Hold my beer and watch this! I am currently, slowly, painfully, working on my wife's computer waiting on parts to mail in and still trying to decide if we are going to go full Ryzen 3600X right now or transfer her I7 3770K system (see project dolphin) for future Ryzen / maybe Intel build But! I have an evil project that has been gathering steam, tween work kicking my arse, project dolphin, house chores and life, and I call it Hold my Beer Hold my Beer started off as a lark, one of the machine tech's at work said to me a couple months ago "hey dude do you want a old ass pentium board and cpu?" FK yea I can make a pimp ass dos machine in like a week and flip that on ebay for 100 dollars. what I got was a socket 775 pentium dual core, on a dell motherboard, with a gig of DDR2 ram. Well ok, crap, lets have some fun with junk laying around the graveyard ... er I meant garage ...er I meant super bad arse computer / electronics lab! Ok cool lets make a Windows XP gamer, what cases do I have, oh snap ... I have a baby AT case and a uATX motherboard Crap! darn case has been sitting on a factory floor for 3 decades, and originally contained a 386 and was missing its mobo tray and front, ok lets redneck it. first order of operations is that a uATX style mobo, wont fit in a baby AT case its like 3 inches too tall and its center support has to be removed once the center support is removed the motherboard still interferes with the drive bays, so off they come and get hit with the tin snips There, that's better Next issue is the back connectors for VGA, RS232, and dual PS/2 mouse and keyboard crashes into the case. Well this sbox will never use onboard video, only nerds like me use RS232 serial, and while PS/2 keyboard and mouse would be nice ... its in the way. That's it for now, next episode lets tackle the power supply
Hold My Beer Episode 2, The Darn Power Supply! As far as time goes AT and XT power supplies fit the same space when screws are concerned, problem is, my uATX motherboard enters the power supply bay on the babyAT case, again the uATX mobo its almost 3 inches too tall to fit in the baby AT form factor. Technically it fits with a standard ATX PSU, but oopsie on the P4 12V PSU connector (the forerunner of the EPS standard we use today) I could move the PSU roughly 1/4 inch up and front to clear this, but the PSU I have is 300 watt ... that is perfectly fine for a dual core pentium but its not enough for what I have in my evil brain. An SFX PSU would be ideal, but with the system upgrades I am intending pushes the power draw from about 290 watts to 430 watts, and have you checked the prices on a 450~500 watt SFX PSU lately? Its a bit much for a laugh machine. I did manage to find a 550 watt 1U server power supply for 20$ shipped, vs 100$ for a similar SFX unit. its going to be tight against the optical drive but it will fit its going to need an adapter plate, and while I regret getting photo's of making that, its just a(rusty steel) rectangle with a rectangle cut out, being a redneck system I just left the scribe lines and rust, but put a little clear coat on top so it doesn't get too nasty of course the thing is so long it sags with no support so for 1.50$ tax included I bought a construction strap to hold it up ... and I have done this in many mods including my red and black machine holding up a dvd drive in a cooler master Q300L
Hold My Beer Episode 3, The Darn Power Supply! part II I had ordered a Aptevia 500 power supply from a newegg marketplace vendor, it had a P4 connector, 2 SATA, 2 Molex. What I got was a different (but just as decent) brand power supply that was 550 watts, but had dual EPS and 2 molex connectors ... damnit I was OK buying adapters for molex to PCIe connectors for the video card, but pricing molex to sata, EPS to PCIe, EPS to P4 connectors came out to a few choices. argue with the vendor and most likely pay half the cost to return the stupid thing spend more on stupid adapters than I did for the power supply wait an eternity from various suppliers from china for adapters mod the power supply Considering I have a boat load of connectors from modular power supplies left over from almost a decade of buying them, lets go with number 4. Before I continue please be aware that power supplies are nasty critters, they plug into your wall, they have large capacitors that hold enough charge to bite, and if you screw the wiring up there could be very serious problems resulting in harm to yourself or property. Please note that this is not advice or suggested practice. I myself have worked in electronics for a while now, mainly dealing professionally with power supplies, and my messy dumping pit of a workbench has a special outlet which is GFCI protected, current limited, isolated and has a handy oh sh-t switch. This is convenient considering I like working on broken vintage computers, game systems and audio equipment. That being said its not exactly rocket science, I am simply removing wires from the