Project : FX-57 MaxPC RotM, Sept.2006!!!!!

[Tech-Daddy]

Hey guys! Putting the wraps on my next mod, and wanted to keep my moddin bruthas in tha' loop!

This thing has been a labor of love. It was built for the 2005 Coolermaster Case mod competition. I finished it (mostly), and made the submission deadline.

The top scoop was made by hand out of aluminium, foam, fiberglass and bondo. I have a desire to finish this scoop (the inside needs a little bit of work to smooth it out as well as additional paint to even the color out) and wrap up the case,





You see that orange light strip to the right? That is a layer of UV reactive orange acrylic being back lit by a UV meteor light. It makes the edge of the drive bay pulse/chase/strobe!!! I also have 2 red meteor lights on the belly of this case. with the same lighting effects available to them too.














I then took a break for a bit, and then went back after it, modding a mouse (paint, LED color change, mouse wheel dyed black like a tire), and took a Saitek and pulled the blue LED's out and replaced them with white ones, then painted the outside to match the color scheme of BOSS. I'm going to put some BOSS striping and graphics on the keyboard. I also have an actual classic Mustang grill emblem that will make it's way onto the mod eventually.

Here is the computer/keyboard/mouse all together.







Not done... but getting Daaaaaaamn close!


The hardware is as follows:
AMD FX-57
ECS KN1 SLI Extreme
Gigabyte 6800GT x2 (SLI)
Crucial Ballistix Tracers (2x512MB)
Coolermaster Hyper48 Heatsink
Coolermaster RC-531 case
Plextor PX-712A SATA DVD Burner
CoolerMaster CoolDrive3
CoolerMaster RealPower 550w (modded into an SLI)

A *major* shout out and thank you to AMD, NVidia and Crucial for their support of this mod and generous support of the modding community. I could not have done it without your assistance. Thank you BW, SH and LP... you guys are simply the best!!!


Also, CoolerMaster... your contests and enthusiasm for building *personal* computers is second to none! Without the CM Modding contest this last year, and the prizes from winning the stages...this machine would not exist. Thank you for your support of our beloved addiction.

If anyone is interested, I will start porting my actual work log on this beast over. If not, and you just wanna enjoy the pics... that is cool too!

But, bit my fellow bit-tech brethren... I bring you my latest mod, based around a Ford 1969 Mustang Boss 302...

[3D Warrior]

Originally Posted by Tech-Daddy

If anyone is interested, I will start porting my actual work log on this beast over. If not, and you just wanna enjoy the pics... that is cool too!

Are you kidding me i can't freakign wait man! looks hard core!

[ReFredzRate]

Dude... Sexy, V-E-R-Y sexy...

[Dj Ovin]

Man it looks sweet! Cant wait 'till you start your log here

[Shadowed_fury]

Looking good, as always

[Tech-Daddy]

Ooooo baby.
Lemme tell you something. Brainstorming with the wifey can *really* pay off!

I had a completely different tact that I was going to take on this next rig... but the more I thought about it, the harder it was going to be to pull off. Cuts being too complicated, painting process to prone to error or too expensive... experimental acrylic work...

yadda yadda yadda...

After all of that, I now have a good, clear project plan. Sometimes just having people to conversationally bounce stuff off of is the best thing!

So...

Here is a quick shot of all of the equipment I have, one big group shot:


The case this is based off of is a silver RC 531. All alum front bezel... and the front of it, I feel, is actually going to lend itself very well to the following inspiration:





I found this little tidbit, and will buy it tomorrow. Dress it up and put it on the front of the machine right over the front intake (just like on the radiator)


Coloring will be just like the first picture, orange body, black striping. Case frame will be black, and for the cabling, I plan on using either stainless steel or chromed conduit to route all of the cables through, and will bend it to fit. (Kind of like the brake lines/hydraulic lines in the engine compartment. I may use some clear tubing for some cable runs as well, which I will custom light. This 2nd option is more of a trick for the "if I have time" section!

