hi guys - i read in the project log section that only cases are allowed there - now since this mod is related to my case and also my rack (or lack of rack) i have decided to put it in this section as per the following rule quoted from project log rules "Note: Project Logs are for PC projects only. Decorating a room, doing a computer desk - these aren't Project Logs, and threads should be posted either in the Modding forum or General Discussion." the story so far is as follows ........ i had a case mod which looked like this when i was working on it around two years ago the side panel was lasercut to provide the effect you see above - and heres what the actual panel looked like the machine as it was then had d the following hardware which by now would have been totally out of date thus i decided to update the haedware as well as complete the case heres a pic off the waterblock as it was on the case and here the lcd monitor and the cordless keyboard and mouse
so in order to start of with the story on the updates let me quickly start withthe hardware thats going to replace the old hardware old setup 1) 2100+ tbred 2) abit nfs7 v2 mobo 3) 256 megs x 2 twinmos ram 4) 9800 pro 5) 40 gig hdd new setup is along the lines im going to show now first up i recieved this in the post and rummaging around in the carton i soon had this on my table so what the heck is that you might ask ...... and ill tell you .... each x-shaped box contained one of these those are xfx 7800gtx pci-express graphics cards - and heres a pic of them side by side hmmmmmm - sli anyone ??
okay - those cards were secondhand - but the rest of the stuff i bought was all brand new - and heres the rest of the stuff i went to pick up from my supplier hmm huge box of stuff - lets see whats inside first up the cpu - being a bit of an amd fan (oh - ive had plenty of intel rigs and im a fan of whats best for the moment so its amd now and intel when that gets better) heres what i chose for the upgrade this is a boxed retail version of an amd 4800+ x2 socket 939 cpu - i wanted the fx60 but when i got this the fx60 was still due an was going to be too expensive so i just bit the bullet and got this stepping for hardware fanatics ADA48000DAA6CD CCBWE 0529TPMW 1290684H50183 now i wanted to watercool the setup again but that would take time so to temporarily aircool the setup i got me one of these thats a zalman cpns9500 cooler - lots of peeps dont like this cooler but it was only for temporary and it looks great so its good enough for me next up we have the box which contained the mobo from this im sure you can see its an asus a8n32 sli deluxe - which seems to have a great reputation all over the world - and it surely is a great mobo but its fussy with ram and psu's and harddrives as i found out (more on that later) heres a pic of all the ram i had at my disposal - i was going to use the mushkin redlines - but the mobo didnt like those and yep i lost loads of my data when i tried those even at stock settings - since i had to format all the partitions on my drive due mainly to incompatibilities between the mobo and ram and right now im using the green sticks of twinmos ddr466 but thats only 256megs x 2 - the kingston i couldnt use since only one stick was working and that also i had purchased second hand - i intend to get a matching stick just for benchmarking and im still going to buy 2 gigs of decent ram for daily usage sorry forgot the ram pic - but here it is
heres a pic of the power supply i bought - this is an antec smartpower - and i actually had read that certain antecs had a problem with asus mobo's - i really thought that i wouldnt have a problem - i was wrong - these psu's really dont like to work properly with asus mobo's so what did i replace it with since it didnt work - thats simple ........ since famous overclocker macci recomended that for an fx60 overclocked with a pair of x1900xt's also overclocked the best psu he used was so who was i to argue - i sold the antec to a friend who has an intel rig - and its working perfectly there - in fact he is really happy with it and heres what goes into my rig now
a few more items that i purchased to complete the pc and the mod is as follows no pc is complete without a dvd burner and the previous one i had was a sony thus im going to leave that one in there as well add another newer unit for faster burning - the unit i chose was the sony dru810a next up we have a few modding items ie some ram heatspreaders for making the ram which didnt have any look nice as well as some sleeving for the psu and also some items which plug into the empty mobo slots just for a neat effect as well some red molex connectors just to make everything match the name of my project which BTW is "PROJECT RED HOT CHILLLI PEPPER" i had also gotten some red antec tricool 120mm fans for the case and watercooling as well as some cold cathodes - heres the pic more on lighting later
some more odds and ends for modding that you cannot do without ie paint as well as wood and i went and picked up plenty of that - you will soon see what all that wood will be used for my workshop was in a messy state as usual and before i began the modding i cleaned up and this is what the tool cupboard landed up looking like ...... this is the neatest its ever been so im a bit proud of that LOL
okay - so heres where the pc was gonna land up - in this little corner of my lounge the brown speakers that you see there are actually ging to be the pc speakers - full 7.1 surround sound with a 1000watt rms subwoofer - much more on that later - the black set of speakers were removed from there - and the sub is going to find a new home on the other end of the room i intend to put my monitor on an arm which will be bolted to the wall - heres what the arm looks like also in order to hide the cables im building a bit of a false wall - here are the components of that wall the bottom bit will comprise of a rectangular section - and heres a pic of that above that will be an octagonal section which for simplicity im going to refer to as a hexwall (i know its an octagon but its simpler to call it a hexwall section rather than octwall) and heres what that looks like ........ remember im still working on it in the middle of that red perspex section im going to have a logo which resembles the side of the case - and heres a pic of that logo cut out from clear perspex the logo was then sanded down so that paint would hold and then primed with grey primer paint and then painted sanded primed painted end result isnt too bad - so now imagine this in the middle of that hexwall stuck in the middle of the red clear perspex heres a pic which explains what the falsewall will really look like within that corner above the middle section will house a few switches which have red leds which will also glow when they are switched on - these will power the lighting ie white fluorescent lights to backlight the clear red perspex and also some red undercar lighting on the sides of the falsewall to create a redder glow in the corner heres a pic of those undercar lights to supply power to all of those 12v lighs im going to use a psu hidden behind that falsewall - thats gonna be donated by an old 386 comp of mine