output and replacing them with my own. Cracking open the power supply shows the typical hard wired powers supply output, a bucket load of wires going off to different regions, the largest being +12v and Ground. Releasing the supply from its metal shell I can isolate the wires I want to replace and simply cut them off. On the underside of the PCB I can use a (pretty beefy) soldering iron to remove the cut wires, and with a solder sucker clear the required amount of holes, there's plenty of unused holes in this arrangement after clearing out the waste. Now I can attach the wires I want to use, and it gives me a little chance to make more custom lengths on those wires. One could trust the colors used, but all the modular cables I had were all black wires, so that was a bit of a pain just using a meter to check what wire ended up on what pin for the various connectors. On the sata connectors I omitted the 3.3 volt connection as there's almost nothing that uses it and the only 3.3 volt connection was going off to the 24 pin connector and looked rather weak. Once that was done, what was already a tight fit is a now a slightly tighter fit, got the PCB screwed back down, checked both input and multiple outputs for shorts, everything appeared good. plugged it in, flipped the switch and ... Just kidding, it works fine I checked all my work on the outputs to make sure correct voltages and grounds were going to the correct points on the connector, no big deal. Now I have a power supply that fits my case (barely) and has all the connectors I want without use of adapters. And outside of the 24 pin connector its cut to custom length (though still a little long)
Hold My Beer Episode 4: MOBO? What did you call me!? In episode one I stated this baby AT case had no front or motherboard tray, while it is true I have never seen the original front to this case, I did actually have the tray. Problem is I was starting to break this case down to flat metal to fit into the recycle bin, and that tray has been gone for at least a month ... Not that it would have helped much since there are differences between AT and ATX screw locations. Needing to form a new motherboard tray, the theme of the build, and my idiot buddies at work I have been scouting out potential material. Then like magic (not really) a plywood topped pallette appeared with its runners already knocked off, and its the proper 1/2 inch material I need to fit (most of them are 3/4). bonus points was its been sitting out in the rain and has boot prints, win! I grabbed the jigsaw and harvested a nice sized chunk, I could not fit the entire thing in my car and even this chunk is way more than I need for the entire build. Once home I took some measurements and roughed out another smaller chunk that I could fit on my bandsaw, where at least I would have a chance of making a clean cut. Added a bit of finish to make it purdy Drilled out the rivets holding the bottom of the case, slotted the plywood into the opening, set home with a rubber mallet and this thing is pretty much press fit in. Add in some PCB stand off's, little redneck cable management for the SATA cables and boom, motherboard is in for real real this time. oh yea installed DVD drive and a 120 gig SSD on top of the PSU, and I will probably go back and add some construction adhesive just in case something moves, but then again it is hammered in there and trapped by 3 sides
Hold My Beer Episode 5: Hitch it up and tie er down! This episode of cringeworthy terrible idea's start with cable management. Baby AT cases have zero provisions for this, back in the day you just shoved the extra cables in a open drive bay if you had it, otherwise whatever. The good thing about having the motherboard tray made out of half inch plywood is that its very easy to add anchor points where ever suits your needs best. Next is the back IO shield, I was just going to leave it cut up metal, but its sharp and I really wanted to vertical mount a GPU. Simple enough I have enough plywood left so lets just whip out a funny little shape fits like a glo..... er um redneck build its good enough GPU up next, I need something stupid, a little trashy and age appropriate to the rest of the build, I got this box from a seller on ebay and knew I made the correct choice. The MSI stickers were beat up and they came off really easy showing just a reference card, I will replace those later on with something more fitting to the theme. Pairing up a an HD 4890 with a 2.6 Ghz pentium dual core didn't seem right so lets swap that out for a 3.3Ghz Core 2 Duo. Back to the inside of the case I route the PSU cables and mount the GPU into place using the cheapest riser cable ebay sells, now I just got to make a block to stabilize the end of the video card, hanging completely off its bracket it sags a bit and wags like a dog's tail. After that I have to figure out cooling for the CPU. But I may have left a little spoiler on how I am going to get that massive C2 Duo to run in spec.