The side striping will actually go all the way over the window, actually dividing the window space into 3 parts, with the vertical curve happening on the side window panel closest to the front bezel. I am thinking about this graphic on both sides (just like on the cars) of the case, possibly windowing both sides as well. I will paint the whole case and window the orange color, then I will lay down the vinyl graphic stripes, then I'll clear coat the whole thing until it is level and smooth (Vinyl not leaving ruts on the surface). I *may* paint the striping, if I feel comfortable in the procedure. But I'm thinking vinyl since I am under such a time crunch.

The middle portion of the front of the case will be black as well. In keeping with the BOSS and the Mach1 motif's of the early 70's, this will be a nearly matte black color. I will put this matte black on the center section of the front bezel ( the area with the vertical bars) running from the base of the front, to the top, and all the way down the roof piece, stopping just over the rear of the power supply exhaust.

I am entertaining the possibility of a blow hole, should the design allow for one.

For the fan grills, I'm going to go over to a hobby shop and then to an RC shop up the street, and see if I can get RC Car rims that look like those CRAGAR style 5 spoke mags (kind of like the 1st pic) and I'll mod those into fan grills!

Lighting will be done with White LED fans. I may be popping in a white CCFL to provide internal light as well as a ground effect.

One little trick bit that I am also thinking about is taking the gauges out of a Musketeer 2, reprinting their backing, and embedding them into the top of the case (just above the top most 5.25 bay) and having them facing forward, but recessed like in dash gauges), angling them up at about 45 - 80 degrees.


I'm going to start drawing and working graphics tomorrow (I hope), then I'll go looking for the paint I need... (big grin)

I'm thinking about a slimline optical drive (hellooo DFWDepot!)

[Tech-Daddy]

Everyone had their favorite cars...
The Fastback Mach1/Boss has always been one of my fav's.

I'm also a big time fan of the Chevy Bel's and the old 51 Merc's:


When I get my own place, and have room, I *will* get me an old Merc, and rebuild/chop/hot rod one of those old lead sleds!

Camaro's are great too, but have usually fallen 4th or 5th on my list.


Let's not get into a war on this, Stang vs Camaro is almost as ferocious as AMD vs Intel!

[Tech-Daddy]

I've received a few things for the mod!







Oh man.... those video cards are BEAUTIFUL!!!
They are *so* going to add a presence to this mod.... yummy!

All of the fans are white LED fans, the IDE cable is copper clad to go with the whole "car cabling" theme.

The Sunbeam lumpy cables are strings of LED's on a quick connect. Already wired and ready for action... I plan on using these for an "under motherboard" light mod.

The CoolDrive3 is for my hard drive, as I thought it was a trick looking bit of CM product that seemed to match with the late 60's theme of the Stang... (all of the currrent CM CoolDrive pieces are LCD/digital readouts).

NVidia threw in some cool little stickers that are almost metal in feel and appearance. One may work it's way into the rig!

MMmmmmmm..... the fun is about to begin!

[Tech-Daddy]

Here is the gist of what I am going.

The striping will actually frame the main center window on the side panel. Where the "BOSS 302" logo is on the original striping, will be "BOSS (insert proc speed here)". This writing will only be on the window side of the mod, striping will be on both sides. There will be a smaller window cut above the top stripe (maybe) to show off the cabling if I am so inclined.
(edit: I figured out how to accurately get the striping *and* properly italicized lettering on both sides... so it will match! YAY! Let's hear it for learning curves and not giving up!)

Bottom of the window, matching the typestyle of the sticker, will be the word "BOSS", which will be cut out of sheet metal (maybe aluminium), will have the screws mounted to the back side of the letters (thinking 2 screws on the straight part of the "B" and then 2 on the "S" one on the top and one on the bottom. These screws will then go through the acrylic underneith it, through another backing piece of aluminium (to go under the sanded acrylic), then feed the screws through spacers, then through the case to nuts awaiting on the back side of the window panel. This should allow the boss logo to stand off the case, and with the sanded acrylic sandwiched between more or less 2 pieces of aluminium, I'm hoping to bottom mount 3 or 4 red LED's into the logo. The LED's would actually be firing their light into the back of one of the blacked out letters, it would then bounce between the layers of alu, and reflect more light into the sanded acrylic. This will hopefully cause a nice glowing efect of the boss logo that is raised up.

