Case Mod - In Progress (FINISHED) Node 2.0 - a Hackintosh build

Haven't come across this company before. They have some interesting products, including the case you've purchased. I've got the SilverStone FT03 and I do prefer the look of yours without the plastic side-grill.

I really like the look of their CR-95C fanless CPU heatsink as well. That could look nice sticking out of a case, or in a car themed mod.

The project is looking good so far. Nice work.

 

Really nice job so far!

Btw; to answer your question, there is a max res. If you go past it, The pics are automatically resized. If that happens a little beige banner appears above the posted image which can be clicked to view the full-sized image. The maximum resolution is mentioned somewhere in the FAQ... If not just ask one of the mods.

 

Thank you all for all the nice comments, keeps the spirit up
My wife think I am over complicating things, but she do agree it looks pretty so I will continue until it´s finished.

UPDATE:

I have started the most time consuming work on this project, the re-sleeving and shortening of cables.
Let me start out by saying I have never really done much sleeving before, so it might not be perfect, but it sure is looking better than how Seasonic originally did:



The black snakeskin is the factory sleeving, glued on to the cables so it´s very very hard to get off.

Almost all the cables will be sleeved, even the front panel wires.
Before:



After:


The blue sleeve is a little see through, so had to heat shrink the whole cable first



I also need to custom shorten the cables so they fit nice and tight in this oddly shaped case



I do not have crimping tools so my solution is to cut and solder + heat shrink before sleeving the cables. Not just any solder is used, I use silver solder for best possible connection.



So, this is how it looks now:









As you might see in the pictures, not all the cables is fastened yet, as I want to be able to move them around and find the perfect location before attaching them permanently.
Still need to sleeve and solder a lot of wires....

Notice the Bluetooth adapter in the top of the case, it is tiny! This little thing gives me native OS X BT4.0 for my keyboard and trackpad, nice...





I´m just waiting for some more sleeve and a new ATX pin remover as my cheap-a** model broke (this time I bought a quality one instead ofc).

//Stay tuned for more pictures as the build progresses.

 

Look forward to completion should be a tidy little build, good colour co-ordination so far maybe the red accents on the GPU shroud will turn blue ?? I know they cant be seen but finishing touches are nice. Excellent case choice love the FT03 didnt know Nofan had a version

 

UPDATE

Still shortening and soldering... This takes quite some time when you have a full time job and a little daughter to play with too, I get about one section of wire done per day.



The sleeving kind of reminds me of how a snake eats...





The new look makes a huge difference



Remember I have never done this before, I just want to avoid a situation like this:




//Stay tuned, hopefully soon there will come more exciting updates

 

Ran into a little problem when I wanted to check if the machine was still ok, tried a OS X hackintosh boot stick and it resulted in this:



Anyway, I´m pretty sure that was a problem with the stick and not the hardware.
The machine looks great but still am not completely done with shortening and sleeving.



Also wanted to see if my huge TeraLabs Prism HDMI cable would fit below the top cover and it looks like it´s ok





Tried my LED lights, but did not care much about their position. They also worked even after I have worked on their wire ring





Lastly wanted to check just the overall temp on the hottest day so far and it looks pretty nice, I do though know that there is still no graphics card in and no real load on the system (just bios readings)



Flashed bios to newest and hackintosh ready version and fixed RAM speeds to their XMP values




So there is a little progress in the build, but I hope a lot more will happen over the weekend, need the PSU and PCIe wires to be done plus putting everything together and installing.

//stay sharp

 

don't' worry dude. My first wire modding and sleeving attempt the other day was a nightmare.
Snap on the sleeving colour scheme

 

Would one of these help to put the BT adaptor in the case, just for aesthetics like.


http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/30978...:13315|cat:30978240|prd:30978240&kw={keyword}

Not that there is anything wrong with where it is, but if you can hide it, why not.

It is looking good. Really starting to come together now. Still watching with interest, after my failed attempts to get hackintosh working on and old athlon I had kicking around.

 

I did actually think about it when I was planning what to do, but I am thinking that because the whole chassis is pretty solid aluminium I could get into trouble about bluetooth coverage if it was internal.
The top is just a plastic mesh and because it´s a tiny tiny dongle no one will really wonder what it´s doing there. Thanks for the tip anyway

-about your attempt, I understand you was struggling with your hackintosh if you tried with an AMD, that is not an easy task.

 

I just found your build log, I see no wire sleeving in there?

 

A small update so you guys know I´m still here


My wife still lets me play around in the kitchen and living room, even that I do make kind of a mess when I setup my little "workbench"



A little tip to anybody attempting what I´m doing to my wires here, please do yourself the favour and buy proper tools. I first invested in one of those solid metal ATX pin removers, problem was though that the metal was not so solid as I had liked so it broke.
Now I have this and this is a treat to use (but a little costly):



Just realised I totally forgot to show the wiring on the "backside", it looks pretty neat...
Still missing two cables, MB power and PCIe power.



Even better though, because every cable is now exactly the length needed to fit inside this odd case, the "engine room" looks very very clean. I have tried to draw in where the graphics card will be and the last two wires, but wait for final pictures - it´s going to be even better when done for real.



Actually I would have liked to do one more thing today, because I just received my hackintosh vinyl logos (see the sketchup rendering in the first post), but it´s now past midnight and I need some good light to put them perfectly.


//stay fresh

 

going to do a big update in a few days.
I can only seem to find an hour here or there to mod so gonna put them all together.

Looking good though!
Where did you get your tool from btw? my one snapped as well

 

Same here, only working on it for short periods of time once in a while whenever I can.

I bought my tool from a Danish store here, first bought their Phobya set but don´t really like it, so went for the more expensive versions instead after one had broken.

 

Just found a good comparison site, and it seems I will get good improvements both in graphics and in CPU - the CPU part actually surprised me a little because I go will from a i7 to a i3, but from an Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge and that is where the gain is.

CPU comparison

6.9 vs 7.2 in score

Current 6630M vs new GTX 660 Top

Between 2x and 7.5x improvements, depending on what you look at.


...better get started on the last few cables to get this show started

 

A good argument for " i7 branding on a laptop doesn't mean it will be as good as a desktop part." Just knowing my measly 3220 is better than most laptop CPUs makes me feel better.

 

Ah yes, had actually forgot my current Mac Mini is just laptop parts showed into a "lunchbox".
If just this MB cable did not take forever to get done... Can´t wait! Worked 4 hours on it yesterday and am now building up courage (eating breakfast) to finish it.

 

UPDATE

A LOT have happened since my last update, so can´t write down everything else at once so be patient

First of I had to finish the motherboard cable and PCIe cables that have been bugging me for a long time, they were way way too long.



Here you see what I started with and the length I made it.



Another minor update in between all the sleeving, just to get my hands and mind off and do something a little easier, stickers!

Before:


After:


A little teaser of the front panel too:



I have completely forgot to show what I did on the front panel in the beginning, the actual very first thing I did on this build!
Took a heatgun and heated the front until it was untouchable (pure aluminum heat up very well), the to a pencil and pushed trough the tiny hole behind the original NoFan logo until it popped off.
Then inverted it, because it already had the right size and depth to fit in the hole and because the backside is clean flat were the front had letters sticking out a few mm (would look terrible if I covered the lettering in vinyl).
A little epoxy and some carbon vinyl and voila, a clean flat front.

Sorry have no pictures of it because it was before I received my little blue camera, and I hate my iPhone cam so rarely use it.

Enough talk, here it is - the finished motherboard short cable in black and blue!



With the backside closed it peeps through



Because of the length the inside still looks very clean



Color coordination rocks



And last for now, a view of all the extra cable Seasonic have used (and I have removed)






Much much more to come soon, stay sharp

 

Just one of the reasons I have not been here much the past few days, I ran into serious trouble when I installed the first time.
Anyway, more updates later.

 

Looking good still!
Glad you sorted out your icloud troubles.

Sleeving looks great. As I said earlier I'm using the same colours!
one question though, what are the lumps in some of your 24pin wires?

 

Thanks m8

Yours too, am following your progress and looks pretty nice.
The lumps is were I re-connected the shortened wires, not untill I was almost done someone told me I should have done it like this:



Kind of too late, don´t want to redo everything because it really don´t matter, the lumps are on the backside very close to the PSU outlet, so no one will ever see it.

Whenever I upgrade the PSU I will do a better job, this is my first try at it so I knew it would never be 100% perfect.