Case Mod - In Progress Carbide - 98% Complete!

Yeah I voted for this too. Absolutely love the cheerful colours and theme.

Shame the DFI has been swapped out though

 

I have a question, do you have to remove the factory ram sinks to put aftermarket ones on? I know most ram has a life time warranty so I was just curious.

 

A decent amount of heat and 'finger grease' and nerves of delrin or some other hard plastic were needed to remove the XMS2 sinks. The tape they use on them is, well, tape and very sticky stuff. I had to be very careful and in the end im not sure if they work or not since i could only get the board to boot once.

Now, the Vengeance 1600 ram with the blue sinks is what im using now and it was more like a stickier thermal pad than tape and required no heat and very little prying to come right off. I just got the two remaining fittings i needed to pumb it again and im bleeding it right now with PrimoChill's Sysprep.

Later tonight i may route out the side window and wire in the front panel switch bay i have yet to give you a hint of. After that i only need a couple small things to tidy it all up and Windows install hopefully on Sunday!

 

Sorry, i missed your post

Yes, im saddened by this as well, but i have an idea why it wouldnt post. If i can get it to post ill just use it for a firewalled XP gaming machine for older games.

I appreciate the kind words though, thanks much for your support!

 

Fairly big update here. I didnt like the mesh cover plate i made, so i went with the solid one, but of course it had to be 'Carbided'







Sorry for the blurriness, showing the custom switch panel, stealthed of course. The one with the huge mess of wires is for the triple rad stack fans so i can run at 5v or 12v depending on work and sound load needs. Plus i figure 4 high speed Yate Loons will push a butt load of air even at 5v. The other two switches are for the side panel lighting, one to turn it on/off, the other to switch between sets



Showing the drive bay lighting and power connections



Just how hidden are they? Pretty well id say, its actually a bit hard to flip them but you can manage



Ugh! What is that??!!



Oh, proof you can remove the silicone from a 'waterproof' LED strip



I opted to go with a UV and an RGB strip setup. The UV strip should be self explanatory, but i went with the RGB instead of plain white because the white strip didnt have the 'LEDs per inch' i wanted, plus they were 3528's vs. the RGB's 5050 size.

Showing in white



I swear this is red on the lowest setting, the sunlight messes up my camera, ill pull out my older Carl Zeiss lensed camera for some nicer shots later



Well, thats all i have for now. I would say that its about 98% done as i just need to cut the side panel window and wire in a USB hub for my wireless accessories. The hub is optional since i have 10 ports on the back and 2 on the front, so i may not need the extra internal ones.

 

Nice to See some progress. I'd nearly forgotten this was here!

Really good idea for stealthing the switch panel. Seriously, great. Toggle switches are a nice touch, but people seem overly fond of just slapping them on as they go and just end up ruining what started out as a clean, sharp looking front panel.

 

coming along nicely.

 

Sigh, well i got it up and running and dangit if i cant get past an ATi driver error to load the VGA drivers for the 4890's. Then i get random errors with it freezing on bootup etc etc etc...

I also think i fried the RGB controller so i had to order another one and the only place was in China lol. Im just not having a good time with this build!

 

So, i think one of the 4890's is dead or something. I got it to boot ONCE on a clean install but as soon as i tried to crossfire it crashed. Got it back up into Windows and was able to OC them to 1050core/1200mem and it crashed. Got 7.3 on the WEI and it crashed. Tried booting with the slave card as main and no signal to the monitor on either DVI port. There are 3 of these cards on eBay right now, one from what seems to be a reputable seller, the others at one who lists every item they have as 'Manu refurb' which is suspect for some things like a $5 memory card reader lol, let alone a 3-4 year old GPU.

So ill snag the one and some more paracord since im going to move the drive cage up to the fan above the rad stack as its just too hard to make adjustments or make sure the SATA cables are plugged in with that massive assembly.

 

this is a great build youve got some nice ideas and i like the colour scheme! the hdd and ssd mount you made is very nice, i might have to take a little inspiration from it for my upcoming build, but i do have a question, is the mesh not trying to bend and buckle under the weight of the drives? i have images of the mesh bending and the screws coming out?

