Case Mod - In Progress [Project] Goliath - COMPLETED 19/09/09

thanks ras/wbdog/ninj for the complements ,

Current Issues

I'm gonna have to tweak my motherboard tray and cut out a second PSU cable hole as I'd originally spec'd for my current AM2 board however as Im migrating to the i7 Im gonna have to cut a new slot above the current one which is a bit of a downer as i had it powder coated, but I will put some C-fold over the edge to finish it and over the original hole so it is uniformly finished

darn asus for making a non standard board size for the rampage II extreme hehe


As you can see doesnt quite fit .. so i have photoshoped the second hole (top hole) thats what i'll do !!

Love and metal

Luke

p.s. update possibly on thursday/friday !

 

Looking really nice, love the sleeving.

I have the same MNPC Tech shirt as you, thanks Bill lol.

 

Youre welcome dude!, great use of my goodies too. Very nice project

 

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Part 4

Drive Shroud

Hello there Gang, thank you all for your continued support means a great deal to me ! anyhow enough of all this gushing and on with the updates !

1 element of my system that i wanted was to still have 2 dvd re-writers for copying and burning etc etc, so i decided to purchase 2 slot loading DVD RW's but not your ordinary size .. nope laptop sized !

so after some hunting i found the relivant bracket and it all arrived good and well however the back was a little to .. unfinished for me, so i wanted some cover mesh or acryllic, i originaly mocked up a cover in acryllic but never working with acyrllic it didnt come out to great and was before i began really documenting my work on Goliath



anyway...

here is the sketch up concept of the drive shroud with and without the shroud



here is the first shroud i mocked up with acryllic ok for a first attempt but wasnt good enough and i wasnt to happy with how it looked on the drive, so now



as above you can see the acryllic shroud and the second show shows it laid ontop of AC ryan HEX mesh, great stuff !



its actualy pretty flexable and easy enough to cut with some good scissors, the patern helps with keeping in a straight line, one cut out i also tidyed the edges with the scissors again to neaten it off



i used the edge of my desk and some scrap wood as a bending brake, however not haivng four hands shots were hard to get lol



as you can see its pretty easy to get good results with some carful cutting with this stuff, later this weekend im going to mottle some satin black paint on with tissue to the edges just to blend it better and avoid drawing attention to the glaring aluminium edges



above you can see before and after cutting the mesh for the appropriote holes, the paturn looks pretty good as is..

the final Product:


it will be attached with the application of hot glue to the front edge on the drive to hold it in placeand small tacing points in the bottom left and right corners.

some of you may have noticed that i posted about the asus rampage II extreme fitting issues, well it arrived today so time to see how it will go



lots of goodies that will be mostly unused and i do hate te red... but such is life lol ..



with some carful fitting and bending of the braided connector, it fits .. snuggly .. JUST .. 3mill more and id be flexing the board .. so im a happy bunny, in temrs of modifications to the board the first thing to go will be thoose stupid red shrouds on the heatsinks as they have screw heads so hopfully will come ouff without to much coaxing, but i dont want to do that mod till ive tested it with parts im using at a later date incase i need to return it, im also considering a peices of acryllic on the red writing to cover it up, .. red just isnt my bag what can i say

well thats ll i have for this update, but stay tuned for more possibly this weekend !

Enjoy

Love and Metal

Luke

 

The honey comp grid rocks.

 

man this mod is already looking really good!

i love your lappie DVD drives! great idea!

 

thats for the tut i needa do that soon..

nice case work so far

 

Nice work on the DVD drives, I was really considering doing something like that but couldn't get the parts in Australia.

Love the mobo, personally I would leave the red shrouds on the heatsinks because it ties in with all the red solid cap capacitors lol.

 

This is the look I'm going for on the board:



thanks for all the support its great to see +2 new posters for every update hehe its growing

love and metal

luke

 

Your right, it does look better without the red covers lol, run with it.

 

Nice job so far, keep it up !

 

wow!
great work so far..
keep it up!

 

thanks frenkie +arkadar

also boy4rm oz,, its all about the wonders of photoshop lol !

love and metal

luke

 

i really wonder why ASUS even thought about adding those red plastic thingies.. the board is way cooler without em.

 

its kinda like some kid on work experiance had to make the board look more agressive i know lets put some more red pointy crab on a board filled with blue and black already

like a last minute colour scheme change

but boy do i hate red, i was almost gonna but the evga board just cos it looked better

 

yeah.. though red gives me associations to girly things (Ferrari anyone? ), not something aggressive?

 

Fan Controller Mod

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Part 5:

Fan Controller Mod

The next item in my list of mods for Goliath was the fan controller, I ordered the "Scythe Kaze fan master ace" as it would be sufficient to control my 4 120mm radiator fans and had a rather good look

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however upon arrival i decided it just didn't cut the mustard as a standard look, the brush strokes were the wrong direction the finish was slightly gloss and I didn't like the silver edging .. so I decided to make my own fascia for the device

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first things first, time for a tear down the dials were quite hard to remove, I'm thinking jees these are the tightest push fit dials I've ever seen.. once I finally hulked them off and discovered they were mearly aluminium shells filled with hot glue .. o well .. wont be using them again .. plus they looked pretty sucky, next off was the faceplate, this was removed with relative ease, via 2 taper head screws located on both the left and right side of the drive bay, I then unscrewed the PCB from the mild steel enclosure, which required the removal of 2 screws and the bending of 2 metal retainer tabs

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above shows the bare naked board looking pretty good, and the other shows the lian li bezel it will be going into , the board is quite slim parts included, and should fit rather well into the system

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As I wanted to re-used the facia screen i placed the aluminium plate on a flat surface and wedged it off gently with a razor, i then used the plate as a cutting guide (see above) and the second pic shows the bezel marked up ready for some cutting ! .. you don't know how long it took me to find a fine tip marker pen well it was around an hour

raided the house .. 15 mins ..
went to the shop they were even looking in the staff draws (local shop) 20 mins...
then went next door and got one after all that lol .. this took 20 mins ..

after the obligatory cup of tea and a chat it was back to work !

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above you can see the first cuts for the screen made, keeping well within the lines, I know all to well how easy it is to wreck things with a dremel .. even on the slowest of speeds but after about an hour with 3 mins breaks between cutting to allow the aluminium to cool it was all but done

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as at the time i had no files or a drill press i did the hole drilling and filing at work where there's a few more tools at my disposal, and a better finish is what its all about

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above you can see the VFD powered up looking mighty sexy, and the next shot showing the bezel finished from work, looking alot better than it did the night before ! next was to paint the internal edge black with some paint to take away the bright alu edge

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the image above show the bezel face down before painting as i used the masking tape as a seal to stop to much paint bleeding to the front and ther second shows the view from the front after painting, some carefully applied thinners took away excess that had bleeded onto the front and although not 100% perfect, is certainly better than the raw aluminium edge from before

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next was the refitting of the VFD, i sourced some M3 Taped black plastic stand offs from work and first screwed them to the board to get the depth i wanted correct, once i had the depth i wanted it was a matter of unscrewing the posts and grinding off the excess with the dremel for application to the bezzel i used a heavy grade hot glue insert for my hot glue gun, and pushed it into place until solid, this was after some minor adjustment of the dial holes as the were out by a small amount, and now all fit very well

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above you can see the re-application of the screen and PCB all fits together quite snugly and has turned out better than expected, the last thing on my list was dials, as i certainly didn't want to put the standard ones back on after all that work, so after some searching I found some anodised brushed aluminium dials .. this was not to easy i assure you .. especially at that size hehe

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they arrived at 9am on a Saturday i was up prompt to get to work with them ! i bought 5 as i was guaranteed to mess up somewhere lol

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after some minor adjustments to the positioning they were all in sync and looked great, an so ended the construction of the new fascia !

so from this to this

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overall I'm very happy with the results, for now the thing is sitting taped up to the eyeballs in masking tape till the final assembly

More Updates soon .. .. most probably on Thursday

Love and Metal

Luke

 

To be honest, i dont like the big dails. They are just a little too big. But you're making great work!

 

Yeah personally I find those Dials a little too big, the rest of the fascia looks great though.

 

have to agree with the others, it just doesn't look right.