Case Mod - In Progress Project King Kong- Silverstone TJ07 mod

why downgrade from a gemini to a freezer?

anyway, i do have cs on my dad's workstation ; )

 

It's not a downgrade really. It's only 3C hotter at peak load. U hafta consider the sound levels of the Gemini n the Freezer. The Freezer is so much quieter. For so much less noise, 3C is not a bad trade. Anyway, I'll be receiving the Arctic Cooling Freezer Extreme and that's gonna really rock.



Anyway, here's the rest of the updates. I dozed off while doing the updates earlier.



After taking off the old hsf, I gave the mobo a good blast with the good ol can of air. The mobo now looks good as new n ready for the new hsf.










Next thing was to clean off the old MX1 paste so I'll only haf nice clean paste from the new hsf.









This is the best part about this hsf. It uses the stock mounting. So I can play around with different thermal pastes n heatsinks when I do the hardware reviews. All it takes is to clip it down n it's done. When I need to review thermal pastes or heatsinks, I just unclip it n it's only a matter of a few seconds of work.











Done. Everything installed but i figured it looks a bit plain. It's just silver with a black fan n there's no option to add a LED or UV fan.









So............... I looked at the AC sticker that comes in the box n thought y not stick it on there to gif it sum bling bling. hehehe. Looks a whole lot better doncha think? It's such a small sticker but i reckon it makes so much difference to the looks. I may make an acrylic shroud for it later so I can mount the 90mm aluminum fans I bought earlier.









The good thing about keeping the stock fan is that it doesn't obstruct the RAMs though. The RAMs come right out. If I make an acrylic shroud n use the aluminum fan then it'll most likely block the RAMs. This pic shows the stock fan sitting just above the RAMs but the RAMs come out easily.







After I finished installing the new cooler, I decided to add sum "wheels" to the case. As u all know, this is an extremely heavy case. It sit's on top of my table n everytime I wanna access the back or move the case I hafta lift it up off the table n it's a back breaker. Soooooooooooooooo heavy. Not good for my old backbones. So........... I bought sum teflon feet from the hardware store n stuck em on to the stock feet. Now the case just slides around the top of the table like it's on ice. :thumbs:







Well, that's it for this episode of updates. more mods coming soon.................... I jsut need more TIMeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. If only there was 25 hours in a day.

 

Phew, it's been a bz few months. I havent had much time to work on King Kong. Just checking back to report on the progress. I'll be redoing the front intake plate so that the DVD drive will be at the bottom. This is so that the 2x120mm fans will be right at the top so the 2x8800GTX will get lotsa direct flow from teh fans. As it is now, the air flow path doesnt go to the top 8800GTX. Hopefully I'll haf sum free time this month to get that done.

 

Damn I have one of those coolers but it just doesn't fit properly to my Mobo, because no, I don't want it to push the air toward the back of the graphic card Damn heatpipes! Curse 'em.

 

See, DVD drive at the bottom is better

 

Very nice hardware, I love the work and the idea, clean and simple nice well done.

Good luck, Enjoy it.

 

Why's that? U know that the AC Freezer 64 can be used in any orientation right? U just hafta turn the mounting to the position u wanna direct the fan to.

I forgot there was lotsa space at the top so I can put the top 120mm fan right up to the roof of the case to give direct airflow to the 8800GTX SLi. Hmmmmmmmm, anyways, I'll be doing a whole plate soon. Need to find sum time for it. Been extremely bz of late. I'll be sure to exchange more ideas with u on msn.

Thanks for following the log. Lots more work on the case but I really need to find sum time to get down to it.

 

great work!!! i also love AC products!!!

 

Here's an update for u then. It's a hardware update.

Anyway, here's sum stuff I did for King Kong just b4 the new hardware arrived. I decided to change out the fans n use the lovely Arctic Cooling 12cm PWM fans for my HDD racks.

Here's the 2 lovely beauties. A big thank you to Arctic Cooling for providing me with these fans. They're really special. There's a PWM sharing function which I havent seen on any other fans.









Here's how the fan looks like. Plain black fan. No colors, no bling bling. Just the way Arctic Cooling has been. Just pure performance instead of going for looks. Note that the wire is nicely sleeved in black so that's a big bonus for modders. No need to waste time sleeving the fans.











Installing the AC fans into the HDD racks.









Done.








After that I proceeded to install my new aluminum fans too.

Here they are in the back of the case as exhaust fans.









Aluminum fans in the front too, as intake fans.









Here's the back again with blue CCFLs turned on to show how the alu n chrome blades really haf a nice bling bling effect.

 

lol thanks a lot!!!

 

dude you mentioned the Arctic Cooling Freezer Extreme, whens the release date in the UK? expected performance levels, iv been waiting for something like this....

 

Well, I dont know the exact release date for it. Judging from how good the small lil Freezer 7 Pro is, the gigantic Extreme shud be really good.

 

dude your sig and project confuse me, you say there is a ASUS mobo, Intel Quad in there with a Freezer 7 PRO yet i see your lastest update is bolting a Freezer 64 pro to a AMD Athlon 64, most likley a X2 with 2gb of PC-4000.

is your sig displaying hardware you are about to purchase?

 

He probably has more than one pc

 

I just upgraded those parts last week. I havent had the time to sort the pics out yet. I'll be updating the log with the new parts as soon as I sort out the pics.

N yeah koradhil is right about me having a few rigs. I'm also currently starting another project using a SFF SG03 with GTX SLi. I moved my AMD stuff n DDR over to that project.

 

OK, here's the update that I really love. New hardware!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been waiting waiting waiting for the AMD quad to arrive for such a long time. They kept delaying it n I just got fed up of waiting for it. So I decided not to wait anymore n just get the Intel quad as my AMD X2 cudn handle the new multi core coded games like Bioshock anymore.

Here's the new hardware. A loooooooooooooovely Striker Extreme mobo, Q6600 CPU, sum small DX10 gfx cards for use as a 3rd gfx card. More story on the 3rd gfx card later. There's a funny story about.











The very next day I went shopping in again. Bought a boot full of stuff. After buying all that I had to go grocery shopping in Tesco. My wife took so long with the groceries. I was totally bored out of my mind so I decided to go back to the car to play around with the new stuff. I also decided to do a photo shoot right there in the car park with my PDA's camera. So many ppl were staring at this weird fella arranging stuff in the boot n taking pictures. Anyway, here's a list of the stuff I bought. HP all in 1 printer, copier, fax, scanner. 2 ram heatspreaders in my favorite black. A PCI slot blower fan. A USB cup cooler n warmer. A special edition copy of PC.COM magazine, I dont read that mag but I bought it anyway coz i really like the metal box cover. Finally we come back to the small gfx card again. This time I bought an ATi 2400Pro.



Now let's get back to the story about the gfx card. I actually bought a 8500GT n 8400GS earlier. I cudn decide which card I wanted to use as a 3rd card. So I bought both. Once I got home n took out the cards, I decided to use the 8400GS coz it's a half size card. the 8500GT is full sized. I prefer half size coz it sits on top of my 8800GTX n blocks the intake fan n also the exhaust slots on the back. The half sized 8400GS will allow the 8800GTX to haf better ventilation. My priority is always the performance of the GTX. So I spent the whole night trying to get the 3rd card working to power my 20" 2nd monitor while I SLI the 30" monitor. I cudn get it working even after working on it all night long. So I went to sleep after a frustrating night. Woke next day n started googling like a mad man to find out how to set up a 3 gfx card system. I then found out that for a 3 gfx card system to work with SLI I needed the 3rd gfx card to be ATi. Oh well, nothing like a lesson well learned the hard way. So, off I went again to buy the ATI 2400Pro.








B4 I get on with this episode of updates, I'd like to apologise for the very, very poor quality pictures. I oni had a puny 2mp Sony camera to work with. My good camera wasnt with me at the time.

Time to get on with the mods this time. Remember the PCI slot cooler I bought earlier. Well, I'm not using it in the PCI slot. I wanted it for the purpose of ventilating the area between my 2x 8800GTX. The area where the SLI bridge is, it's waaaaaaaaaaay too hot I tell u. The side panel is burning hot in that area after a few hours of gaming. Here's what I did to it.



Here's the fan with the metal plate removed. See that L shaped part that screws into teh PCI slot? I flattened it with a hammer after this pic was taken.









After hammering the metal slot flat. I drilled 2 holes in the top n bottom of the plate so I can screw it into the back panel of the case. This is how it looks like installed in the case. I'm doing sum rewiring in this pic. I had to extend the wire longer n also changed the molex plug to a 3 pin mobo plug so I can just plug it into the mobo for neater wire management purposes. This Striker Extreme mobo has lotsa fan plugs in all the right places. Just perfect for overclockers n modders who need lotsa fans.









Soldering the wire joints n covering with heatshrink. Then sleeving the wires in black for stealth look.










All done. This is how it looks like now with the new mobo, new CPU, new fans, 3rd ATi gfx card all installed. U can see I've installed the stock Intel HSf coz I wanted to compare the temps n also measure the performance of the Arctic Cooling Freezer7Pro.









After testing the stock heatsink to make sure everything was working nicely, I then proceeded to install a nice lovely Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro which was kindly provided to me by E-Devices Sdn Bhd. :thumbs: Once again I thank them profusely. I cant thank them enuf for the support. The Q6600 overclocked to 3.0ghz was just burning hot with the stock heatsink. Everything is under control now with the Freezer 7 Pro.


As usual, I cleaned off the old paste n applied new paste. This time I used MX2, the latest thermal paste from Arctic Cooling.








Freezer 7 Pro installed.










Everything's back in the case now.











A closer look at the 3rd gfx card installed between the 2x 8800GTX.

 

what does teh 3rd gfx actually do, and how did you connect it?!

 

nice

 

Powering the 2nd 20" Monitor.

 

Ya, like Aterius sed. I run teh 8800GTX in SLI for the 30" monitor. But SLI cant do multi monitors. So I need the 3rd card to power the 2nd monitor. If I dont use 3rd gfx card, I can always switch off SLI n go dual screens but as any1 who has tried dual screens with SLI, they'll tell u switching SLI on n off is teh proverbial pain in the butt. Everytime u switch u hafta reboot.