Top will have a blow hole, spacing will likely only allow for an 80mm, we'll see. If I do go for this, it will have a blower intake style cover like seen on the hood scoops of the Boss. Not the dual nostril NASA style intakes, but the single center raised air scoop... except in this case, it will be an exhaust vent.

The center/front of the computer will be a matte black to go with the factory finishes at the time using a less reflective black on the hoods. The center line and the bezel plates will all have the same matte black paint job. I will apply thin masking tape to the tops of the grill ribs that run from the top to the bottom of the case. After the black painting, I will pull the tape, and the tops of the grill ribs should have a single, polished stripe running all the way to the top. I'm hoping that his effect will resemble the hood/front grill area of a car.

I'm pondering the idea of corp logos like what hot rodders do with the products they use. Putting them on the lower body panels or hood lines... I'm considering that for this mod....

The Mustang hood ornament will get gussied up, repainted with a good red/white/blue stripe job, and get mounted to the front of the case, just over the 120MM intake fan.

Main color scheme is orange and black, with red accents under the mother board, as well as a metor light mounted into the bottom of hte case, firing down to the area under the case... pulsing red. The raised BOSS logo will use red LED's, the video cards and the CoolDrive both use blue LED's (I will need to see how hard it is to change them to red), and the fans are currently white. I may change those to redm bepending on how things come out. I like to change up the colors in the case to make sure it is not some sort of monotonus color through out... plus whte seems to reflect better off of shiny stuff....

Feet for the case will likely be either polished steel legs, or something with my chrome vinyl wrapping applied to it, and keep the case up high enough for the under case lighting to work.

[Tech-Daddy]

Ok... stealing inspiration from MNPCTech... I'm going to create 120mm fan grills using the center hubs of one of the following hubs:


or


Which one do you think would work better? I will be using spacers similar to the boss logo, raising the grills off of the surface, but I want the centers to look like the old 5 spoke Cragar mags... these are as close as I can get them...

[Tech-Daddy]

Striping is done!




The line art is clean!
I can now work on getting this cut!

[Tech-Daddy]

Working on some fun with the Drill Press... (que 2001 Space Oddessy theme)


I had bought this a few months back, to be used on my next mod, well... guess what, my next mod is here!

So, I started practicing with 120mm holes (actually a bit smaller, I did not want to hit the frames, only the areas around where the fan blades would be. No filing done to finish these edges. These are the way they came out.)

Some junk acrylic I had laying around:



Aluminium:



Computer steel:




What is the wonderous tool that I am using?
This cool little beastie!!!


It has a ruler on the top of the tool that allows you to slide the blade out to the desired diameter. It will cut all the way out to 4 inches in diameter, and all points in between...



The blade depth is adjustable as well, so you can really customize the hole that you cut! I'm sold! Anyone with a drill press, be on the look out for one of these beasties! I plan on putting this to good use on this BOSS mod!

[Tech-Daddy]

Okay...okayokay... 'kay 'kay 'kay

The reason I am so excited?
The last of my parts arrived today.... oooOOOooo baby! I'm a happy camper tonight!

So, what's a hardware freak to do except put it all together and make sure it all works!!


All of my parts lying around the bench...


My drool inducing processor...


Awwww, all nesteled in and snug in her bed...


With the HSF mounted:



The powersupply I'll be using:


Planning on dropping the blue fan, and replacing with a white fan, like what the front and rear fans will be... assuming that the white fans are not too bright. If the white carries too far, then I'll stick with 2 white, and leave this one blue.


Fitting the cards with the big ass heatsinks is going to be quite a challange, as the onboard molex for the PCI-e slots sits pretty damn close to the actual slot. And the molexes on the power supply are the easy disconnect ones with the bowed push tabs. *SNIFF* *SNIFF* What's that? You smell a custome cable job? Damn! So do I!



With both cards installed, it is going to be a cable management fiasco, but I look forward to the challange:



All lit up and powered on:


The blue lights below the graphics cards are actually blue LED's that are hard soldered into the motherboard itself. They blink randomly, just for effect. I happen to like them!

I took some other night shots, but I could not hold still enough for good shots. I'm going to take the tripod out and see if I can get some good light shots.

Now, here I go again on more inspirations, and I need your input.

