Hi Modding colleagues, As some of you might know, this is not my first project. The first project died before being finished but a second try ended up in a nice 17" Hot Wheel. A few years later and more experienced, several hobbies later, a slightly larger budget and some new ideas. In 2013 I met my current girlfriend how finally gave me the stimulation to start my motor license. Took some time but it was worth it. At the same time she infected me with a pretty dangerous virus: Ducati. She was still driving her good ol' monster 800 but jumped up lately to a 1100. When making several test drives I came in contact with a Ducati Dealer in Nuenen, Moto Puro. He sold her the 800 before so I knew I could ask him a favor: Do you maybe have some damaged Ducati Parts in which I could build Media Center? My girlfriend hates everything with a wall plug but when it has a Ducati logo it's tolerated. He walked me outside where he gave me a tank-body part of a 796. I told him the plans and then he suggested: Could you build ME a PC in a > 2009 Monster Frame? Can I? DUH! I got my chance and drove home with the challenge: Build a PC in a red Monster frame as neat as possible so I can show it off in the shop and even sell if a customer offers the right price. No time to doubt about that... Google helped my find the needed views on the different angles on the monster so I knew which parts to ask him to implement in the build. Second would be the hardware as in the shop it will only handle some word, excel and Google Chrome but when it has to be sell-able, I have to make it versatile. Enough to dream about. Who would (be mad enough to) buy this case? For sure it will not be the hardcore gamer in for triple SLI or crossfire setup, he/she will not buy it for the most insane or newest hardware implemented. Someone who is really crazy for Italian motorcycles, who sees the parallel with the Monster 696/1100 that's willing to pay a little more for a case then @Newegg but has something unique. It then has to be as versatile as possible: It might be a family/game PC, a storage/webserver, a home-office desktop or even media center in a "men-cave", who knows... Moto Puro sells motor cycles, not PC's. So it needs to be maintenance free. Too bad, no custom water-cooling. The best solution to me seemed a bare-bone concept: - Case - Motherboard - Power Supply - Cooling For the hardware to implement I chose: - mATX: MSI Z97m Gaming - PSU: Corsair RM650i - CPU cooler: NZXT Kraken x41 - Case: Frame Ducati Monster red To show it off the PC needs to runs, lights should be burning and cooling dead silent. To make that possible we agreed on putting some of my own/old stuff int to be able to run it: - CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary edition - Mem: 2x4GB DDR3 1333Mhz from Corsair - HDD: 2x3,5" and 2x2,5" just for show what's possible - GPU: Good Ol' (large for future proof) Gigabyte Radeon 6870 2 GB Enough about the parts, now some eye candy: Frame Parts to build the CPU cooler in: Beltcovers to be used later as covers for the graphics card. Unfortunatley only when the shop/customer has chosen his/her graphics card: Last one with all original parts: As the case should hold multiple generations of hardware in the future I chose to buy an mAtx case and take it apart to use all parts. The Bitfenix Prodigy M became te victim for the donor parts: The case fully stripped: Mobo Panel has been dremeled to first phase here. Second phase will come later as it still doesn't fit: As modding with new hardware is risky possibly more expensive then necessary, I dropped by my local hardware dealer to pick up some broken mATX motherboard and "they hooked me up" with a MSI Z97 with an MSI H97M-G43 which has the same lay-out as my targeted mobo. Big thanks to CDRomland! Now with my old R6870: These are the things I still need to do figure out (for now): - Clean up mobo tray and create U-profile around the mobo; - Re-use PSU bracket in the frame to easily mount PSU; - Mod oilcooler housing to fit the AiO Kraken; - Mount the Mobo tray in the frame; - Mount Disk bracket in a modular way at the back of the mobo panel; - Spray all parts black except the frame. For now a last pic of all the hardware together: See you in the next one!
Hi all, Update 1: Layout To mount the water cooler in the original place of the oil cooler, some brackets and mounting points needed to go. The frame will go to the painter in the end anyway, so the ugly places will get some attention later on: The first plan was to slide the mobo in from the backside of the frame like in these pictures: But as you can see that's a really tight fit. Too tight in my opinion to keep it upgradable (is that even a word?) as there's no place for a wider Graphics card and this is a very narrow reference card. This picture was taken from the rear of the mobo tray, through the mesh: This is the way the cooler is going to be mounted: This is the way the interior will look then: The sides of the plastic frame do not fit around the 140mm radiator very well so they need some modding. How they look when new: And this is after the dremel touched it (yes, this is the other side): The width of the middle plastic part is not large enough for the radiator. Even after a bath of boiling water and some bending it didn't fit. The top and bottom braces were cut and mounted to the sides. That looks a lot better: Well, that's it for know. I do have some more image material to write about, but as allways. it's balancing out the modding and the writing... Thanks for following and see you in the next one!
Good evening everybody, Update 2: Power Supply The Power Supply is goint to be a 650W Corsair RMi series. Completely silent when system is idle, but powerful enough to eventually run a Titan, 980Ti, Fury or even a 970 SLI of 290 CrossFire. The whole case has to be as user friendly as say a Bitfenix Prodigy or NZXT s440, fully tool-less to build and update/upgrade. In a Prodigy M the power supply is mounted on a bracket which is connectable to another bracket in the frame. The power supply is then mountable with 1 thumbscrew. That combination is rebuild in the Duc Frame: This is how it connects to the frame. Of course, all will be painted afterwards but first make sure everything fits together and is rigid enough to hold the PSU: The other part that connects to the PSU: PSU mounted in/to the frame: That's it for the PSU. Next time more on the definit position of the mobo tray... Little Tease ... Anybody?
But Of course my friend, your wish was my command... I assume you mean the large hole/pipe in the frame just above the rad? For now the plan is to mount a Crown plate (the triangle that connects the steering rod with the 2 shoack absorbing legs that hold the front wheel) with rod (in dutch it's called a T-piece) agains a wall and hang the fram on it exactly the way it is on a bike. If not, I really have no clue what to do with it...
Update 3: Mobo tray stage 2 Hi All, An this is Update 3: Mobo tray stage 2 As mentioned before I wanted to slide the mobo tray in from the bottom of the case, but this was getting to cramped up. After some measuring and testfitting the whole tray with GPU seems to fit above the horizontal brace in the frame. The metal backside of the mobo tray does need to be cut a lot further to fit underneath the diagonal frame brace. The tray will get metal clips to fit around the frame so the mobo will be close the frame from behind like a door. (don't know how to describe it better): The motherbord that will be used in this mod: Now with the backplate of the Kraken x41 mounted: The RAM that will be used during demo (will later be changed for black sticks): When the tray is mounted to the frame, it will tilt to it's fixed position. A metal plate will keep the tray on it's place. The plate is mounted to the tray with screws underneath the mobo. In the final layout this plate will be fixed tot the frame with thumbscrews but I didn't have them yet when I took the pictures: And with the GPU in place: The grey aluminium around the motherboard tray is a 10mm U-profile, dremeled in 45 degrees to create nice straight corners and reduce the flex in the tray. It's kept in place by clamping it to the tray with screws and bolts, where the bolts are in side the frame. The screws will be replaced by black ones when the aluminium has been painted. Everything mounted in it's future habitat: After all fitting, drilling and filing the frame has been send for paint-job. I really couldn't withhold these shots from you: Thanks for joining and see you in the next reply or update!
Update 4: Spray painting Hi All, It's been a while but I had a few things to do in parallel and was waiting for some stuff. This is the first part of the updates. Update 5: Spray painting Because I had to saw, dremel, cut and grind several parts, the edges and parts were pretty ugly. Everything had to become matt black so I spray painted all parts after being tried on to be sure everything fitted. I created sort of a small cabine out of an old cardboard box and hung all parts in: After the first 2 thin layers (with and without flash): Next up: Cable sleeving See you very soon in the next update...
Hi All, back again!! Update 5: Cable sleeving What a terrible work!!! Fortunately the end-result is really great cause I was about to give up multiple times. First my tool didn't work on the Corsair plugs so I bought a new one. Then the new one from HighFlow and they got it at my door within a day although I choose the wrong shipping option duh. The new tools didn't work either so I had to mod it a little to get the connectors out. Then someone at Corsairs HQ thinks it might be funny to put some inline resistors in the fully modular cables (Corsair RM650i). These are the cables, with and without their stock braiding: I ordered this sleeving in China: 10M red and 60M black. The other 10M is for the SATA cables but I still need to start on them, that's for later: After that I created a pin layout / mapping table for all seperate cables so I could rebuild it. Because of the resistors (1 for 0-12V, 1 for 0-5V en 1 for 0-3,3V) the rebuilding could only be done 1 way as I don't know the inside of the power supply and what kind of fun they had designing that. I disconnected and sleeved everything line by line and put it back in the connector (on MB connector side): Color code should be obvious here ;-) These were the resistors: And this is how I sleeved them, pretty stealthy... last but not least, I sleeved the cable for the power switch. The switch itself will be replaced but I'm looking forward to receiving it from the UK (together with my new Parvum ;-)) That's it for tonight, next time the start of the definit building of the parts that are finished upp untill now. Have a nice evening and I hope it was worth waiting for!
Hi to all of you patiently waiting colleagues, It's time for: Update 6: Building time, MASSIVE update! It has taken a very long time, too long if you ask me, but I encountered some logistic issue with the last part: The power switch... It has finally arrived so I could finish the mod. Just in time as this weekend it's Desmo test days at Moto Puro. Before showing the end result, first some modding-work to be shown. Nice clean work bench, painted parts so time for build up: I love this magnetic mat to keep all screws close, even when bumping into it. Time to start assembly. First mobo panel and mounting brace: Then mount the mobo: To mount the PSU some metal pieces were needed that asked some black paint as well. First picture is the screw that falls into the frame, the second is showing the plate that holds the bracket. The result: Around the mobo panel I mounted an aluminium frame out of U-profile that was painted black as well. Inside the profile a bold is hold by a headless hex-screw. Like these: Like a picture frame around the mobo it looks a lot cleaner !! Viewed from the top: As the case could end up standing in free space, the rear needs to be cleaned up as well. With the new hex screws it's really clean! Metal clips on painted is guaranteed to scratch :no-no: . I cut a lens cloth in 2 and put it around the painted frame to protect the paint. The cloth is nice and thin both tightly woven. It's temporary Of course, just for the time being as I'll have to open and close her up a few times probably. Now we're getting somewhere: Radiator put in place. I choose not to do custom loop for the convenience (maintenance) of the future owner. Nu de hardware in elkaar zetten: Now put the hardware together. GPU in place, forgot that the old reference 6870 were pretty large already This PC deserves some good performing and good looking RAM: And nice matching color : That's about what the end-result looks like. PSU is not mounted as cables are more easily mounted when PSU is not mounted yet. Don't Worry, I'll post some more eye-candy later but be patient as Jean-Claude really deserves to have this in his shop as soon as possible. Again, sorry for the delay, I hope the size of this update makes up a little for you're waiting... I'll do my best to have the new pictures as soon as possible! Gaoske
