Case Mod - In Progress Project: Orange Monster, 26 July 2006; Wire routing blocks 16.3.2014

External features...

It's nothing new, but I'm soo bad at keeping promises. Sorry everyone

With that said, let's make a new one or rather modify an old one:

I will finish this mod, but no more promises about the timeframe!

It just seems that other aspects of life take up my time for undefined periods and truth be told, when that happens, I don't even want to go to the shop and work on the Monster.

Once things clear up, I gradually start browsing through other project logs and try to gather up some modding spirit so that I can continue this work.

Hopefully everyone will be cool with that

Now that I got that off my chest, there's also some good news in the form of an update. Let's get to it:



After blowing off some spider webs from the old parts like this Aquaero & custom bezel assembly, I took all of them apart and cleaned them rather well.



Next up I took apart the res assembly, cleaned it, applied some o-ring grease to the well, o-ring and put it back together again (sorry about the weird angle of the photo).

Around this time I realized that the Monster has five 5.25" slots and these two only take up four. The fifth was originally reserved for a DVD-drive, but it's 2013 now and I've moved on from optical media.

A quick check through the "scrap" alu sheet pile revealed that I had only one large enough piece left from the window cut-out that has the "grain" going horizontally. Better not screw it up then



A bit of measuring twice (or in this case about five times) and cutting once we have this. Pretty ain't it?

That rather ugly coating is masking tape residue from 2006



It did clean up nicely with xylene and a bit of elbow grease. Next I dug around a bit for a frame for the bezel and found a bunch of brand new alu bezels.



I got a bunch of these from where I used to work.

They have five pre-cut holes for potentiometers, a pre-historic fan controller system if you will



And here it is 8 holes later and a few nuts and bolts added.



After doing a bit of a mock-up of the front I remembered that the distance from the fillport to the top of the reservoir was really short. Originally it had about 3cm of tubing between them and it was a bit*h to get into place.

Since I already did a similar thing with the drain port, I did it again here. Only this time I wanted to go with even lower profile for the port. This meant that I also had to shorten one of the compression fittings to make it work.



And work it does!





Installed in the case.



Here's a mock-up with all of the above installed (a reflection from my fill-flash makes the front look a bit odd).

Next I thought that it was about time the Monster got its feet back...



Before putting the feet back on, I took them apart and re-polished the heck out of them.





They shine quite nicely and give the Monster back some of its character as well



Finally here's the front view at this point and it comes with a few explanations:

- The liquid will be UV-reactive orange and the res will have an UV-led installed into the middle plug (designed for it).
- The orange acrylic piece will act as the drive activity led, UV of course
- The photo overplays the color difference between the Aquaero and the acrylic piece above it.
- The Bulgin switch has an amber color ring, which will be the "on led" from the mobo.
- The hole on the bottom is a pain in the arse, but I have something special planned for it...

That's about it for now and I'll get back at it as soon as possible.

Feel free to comment also, they are hugely appreciated and really keep me going forward with this project

Darkened

 

Studio table...

A bit late on this one (shocker, right ).

I actually just finished my studio table, so I'll do a small bonus update on that:



We have a bunch of different sort of aluminum profiles in the shop/warehouse/studio space, so I just took things from the shelves and figured out which way I wanted to go with them.

I wanted to use the double-locking profiles, which are much more sturdy than single-locking ones. The wheels I had to buy though



This was the first draft of the base for the table, basically a skateboard at this point.

The wheels were modded a bit by me (another shocker...). They originally had a square base with 4 holes and I just needed two for the profile, so I lopped off two of the corners.



This is where the table starts to take shape. While I was building it, I figured out that another crossbeam at the base was needed to make it sturdy enough.

Same goes for the vertical profiles, so two on each side. The top is quite simple and explains itself.





Next I added two more vertical profiles to the back of the table to support the upper portion.

The said upper portion is connected to the table with four hinges which make the whole assembly fully adjustable.

I can move the vertical profiles front or back to change the angle and the height is also adjustable by loosening the wing nuts and sliding the upper part up or down (and adjusting again the vertical profiles accordingly).

Adjusting the table is not hard, but it isn't a breeze either. The good thing is that I can improve on the design if needed, but I don't think it'll need much adjusting once I get it the way I want it.



I wanted the top to be adjustable as well for all four corners, so I fabricated these contraptions from four small c-clamps.

The table top was a bit of an issue. At first I couldn't decide what material I wanted the top to be.

Ideally I wanted something I could light from underneath, so acrylic and glass then. Acrylic would have to be at least 10mm thick to be rigid enough, which means hard to get and expensive.