1) The primary external color scheme is to be Orange/Black, with touches of Chrome. Internal, I'm thinking right now, to have the frame painted black, white intake and exhaust fans, red under motherboard lighting and under case lighting, and blue on the gigabyte coolers and the power supply fan... red, white, blue. Thoughts? I get so tired of the single color LED blending.... I guess since I had so much fun on bling, there is no saving me from led blending from here on out!

2) With my new little tool toy, it occurred to me that since I can make circles *any* diameter that I want, I should be able to create a circular air manafold! (Kind of like this: http://www.mustangv8.com/en2/modules...lbum02/aao.jpg)

Following up on an idea from earlier from PoMan, I'm going to design a graphic for the side of the air scoop up top (that is actually an exhaust vent.... but dont tell anyone... ) that will feature the text "6800GT powered" on both sides of the scoop.... or some verbage to that effect. heheheeh

WOO HOOO!!!!

Please let me know what you think of the above ideas. I'm trying to find ways of using what I have, to lower the ammount of new build that I will need to do, allowing me to concentrate on the cutting, paint and finish of the case.

The cabling is going to be a real trick, but I have a friend with a good conduit bending set, and I should be able to borrow it to custom build my cable "lines".

[Tech-Daddy]

Warranties are sooo over rated...

Strip down the 6800GT's





Here I started asking one of my friends about the fans I was shipping him for surface mount rework. Wanted to know if he wanted me to take them all the way apart.

[Tech-Daddy]

Here are the pics showing the locations.

And, while out there tearing apart perfectly good fans... I remembered that the power supply had a "watt vu meter" for the floppy bay/ . Plugged it in, and it was a backlit blue.... so what's a modder to do? Break that lil freak open! See what makes it tick!




If my wiring memory serves me correct, this is a 5mm LED running straight off of the 3.3v line!! I think I'll make it either red or white.... depending on what I find on 5mm LED's.... or possibly 2 3mm leds (one on each end of the vu meter...) hehehhe.... it just keeps on going...

[Tech-Daddy]

Well... this *officially made the mod mine...
--------------------------------

So. while pulling apart the case tonight, and clearing the frame, I decided to gut the power supply, and test out the fans... see how my replacement white LED fan would compare.




Let me say this, the fan in the powersupply is a MUCH stronger fan that what is purchased in the retail channel.
Just how stong you ask? Well, the PS fan pulls .45 amps while the retail case fan that I bought pulls .13 amps. There is a serious rpm difference between the two fans, and major airflow in favor of the existing power supply fan.

While testing the fans, the PS one started to fall... I reached for it...
ow OW!!! @(&$*(&@#@&#!!!!!!





after 10-15 minutes of papertoweling and compression on my finger tips, I finally stopped the bleeding. I took that little experience as the fan telling me "I aint a normal fan, and you had *better* put me back in the power supply if you know what's good for you... foo!" I'll figure out another way of getting the white light....

Also of note, the Coolermaster power supply uses a 3 pin molex connector, just like the fan header on the motherboard... except that they rewired it a bit, they flipped the 12v and the ground, but left the signaling wire in place, go figure... so I had to pop the pins on the retail fan and shift them a bit to make sure they would work properly.

I took a ton of pics of the strip down, nothing really interesting there. Just some pics for later use to show before and after, possibly an article on the case, we'll see.

But, I figured you guys would get a chuckle outta my misfortune...

[Tech-Daddy]

Sorry for the delays, I've been doing lots of planning and sitting in the garage just looking at the case... kinda one of those meditation things, I think my wife thinks I've really lost it this time...

1st off, big shout out "THANK YOU!!!" To PoMan for coming through in a BIG way for me. I had 3 fans that were pretty dang small! All of them (2 from the video cards, and one from the chipset cooler I won from CM earlier in the contest) had little surface mount LED's on them. My big ass fingers have a *very* hard time with little, itty, bitty, witty things... (cue Indiana Jones theme here) PoMan to the rescue!

I needed to normalize the colors in my case, seeing as the fans are white (Intake, exhaust, blowhole and power supply fan), and the under carriage lighting will be red (under the case and under the motherboard), the fans on the video cards were more of an aqua blue and did not match with the theme. So... how does one go about changing the color of an LED that is hoplessly soldered onto the PCB's ??!?? You call for help, that's how! And PoMan bailed me in a big way!

