Case Mod - In Progress Project: Nutman (update: August 22nd 2011 - FINISHED!)

Workshop = Appartment

And besides that, my basement is kind of heated. All the appartments above it keeps helping heating it up, so I don't think it ever drops below 15 degrees celcius.

 

I'm really looking forward for updates!

 

Loved reading your project log. Can't wait to see what you create next!

 

Waaaaaaay too long since last update, but a lot has happened (as usual, one might say).
However, I don't have that many pictures to show you today, but much more will come later. Believe me!

First of all, I got a new camera: a Canon 550D and a Canon 24-105 mm. f/4 L IS USM lens. Nice gear, but I'm still learning to use it properly:



Let's get on with the work log.

As you migth remember, I had bought a hose cutter, so I wanted to test it.

I used to use a utility knife for cutting hoses and it looked fine. However, when looking a bit closer, the results were not that great:



So I tested the hose cutter:



And here's the result:



Muuuuch better, eh?

OK, suddenly I couldn't find my Kingston RAM, so I had to buy some new ones.

I got these which also fit the colour scheme much, much better:







I spent hell of a lot of time sleeving hell of a lot of cables - more on that in the next update, so here's just a little teaser.
It's the quick connector for the HDD LED, Power button, Reset Button and Power LED:



Yes, I had promised cutting down on the size of these updates, so I'll stop here for now.

Hopefully, you won't have to wait long until the next update.

 

WHY WOULD YOU PROMISE TO CUT DOWN THE SIZE OF UPDATES?! DAMN YOU!

Anyway.... Good to see something from you again, and I gotta say that its looking really good

 

Thanks Nicksen.

 

That's some pretty nice ram to just lose.

Sleeving looks great, as does the rest. Did you do anything special on the sleeving because you said it took awhile? I'm just curious?

PS: I'm gonna half to steal your idea of heat-shrinking the unsightly brass of the standoffs, just thought I'd warn you and say thanks in advance.

 

Hehe, no worries. I'm just glad to be able to pass on ideas of mine.

 

Looks like you've already got the hang of your new camera

 

Thanks, I'm trying.
But there's LOTS to learn, so I've acquired several photography books and signed up for a course aswell.

 

Seeing this log showing up every once in a while sure is a good example for "work in progress"

 

Or extremely bad planning ahead and no experience to begin with. Which is the case with my project here, hehe.

 

Super short gap between 2 updates, woohoo!

Yes, it's all relative, but by my standards this is super short, hehe.

People had told me that they thought I should the fan cables all the way to the fan motor, so I started doing that. I "only" applied heat shrink on the part that wasn't sleeved by Nanoxia.

A "Before" and "After" shot:



All fans done:



Fans mounted on top radiator with UV CCFLs on each side:



Powered up:



I mounted the radiator and powered up the UV CCFLs:



Then I tidied up the fan and CCFL cables for the top radiator. I had bought some MDPC P-clips:



And some snap-caps to hide bolt heads:



Continued sleeving my PSU and the pump cables.

My girlfriend thought it'd be funny to photograph me in action while sleeving:



So I had to make a geeky photo of her aswell. She needed something to put into her hair for a party, so, naturally, I suggested MDPC sleeve.



One last shot of the pumps after sleeving.

Here I am testing the pumps and, sadly, it sounds like one of them is only running at 3/4 speed. I'll have to monitor its RPMs using my Aquaero one of the next days:

 

Nice!

Now how are you going to sleeve the power cord of the hot air gun that you use to sleeve

 

Those fans look mighty cool under that mesh

 

Well, it's not like I have to sleeve EVERY cable that I come across, so I guess that one is going to be left barenaked as it is.

 

Those fans are looking beast! Nice work

 

Thanks!

 

Did lots of modding this weekend - mostly cable management, but also some other tasks.

For instance, I sleeved the non-modular cables of my PSU.

I didn't need the 4-pin EPS cable, så I cut it off internally and heat shrinked the stubs:





The 8-pin EPS cable was way too long, so I had to shorten it.

In this shot I am controlling the length:



Having found the correct length, I soldered the wires back together:



Earlier I had sleeved the ATX 24-pin cable (see the previous update, where I am heating up heat shrink), so the PSU is basically done - only need to sleeve the modular cables:






As mentioned in the previous update, I had finished sleeving the pumps, but during testing I could hear that one of the pumps were only running at 3/4 speed.
Or, at least I thought so...
I plugged in my Aquaero the get a read of the RPMs on each pump. Turns out that one of them was only running at 40% (app. 1550 RPM), while the "healthy" was running along nicely at app. 3750 RPM.
So I scratched my head over this for quite a while. I took the pump apart, checked the soldering, the magnets, the wires, etc.
Finally, I hit myself hard and switched the 5V+ and 12V+ wires so they sat like they were supposed to....DOH!

Ok, now the pump was running fine again, so here are some shots of the final results:







Now, for a while I had been pondering on how to mount my Aqua Computer Multiswitch LT in the case.

Being a model LT it has no 5.25" mounting brackets, so it had to sit elsewhere in the case.

But then I had a look at the PCB and noticed the same mounting holes as on my Aquaero!

Got hold of some long bolts and attached the Multiswitch on the back of the Aquaero:




Nice solution, I think.....

Ok, since I was handling the Aquaero, I wanted to put some carbon film of the mounting brackets, as these didn't look too pretty:





You might have noticed that I put some longer bolts between the Multiswitch and the Aquaero. The black bolts were simply too short...

On to testing the Multiswitch:



Worked fine with LEDs, but for some reason some of the CCFLs (or maybe their inverters?) drew too much power, resulting in various errors such as Aquasuite crashing, CCFLs refusing to turn off, etc.

Really weird, but in the end I managed to find a good combination of CCFLs and inverters, so everything turned out just fine.

I had purchased a LED strip from Dioder-online.dk, which I'll cut in appropriate length and put behind the motherboard.

I tested it on the Multiswitch - it plugs directly into a 12V+ source and the light is very powerful! It apparently contains quite a bit of UV light, because all my UV reavtive stuff lights up when the LED strip is on. You can't see it with your eys, which will only see a bright, blue light - but the camera manages to catch it, as seen in this shot:



Commencing to cable management - what a crappy task.... min next case, which will be built from scratch, will definately be optimised for intelligent cable management. Just wait and see...

I will end this update with a couple of shots of the state of the case as of yesterday evening:

 

Project: Nutman (update: February 2nd 2011 - Mobo lighting)

And then it was time to light up the motherboard.

I measured and cut the LED strip:




And then I tested the cut strips:



Also had to test them under the motherboard.

One strip in each side of the motherboard panel:




I was satisfied with the result, but remembering how the LED strip also contained some light in the UV spectrum, an idea had come into my mind.

So, therefor...

Remember this one?



Hehe, yes, it's been a couple of years since I used it last time, but back then I DID tell you that I was going to paint some small details with UV-green paint.

And since this was a golden opportunity, let me show you what I came up with.

First I had to apply masking tape:



And since I was going to do a test in the non-visible part of the motherboard tray, I made this:



Hop to it:




I used an old plastic card to smear out the paint:





After leaving to dry for 5 to 10 minuts, I removed the masking tape:



Unfortunately, some glue residue remains, but this could be removed using benzine.

I started on the visible part:



After leaving it to dry for 10 minutes, I removed the masking tape. I was much more careful this time and this did result in lots less glue residue being left behind:




As you can see, the edges are a bit jagged. Nothing to do about that at this point, I guess, since I really tried my best to put the masking tape on the motherboard tray as flat as possible before I started to apply the paint. I guess this all comes down to the "quality" tape from 3M which I used.

Ok, on to testing with lights:





Next update coming soon.