent a lot of time with a PSU tester before connecting them to my components and fortunately it all worked fine.
Are you happy with the end result and looking back is there anything you wish you had done differently?
I'm really happy with the end result – it would have been nice to incorporate some sort of pneumatic lift similar to a car trunk into the top of the Perspex to make it easier to access when water cooling maintenance is required, but it only takes the removal of 18 screws.
Water-cooled desktop PC specs
- CPU: Overclocking the Intel Core i9-9900K to 4.5GHz
- Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, base clock OC up to 1450MHz, boost clock up to 1750MHz
- storage: 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD, 4TB WD Black hard drive
- memory: 32GB (4 x 8GB) G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3200MHz
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra
- Power supply unit: Corsair HX1000i
- cooling: EK-Velocity D-RGB Nickel + Plexi CPU Water Block, EK-Vector RTX 2080 Ti RGB Nickel + Plexi GPU Water Block, EK-XTOP Revo D5 PWM Plexi, EK-RES X3 150 Reservoir, EK-CoolStream SE 420mm Radiator, EK-CryoFuel Solid Cloud White Coolant (Premix 1,000ml)
I'm always impressed by PC cases that are built completely from the ground up, and this desk PC is just amazing. I love how the Perspex top (which looks like glass at first glance) reveals the Hardline water-cooling gear, plus the whole thing doubles as a very attractive piece of furniture. Great job, Jonny!
This post originally appeared on Custom PC, which has been covering amazing setups for over 20 years and is now part of PCGamesN. To discuss this build, join our Facebook group with 500,000 members.
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