Check this out!!!

Before:


We discussed what I wanted to do with the fans, and then settled on the proper color, and he took care of the rest! This man is a PRO!!!!

What was originally blue is now a nice, glowing white!



Now, the neat bit about this next shot, is that when I got the device (an active, heatpipe chipset cooler from CoolerMaster) it had a fan in it that lit up blue. For some that is cool and all, but I don't particularly want blue in my cases anymore. So, in the Craig Tate mentality, I tried to change the color to purple for use in Lupine... everything I tried (all of which involved putting some form of red coloring over the blue LED to try and blend it to purple, that was ghetto) did not work. PoMan *not only* pulled the blue LED and replaced it with our decided upon white LED, he also noticed that the PCB for the fan was actually setup for 3 LED's and he filled the remaining 2 other spots!

So... not ony is this the *only* white "Blue Ice" chipset cooler, but now instead of one LED to light it, I have 3 to light it!!! Think I'll change the name of it from the "Blue Ice" to the "Ice Cube" or something like that. Then, as if that wasn't good enough, the guy hits the part with some cleaner that he had at his disposal, and got a large portion of the ghetto painting I did to the fan trying to change it's color!!! Just took it over the top in my book! Thanks bro!

The 2 video card fans for the Gigabyte cards will are just gonna absolutely *snap* in those shiny, gold reflective heatsinks! And since they wil be SLI, the card on bottom will be lighting the card over it, I'm anticipating some nice light play there! Also, remember that the fans had a shroud of their own that was anodized to a near yellow/gold match of the heatsink color?
(Image here:
)

Well, I'm going to take those little shrouds and hit them with some matte black paint to add accent to the white light that the fans will be providing now! It's gonna look soooo cool!



I have more to post, I gotta get something to drink... more in a sec!

[Tech-Daddy]

Mmm'kay... started butchering the case out last night... you guys know rough cutting the fan grills out, gouging out where you dont want metal, etc.

I have shots of those but they are all so boring, no need to post. You guys know the drill!
(modder humor there...)

But, I went last night up to Kinkos and hit one with a large format printer. I Had my graphics printed to the native size. I wanted to make sure that my measurements that I "thought" during the design process, were accurate... this is how the stripes will lay out on the computer. Try to look through the blue tape and the stripes underneith.




That mesh work is going to take some bondo or mesh/fiberglass, we'll see what is needed.

now, the neat thing about these stripes is that right there where the word "BOSS" is, the stipes are actually stopped. So, if I want to space the stripes out a bit more... I can do it!!! But, the plan is to cut the window in the middle (where I cut the paper out of hte center of the sideways "U". Anywhere you see grey metal or white paper would be caution orange. This is what may allow me to drop the bottom stripe just enough to get it past the mesh work, so that I am only cutting on straight metal, and not trying to patch up the mesh work that was pressed into the metal.

I have to leave enough space @ the bottom of the window frame for the elevated "BOSS" logo to be built up and added on below the striping. I need metal to tap into for strength, so I dont want to cut too much away.

I've also found some sweeet acrylic square cubes that will work great after being wrapped in that "Chrome vinyl" (from Lupine), hoping that it will look like chrome metal legs!

Anyone know of a place where a person can by metal speaker grille mesh? I just need a little bit of it...

[antiHero]

Damn Pics are down! Would like to have a look

[Lazlow]

Woah. Absolutely brilliant.

[Tech-Daddy]

Originally Posted by antiHero

Damn Pics are down! Would like to have a look

anitHero - Pics are up and working. I'm sorry if you are having problems viewing them. Server may have been down for maintainence last night.

Please let me know if youare still having problems looking at them.

Because I host them on my free space with my provider, the comcast.net in the address *may* be causing a filtering error. I know that some other Internet providers do not like comcast addresses, and black list the domain due to a sizable population of computer users that seem to enjoy getting infected with crap and then pushing out bulk email to everyone else...

*ANYWAY*...

Please let me know if the pics do not show for you again.

[Shadowed_fury]

Pics working fine for me.
Hell of a nice job your doing mate!