Hold My Beer Episode 6: Block n Tackle... In this episode of "shi+ you should never do" we adapt a 8$ water block. Bought a CPU water block off aliexpress for 8$ shipped, that technically doesn't fit my socket 775 system. It will fit, just without the given backplate, but there's nothing some metric nuts can't fix. Next order is fittings, the top is made of black acetal plastic with G 1/4 (standard for water cooling) threads. The problem is that G threads or BSPP threads of this size is pretty much non standard in the real world. Added bonus is the fact that I have some left over national standard USA merican 1/4 inch NPT barbs from another project. 1/4 NPT vs 1/4 BSPP have a couple differences. One being that NPT is tapered 60 degrees from start to end, which would not be a big deal, if not for issue number 2, which is the thread pitch is close but not the same so even if you force things, its not going to fit right. In the real world a 1/4 inch parallel thread, is closest to a 1/2 inch thread machine thread, so I targeted that. Using my redneck lathe I filed the taper and most of the threads off the existing fittings Then I used a hand die to re-cut the threads on the barbed adapter once the nylon barb was re-threaded, its back off to the redneck lathe to be parted off with a hacksaw and one can clearly see the difference with a quick depth check a second part was made, non hardening thread sealant was applied and everything was assembled back together now I can start my pipe runs PS: the block was tapped 1/2 inch 13 TPI as well to match the barbed fittings
You should have gave it a sloppy kiss of RTV blue. For someone putting on a show of redneck engineering, you have a lot of Lowes stuff. Don't you know that's the fancy hardware store? I suspect you are a fraud, sir!
I will have you know that the drillpress and tap set are harbor freight! Kind of suprised you didnt mention the out for justice laser disc in the back
Hold My Beer Episode 7: Saggy Dog Wag I mentioned when I mounted the quite heavy Radeon HD 4890 that the entire weight of the card was hanging from its thin metal bracket, which caused the card to sag, and its tail to wag. That's a simple enough fix! I propped up the card using a chunk of wood and placed a segment of square stock next to it in its proper location, marked it off and cut to length Once cut to size a L notch was cut in to the end to hold the bottom and back of the card, and a hole was drilled to accept a 4-40 screw and nut Exact location of the card was again found, roughly outlined, then squared and drilled to fit a wood screw into the post, a little "aging" was applied and the 2 way support was installed
Hold My Beer Episode 8: Quarter Panel I need to fill in the hole on the front of the case, this originally held 2, 5.25 inch drives and 2 3.5 inch drives with a HDD cage and a 80 mm fan. That's fine but I need to mount some stuff in the middle of that hole. I started off with a pristine piece of hobby grade plywood and cut it to size, since my daughter was asleep I broke out the old "apartment tools" and made quick work of that but my hand hurt a little after. once that was trimmed to fit, I looked at it and its way to clean and bright and new so I will do some "aging". The Surface was hit with some super rough scotch brite stripping pads to tear the grain of the wood, and rubbed down with steel wool to embed some ... character which can't be seen yet. The surface was washed down a couple times with Ammonia, which turns wood fibers grey, and mixed in with the embedded steel dust darkens the grain. Then the surface was doused in another soaking wet application of ammonia, tossed on the garage floor and got lots of black boot prints applied to it. One even application of wood sheen, was applied, then a second application was rather poorly applied to simulate the different saturation rates of the original palette wood, and I think we have a decent match.
Hold My Beer Episode 9: Hey bubba, whats that heater core doin in there? Now that I have added some surface area to the front of the case, that used to be all drive bays, I can go ahead and mount the radiator. first order of operations is to find out where I want the thing and mark it out. For those (both of you) interested that is a 90mm radiator, why 90 when I obviously have room for a 120, maybe even a 140? Cause it was half the price, and I have what? like 10 90mm fans kicking about from that mid 2000's era when those were "HUGE"... Its a cheap laugh computer that is running 2009 era hardware, the fact I am even water cooling it on a dell motherboard that can't even overclock just makes it stupid, which amuses me. (and isn't that the point of computer modding?) Using the coping saw I opened up the hole, and using the old trick of using a fan grille to mark holes, drilled out mounting locations. Now that the rad is mounted with its fan, its one step closer to complete. I just have to wait for my pump to show up, which may be a little while since I just ordered it from aliexpress today, and its coming from china to the USA via "free shipping". Meanwhile while that happens I can collect the water cooling components, and there's still work to be dun! I need to recreate the front bezel, cut a hole for a window in the side of the case's cover, and graphics. But until episode 10, I wanted to do a little mockup to make sure things were going in the right direction, I used one of the few reservoir candidates I have on hand and some clip leads to add a little bit of LED lighting to see how things are working out. PS if things are looking a little skewed the bottom of the case is being held on by a couple strips of duct tape at the moment as I work out what I want to do down there.
I was getting so many dell/hp 92mms, I trashed a huge pile of them. I don't even want to talk about the mountain of 80s. I should have gutted the 90s for micro bearings.
