Scratch Build – In Progress Fresh Fusion: 30-11: Do the GPU Shuffle!

Yeah, metallic sleeving is usually conductive.... don't ask how I know....

@ Xtrafresh:
This is looking really cool. You're very resourceful when it comes to solving problems, like the handles. I love how you used what looked like a table corner edge as a jig. LOL. You think the double-sided tape is going to be fine to hold those Aerocools on the panel? Is it the thin type or the puffy type of tape?

 

Final HDD bracket (version 4.0)

you guessed it!


right... update time i guess

I was getting tired of the HDD problem i had. i have made three brackets, with varying degrees of success. Yesterday, i sat down, and decided to put an end to all the doubt and go on untill i had the HDDs suspended from a plank. I finised by half past midnight, so not too much too late. below is what i came up with.

Two updates back, i showed you these trial bends with the strip heater:

The piece i bent there is just a simple piece of left-over, but it turned out to be exactly the right shape

The only problem was that it was hanging too low. look:


To measure off the correct height and correct length of plexi to be used, i used the thin strip of mirror plexi in the above pic, plus a lot of clumsy holding-the-stuff-in-place. See above picture to get an idea of how clumsy this actually was


Some snap-cutting and a little strip-heating later i had me two nice brackets. They look flimsy, but they are actually more then strong enough to hold the drives.
Here i stacked them with a role of tape in between to give an idea of how they should line up:


I was a bit worried about sound production though, so i took some really cheap rubbery tape and placed 9 layers between the bracket and the drive. You can clearly see the tape sticking out here, obviously i cut away the excess material afterwards. You can hardly see it sitting there. Did you see it in the previous picture?


After being happy with that and taking some pictures, i ran into a problem. It would be uber-easy to screw the plexy to a piece of wood and be done with it, but that would have caused two problems.
First, it would start vibrating like crazy, and with the wood as a soundboard... You never know how things sound till you fire it up, but i wasn't curious.
Second, assembly would be hell that way.

The only real way to deal with both issues is some way to slot the brackets into. And a dampened slot at that, thank you very much. I thought long and hard. I think i have been staring and turning over bits of plastic in my hands for about an hour. Finally i had the idea i needed, and started making it. I needed padding above all, so i got Groucho's beard some packing material.


This is a layout of the slot that the bracket will go into:

looks familiar?

The next step was to drill the holes in it where the screws go through. In the background is the bracket mocked up with double-sided tape and ready for drilling.

On the foreground you can see what i did to the bracket itself. The rubbery tape dampens more vibration, and the trapped air inside the foam expands to fit the bracket in the slot snugly.

After disassembling the slot, scraping the tape off piece by piece, re-assembling it with the foam in place and bit screws, this is what i had:


The screws on the end of the bracket fit just through the slot, and are forced upwards by the weight of the drive. that way they secure the thing in place, it really works quite well. Here's how the two pieces come together:


Going through that same painful process again (snapping the pieces to size, mockup for drilling, de-assembly, scraping off tape, re-assembly, taping the bracket with foam inside) i had two.


The process to make these babies was a lot more labour-intensive then i thought it would be, but it paid off!
I mounted those two brackets to an old piece of wood i had lying around to testfit the whole thing. I'm happy

I finally realised the look i knew i wanted 60 posts back.

There's just one issue left with these. The slots are exceedingly ugly
For now, i'm betting on the fact that they are in the back and on the ceiling of the case. They should be well out of sight there. If they aren't, i'll have to mask them with some attractively shaped plexiglass, but it would be better to keep it simple from getting more complicated.

See you guys next update, and mad respect to Cheapskate for getting the mistery pic right!

 

That's the corner of the desk i'm sitting behind right now
And yes, the tape is very capable at holding the fan. It's the thick mushy kind. In fact, i think i'm going to use it to fully assemble the sidepanel

edit: thanks for the kind words

 

Just finished reading through and I'm very impressed by your ingenuity and improvisation. Very reassuring to see given i'm just starting a mod with far from all the tools i'd like. The hard drive brackets make me nervous but i'll take your word for it on their strength. Looking forward to seeing the finished article, mod on!

 

thx for that
I can only hope i'll ever make an article, but i'll make sure to make a very elaborate last post when i'm done

What kind of mod will you be building? Will you be posting it here?
It really helps to have a thread here, if only to order your thoughts. On top of that, the community in here will help you a great deal, like they helped me
One advice i can already give you is to be prepared to do everything twice. There is no substitute for practice.

the HDD brackets making you nervous is very normal, i was pretty amazed at the strength aswell. I would have never drawn them like that, but i found out by accident that the piece i bent just to get practice in bending was strong enough. After that, i just made a longer version

 

lol @ wether earth shields are conductive or not?