[Tech-Daddy]

Swung by Earmark car audio (USA, Texas "local", might not be in the UK! ) car this afternoon, and picked up 2 free 6x9 speaker grills.... *perfect* for what I need them to do!!!

They had boxes of these things just sitting there!

I asked them "Hey, when you guys upgrade speakers, what do you do with the old protective grilles from the replaced speakers?" guy takes me to the back and pulls out a box and starts handing me grills!!!!

Heheheh... so keep that one in you back pocket the next time you need a small bit of mesh!

[Tech-Daddy]

Working on the video cards, since I got the fans back (Thanks PoMan!)
Did a little custom work to the cards. They have a little fan shroud that is anodized to nearly the same color as the heatsinks:


That just would not do in my case...
So I hit them with a good layer of camoflauge black (think super matte black)


Then I used a sanding block *very lightly* on the raised lettering of the shroud to strip the color off and leave the letters their brushed aluminium color.


I then vinyl dyed the power cables for each of the fans with black, and then mounted the fans and routed the cables:


And then installed the shroud....

WOO HOO!! I like that look! but I dont want to get too happy, because as I was trying to do the same actions to the fan on the other card... my power/signal/ground lines started popping off


*&@(#&(%$@!!!!!

By the time I got it back to my bench, the power *and* the ground had said "Hasta la vista..." to their respective solder points on the back of the fan...

So I broke the last remaining one, and will now be working on resoldering the lines back onto the existing solder points. (fingers crossed).

However, both of the cards will look like the above unit. I left the bottoms of the fan shrouds the gold color to aid in reflection of the light, but the top is the nice, even matte black.

[Tech-Daddy]

Woo Hoo! Fixed the fan for the video card! Got it tested and mounted... yes!

Started working on the case framework tonight, specifically the under motherboard lighting and the bottom lighting. I'm going to attach 2 12" red metor lights under the case to light up the space between the case and the desktop. Cool thing about this is that the lights are programable, and will run through 7 different patterns. After experimenting tonight, I'll be running either a strobed chase or a gentle throbbing....



The under motherboard lighting wil be handled by these cool little jobbies from Sunbeam. They are a set of rubber enclosed LED's on a flexible ribbon track (rubber completely surrounds all of this), with centers on the LED's that are 15mm apart. So, the picture below is the lighting in place with a box that is approximately the same dimensions as an ATX board. I put it over the lights in the approximate position that they will be in, to gauge if they would put out the light, they did!


Here are the lights all on their lonesome, aimed down onto the mobo tray:


Me marking the approximate path of the line of lights, I cut out a 15 mm piece of posterboard, and used it to mark each of these, center to center. I'm not concerned about the straightness of the lines on this, I just wanted to get the concept rolling. I'll clean up the straightness of the path tomorrow.


And after I popped the 7 rivets on the motherboard tray to allow me to use the drill press properly, the front and the back nearly fell over on this thing! Heheheh... I'd say the mobo tray is an active and significant portion of the frame rigidity!!!




Too late for me to dremmel or drill tonight, so I'll hit it tomorrow! More then!

[Tech-Daddy]

Quickie update.

Drilled the holes... and I am an IMPATIENT guy!
What happened to me?!?!? Oh... it must be the looming DEADLINE that made me throw out the "calculate every cut 6 times"...

So, the holes are not straight by any stretch, but then they do not have to be. They will be covered by the motherboard, and the light will be cast out the edges. Here are 2 pics of the work, has not been filed out, or finished, but you get the idea!

[Tech-Daddy]

thinking about why I had such a hard time keeping the line straigt, if any of you have need to to something like this in the future, get a block of wood that will let you take the tray off of the drilling surface "high ehough" to get the rolled edges off of the surface.

Because I had these in contact with the drilling platform, whenever I would press with the bit, the surface would flex since there was space under the steel.

Learn from my mis-step (as I Have), and keep blocks of wood that are the size of your drilling platform handy. I'm going to cut some down tonight to fit my rig. That will keep this from happening again.

[Tech-Daddy]

Hehehe, just found out tonight that the CM contest deadline has been bumped back to Dec. 11th! That gives me 1.5 weeks longer to pull off my mod!