now onto the case itself - this is how the case was before i cleaned it and heres after i cleaned it i cut a small little hole in the bottom and the reason for this will soon become apparent - this is what that looked like when i had edget it with a chrome beading now i cannot for the life of me decide wether to enlarge the front and rear fanholes and use the red fans - but i also have a few blue 80mm fans which i could use - the reason for the indecision are these fan grilles that i had gotten from the uk those would look really smart so im going to decide on the colours only when im pulling the hardware apart for the watercooling - in the meantime im just gonna use some old black 80mm case fans - also the psu has blue leds as well as the aircooled hsf so maybe the blue 80mm fans are a good idea
now here a pic of the mobo with the cpu and hsf attached hsf from another angle - this thing is really huge -and i had to check a few times wether the side panel would actually close when the mobo was in place the system up and running with the aircooling and for stability testing before the modding continues frontal view now this mod is eventually going to have the internals looking as clean as can be since i dont intend to have many wires visible example here is the sata cable which is going to go behind the mobo - and for raid theres going to be two of those - im still waiting for the hdd's which ive ordered - will need those before i continue on cleaning the wiring up another example is the ide cables for the optical drives - those will be routed through the rear of the case as per "CASEMODDING 101 - RULE 1" which is what you cannot see wont harm you lots more unused psu wires gonna go this way so that the internals of the working pc is going to look extremely neat
to complete the falsewall and a few other items i managed to get some more wood and cut that into relevant sized strips and also i got some more perspex to build a new front bezel for the case - the origional one was boring and uninspired - but for the new one i still need some honeycomb shaped mesh and also a few other small surprises - im gonna build it so that i still have fron usb and firewire slots and its also going to be in the form of a door "antec style" for the optical drives also for the watercooling im building a sub case which will be the lower half of the entire case structure - more on that when i begin work on it but the radiator and reservoir are going to go down into that section below for that lower case section i appropriated the following from another case these are revolving feet and those are already the right color so i wont need to do any work on those im also going to use a secondary psu here for the casefans and caselighting - and this will be an aopen 300watt from the older aopen case - this is also a prime candidate for some modding since the chassis is beginning to rust and is awaiting that honeycomb mesh and i have plenty of blue fans from previous modding efforts - one of these is surely going to find its way into the psu chassis
now onto the watercooling parts that i have collected waiting for assembly on the bottom left we have the asetek antarctica cpu block - one inlet into the centre with a pair of outlets ie one on either side of the inlet - these will lead to the inlets of each graphics cards (gpu block which you can see on the lower right hand side of the pic - and the tubing leading out from that will be joined by a y peice coupler and the resulting single piece of tubing will disappear through that hole in the bottom of the case that i showed earlier - that hole will lead to the secondary section of the case which houses all the watercooling components the upper left of that pic holds the ramsinks for the graphics cards whilst the right hand side shows the red thumbscrews i will use inside for all the ancillary cards and also the thubscrews which will hold the side panels in place ie the skull and crossbones now onto the rad this is a golf2 heatercore and is a very efficient bit of kit - it held my 2100+ at 36degrees idle and around 43 degrees load whilst overclocked from 1.73ghz to 2.2ghz (best overclock of 2.5ghz at load temp of 48 degrees) pic of one of the two filters im going to use to keep dust out of the fins - and heres the filter on the rad heres a pic of the perspex shroud im going to use - will explain how it works when i show pics of it mounted the pump is submerged into the res - and i didnt take any pics of it yet - but will soon - to power the pump heres whats gonna do the trick thats a criticool relay and it supplies the pump with 240 volts whilst it switches it on with the psu if i want to do that - though i will probably leave the pump running 24/7 so it will run smoothly without air bubbles
well thats the stage im at so far - will update as i go along - but i will appreciate any comments and especially ideas on improving things as i do go along - it will all soon take shape as my new ram and hdds arrive and the machine is stable enough in terms of the components also one small setback occured in the sense that one of the cards died and will have to undergo an rma process - so that will hold up the watercooling until i get the new card benchmarks so far without me having saved any results since these are all single card and im expecting far better in sli mode are as follows 1)3dmark 05 oveclocked to 2.75ghz card at 490/1300 = 8749 2)aquamark 3 same clocks as above = 103558 4) superpi best of 31.079 seconds will redo all those when im watercooled and overclock properly - and also in sli mode together with all other benchies - should be interesting thanks for reading up to this far - it should really start getting interesting as i head closer to the finish line on the mod i totally forgot to mention that i will also soon be getting a logitech dinovo keyboard and mouse set since thats bluetooth and works up to a distance of 10 metres since the keyboard and mouse will be on a platform thats built onto a chair that has wheels and will be movable around the room and long term plans include a projector to add to the 7.1 surround sound for multimedia purposes as well as large screen gaming
Awesome mod there dude. Great hardware and great cutting of the Offspring logo, I take it you're a fan of The Offspring? Great band. Anyway, keep up the mod and most importantly have fun
thanks Hybr1d - you seem to have caught on to the fact that the building of the mod is even more fun to me than actually using the pc LOL - but i will try and follow your advice and have as much fun as i can in building the rig and also using it about the offspring logo - yes it is from their album cover - and i had it lasercut into the side panel of the case - should have tried it with my dremel asi managed to do wih the perspex bit for my falsewall - but i was a modding n00b in those days - so on the case i had to have it professionally done and i hope others think that it looks good too thanks for the positive comments though - really appreciated