I like the curved hdd hanger panels, but i'm not keen on the mounts, sorry, but they don't look very pretty. I have a small & simple suggestion: How about just driling two holes at the top of each panel, side by side, and fitting a grommet in each hole? That would give you a nice neat compact soft yet strong mount to bolt onto. Further noise reduction can be had by drilling the hdd mount holes larger, and fitting grommets there aswell with longer hdd screws, so the curved hangers won't be acting like speakers - which is what they will definitely be if they are rigidly attached to the hdd's. Having grommet mounts top & bottom, will insulate vibrations & noise very well, whilst looking nice & neat

 

Very interesting the support of the HDD

 

Thx for the advice magusta

hmmm, sounds good, and i have to agree with you that the brackets are ugly. They are out of sight, so it doesn't matter that much, but it's always better to get it right

Could you post a picture of the type of grommet you mean for the panels? I really have no clue.
I'm not going to drill in my HDDs though, i need to be able to install them in a normal case when i go to a LAN

 

Grommets such as these are perfect, as long as they are soft that is!

You don't want to drill the hdd's, you drill the acrylic holes large where the hdd screws go through, so you can clip grommets in place, and then use longer screws that will suit the width of the grommets and still be able to screw into the hdd. You can see how there is a cylinder of rubber around the screw, insulating vibrations from the acrylic & the hdd screw. The wide parts of the grommet not only keep the grommet in place, but one side also serves as insulation between the acrylic and the hdd body.
You wouldn't want to over tighten of course, just a little snug.

edit: similar story with fitting two grommet to the top of each hanger as mounting points, which further insulates the hanger from the chassis, minimising any noise creating vibrations.

The only down side is that if you fart, everyone will be able to hear you!

 

ohh these would be perfect indeed...

I'll need to find them first, but i like the idea. Might take me a while... but it's not as if it'll be the first delay for this project, will it?

Thx man

 

They are really good, some people find them horibble, but those that make them usually think that they are great
You don't neccessarily find them, you make them, but you usually need to use the right ingredients to make them tho. If you don't have the right stuff, you can get these here
oh wait a minute, you're talking about the grommets aren't ya?

 

the best ingredients for those are usually large quantities of beer, deprivation of sleep, and an overdose of junkfood. Festivals, LAN-partys or moving into a new house before all the painting is done are usually the best methods

 

A blast from the past...

Well hello guys, remember me?

I haven't done any modding since april, but i thought i'd drop a few words to tell you guys what to expect. I'm also reviving this thread as a motivator to start modding again

First of all, there's some bigtime upgrading going on with my hardware:

I swapped my Raptor 150GB for a Samsung F1 750 GB, at 0 extra cost. I'm pretty pleased with it.
I updated my screen to the awesome 24" yuraku. User review [here]. The extra cost for this was €35, which is laughable obviously!
And as if that was not enough, I was able to get my hands on a DFI lanparty dk p35 t2rs motherboard.



That's going to look absolutely sweet when i'm done.

There is one more upgrade i'm really looking at for now, which is a good (and cheap, i'm still on a budget) set of 4gb PC8500 memory. Preferrably good-looking too. Anyone got any suggestions?

Some plans have changed too. I'm going to re-create the frontpanel and make it just a little bit wider so i can fit a slot-loading DVD drive in there too. Apart from that, i ran into some insanely frustrating cabling issues, which i'll elaborate on later this weekend. Maybe you guys can help me get back on that on that issue...

Next week, i'm going to be cleaning up the desk and my equipment.

After that, sadly, i have a holiday, so no modding for another month. When i get back in august, i'll switch back to working 4 days a week, meaning i'll have time to finally finish the project.

Next week i'll do some light prep work, and might even throw in a few teaser pics when the DFI board hits the doormat. See ya then!

 

good to see you back up and tweakin again. when i first joined bit-tech i considered this mod as a form of inspiration to get off my ass and do something myself =o)

 

I really like the idea dude. It's awesome to save tons of space. The work is awesome too. Good job so far. I liked the project and I want to see more from you. Good luck my buddy

 

Thanks guys!

About the problem i had:

I'm having a lot of trouble with the 24-pin ATX cable. Because of the huge connector it would need a very big hole right in the front of the case, where it would be a MAJOR disturbance of what is otherwise a very cable-free design. I messed around a bit with taking the connector off the wires, running the wires through the hole i made, and then reconnecting, but essentially wrecked the cable. It works, but it looks horrible, and i absolutely hated working with the wires and connector. Can somebody please point me to a detailed guide on how to properly disconnect the individual wires from an ATX connector?

For the record: i do have the ACRyan cable sleeving tool, but it just doesn't seem to work. The wireheads are just not releasing, and i end up wiggling and pulling too much, thus damaging wires and connectors. Untill i figure out how to work with these things, i cannot progress towards a solution for my problem.

Anyone has any ideas?

 

if you cant get them out without damaging them i have had success in the past actually cutting the wires ina convenient spot. slip cable sleeving over them and solder them back together with proper heat shrink tubing over them. the end result if you stagger the wires you could would be slightly larger then a regular sleeved cable but not really bad.
just an idea as i hate atx cables also =oX

 

yep, that's basically how i solved it with the 3-4 wires that i snapped trying to take them out.

It's just that this solution is very very ugly, and it's in plain sight. I'm really in need of something a little more elegant.

 

Good choice of motherboard . I use one everyday, and its brilliat! However, the VRM sinks and the NB sink can get rather-hot, so you may need to ghetto rig a 120mm fan or something like an Antec spotcool over the top of them

 

Happy Birthday
John