Project: Think Outside of the (X)Box (Updated 4/6/07 - Done)

Unfortunately I dont have any real updates. I was doing the family thing over the long weekend and barely had time to do much modding. I did begin to resolder the wire that came off of the Logitech controller receiver, but in the process two more came off so now I'm a little pissed that more work was made for me. *Sigh*.

 

You can also use a LG 8164 drive and either put the adapter (xbox8164adapter.com) or make one yourself. That way you have a faster drive and it will be easier to adapt to your front faceplate just like your other drive. The 8164 will also read 360 games but that doesn't do much on an xbox lol.

 

Well, I already have the Samsung drive and it's 16x which is the same as the LG. It already had the 12 pin power connector modded in the rear, so after lengthening the cable, it was all a matter of plug n play.

What that link you posted shows is identical to how my drive looks. I suspect the process is fairly similar for both drives.

I dont think I'm going to use the faceplate in the new case. If I do, it will be by cutting the Xbox logo out and fitting it in place where the Lian Li plaque is.

 

I've always wondered why there's no custom cases or all-set gaming consoles in hifi-format. Why do they have to be all plastic and stupidly shaped when they become more and more a part of the AV-system? It's just stupid one can't stack a Xbox with an AV-amplifier etc.

That's pretty much why I like this project and will be watching how this turns out. The WC seems kinda overkill to me, but if you had the stuff lying around and the case is roomy enought then hell, why not.

 

Ditto with the above. I used to have an xbox and theyre not tht loud with the fans and they dont heat up enough to warrent watercooling. But if its free....

Of course the noise and heat is nothing compared the 360's noise and heat. Pity you didnt have an extra 360 lying around

 

i dont post alot, but its really refreshing to see a good console mod every now and again. i actually got into pcs through modifying xboxs, so they hold a special place in my heart. good job so far, and keep it up.

 

Very nice job!! Hope for results very soon

 

are you using a modchip? if you're using an x3, get the lcd and put it on the front of the case.

looks good. if i can get a hold of another xbox i might try something like this (minus the watercooling)

 

Well, I'm sure it seemed like I was having so much fun with Ever-So-Tight-Li that I had forgotten my dear old Xbox... Not so.

I just have some stupid little updates, it's hard finding time to mod at all when you have a 3 month old... he just doesn't want to be put down.

So, here they are.

I moved a wireless receiver (not the one that was wired in between ports 1 and 2 and needs to be resoldered) into the drive bay and attached it with heavy duty 3M double sided tape.



It may not end up there depending on placement, as some things may be moved around for better fitment.

Next, I finally mounted the radiator onto the RadGrill.







You may also notice that I ran the Xbox A/V cable out of the back grill. I even managed to bend it back fairly straight.

Completed (so far) view of the backplate:



More to come (hopefully) soon!

mj

 

Wow, I first found you cousin mod to this (Ever-So-TightLi), and have been reading that since, and decided to click the link in your sig, which obviously led here...but thats not the point...Both of these mods are really cool, I applaud you for not only doing two mods at the same time, but also having the resources for these and just doing them. They both look awesome but arent insanely hard (looking). (Im not going to judge the difficulty of your mods) Keep up the great work on both mods!

 

hey looks like you are making some progress lol
it looks good at the moment so keep it up!

 

I got the chance to work on the Xbox a little today.

For a pretty short amount of time spent, I made some decent progress.

I rearranged the location of everything in the case since the temporary layout wasn't working out very well. I finally got to drill and tap new mounting holes for the motherboard and PSU. I used motherboard standoffs to elevate it off the case floor. I got some electrical insulating material from McMaster to place under the motherboard and PSU to avoid any shorts.









All in all, the whole thing came out pretty nice. The hard drive cage was taking up unnecessary room so it had to go.



Not a big deal, I have a 3.5" to 5.25" adapter left over from my Lian Li V2000 that I'm going to use for the hard drive. I had to remove the wireless controller receiver, but no biggie, I can easily find somewhere else to put it.

I did run into a small problem, and that was that the 3.5" adapter was hitting the controller board on the Xbox mobo. I grabbed my trusty mini-hacksaw and cut out a small piece to make the whole thing fit nicely.



Here's the adapter playing nice with the controller board:



And here's the money shot:



It's getting there! If only I had more productive days like today, it would be done in no time. I'm not sure when I'll find time to resume work, but when I do it will be on electrical/soldering issues i.e. the second wireless controller, extending the PSU "ATX" cables, and soldering the Lian Li switch wires to the Xbox switch board.

Cheers,

mj

 

Nice and clean look, I like it!

Keep up the good work!

