Case Mod - In Progress Maximum Security - FINISHED 11/20/2011!

I like the "rusty" effect, but i think you followed the same pattern on the last pic and it doesn't look quite "real" hehe but maybe that's just me

 

No patterns, all freehand My first time using an airbrush though

 

Nothing that half a can of Rust-Eze wouldn't fix.

 

fantastic job! congratulations! I liked the new color!

 

Hi, how many time did you spend to obtain this result?

 

Thanks Man!!

About 2 hours or so to get that result. You need to press lightly and let the sandpaper do its job, do not press hard.

 

Update time!!

I cut a piece of mesh to cover the holes left in the side panel and put some trim on it to dress it up a bit then hot-glued it into place.

​

I also got a bunch of random parts soldered to the ProtoStack dev board to make it look more industrial-ish. All I need to do is wire up the LEDs that this board will be controlling.

​

Thanks again to NZXT for sending me a 2M red LED strip!! I removed the module from it's PCI slot bracket and mounted it to a spare standoff hole on the backside of the motherboard.

​

Then I removed the motherboard and hot-glued the LED strip to the case under it.

​

Looks pretty sweet

​

I also tested the fans and my fan controller and found that for some reason the Sentry 2 wouldn't even get the Turbine Master fans to even start spinning. :? If you tapped the blades by hand they'd spin right up, but not from a dead stop. So I replaced them with a pair of Gentle Typhoons and a sweet ACRyan radgrill

​

I also got my Indigo Extreme TIM installed on the CPU

​

Next up I got all the UV LEDs sleeved. I started with the 2 3mm ones that go into the CPU block, then did the 5mm one in the res and also swapped out the 2 3mm blue ones in the flow meter with 2 3mm UV ones. The camera makes the UV look super bright, but with the coolant I'll be running it should look perfect.

​

I also got 3 more WD Caviar Black 500GB drives to go with the one in my current rig. I plan to put the OS onto the 96GB SSD then do a RAID 1+0 with the 4 500GB drives.

​

I got the SATA cables sleeved with the copper sleeving from MDPC-X. I must say, their sleeve is THE BEST! Dirt cheap and looks great!

​

Speaking of sleeving, I did the PSU. I wasn't going to, but I had to. I did it with a mix of the copper brown and tungsten gray from MDPC-X. I did ALL the wires. I ended up cutting and extending the 8-pin CPU wires so they'd reach without needing the adapter that Tt included with the case. I also cut off the un-needed cables and heatshrunk the ends inside the PSU to keep things clean. Enjoy

​

That's all for now!

 

It is looking awesome man!

Why not do a RAID 5 setup instead of the 1+0?

 

Looking very nice . Personally I liked the paint job without the rust affect, but overall it looks fantastic.

 

I hadn't looked into a RAID 5 setup, but now hat I have it does look interesting. I was thinking raid 0+1 for the mirroring aspect, but raid 5 would get me 500GB more space. hmmmmm.....

Thanks man. The rusting effect was all part of my master plan

 

Ooooh... I like the sound of that .

 

was perfect congratulations a great job!

 

I put some zip ties on the PCI-e cables to clean them up a bit

​

I also picked up these sweet aluminum hose clamps for all the 3/8" tubing. I wanted the same ones for the 1/4" but they were all out, so I got the standard plastic clamps

​

I picked up this Bitspower radgrill for the rear fan

​

But the green wasn't cutting it so I painted it to match the rest

​

I also got a pair of Lian Li blank 5.25" drive covers and some military switches.

​

I taped, marked, drilled and mounted everything

​

The other holds a 16x2 LCD and a Bulgin button.

​

I decided to go with a single LCD versus the 2 for simplicity's sake, and the fact that I only really needed one anyways. I also painted both panels to match as well.

​

Now I figured I'd do something different with the 1/4" clear tubing for the RAM. I wanted them to do something rather than just be there. So I tried some different routing setups and settled on this one. I cut up some spare plexi I had laying around, sanded, drilled and painted, and here is the end result. This will look sick once the fluid is in there

​

That's all for now. I've been working a lot with the coding for everything lately. All that's left to do really is finish the switch wiring, finish the airbrushing and integrate the flow meter into the coding one the system is up and running!

 

Those plexi tube holders look awesome!

Nice work bro, keep it up!

 

You've made some good progress. Nice work .

 

Another update

I designed, etched and assembled the 2 circuit boards I'll be needing now that I'm only using 1 LCD. One board will house the ATMega328 and all it's associated components as well as have all the I/O pins for the accessories. The second board will mount to the LCD directly and allow me to use a 2x5 ribbon cable instead of the breadboard-friendly layout as the LCDs come.

I used Fritzing to create the layouts and the PCBs.

I started off by laying out everything in the breadboard view.

​

I used that to create the PCB layouts as seen here. From the breadboard point to the ready-to-print PCB point was about 2 hours. This consisted of moving parts around the boards to get the best possible layout.

​

Next I created etchable .pdf's (done with Fritzing) so I can print out the boards. You'll notice one side is mirrored. This is because when you transfer the image it'll come out oriented correctly.

​

Here the boards are printed out and cut out. They are printed with a laser printer onto inkjet photo paper. The reason for this is that the toner, which is plastic, will not adhere to the inkjet photo paper. This will allow it to be transferred to the copper clad with an iron.

​

Here are the top sides all transferred.

​

Here I've drilled a set of holes and inserted pins through them. I use these pins to line up the back side traces for transferring.

​

Fast forward a few steps and you've got a pair of freshly-etched and drilled boards ready for assembly! The blobby-ness on the traces is from a sharpie. If you get mostly good transfer but have a few little patches where it didn't stick you simply use a sharpie to draw it in. It works as an etch resist almost as good as the toner itself.

​

And here we have the pair of completed boards. I still need to test these to make sure they're working 100%

​

That's all for now!

 

Hi,

At this stage, you've done a nice building. Congrats dude!!!

Nice idea about plexi tubing plate!!!

 

It's aliiiiiive!!!!!

​

After doing the reflow procedure for the Indigo Extreme TIM Temps are VERY nice I'm getting ~34ºC idle and topping out at ~48ºC under Hyper Pi, OCCT and Prime95.

All that's left to do is finish the coding and the wiring! Also, my coolant will be here this week, stay tuned

 

Minor update!

I painted the CPU retention bracket to match the rest of the case

​

I also got a pair of 12" UV cathodes installed the the side door. I ended up reusing the touch connector that came with the case for this. it simplifies the wiring a lot

​

Next up I wired up 4 LEDs and hot-glued them into the top part of the front side window. The LEDs are all warm white colored.

​

And it's now finished! But you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the good pics. In the meantime here's a few teaser shots

​

 

There is a lot of work in the electronics but I think there are a lot of different colours that don't look that good all together.

For example in the last pictures we can see UV + green + red + white etc...
A 1 colour theme or 2 colour would look much better imho

Hope to see this finished soon