Hello and welcome to my first worklog! I've been fumbling around on my old system for quite some time, but I finally decided to let a few more people have a look at this project. As one can see, I'm starting pretty much in the middle of the whole project - I'm calling it: YAA05 - Yet Another A05. I did already put a lot of work in it, but it's still faaaar away from being "finished" or "beautiful". Let's start with the hardware it's supposed to be: CPU: AMD 1055T - 4,2@1,488V MB: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula RAM: G.Skill Eco 1600 7-8-7-24 GPU: Radeon HD 5870 HDD#1: G.Skill Falcon II 64 GB HDD#2: Samsung F1 1TB Sound: Asus Xonar DX Cooling: Laing DDC with Zern top Phobya Xtreme NOVA 1080, with 9x Scythe Slip Stream 800rpm Watercool HK 3.0 LT Watercool Silentstar Single EK-Waterblocks FC-5870 EK-Waterblocks 250er AGB Iandh Stealth Clamps AquaComputer DFM MIPS Filter 11,2/8 Tygon with 11/8 Feser Screw-On-Fittings CPC 7,9mm quick release couplings Red Feser One Also featuring 2x NB Multiframe S1 and 1x NB BlackSilentPro PK1 in the case And an Alphacool Heatmaster managing all of it What it looked like before: ToDo-Liste: - Switch out the LED on the card reader - remove the card reader's writing - properly fix the hole in the top - Try to fix the crappy wiring on the radiator-fans - maybe get some proper tubing for the outside of the case (maybe 16/10 or 19/13) - turn the radiator 90°, so that the fittings are on the back - change the length of the tubing from the case to the radiator - get a window in the side - try to fix the wiring inside of the case - sleeve the cables that are still visible - fix the holes for the fittings in the back of the case - properly mount the LED in the back of the reservoir - get the VGA card light up - switch the screws for black ones - get this case black after it's all done Day 1 (10/25/2010) All right - here we go. Today I got the first shipment by Aquatuning, looking like this: So here I went, carrying the case down to the cellar and started disassembling. This way the case got emptier... and emptier... finally being empty. First stop, Heatkiller 3.0. It really needed some cleaning - again: Looking at this picture in combination with what I found in my reservoir: ...made me decide not to use Feser One anymore. In the future, I'm going to use Aquacomputer Double Protect, which I hope will not do this. After reassembling the HK, it was the VGA card's turn. Before: Disassembled the waterblock,... ...cleaned it and reassembled it. Seal, I really hate you. After wanting to smash the card to bits after this, I decided to switch the standard ATI-backplate against one by EK. Doesn't look as good as the newer backplates, but it's still pretty nice in my opinion. The acrylic glass top of the block will soon be lit by two red LEDs, making this the only illumination inside of the case. Next stop: PSU. Top off, fan off. It doesn't run smoothly and will soon be replaced by a Noiseblocker BlackSilentPRO with four pins. After this, I started to remove the stock sleeve of this Antec PSU, it just didn't look pretty. This will be replaced by sleeve by mdpc-x.com sooner or later, anyway. I was out of time for today, but I'll continue soon -ish. Well, so this is where I'm going to write down my work in the next couple of days, weeks, probably months. I hope, you'll have as much fun reading as I will have working on this project. Thanks go out to the company aquatuning.de for supporting me with this project. -cake
Day 2 - 11/01/2010 Aaaaand it continues. Day two was heavily affected by two deliveries by Aquatuning and MDPC-X. In the MDPC-X-letter, there was quite a lot of sleeve, the box by Aquatuning contained the following: For starters, I took a look at the motherboard. The standard heatpipe had to go was to be replaced by a fullcover block by EK, so I removed both the block and the thermal paste beneath it: I spread some new paste, fitted the block according to the included instructions and got a result looking like this: After mounting the fullcover block, i remounted the Heatkiller, with new screws and a new backplate. As clever as I am, I ordered screws, that are slightly too large... ...so I had to...well, modifiy the mount of the block. Doesn't matter, though, as the result was worth it: Board put aside, there's more to do today. Sleeving! I started up with thinking about how I want the cables to run out of my PSU. Before: After: All the other power I will get via the modular cables Makes it look a lot cleaner in my opinion. After sleeving for a while, I got bored and started to look at the fan of the PSU, that's supposed to change from the current, grinding ADDA-fan to a nice and shiny Noiseblocker BlackSilentPRO with PWM. Looks quite sexy, I just have to take a look at the wiring. I'll just have to weld these cables together, that's easy...just solder the mathing colors. ...well, crap. I'll have to get some more information. Next will be the complete sleeving of the PSU, it's already looking pretty good in my opinion:
Update 3 - 11/16/2010 All right, it's been some time, but here's an update for the last few weeks. I spent most of that time with my PSU. Especially the sleeving was a tough job, but after all, it was worth it. After getting that done, I wired the fan...somehow...and tried the PSU out on some old board I had floating around. Turns out all my work was successful, even the fan was spinning quietly, just wonderful. Even though it doesn't look perfect (especially not the transition between big and small sleeve...) I'm very happy with how it turned out. Next step would have been the window and afterwards the powder coating, but as I got invited to a LAN party at December 4th, this has to wait till after that. So I got to work, getting the rig done somehow, at least so that it will survive a single LAN. According to my plan, most of the cables were supposed to be stashed away in the 5.25"-slot above the SilentStar. To get them there, I cut a hole in the side of said slot: ...uhm, yeah. That sucks. Well, nobody will see it anyway, so I guess it'll do. Opposing that hole, I mounted the Heatmaster, just drilled four holes in the back like on a dvd drive and pinned it to the matching holes in the case. Some days ago, I also received my new CPU-block - an EK Supreme HF. Quickly mounted it: Before letting this beauty of a board in my case, I prepared things first, for example with the flowmeter: After that, I decided it would be a good idea to check how well the thermal paste spread under the block. Result: The CPU was stuck under the block. I ripped it out of the socket...still, everything stayed intact, somehow, and even the paste spread perfectly . After that shock, the board was allowed entry into the case, I also connected the first tubes. As you can see in some of the pictures, I put two LEDs in the matching holes in the top of the Supreme. As they always dropped out of there, I decided it would be best to glue them on...well, as it turned out, not the best idea. The next morning, I noticed (superficial) cracks around the areas I put glue in. Still, it seems to be all right. After that I found one more thing to mod - the cardreader's green LED. Doesn't work at all in a black/red case. I unsheathed my soldering iron and got to work: After that, I started to get everything in that tiny case. I didn't take many pictures during that process, I think everybody here knows how to build a rig. Instead, here are some impressions of how it looked like after I was (almost...) done:
