Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Der_Meister - custom alu case *Epilogue Nov 8th, 2007*

Whoa!
the strips looks good!Good idea for the mesh,go on and show us the whole case without the masking tape!Bye!

 

really a nice idea to cover the gaps and finally the led are coming so lets get going .
keep up the good work.

 

Great work!

 

The end is getting nearer – casefeet

Small update. Again I’ve been doing quite a bit of stuff, but I don’t have pics of most of it. I’ve done a lot on the stickers: some designing but also I printed and attached the extra stickers for the logo panel. Also did some filing, shortened some bolts, stuff like that.

There’s one thing I got two pics of: the case-feet.

The basic parts of the feet were already made a long time ago, but I still needed to attach them together. Let me refresh your memory: the feet consist of a piece of black anodized alu, to which a piece of plexi is attached. The actual feet are then attached to the plexi.

The main problem/concern on this was how to attach the plexi to the alu without bolts (very little enough clearance for bolts). I tried several glues that are supposedly good for plastics, but none did the job very well. Most worked until I put sideway pressure (quite a bit) on the pieces. I did this because I can imagine I want to pull/push the case a bit on my desk sometimes. Because it will weigh A LOT, the sideway pressure will be considerable.

At the end, I thought there was only option left: carpet tape, the good industrial stuff. But then in a moment of clarity I thought ‘why not try it with JBWeld?’. And: success! The bond is solid as a rock, I put as much pressure on it as I could and it just doesn’t give anything.
JBWeld = bad-ass stuff

Of course there’s one disadvantage: it’s ugly, but it’ll be impossible to see when the case is standing in normal position.


The feet themselves have a very sticky tape on them, here’s the first one attached one attached. It seems thick but due to the heavy weight of the case it’ll be compressed. The feet can handle a weight of 40kgs and are very stiff.



That’s all for the time being. However, later today or tomorrow I will most likely have some more –very exciting news- to tell you…

 

really good man but what is that tape?it seem really thick .
keep up the good work.

 

it's the kind of tape that is used to lay carpet or vinyl on a floor. It's double sided, very strong, and very sticky.

 

Why here in Italy we don't have the JB Weld?
Good work,keep on,the feet appear really stylish!

 

The end is a bit further away again – post 1/2

Hi all, like I promised yesterday I have some news to tell you. It’s about the hardware for this case. But just before I started typing this, I realized that there is more to say about it then I was going to. So I’m going to give you the whole shlabang, it could become a pretty long post but then it’s over and done with!

First of all, I have mentioned on several occasions that I’m going to put in a ‘certain device’, for which I made a special cable that exits the case through a hole in the bottom. Well, this pic shows you the plan:


The pics are dated, I took them a long time ago with my old cam. But they serve the purpose of this explanation.

As you can see, I’ll be using a ‘3-screen’ setup. There’s actually a fourth screen, my TV. The setup is like this: the main monitor and the TV are connected to my main video card (TV through s-video). To get my Psone LCD to work (it’s the one on the right below) I needed another s-video port, so I bought a cheap PCI card (geforce mx4000), to which the screen on the left is also connected. That one is an 8” monitor with VGA connector and…touch screen. The big advantage of this setup is that I use a small tool to switch between the pc and my TV and that tool only takes into account the primary video card. So I never have to go through all the windows settings. The three other screens are very easily setup: horizontal expansion of desktop in the windows settings.

How will I use this? Well, the main monitor and TV are obvious. The 8” will be used for example for: music players, showing some info files while gaming, tool menus for photoshop. The Psone LCD will show a Samurize config that shows info of the watercooling and system stats.

In the pic above, an example of a Samurize config available on the Aqua-Computer site is shown. In the pics below, the same one is shown but on the other displays.

The 8” is very sharp and runs at 1024x768. I was very surprised by its quality. The horizontal line is a foil, that I partly took off to take the pic.


The Psone LCD is also running at 1024x768. It is not as sharp as the 8”. But this Samurize config has very small fonts, mine will be much larger so it won’t be a problem. The colors are also a bit off, a bit more red. But that’s easily corrected.



Now that you know about the screens, time for the rest of the hardware. I’ve gotten some questions about it in my log and never really answered them. That’s because I expected my original idea wouldn’t last because I know myself.

This was my original hardware:
Asus P4P800 Deluxe mainboard
P4 2.8 Ghz Northwood (c version)
OCZ Dual Channel PC3200 1Ghz memory
Asus GF6800GT (agp) with Aqua-Computer block
XFX GFMX4000 pci
SuperFlower 500W psu
And the rest, soundblaster, opticals, hdd.

If you happen to be interested in one of these ‘old’ pieces of hardware (the first four items), just drop me a pm. Everything is in prime condition, I take good care of my beloved hardware.


You see, at the beginning of this project, the time horizon was pretty short. My first idea was to mod a Stacker! That thing would have been finished after a couple of months. The hardware wouldn’t have been dated, I would have been able to run it for another 18 months or so.

But…well we are now november 2006, one and a half year after the start of the project and the hardware is outdated. With the introduction of the newer black Asus mobo’s, dual core CPU’s and the first DirectX10 video cards, I felt the itch to live up to my reputation (my friends call me ‘purchase power Jokke’). And last week-end, on the hangover-day after a night out with lots of beers, I gave in and placed some orders.

This is what the new hardware will look like:

Asus P5B Deluxe mainboard
(link)

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz cpu

OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Platinum Revision 2 – Dual Channel 2x 1GB (this will look so good)
(link)

Asus GF8800GTS (the gtx version is too long for my case)
(link)

XFX GFMX4000 pci

SuperFlower 500W psu (made some calculations, checked them with online psu calcs and 500W should be more than enough for this system, so I’m not changing it at the moment)

Maxtor 200GB and 300GB SATA hdd
DVD-writer and DVD-rom and floppy
Soundcard

And the watercooling will consist of:

Aqua-Computer:
Cuplex XT cpu block
Airplex EVO 2x120 rad
Aquatube reservoir
Aquastream pump
Controlled by Aquaero
And…AquagraFX waterblock for 8800GTS (still need to order this)

Non Aqua-Computer:
Innovatek flowmeter
Danger Den fillport

Sweet setup, right? The CPU was in stock in my local store, and I already went to get it. I’ll post some piccies when I have all the components in, especially the mobo and the ram will look very good with the rest of the case…

If you happen to be interested in one of the ‘old’ pieces of hardware, just drop me a pm. Everything is in prime condition, I take good care of my beloved hardware.

The new set-up has some implications on the case, see the next post.

 

The end is a bit further away again – post 2/2

So, there are some new implications that the new hardware poses on the case. They mean I have to make a few small changes. That is not so good of course, on the other hand most of the pieces of the case still have their tape on it and I’ve been working on this so long that a few weeks more won’t be that bad.

There are three areas that require some changes. They are:
1) IDE cables from mobo to optical bay
2) Wiring for vid card
3) Vid card support
And the best part: I already have a nice and easy solution for all of them. Here goes.

1)
Problem: On my old mobo, there are 4 IDE ports, the two I used for the opticals are right next to the ATX connector and the floppy connector. On the new mobo, there’s only 1 IDE connector left and it’s not suitably located. However, the mobo has 6 SATA ports, of which I only need 2 for the HDDs.

Solution: I bought two SATA to IDE adapters on ebay. They are connected right at the back of the optical drives, and I can use two SATA cables from the mobo to these adapters. The only work here is to enlarge the hole for the SATA cables in the black alu next to the mobo.

2)
Problem: The GF6800GT has two 4-pin molex connectors on the back, the new GF8800GTS has one 6-pin pci-express connector on the top near the end of the card. Problem 2: although the RCA cables are a good concept and were nice to plan and make, the 3 cables from the fake bottom to the vid card support give problems. The AC tubing is too stiff (or the cables too short) so I need to really fiddle to get them out without damaging them. The fake bottom will need to be removed frequently because a lot of wiring is near it. So those 3 RCA cables are actually not practical (the other 11 are much better). I was planning to eliminate them for the old vid card as well, in my planning and sketches I didn’t include the mesh pieces I recently made so I didn’t know that the one over the power cables would also hide a cable going to the vid card support.