Glass would have to be specially made for the table, so again hard to get and expensive.

At this point it came down to the cost since I'm still unemployed and we just happened to have a suitable size board of, well...



...this. I know the Finnish name for it, but I have absolutely no idea what's it called in English. It's not plywood, although the top and bottom are pretty much plies (?), but there are actual strips of wood between them.

Anyhow, I attacked the board with a router and made this kind of a indent in all four corners so that the top would sit flush with the adjusters in place.





Here we have the top in place. Nice flush fit and it's at a really good working height for me.



To finish it off and give it the appropriate material for product photography I clamped this board of white plastic onto the table.

I still don't have a photo of the table when it's in use, but I've been using a large softbox on a boom stand right above the table as the main light source. It's a bit like a large Chimera softbox, which is used to light cars from above in a studio environment. Only in smaller scale

For small object it's actually enough to give a near white background and a really pleasing light. For larger objects like a computer case, which has a roof etc. which will block the light coming from above, a fill flash or two is needed.

I'll try to remember to take a photo of the table in action at some point.

Darkened

 

So, within the next year or so?

Anyways, really nice to see some progress on this!

 

That seems about right at the current rate of updates

I was actually surprised that the last proper update was one year ago minus two days. That's absolutely crazy how the time flies since I really didn't think it would have been that long

Darkened

 

Do what I do, wait till the weekends, go on a modding binge, make a backlog of updates, and update every other month or so.

 

Good to see you back at it !!!

Take your time to finish this pretty damm awesome machine of yours and let's say it's done when it's done

 

Yay! Darkened! 'Bout ready to rock some hardware it looks like.
I've been doing what Silicon mentioned too, But with our time management issues, you end up wondering what the pictures you took were about.
-So it's good to add a text file with your explanations, but then you don't have that kinda time anyway...

 

Back from the grave! I was very surprised (and delighted) to see this thead update in my email. Even coming back to see this project years later is still looks great and your craftsmanship has never faltered. This is still an inspirational project to me. Even if it takes another five years, I hope you do finish this.

Thanks for taking time to post an update.

 

Awesome update! Nice to see monster alive!

 

I do go on a modding binge, but it only happens once a year as it turns out

@ShadowWings

Thanks man, I'll do my very best

@Cheapskate

It'll still be a while before I get to the actual hardware point, but I'll try to keep at it though.

Could you open this sentence up for me a bit. I'm pretty sure I'm not getting it like you meant it.

@gvblake22

Well yes, I do have to lift the lid off the casket once in a while to get some fresh air It's great to hear that I can inspire someone, so thank you and it's much appreciated.

@Evenge

Well Monsters are notoriously hard to kill, so I think there's still life left in it. You have a response to the PM you sent btw.

I was actually at the shop today continuing the work on the Monster, but I had to bust out some epoxy. A slow drying epoxy that is, so after I did that, I couldn't take any photos of the progress, but I did manage to get on with it quite nicely. There should be an update soonish since I got a lot of to-dos crossed off my list last week, which gives me a bit of free (read modding) time this week.

So let's say stay tuned shall we...

Darkened

 

Sweetness

 

Great to see this mod resurrected!

I think Cheaps means that you should make notes about what you've done whenever you take a new set of pics, so you don't forget what they cover.

 

@IanW

Much appreciated and it does feel good to be back working on the Monster. Hopefully that good feeling will last

And thank you also for clarifying what Cheapskate meant earlier.

To answer that, I do know that the res and the Aquaero were made a long time ago and I've documented them at that point. The problem is that this thread is now 60+ pages long, so I assume not everyone has read it from the beginning. That's why I'm gradually re-photographing the parts as I go so for someone casually browsing through the project logs, the parts won't just magically appear out of blue into some mock-up scenario.

I also re-photograph them to keep a more consistent look throughout these updates with a better camera and better lighting than before.

Hopefully that clarifies things out.

Darkened

 

Help the Monster to find the right PSU!

I almost forgot to post this regarding getting a worthwhile PSU for the Monster.

So the only PSU I have lying around right now is a PC Power & Cooling 850W unit, which is red and not modular. So both important parts are just wrong and 850W is overkill for this purpose anyway.

So the main requirements would be black as the color (shouldn't be too hard to find, but it could be orange as well) and modular. Fully modular is a definite plus, but if it has ATX and say 8pin AUX leads as not modular, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Something I'd also like to add to the list is the sound level. The Monster will hopefully be a pretty quiet computer due to watercooling and the fact that I'm going with only one SSD drive in it. So it would be nice if the PSU would be as quiet or ideally quieter than the fans in the case.

