Case Mod - In Progress Project: Isis Ascendant - October 27th, Crystal indicator lights

is it mana energy potion?
you actually consumed one of those energy drinks???

 

September 30th - Epoxy

Interloper - Thanks!

Plastic. Not, however for storing shampoo.

Guilty as charged. It is indeed a Mana Potion bottle. I have consumed them, more than once even. They're every bit as terrible as these youtube videos insinuate. I like them that way. I appreciate that they're so strong that you have to drink it in one shot. I like the fact that the flavor is off-putting. They're like shots, only for caffeine instead of alcohol.

I have plans for these bottles, ones that don't involve promoting mana potions, but I'll get to that later.

I found some working epoxy that hadn't hardened into an impossible mass, and promptly set to work turning it into an impossible mass. It's "marine" epoxy, though I don't know what's particularly aquatic about it. I bought it because it had a 50 minute drying time. Plenty of time to reposition the switchplate:


I added a thin layer of epoxy on the brass:


And another layer on the tank lid:


Then I slapped the two together, lined them up over the span of ten minutes of cussing and swearing. Then loaded the whole thing down with weights to assure a solid bond.


Finally, with all said and done, I added in the switches, though I haven't finished wiring because it's late and I'm tired:

 

Looks slick.
Gotta love 'em toggle switches

 

^
i like toggle switches but the only prob is they don't fit everywhere

Its coming along nicely longwing

 

October 7th - lingering details

So, guess who didn't buy enough marine epoxy? Yeah, it's never quite easy with me.

Some wiring, the epoxy, and about five gallons of mineral oil are all that stand between me and the big day. The mineral oil is in shipping, I'm out of epoxy, and I didn't feel like breaking out the solder last weekend. So I busied myself with lots of other little details.

At least one part showed up. Quartz crystals. I'm told that these crystals have fantastic spiritual clarity, and will be very effective at realigning my chakra. I'm very excited about that.


We'll get back to the crystals in a moment. First I have to deal with a bit of troublesome unwelcome advertising.

Dear Creative Labs. I use your sound cards because I play enough games with EAX in them to make it worth my time. While I do use your products, your drivers are so sodding troublesome that I'd never bother if there were another choice. So imagine my surprise when your logo started glowing. Also, imagine my growing annoyance as I discovered there was no way to turn. it. off. Dirty pool creative, dirty pool.


Even if I absolutely loved your products, there's no way I'd make your logo the front-and-center visual in my computer's window. Seriously, who advertises their sound card as a major feature of a mod?


Honestly guys. Surface mounted ultra-bright leds? On your sound card? With no hardware or software switch to disable them? The heck? You didn't pay me money to advertise in my case, but I'm supposed to think your glowing logo is cool? Really? Oh well, I will thank you... for the free light source.


One chakra-aligning crystal light-source down, two to go. Next up, the unfinished front corners. Some simple aluminum angle should solve my problems:


And a quick coat of paint:


Now it's time to deal with the fluid circuit. In the original kit, the fluid circuit passed through one of the expansion slots, using disconnect valves. I decided on a... less intricate approach:


The connection's still rough, all the ties are temporary, I'm just getting a feel for the position. I separated the fluid loop from the motherboard tray for one simple reason. I can run the loop without the tray, and vice-versa. They're independent systems now, giving me more control over maintenance and fine-tuning:


I've cut both tubes to length, and they look quite nice from the front. I'll be finishing them up when I have some oil to work with:


Finally, we have the tank's copper base-plate. This plate will hold the power supply, while keeping it separate from the glass beads that will fill the rest of the tank floor. Like a normal fish tank, sediment settles downwards, so I need something to disguise the bottom. The toner-coated portion will be under the power-supply, so it doesn't matter that it looks that way:


With any luck, the oil will arrive before the weekend. Which means the weekend may be quite interesting.

 

stonedsurd, Bad_cancer - Thanks. I actually had the toggles available from my spare parts pile, and they fit the mod well enough. I tried a bunch of other possible switches and buttons, but none of them really seemed to fit the theme.

If anyone would care to suggest possible alternatives, I'd be keen to hear them. Otherwise, at least the toggles look lovely.

 

Looking good and the toggles look awesome. Other switch ideas.

Brass doorbell like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110403335573

Miniature knife switch
http://www.xump.com/Science/DoubleKnifeSwitch.cfm

Telegraph contact switch
http://www.xump.com/Science/ContactKeySwitch.cfm

Roll your own with brass bullet catch

http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=145

Grand daddy of all switches...demolition plunger



No worries on the oil dissolving the toner? or did I misunderstand where the oil will be?

 

Yeah stick it to Creative lol. I am pretty sure the Auzentech cards do EAX (or similar), I have no trouble at all with my games, except some much older ones.

Mod is looking fantastic, keep it up .

 

Oh those do look lovely. I really wish I could manage a place for a demolition plunger like that, but it'd be such an extensive change in plans. Working that into a design is practically a mod all by itself.

The oil should play nice with toner, there's not much reason to worry. However, its good to be a little paranoid, and you make a solid point. I've stopped being lazy and just cleaned the toner off the plate.

I know creative licenses their tech to a few people. My problem is less with the hardware (which does what I paid money for it to do) and more with the software (which makes me want to bludgeon kittens to death).

Plus, you know, glowing logos; but that's a new one. They keep that up, and I'll probably just use onboard sound next time around.

I have a completely new post to put live, but I'm having some problems with my FTP right now, and I can't get any photos up. Sadly, it'll probably be Thursday before anything substantive shows up here. I don't have any time at all on Wednesdays. Sorry for the delay.

 

October 20th - Immersion Part 1

So we had a bit of a skip-week last week. Sorry about that. Here, let me make it up to you, I've prepared a special dinner, to say I'm sorry.

Key ingredient: Distilled liquid awesome:


But before we get to the main course, I've worked on some seasoning. I shaved down a pair of bright red leds, then hot-glued them to the bases of two quartz crystals:


But hotglue isn't likely to hold up under constant attack from mineral oil, so I added some marine epoxy to seal up the connection:


This is actually a cluster of three crystals, all glued together with the led in the center/bottom. This should make it three times more potent in the chakra-alignment department. The leds should also make my aura easier to see. (New-age jokes will get old eventually, honest):


Next we set the leds aside to firm up, and add some serious epoxy to the underside of the switchplate. These will soon become sockets:


Sockets for what? Bulbs, of course:


Now I have a lot of thumbtwiddling time while I wait for my epoxy to harden. I spent some of it cleaning. Happy Mach? :


Once a day's passed, I can get back to my earlier work. Leds+crystals+oil+wires+silicone=


Those will eventually be my power and hard-drive lights.

 

Goddamn, every update is amazing.

I can't wait to see this thing done

 

October 20th - Immersion Part 2

Oh no, I'm not done yet. THAT was last week's post. THIS is today's.

With oil ready to go, it's time to test the fluid circuit. I figure I should run it a few days before committing to using it for my actual computer. Only one slight problem. My pump appears to be broken (it isn't). I'll have to buy a new pump before I can get started (no I won't). Any guesses as to my exact stupid mistake? I'll reveal it later in the post.


Soooo. Having convinced myself that I can't test the fluid circuit, I set about another task. Wiring again. Always. More. Wiring. :


Ive attached the switches to two plugs, one for the lighting (the little 5 pin) and one for all the controls and indicators (the looted monitor cable). This will allow me to disenguage the lid without unplugging anything else:


Next, I set up to convert my BFG GeForce GTX 260 into something submersible. The stock cooler used a LOT of thermal grease, and one truly gigantic, strategically shaped heatsink. That won't work for me. I need to epoxy all the minor parts, so the old heatsink goes. For anyone wondering, the Zalman VF1000 does NOT fit on a GeForce GTX 260, I had to get a little creative with the screw posts to get it working:


My advice to would-be submersion modders: Check the availability of aftermarket heat spreaders for your card. You'll be glad you did the research.

Now, did anyone guess my screw up? More advice for would-be modders: Ehiem pumps are not self priming. In other words, they need to be full of fluid BEFORE they can pump anything. Whoops. Once I figured that out, everything started going a lot smoother.

I filled the tank half-way using the pump, then I added the motherboard/powersupply/gpu heart-lung block. Not. Nervous. Nope. Not at all. Bestnotthinkaboutit... holycrapallmypartsarecoveredinfluidi'mokayi'mokay.

Whew. Right.

It took quite a while to fill the tank once the parts were in place, but I couldn't be sure of how much oil they'd displace while submerged. So I filled the tank half-way, added the computer, and filled the rest with a tiny funnel and a bunch of milk jugs (bad plan, by the way).

You may also notice an etch on the front of the plastic. I forgot to talk about that, maybe next week:


Once I'd hooked up all the parts, I added a crude filtration system to stop the oil from wandering off too far. According to Puget Systems, there's a real problem with oil "creeping" up the cables. I figure it'll stop at the towels, then I just swap the towels out from time to time:


and here we are. AT LAST. Isis is incomplete, but it's finally filled and operational:


Course, all that wiring I was complaining about at least gets put to a good use. Lights:


I'm pretty pleased with my progress for the week, if I do say so myself.

 

I'll also point out, I'm not done yet. Next week I'll be adding a bunch of finishing touches. Some time after that, proper "I'm done!" photos.

 

I must say the red lights with the hint of blue really works well together. Do you have any temps? I'm curious to see how it all fares considering you have an SLI rig in there.

 

That is some seriously cool stuff!

Props for having the minerals to go through with this all the way.

 

that looks awesome!!!! great work!!

:edit: i can see your aura now too!

 

Wow man, amazing. If my system was that cool I dont think I would ever get any work done. I would just stare at the system all day long.

Props.

 

wow! Awesome work

 

I was surprised at how nice it looks too. I thought the blue would be an unavoidable distraction. I wanted to keep the fans to churn the oil, but I don't believe paint will hold up well, so I was resigned to endure a blue that actually came out quite fantastic.

I do have temps:


These are a little low. Once the system revs up I normally see about 51 C on the primary GPU (Mislabeled GPU1 here), and about 47 on the secondary. They are NOT set to SLI however. They're two different cards, and thus can't run SLI. I run them separately to power two monitors. That way my second monitor doesn't take any processing power from the first while running games.

HAHA. Thank you.

Is it pink? Oh I do hope it's pink! and thanks.

Actually, I've lost time to watching it work. The blue leds are quite hypnotic at low speeds (the fans all turn slowly because of the oil).

Cleveland216 - Thanks!

 

Nice temps mate .