Paint it Black

[Cptn Vortex]

Nice!! Neat lights!

[DK2]

Some final pics, or what engineers do on vacation!

Here’s the top, I striped all the original top access stuff off
and drilled out all the holes and fitted a 120mm fan for top exhaust.
Pretty good shot of the Black granite paint.


Inside, the rear gold trim hides a lot of the wiring.
The side of the front bays also have trim, its just for looks though.
The red push button at the top by the fan, that’s will be attached to the
clear bios cmos jumper since access to it will be close to impossible once
everything else gets installed.


Internal fan and 2 750G hard drives, mass storage and backup.


The finished front;
I put 2 DVD burners in near the top, one day I’ll replace one with a blu-ray burner,
once the price comes down to earth.


Its new home;

Slide out for easy access.
(cuz ya know, taking the cover off and staring at the MB and saying wtf can get better clocks)


I won’t be able to do much more till July or August, need more money, and
to quote the wife “you need to get your ass back to work, seriously!” wha…
So that’s the end of Phase I


Phase II is the actual computer! omg!
There’s still some re-wiring for some of the fans, but I didn’t want to get too far ahead until I can get a real motherboard in there.
The only real thing I’m set on are the Gigabyte X48T motherboard
with a Yorkfield Quad, 2 150G Raptors in raid 0, and a fat 24” monitor.
Still can’t decide on a video card though, likely a 9800GTX, but it just doesn’t give
me that “wow, I want one!” for some reason….
till then (we really need some beer smiles)

[misterlarry]

Very nice work! The upside is that when your mobo PO's you; you can just rip it up. A word of caution though, you might have to post warnings for people who are prone to seizures. Look forward to seeing it up and running.

[Jack Rabbit]

Originally Posted by DK2

The red push button at the top by the fan, that’s will be attached to the
clear bios cmos jumper since access to it will be close to impossible once
everything else gets installed.

Go buy an egg timer. When you push the button start the egg timer. If you need to push the button before the egg timer runs out then back away from the computer and go give the wife a hug.

srsly... great job with the case.

[DK2]

Thanks guys, I realize its not much of how to, any ? just post’m eh.

egg timer? wth Price in goal? red is dead... heehehee......

[DK2]

A little update and some pics of the latest buys.
A Logitech G15 keyboard, and a MX Revolution Mouse w/Razer mouse pad.


The Coolit Elite. This pic is for the Coolit guys, they wanted me to keep it as is. Ha!


I had two problems with it installed like that; the plate will block my side fan somewhat,
and I have hopes of putting some thermalright high rise heat sinks on the RAM, which the pump would interfere with.
So I mounted the fan on the outside.


and ripped off the plate, it was stuck on good too, son..of..a…
The plate is kinda cool, so I may find a place to put it, little blue glowing lights…mmmm


It really was pretty easy to install like that.
I think if I put some glowing paint or something on the Elite pump there,
it just might look like Ironman’s mini reactor thing!

So….what’s left.
Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 w/Q9550 CPU
2x2GB DDR3-1600 OCZ Platinum
WD Velociraptor 300GB HDD, just one for now
A Razer sound card and 5.1 headphones, and a Samsung 245B Monitor.
Last but not least GTX 280, need a good sale on that one, damn….

Just one or two good sale/price drops away now…..

[sswilson]

Damn, looking pretty sweet!!!!

I really like the gold trim accenting the black.

[DK2]

Thanks, been a lot of work and even surprised myself that I didn’t mess it up,
amazing what one can do given the time, power tools and a case of beer.

[DK2]

Sorry, kinda rushed this but here it is.

Just a few problems to work around before my stuff arrives.
#1 the way I arranged my 2 storage drives and my DVDs.
the sata power cables that came with my toughpower won’t fit
right. One of the connections to the DVD drives is too short.
While I could just re-wire the whole thing, I came up with another plan.
My CoolPanel also needs a sata power connector for the esata port.

Sooooo what I did was insert another sata power connector into the existing cable
and use the short one for the coolpanel.
Like so, before and after;


The connectors are insulation displacement, so you just press the wires in, carefully
by hand, and needle-nose pliers to finish. Just close but don’t touch the displacement rails or the whole thing could be f’d.

#2 I wanted to monitor the coolit elite fan rpm using my front fan controller/monitor.
The easiest solution was to use the CPU split cable the comes with the Zalman MFC2.
All I needed was to add a extra connector to the coolit fan cable
Like so;
I took off the 3 pin header, soldered some extensions on for ground and rpm sensor,
and replaced the headers.



I turned the system on for about 30 seconds to test it, everything seems fine,
Even the coolit elite powered up and I could feel the TECs get cool, and the pump softly humming away.

#3
Damn, I forgot to attach all the wires to the Coolpanel before getting everything else
installed. So I had to remove the HDD front fan cage!
What a mess;

But I got it done. Anyone thinking of getting a coolpanel, just look at all those wires.
I might need some more tie-wraps, even so there won’t be any airflow down in that
bottom hole. Not that it really needs it anyways, but its going to be full.

I think for the Vraptors I will also use an exsiting power cable but just cut off all the connectors
and just place my own because they are so close to the PSU anyways there’s no need to have the extra wire length hanging everywhere.

Should be almost ready for when my stuff comes now. If all goes well,
the first thing is to POST,
then set the boot order,
then boot memtest86,
then boot WD diagnostics.
If all that goes well, no rma’s at this point, install Windows, if we’re still ok, finalize the wiring,
or install Crysis and get drunk. Don’t do today what you can put off till tomorrow, er, something like that.

Anyways, I’m getting a little nervous about using Vista 64, as I’ve been gathering up all my software,
getting new drivers and making backups and everything of my current system.
Hope all works fine *fingers crossed*

Ooo Purolator tracking says my stuff arrived in the TO depot, hope that means a Friday pickup, fun weekend!

[BALISTX]

Looking very nice. I like the paint job.