 

Top mod. Loving the eye popping colors
Makes my black and white theme look like something from the 80's

 

Very shiny updates those.

Looking forward to see how they will fit in the case. Lovely sleeve also.

 

No, ironically it wont bend on its own, but the whole assembly is quite hefty.

Thanks, but nothing wrong with white and black I could see using the white version of this case for a white/black mod....hmmmm monochrome...

Thanks!

Turns out BOTH the UD5 mobos i had are dead/dying so i had to pop for a new one, return the one i got off eBay that was meant for a friend and then turn around and RMA mine. Sigh.. its SO not been a great 'electronics' week for me. Bad thing is i have to wait till about Tuesday to see if one of my 4890's is bad or not, but i suspect the mobo at this point.

Oh, just noticed, first MOTM and now 5 stars? Im honored, really, thanks much Bit Tech

 

I see you, what are you doing with my computer hooman?



The modding continues...i figured since i have to wait till Tuesday for the new mobo i would see what i could do to dress it up a bit. I thought some glow from certain places would look cool.

The 'hub' as it were is the southbridge heatsink and the two PCI-E lanes below the two vid cards. Under the heatsink is certainly hidden, i just hope the vid card ones are not as visible once they are installed. This is powered by the sysfan header.

 

Not one to sit around and wait for something to happen, like a UPS guy to show up...i decided to do something else to the case and make a cover for something...

Just quick and kinda dirty



Little carbon fiber Di-Noc



And some 3M double sided tape...



Like i posted before about trying to put the HDD cage in the upper fan it barely fit but just didnt look right, so i opted for the next best thing, keep it in the original spot but rotate it forward 90º so you can see the custom cable and the SATA cables dont get mashed into the back of the case. Youll see what i mean in later pics

 

I love how you have positioned the radiators.

I have a Carbide 500r and so far only have an H100 to cool the CPU. I had a loop in a previous case, but went back to air for the GPUs and H100 for the CPU as it does the trick, but just doesn't look as good. I decided to stick with it though due to radiator mounting points.

Now you have given me food for thought!

Keep up the good work

 

Quick question:

Would you be able to fit one of the drive bay "blocks" in and have the radiator stack underneath?

I currently use the top 3.5" drive bay, and have the bottom one removed, so could potentially fit a couple of 120mm radiators stacked like yours...

Tempted, so very tempted...

 

I like this a lot!

 

I was able to hang a 360 in the roof, but messed up three of the 8 needed screw holes somehow so i had to step down to a 240. I thought i wouldnt be able to keep up with the FX6100 but the one time i got it working right and OC'd up to 4GHz it didnt climb past 23ºC even with the memory getting cooled with it.

No, for a couple reasons. One, they only hold 3 drives and i would have had to mod it a lot to fit 6. Two, because it would have been a 'stock' solution for something that was intended to be modded Oh, three actually, since the rads are thicker/wider than 120mm.

Swiftech does have a few of the stackable rads left on clearance for under $30 but they dont have the fittings anymore so you would have to shim the rads apart (i used two 1/8" acrylic girlls i had left over)) so the euro style fittings will fit. I suppose you could use Crystal Links instead, but the rad i got had the shroud welded on crooked so they wouldnt have lined up.

I did flip the drives forward 90º and it fits like a glove with the cable being just long enough like i had intended on it being oriented that way in the first place

Thanks!!

 

Semi-large update tonight

First up is the difference between the Rev 1.0 and 3.0 UD5's.

1. Ultra Durable 3 on the old and 4 on the new.
2. Glass fabric PCB on the new one which is almost as stiff as the DFI board is, a complaint i had when i first got the Rev 1.0 board.
3. Other differences include the PCI-E lanes have different socket 'locks', better ones on the 3.0.



Lighting on the rad cover





All lit up





I wanted to go back to my S60 with Carl Zeiss lenses and see what the colors looked like and holy crap...MUCH more vivid!