Hey guys, so some of you who follow my personal projects know I’ve been
working on this water-cooling case design which took some time to finalize and this
is a second follow up video along with the sporadic content I’ve been
releasing on social media. So, this case is called Valkyrie and here is the finished build.
Also huge thanks to Titan Rig for sending over some of the water-cooling hardware here for me
to make this possible. In this video, I’ll be talking about what Valkyrie is,
what it’s supposed to do, the specs and features as well as the components listed
down in the description I used to build this personal editing workstation and gaming rig.
And I do plan on making a very limited amount of these cases for sale which is already listed
on my website and there is a collaboration with Titan Rig for this which I’ll share more details
at the end of this video so stick around for that if you’re interested in one of these.
So, what is Valkyrie? Well, it is a boutique open-air water-cooling case made of full thick
steel, not some thin cheap aluminum and plastic like most mass-produced cases,
and I designed it by pulling inspiration from my favorite ITX case, the Mobius by Yuel Beast,
and the ARES build from Alessandro. Now let me explain what I pulled from these two.
Some time ago I was using the Mobius as my main rig which at the time was rocking a 5900X
and an RTX 3080. But as my workflow became more demanding and wanting a better gaming experience,
I decided to upgrade to the Intel 13900K with an RTX 4090. At the same time, I also wanted to
jump back onto an ATX motherboard in order to provide better power delivery for these
more power-hungry components. Additionally, I was also running out of USB ports on the back
of the ITX motherboard as I was starting to implement more peripherals onto my desk setup
and I personally don’t like using hubs so I had to go ATX if I wanted more direct connections.
Aesthetically, I just really liked how the Mobius looked so I designed basically an ATX version
of it myself to meet my upgrade requirements, mainly just expanding that front panel design
to be able to mount up to four fans. I also didn’t want to copy the entire Mobius case
either because there were certain things I wanted to change and felt I could improve on,
at least for my own personal use. Also, purely from the fact that Valkyrie is an ATX case
means it had to be structurally different anyways to work the way I wanted it to.
The ARES build by Alessandro gave me the idea of wanting to create an adjustable
motherboard tray where the user could flip it based on left or right sided desk placement
while having the internal components face the user. The only difference is that ARES
allows flipping on the fly and requires a lot more complex internal mechanisms that
wouldn’t make economical sense for me to produce multiple units of. So,
I kept it simpler where the user would first set up the preferred orientation and build the rest.
More on the motherboard tray, it slides back and forth to accommodate different sized hardware,
let me be more specific. Radiators come in various thicknesses and so do fans. Well,
most fans are typically 25mm thick but you also have the Phanteks T30s which are 30mm which have
been somewhat popular since they came out. GPU waterblocks also vary in length so depending on
your hardware, sliding the motherboard tray allows the user to adjust some clearances.
The ATX PSU bracket also slides left to right to accommodate clearance for which
side of the motherboard tray the user has set up. Both the motherboard tray and PSU
bracket are secured via 10-32 screws so you just have to loosen them for adjustments.
The backside also has a cover tray to hide routed cables and the back
of the motherboard. It’s pretty easy to install
as it’s just secured via four 6-32 nuts that goes on the motherboard standoffs.
Power button can be placed either on the top of
the case here or in the center of the motherboard tray. Personally,
I prefer to have it on top but some people may want it in the middle depending on your build.
Cable management is normally more of a challenge in open-air cases and I think
the way I have it here is not that bad, but it could be better. The routing is something I’m
still playing around with and I just didn’t have the time to really do that as I was putting this
build and video together in a time crunch. Speaking of being better, the tube runs I
have here were also done on a time crunch as well as certain fittings I wish I had more of
or at the time just weren’t available to buy so I did the best I could with what I had on hand.
When it comes to cables in open-air builds, in fact when it comes to cable management in general,
I know majority of people will say they’d rather not see cables at all. I have two answers to that,
one is yes, I do agree if you can hide cables completely, go for it. But two,
something that I feel most people don’t think about is that cables
can be an attraction rather than an eyesore based on how you route it.
Let me bring up a couple examples. You can Google up server room cable management,
it can either look like a nightmare, or it can be an aesthetic artwork in my opinion. Another
example is the custom keyboard hobby, cables are very complimentary and aesthetic on the
desk if you pick the right one that matches your keyboard and how it’s ran across your
desk. All it takes is a bit of creativity and cables don’t have to be the bad guys.
The last thing I want to talk about is an optional guard for the radiator. These
guards were something I designed for two purposes, one is aesthetics so it
makes it looks cleaner by hiding fans and the radiator itself which of course is subjective,
and two it tucks away the fan cables more neatly and better routing path
across the case which in my opinion would be the cables hugging closer to the top
and bottom of the case frame instead of straight across the middle of the case.
So, the question that might come up is why did I only provide one mounting spot for what looks like
specifically just for a 480mm radiator? Well, at the time I wanted an open-air build that
was ambidextrous, flexible, and adjustable while keeping mounting placements minimal and simple.
In my mind, one of the things was I just want one radiator that could
handle two high end components such as the 13900K and the RTX 4090 in a single loop,
and I figured a single 480 rad would do it. Both my CPU and GPU are currently stock as I
haven’t done any undervolting or overclocking yet, and the temperatures are what I expected
when running Cinebench and 3D Mark. The 4090 pretty much stays under 45 degrees C after
running two Time Spy stress tests back-to-back. The 13900K under Cinebench will hit 99 to 100
C but that’s not actually a true representation of realistic workflow as these numbers are also
spikes under a stress test program. When I’m video editing or gaming, it doesn’t even get
close to that and will stay within 60 degrees even during the most intense video editing sessions.
Now my build here is featured on the Titan Rig website which will
also have a Q&A blog that you can read more about and I’ll link that down below as well.
As for the sales, I will only be making a limited amount of these and in collaboration
with Titan Rig, those who purchase a Valkyrie case will receive a unique
discount code for 20% off water-cooling hardware from Titan Rig’s website.
Additionally, we will also be giving away one free Valkyrie case to a random
person and the giveaway link will be linked down in the description as well.
There will be three color options for the case, black, silver and raw steel. Now for fulfillment,
I will keep the Valkyrie case open on the webstore for a couple weeks starting now,
June 30th to July 15th, to take pre-orders, once closed, production will start and it will take
about a week to make the cases and then another week to powder-coat it if you choose to have it
powder-coated before being shipped out to you. So, if you choose raw steel, not only will you
save money, but you’ll also be getting it at a lower price since powder-coating does cost more.
Last thing is Valkyrie is only going to be sold within the US due to cost and logistic purposes.
Alright, if you have any questions or comments about Valkyrie, please drop
them down below and I will try my best to answer everything. You can also join my
Discord server provided in the description if you want to stay up to date on these projects
as I typically make the announcements there first. Okay that’s all for now,
so as always, thank you so much for tuning in and I’ll catch you next time.