So, to celebrate I committed to an optional mod that I was thinking about doing, but did not think I'd have enough time to pull off!

If I was not a modder, and did not have a window going on the rig, then the sliders on the drive bays would absolutely rock! But, I'm a window nut, and I just cant stand the sight of those things... soooo... OFF WITH IT'S HEAD!!!



I'm going to custom craft drive bays for the CD ROM(s) and any front facing devices. Materials that I am considering are either mesh, acrylic, or (what I'm considering) sandwiching some UV reactive orange acrylic inside of brushed aluminimum. I'm leaning very heavily to the last one, as I can cut the drive screw holes and paint the aluminium gloss black (like the frame will end up. I'm thinking that the edges will erupt with glowing orange if I embed a UV LED or 2 into the acrylic. The drive bays will not be the full height of the case, but instead built to only house the device that needs the support. Essentially, I build a 5.25 bay from the top that is riveted to the front and the top of the frame and it will support the optical drive, and the 3.5 inch bays will be built in a similar fashion, with embeded lighting.

So, I have now committed to this.
It will either be lit, sandwiched, meshed or a combo of these techniques.

And tomorrow, I go over to Harbor Freight and buy my bending brake to make this all happen!

[Tech-Daddy]

Ok, just dropped the nice, white LED into the power "VU" meter attachment, we'll see where I put that little meter!

Light is bright enough to light up the meter, but not soo bright that it blanches it.

Now, I've got a plan on the power cabling. I'm going to have to build each leg of the power supply lines to allow for length and appearance.

This PS is *not* the SLI version of this line. It does have one PCI-e extension, however I need 2 (obviously). Now... here is the interesting rub...

This PS has 3 rails. 12v1,12v2, and 12v3....

The primary 4 pin molexes are on 12v1
The mobtherboard is on 12v1
The 12v 8pin P2 connector is on 12v2 *unused*
The 12v 4 pin P3 connector is on 12v2
The 6 pin P4 workstation connector, it's 12v (2 of them) is on 12v3. *unused*
The 6 pin P5 PCI-e connector is on 12v1

so here was what I was thinking....
create the other PCI-e connector that I need out of the unused 12v and ground lines from the connectors left over!!lines from the P4 and the P2 connectors. This would put the PCI-e connectors on seperate rails to draw from.

(IIRC, I ended up using the 8pin P2 connector for this. On it's own rail, and it was nothing more than 12v lines and ground lines. Was a *perfect* translation for the connector on this unit!)

[Klekkus]

Nice, i like that scoop on the top.

Ohh, FX57 :love: I hope you win some prices

[Tech-Daddy]

I hope so too!
The CoolerMaster competition already happened, and alas, I did not win. Top final 5 of the competition though was filled with some serious talent!

coolmiester's AWESOME Sound+Vision

_ferry_'s unique and exceptional The praetorian mod

mr_kholl's astounding Bluetrack #2

SuAsDu's TribalEclipse

and my BOSS:FX-57 (that you are reading on right now).

mr_kholl ended up taking the competition with his awe inspiring execution on Bluetrack #2, but every one of us "brought the A game" to the final round. Was really inspiring to see how everyone responded and stepped it up a couple of notches for their final submissions.

I know coolmiester and _ferry_ frequent here @ bit-tech, I believe this is where I saw their work first, prior to the contest! So, there was some good representation happening from here!

[Tech-Daddy]

Took a few hours this morning and built a bending station for the bending brake I picked up from Harbor Freight this last week.

I figured after I thought about how it was going to work, that I might need the ability to have the work possibly suspended under the bending brake from either side, depending on the way the bend needed to be oriented.

Attaching it to my bench would have limited me on how the material was to be handled. This way, I have all that free space under the brake to allof for hte material to be under the bending surface, if it is needed.



Started out with 3 wall studs, 8ft in length.


Cut it down to the sizes I needed for the frame:


Framed it and gave it feet, then added in two supports to the feet.



Attached the brake to the top, and used 2 1/2 inch 1/4" bolts and a corresponding washer and nut on the bottom... TADAA!!!!



Oh, and here is my mascot...

If *ever* you have wondered "Why?" it takes me a bit longer to do most of my mods... now you are looking at her!!!