 

Are you going to be extending the Figure 8 power cable to the back of the box so it can easily be attached. I made the (idiotic) mistake of touching the PSU when plugging it in.

I feel electric.

 

heh heh heh. Yeah i did the same thing with a transformer in my ccfl router...

What do you mean rock stable? why wuoldnt it be before? and either way its not going to be seeing a lot of action, is it?

 

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been busy with real life stuff.

I connected most of the wiring and only have a few things left to do on the whole case. I soldered the Lian Li power/reset leads onto the Xbox switch board so that should work nicely. I will be able to eject the DVD by the reset button or the actual DVD button. I havent soldered the power/HDD LEDs yet, but will soon. I have some pics of the wire soldering/sleeving I've done so far but they're not too interesting. I'll wait to post them until I get a little bit more substance done.

The big things that are left are to attach the CPU water block via an old P3 HSF bracket, run the plumbing, elongate the PSU wires and do some overall wire management. If I had a block of time to work I could probably churn it out in an evening, but I'm forced to do 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there. I'm thinking of not internalizing the access point after all, not because of space concerns, but more due to the fact that I may be moving to a new apartment soon that does NOT have hard wood floors, in which case I can run a long length of CAT5 that can be hidden along the baseboard and under the carpet. I'm only using the AP here out of necessity (because of my hardwood floors), otherwise I'd be going with the standard wired ethernet.

I am dying to get this up and running and what makes it worse is that I'm so close. You have no idea how much I hate having parts and boxes strewn all over the floor clustered around my PC. I got all my DVDs ripped to the server and am ready to roll. I ran out of space on my 750GB RAID-5 array so I swapped the four 250GBs out and replaced them with 500GBs. I now have a total of 3TB RAID-5 to work with (2 arrays of 4 drives, or 8 x 500GB) , which should be sufficient for the time being (this is for system backups, digital video, MP3s, software ISOs and pictures, in addition to movies and TV shows; so dont think it's 3TB worth of movies ).

With some luck I will have this thing practically done by the weekend, which would be nice. That way I can get caught up on all the Lost episodes I've been missing lately without having to encode them to DVD .

 

very nice case choice for the xbox. i love console mods in pc cases.

 

Well, I apologize for the lack of updates. Real life sucks. I wish I was able to just sit in my cave and post daily updates for you guys. Oh well, there's always Mega Millions.. hehe.

SO...

Here we go. As I mentioned in the last post, I soldered the Lian Li power button wires to the Xbox controller board.

Here's how it looked unmolested:



And the back side after:



I've learned the hard way that hot glue is an essential tool with Xbox solder points .

Speaking of which, here's a couple of shots of the re-soldered Logitech wireless receiver. It was a real pain to re-solder the wires onto the board. Every time I'd get one on, another would pop off.





After I was done here, I moved on to elongating the PSU wires since they were far too short to reach the other side of the case.

In process:





Labeling each one of these wires was annoying, but I needed to make sure everything lined up after the cuts. Don't want anything to fry...

And here it is finished with some spiral wrap on it:



Once the PSU was finished and mounted, it was time for some plumbing and wire running .

Part of the loop:





Wiring (Sorry for the blur on Pic 1):





And the final shot of the inside:



A couple of the rear:





Once I filled the system with water and ran it for a while, I noticed a temperature drop of over 25 degrees and that wasn't even after burn in. The radiator fan never goes above 18% and is near silent, even when coupled with the 2 Lian Li included 120mm's on the side.

There's only 2 things left for me to do on this mod, and they shouldn't take long. First, I need to acquire a 5mm Blue/White bicolor LED to connect to the Xbox controller board and mount in the front of the case as there are no power or activity LEDs at the moment. The reason I haven't done this yet is that every place that sells this LED wants an arm and a leg for it. I don't want to spend $2 on the LED and then $6-$10 to ship it, that's just stupid. I will probably end up waiting to get it until I need more mod supplies (next project) and then just toss it in to soften the blow of shipping costs.

The second and final thing I need to do is to attach the Xbox logo from the original DVD drive to the front of the case. It turns out the Lian Li logo on the case is just a foil sticker that is adhered to the metal. A little picking at it with my fingernail should get it off in under a minute. I will then Dremel the Xbox logo to remove most of the plastic and then attach it with some super sticky double sided tape. Once that's done I will take full shots of the case with the logo on, and the LED lit, and all the finger prints gone...

So I'll leave you with that image... I hope to have the logo on by the weekend (we'll see)....



Cheers....

 

Try:
LS Diodes

$0.60 for the blue/white. Last time I ordered from them, it was about 100 LEDs and the shipping was $5.

 

Yeah, that was the first place I checked. They only have 3mm blue/white LEDs, and they're sold out anyways.