This far I've thought about something like the Seasonic P-520FL, which is passively cooled, fully modular and would suit the theme quite nicely. I am however a bit worried about the cooling since it will sit in it's own "compartment" with 0 - minimal airflow. The case is full of holes though, so it would probably be ok.

So if you have suggestions, I'm all ears and so is the Monster

Darkened

 

I don't know if this helps but I'm currently selling my Corsair HX650 for £50 (plus shipping - which, to you, might be quite a bit and therefore this might not be worth it). But I thought I'd run it past you none the less

 

Hey Mother-Goose, nice to see that you're still around here as well

And thanks for the offer, but like you mentioned, it would get quite expensive after the shipping costs. The HX650 is a fine PSU though, hopefully you'll get it sold quickly

Darkened

 

Ends & odds...

Something must be really wrong, another whole update this year?!?



When I shortened the fillport (on the right), I realized that I was quite conservative when I did the same to the drain port (on the left).

For the drain port to work properly, it of course should be the lowest part of the loop, so I attacked it again.



My goal was to shorten the port about another 3mm, so that I could drop one of the spacer acrylic pieces off from the drain port assembly support block.



So the block used to go acrylic-black plastic-acrylic, and now there's only one acrylic spacer.

I also changed the acetal T-block to a brand new one since the old one had two M3 threaded holes on the top (made by me of course ).

Next I epoxied this new "unholy" block to the piece of acrylic and that was the reason why I couldn't move the case for a while. Note to self: buy quick drying epoxy!

Those angle fittings have really short inner threading, so I also had to shorten the rightmost compression fittings thread to make it fit properly.

Note that there's no hole in the shroud yet for the tubing to the pump. I first need to buy a 10mm rubber grommet and from that I need the outer diameter for the hole itself.



I did test fit the tubing from the flow meter to the drain port assembly. It seems like a pretty good fit and it makes a pleasant line.



Talking about the flow meter, I decided to give it some tough love...



...so here it is slightly modded. Since I'll be soldering the wires straight to the meter, I didn't need the "plug part" of it.

I also bent the pins so that the wire direction will be suitable for my needs.



Here it is installed to its own spot in the case. As you can see, I also test fitted a tube between the res and the flow meter.

See those two holes in the front? They have M3 threaded inserts in them and they used to hold a bracket for the power led and the hard drive activity led in place. Well, I thought about another use for them.



Since the case is full of holes, the insides can be seen from the front. Granted it's going to be quite a dark place once the shroud and the side panels are in place, but then again, the Monster is in the details



Going through my aluminum profiles, I found this strip of alu, which I thought would be suitable for this job.



I cut it down to size with my scroll saw (not with my band saw since it's so damn small that even 17cm piece is impossible to cut with it).

Next I drilled two 4mm holes at the bottom of the profile and a larger one with a step drillbit in the middle. I also cut out a small portion of the profile from the backside.

When the alu fabrication was done, I rummaged through my pile of scrap acrylic pieces.

I found a thin strip of acrylic with one side totally straight so I used that side as a reference and marked the needed 7mm width from it.

It was trimmed to size with the router, which is kind of tricky when you are dealing with such small pieces.



The two even smaller pieces were hand fabricated so that they are a really tight fit in the groove.

They are actually such a tight fit that they stay in place all by themselves, so there's no need to attach them in place in any way.



This is how the strip will sit on the profile.

The part isn't actually quite ready, since I need to make a few "notches" on the acrylic strip and figure out how to fix it in place. For now it's just floating there.



Here it is installed in the case.

It attaches with two M3 screws to the two holes in the middle I mentioned earlier.



A small detail from the right side of the case.



And finally a view from the inside.

The plan is to drop the power switch, the power led and the flow meter wires in the groove and lead them to the left side of the case.

That's it for now. More to follow and hopefully soon...

Darkened

 

Nice update!

For the PSU, could this be any good? http://www.jimms.fi/tuote/P-660
Should be quite silent if the hybrid cooling is switched on.

 

Thank you Evenge for both the comment and also the PSU tip.

It's actually cheaper than the 520W model I looked at before, which makes it a good candidate. Let's see how fast they'll be able to get it in stock (having worked there, I don't necessarily trust the estimated timeframes too much ).

And btw, who divided by zero? Bit-tech has been working really, really slowly for the past few days...

Darkened

 

One of the servers must be having an affair with a connector or something