[Tech-Daddy]

Gave me time to mull over my drive bay creation problem, and came up with a solution. What I *dont* like about the Coolermaster drive bays are those dang tooless sliders. So, to keep my dimensions right and tight on the 5.25 and 3.5 areas, I'm sticking with the original framework of the drive bays (why reinvent the wheel, eh?) but stripping off the plastic tooless sliders and springs that annoy me to no end. By doing this, it will allow me to keep the original Coolermaster steel that already fits all of the rivet holes, the front bezel mount holes, etc. So, I strip those off, and pull off the supporting steel work that acted as the slider guides, and that will give me the 5.25 bay that I can *then* wrap my acrylic acround and then a bent and painted piece of alu over that to sandwich in all that color!

Much easier!

I had been beating my head against paper mock ups trying to get my drive spacing, hole allignment, depth and length, etc to all come out right.... then it hit me (kinds like one of those Outback steakhouse boomerangs, but I didn't leave to go eat after the inspiration!) and I went to town on my bays!

Pics are boring... use your imagination!

[Tech-Daddy]

Hacked holes this weekend, side window, top blow hole. Forgot to upload the pics, will get to them tonight.


Looking for a local powder coater for the frame (gloss black)... want to sneak this into another run so that there is little to no additional prep work for whomever it is that provides the service.

Lots of wrap up filing to make the beastie as smooth as possible, with finished holes.

The connectors that I spoke of earlier in another thread are going to look SO sweet with this!

Going to build a black acrylic bracket to mount the recepticles in to, and then I'll cut the power transmission lines to size, and solder them onto the plugs. Then using the other side of the attachment, I'll put the power lines, PCI-e power, and SATA power through those adaptors!



(que muzik)
"Come togethaaa!! ... riiiight now.... "

------------------
*note* - my power bracket did not make the final build... not yet at least! Going to require a bit of re-engineering to make it safe and not cause flames to magically appear! )

[Tech-Daddy]

I'll get more pics up tonight, but here is a taster/teaser of the 1st piece I pulled from the box... (*hint* I found a powdercoater locally that would work with me without killing my $$$ and making my wallet cry...)




Mmmmmmm!


Also picked up my striping from the sign shop today, looks good!

[Tech-Daddy]

Yummy frame shots!


We're all family here, so I can talk like that...

The 3.5 bay that resides directly below the 5.25 bay area. This frame actually has 2 sets of these, however I chose to pull the bottom most one in favor of airflow (it blocked the fan, and I was not going to have a drive down that far anyway...)


This is an outter shot with the mobo tray in the forground. All of these pieces are clean. Any white "spots" you see are not dust flecks or the like... they are pin sized reflections coming off of the smooth and glossy surface.



I'm going to get a better pic of this, but this was to show just how smooth it went into all of the little nooks. cranys and bends of the case... this is the power supply area, and, specifically, the rear exhaust point of hte case. Look in the corner that frames the exhaust fan. I *always* have had problems getting this section even... no worries on this one!



Check out the reflection off the base section of the case!!!



The 5.25 bays:



Another shot of the frame....



You may notice some holes in the framework of the 3.5 and the 5.25 sections of the case. I cut out sections of steel that were standing too tall and would interfere with this next section of modding... you'll see shortly!


This weekend is going to be a big time push for me so be looking for some pretty serious updates from my side tomorrow and Sunday!

[Tech-Daddy]

Riveted it all back toghether! (except for the top pieces and the skins... MMmmmmmmm.....









Tired folks... headed to bed.

[Tech-Daddy]

I'm building my back grill for the rear exhaust on the case. But it will be a mirror of this one, from a construction standpoint.


Cut the acrylic to size, tap the holes in the corners:


Add on a vinyl covering that makes it look like carbon fiber:


And then bolt it into the PSU cover with stanoffs under it to give enough space between the mag and the center of the fan:


more later after I finish the rear exhaust!

[Mankz]

sexy!!

[Tech-Daddy]

Case fan grill pics.
I screwed up when I bought my nuts and bolts tonight... both of my packages of nuts were supposed to be lock nuts with nylon inserts... only one was...

So, these pics are the grill, spacers, and fan (sans lock nuts) so that you can see what is in store!


More later!