Solution: The 3 RCA cables will be eliminated. The 6-pin pci-express cable will be routed through one of the holes in the black alu next to the mobo (the one for the power connectors or the one for the SATA’s), as will be cable for the led in the waterblock. The holes in the fake bottom and the vid card support where the plexi and the rca sockets are now, will be shut off (probably by pieces of 0,5mm alu that will be glued on). I will probably need to buy a 6-pin pci express extension cable so I can easily route it, and because the one on the psu has a red connector.

3)
Problem: Looking from the side of the case, the AGP slot is located as the top slot of the back panel on a case, the second slot is not present and then the PCI slots start. On the PCI-Express boards, this is the second slot (the top one is not present) and then the other slots are below it. This is obvious when looking at the backplates. So, the PCI-Express slot for the new vid card is lower than the one for the AGP card was. The new vid card will probably (according to numbers I found on the net) be a bit longer than the old card (but not much, about 1cm).

Solution: I can’t really be sure of this until I have all the hardware and mounted the waterblock on the vid card. However, after preliminary calculations, the vid card support would have to be mounted about 17mm lower than it currently is. And this is a good thing. Why? Well, the support is now 19mm thick: 2x 2mm alu plate and 15mm in between them. So 17mm would mean that I just have to attach it differently to its mount (the fork) without having to move that fork. Small variations of this 17mm would also be no problem, I’ve got enough alu to glue in some extra spacers or so. But more on this later when I know exactly how much it needs to move.


As you can see, most of the changes are not big. However, they do cause some extra work. This isn’t too bad since I have to wait for the mainboard and video card anyway, not to mention the waterblock that is not out of the production stage yet.

The next update will be about the leds for the window, they arrived yesterday and I’m starting on the soldering right after I post this. See you!

 

That 8" LCD is sweet! Where did you find one that small with such a high resolution??

 

I bought it on ebay, from this shop: (link)

I'll make some better pics soon if you'd like

 

Thanks jokkos, should have known it was an e-bay find! I'll have to see if I can work something like that in to one of my next mods. That thing is SO COOL!

 

monitor madness

 

yup it is. Plus it came with lots of cabling etc. There's even a car adapter supplied. I decided to chop up the normal wall plug though, the electronics inside it (convert normal 220V to 12V) made a whirring noise. So I cut the cable and made a molex version, it is now powered by the psu

One word of advise: if you're looking for one of these, a lot of them need no 12V but a bit less or more. So if you want to run it from the psu make sure you have one that needs 12V (or prepare to do some electronics work). It's also advisable to check this yourself on the manufacturers site or in the technical documents of the display, since most ebay-sellers don't know this for sure.

I also specifically bought a 4:3 to avoid possible problems, there are also 16:9 versions around but I was afraid this would cause stuff with resolutions etc when using them as extended desktop. They probably run fine, I was just extra careful.

 

Could I have some UV leds on the side please?

Hi,

After the sweet ordering of lots of new hardware, the UV leds I ordered to be able to finish the window arrived. So I prepared everything and set to it.

I’m not going to talk too much. Let me just say everything went smoothly.
The effect: judge for yourself from the pics.
In real life it’s a bit less bright than the pics show. Compared to the CFFL’s, the effect on the window itself is certainly waaaaay better. More glow, more contrast, the black plexi becomes really transparant, … However, it seems that the CCFL’s gave a better light inside the case. I was expecting this, but it’s a bit more difference than I thought it would be. I hope it’ll be allright when all the lights are in the case, we’ll see.

So without further ado, here are the pics. Hope you like
First pic is right after soldering and temp mounting (final mounting will of course be way cleaner), second pic is with room lights on, others without room lights…but that’s pretty obvious.

















‘Till later…

 

The lighting looks awsome man, great job.

 

OMFG, yeah! That side window is a thing of beauty. This mod project is slowly creeping its way into my top 5 favorite of all time!

Oh, thanks for the advice on the little LCD's. I agree with you and would have done the same thing wih the power (just cut off the AC adapter and wire a molex onto it).

 

Very nice jokkos, I like the way the smoked plexi goes clear when lit up. Are you going to hide the wiring on the back of the plexi, it look a little ugly at the moment and how strong it the side panel? does it flex at all?

keep up the good work ,

Jimbo

 

incredible looking, cant wait to see the whole thing come together, keep up the great work!

 

i looove that blue...its my favourite color!