Fallout 4 inspired gaming desktop build... Nuka Cola!!!

My son, daughter and I talked about buying a new gaming PC for awhile and finally decided to take the plunge. Rather than just spend a bunch of money on a pre-built we thought we would build it from the ground up. After a lot of discussion about what we would build and how we wanted it to look and perform we went to PCPartPicker.com to make a parts list. We talked about the theme being Blood Borne but settled on Fallout Nuka Cola.

We liked the Nuka Cola case and motherboard that NZXT pre-built but we wanted a brand new look, the vertical GPU mount, we wanted better features from the MOBO as well as AMD processor support.

I ended up purchasing the NZXT H710i because we liked the look and the vertical GPU mount option. I planned out the paint scheme and got started printing out the stensils, tore down the case and prepped it for paint. I laid out a base white then placed the stensils, sprayed gold and then sprayed red. After it was dry we de-masked it and placed the Nuka Girl decal and sprayed clear over all the paint.

I laid out the stensils for the glass front cover and etched the Vault Boy and Vault-Tec logos. We then laser cut out some white acrylic with the Vault 111 and Fallout logos. I had Avery print us out some Nuka Cola stickers to cover the factory ones from Corsair. We also ordered a sticker from RedBubble for the reservoir that says "Half Lives Matter" I thought that fit the build style well. Lastly I purchased a Nuka Cola water bottle that we planned on using as the reservoir but the plastic was too thin to risk drilling into and filling with any liquid so we just filled it as is and used it for decoration.

We got all of the parts together and fired them up test bench style to make sure everything worked and sure enough we had some problems. The Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB DDR4 3600 DRAM would not allow the system to post so we ended up swapping it out for the Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 3600 also from Corsair and it booted right up also after re-seating the CPU just in case.

After that was good we started getting everything fitted and placed into the case. Got the water cooling loop done. Bending the tubing was a first for us since we never did that before but Primochill was awesome for that part of the build. We used Primochill for the tubing, fittings and coolant. Corsair Hydro X for the GPU and CPU waterblocks, the 6 LL120 fans, (2) 360mm x 30mm Radiators and all of the RGB control via Commander Pro, EKWB for the pump and RadiKult customs for the 140mm fan shaped reservoir.

We were originally looking at a 32" MSI monitor but decided that since it would also be used for the PS4 that we wanted something bigger. We ended up choosing a Vizio M558-G1 4K UHD HDR TV that we then mounted on the wall giving just enough room underneath for the as yet purchased sound bar (thinking Sonos PlayBar) for those times where we don't need to use the Corsair Void Pro Elite headsets.

It was at this point I remembered we would need a desk to game at. Since I was doing a custom PC build why not do a custom desk build as well. I started there with Five 2x6 and cut them to 60" length, sanded them smooth and put them together with dowels and wood glue. We stained them black and laid out the seal coat of epoxy on them. We then placed the project on a flat surface that we sealed and covered with tuck tape to help it release once we poured the center epoxy. I mixed in some pearl white mica powder and poured a thin first layer in the center of the table. After that was cured we placed a mold in the center to block out for the surrounding edge of white pearl epoxy we would be pouring. Once cured we pulled out the mold and placed the non-working motherboards into the center along with 4 sticks of DDR3 DRAM then continued pouring clear epoxy till the entire surface was flat and covered. Last I routed the edges and gave them a scuffing to make them look frosted. I mounted the legs and routed out a channel on the underside for the RGB strips and placed an aluminum cover over to prevent light bleed.

Parts list: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/t36scf

AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (WI-FI 6)
Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600
Corsair MP510 480 GB and 960 GB M.2 NVME SSD
Seagate IronWolf 6TB NAS 7200 RPM HDD
NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition
CableMod C-Series PRO ModMesh Cable Kit
NZXT H710i Case
Corsair AX860i Power Supply
EKWB EK-XTOP D5 Water Pump
Corsair Hy​dro X XC7 ​CPU ​block
Corsair Hy​dro X XG7 ​GPU block
2 x Corsair Hy​dro X XR5 ​Radiator
Radikult C​ustoms 140​mm Reservo​ir
Corsair Co​mmander Pr​o
6 x Corsair LL120RGB Fans
Primochill​ PETG rigi​d tubing and Rigid Revolver SX fittings
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit