Project: FrozenFire (MORE!! Watercooling changes Sep 8 05)

in one word:
WOW

 

Firehed, had a crack at a logo for you. Let me know what you think. PM me if you like it and I can let you have it at required res etc. Even if you don't want it for the project it makes a cool desktop.

 

Mr. Hed, your pot is in. Just give me an adress to ship it to. At minimum voltage boost, i got rather nice results. 375, Stable, stock sink (fell off once already, leaving the nf4 chipset black and bubbly yet working perfectly)

 

"Mr. Hed" lol Actually that whole sentence is kinda funny out of context. I'll shoot you a PM.

You must have just boiled the plastic shroud thing... I killed one with a half-mounted chipset block. Remember how I said at some point (I think I did anyways) that this was my second mobo? Or at least note my sig? That's where my constant warnings about making sure the chipset block is either cut to fit or using the ATI mounting screen come from And that was cooling it moderately well, it just went all nuts in 3d mode (kinda odd black hole effect) and wierd in 2d (discoloration). Dunno maybe I killed the graphics card instead, but I ended up with an extra 8 SATA cables

Not 375x9 I'm sure... I could see x8 or x7 but almost 3400mhz seems a lot for an A64 regardless of cooling. Should kick my 285x9 out of the water though. I'm hoping for 300x9 or so, if I can do 306 then I'm at 2754mhz and my ram will be 250mhz 5:4 (actually it's technically CPU/11, but roughly 5:4) and it's rated to pc4000 so I'll be quite happy. Especially seeing that I'd be over FX55 clocks and making up for the cache in the difference, more or less.

/edit

Oh yeah, thought I'd do a quick text update. I've been rather busy the last week so I haven't done much with the case. I took my AP Calculus exam last Tues and my SATs on Saturday, and then Mother's Day on Sunday of course. I did finally manage to tweak out the white balance on my camera and get a pic of the tubing lit up that's fairly close to what it really is (they were over-blue).

Tip: for UV night-shots (at least on my cam), set white balance manually on a plain piece of paper in the same lighting that you'll be taking the pic. For me, that's setting it to the "P" mode, going to function and then finding the right menu for lighting. Set to manual white balance, aim at paper, and hit the set button and it'll re-set it to a much better effect. Of course it's different on all cams, but thought I'd share the tip.

Anyways, I'll probably try and work on the wiring more this week. It's something I really want a lot better than it is, but haven't had the time since my laptop sucks too much to use it for long periods of time and I needed this running.

 

Wire management

Finally got around to doing some more work. Not a huge amount, but the internals seem to be looking significantly better.

Removed all of the front drives. Sliced up the Audigy2 Drive cable so I could work with it a bit easier.


Mounted the Audigy2 cable to the top of the case. Where'd it go!?


Ah, there it is. I just used one of those sticky-backed plastic ziptie holder things to keep it in place. I also used a few zipties down the cable to keep it neat-ish.


The excess just got stuffed over the drive.


Re-mounted everything in a different order. This way looks a bit nicer imo, although I've never loved having the two opticals right over each other.


The guts with the wiring cleaned up a bit. I folded the cable between the two DVDRW drives between them, and ran it behind the mobo tray again. I also have the EATX and PCI-E power cables going through the center hole again.


Even the bottom area seems to be looking a bit nicer. That's probably because of the way I mounted the SATA cables in the back part of the case behind the 5.25" area.


On but with a flash. Cabling is fairly clean now. That tubing seperator thing won't stay, it's just there till I cut the tubes to a better length.


More of the bottom. I don't really have it in a picture, but I changed the screws that mount on the bottom wheels to button-head ones like are in many other places. I also switched the front and back feet so the brake is in the front.


I'm thinking of chopping up some 80mm Fire fan grills to fit there, of course on both fans. Not sure if I'm going to as of yet. Please, no comments on the dusty PSU!


http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y66/Firehed/IMG_1392.jpg
That's the back of the mobo side, forgot to resize it so it's 1600x1200. I've changed it a bit since that was taken, but that's at least the general idea. The SATA wires are neater now but in the same area. It'll get cleaned up more, but just wanted to be able to give you an idea of some wire management secrets That's one of the problem with using 1-meter SATA cables... hard to deal with for cable management, but anything much shorter wouldn't have worked.

/edit

Is it just me or are most of the pics showing up at 650xsomething? They ARE 800x600 so maybe Firefox is just screwing with my head somehow. Or maybe it has something to do with the upgrade of Bit.

 

Looking good Firehed - I like what you did with the Audigy. You might want to think about doing something to the front panel of it? The plastic isn't really in keeping with the rest of your lush machine. Perhaps you could get to work with a dremel on a ali. bay cover to create a new facia?

Just out of interest - ithink you know why I ask - what kind of temps are getting?

 

the are indeed 650 by 487

 

ok I'm officially blaming Bit's new design or photobucket. They definately loaded at 800x600 for me, then very quickly shrunk down. I noticed I can click on them and have them spawn full-size in a new window. I don't see any photobucket setting and it never used to do that, so I'm more or less ruling that out.

Temps are somewhere around 45c load CPU (285x9 1.6v), about 48c load GPUs. And indeed, I'm just using the stock thermal paste on the GPUs. That may go down a tiny bit once I get my CSP-MAGs installed (one's here, one's on order, you can see where that one I have will be mounted in one of the pics, much better location IMO, the 750's wouldn't fit there since they're about 3mm thicker and a right-angle fitting just wouldn't have fit)

I've got a couple of things that could work for the Audigy. I tried to fabricate a new faceplate for it a long time ago with a spare drive bay cover but it didn't really work at all, and there's no good way to attach it anyways. I'm trying to figure out a good way to have it normally totally stealthed and then push a corner (or something like that) and the stealthing plate would drop down and reveal the ports. I honestly don't use them often enough that it would make a whole load of difference, and as I don't yet have the z5500's that I want (which can make use of the digital connections on the front) it doesn't matter at this point. I may try again with a blank bay cover. A possible issue with that is that I can't think of a good way to have a hole for the remote sensor and have it look decent.

 

how about making a flip down front out of tinted acrylic?? would look quite good imo.

i like the audigy 2, but i dont really need it, as having it all on the front kinda makes the front look messy, as the sound system i want uses digital/coaxial!

the case is looking great man, keep up the good work

 

That's a very interesting idea. However the smoked acrylic I'm using is pretty light, and in most lighting is extremely transparent. I've got some other places I'll be using it, but I think I wanna keep the front consisting of only brushed aluminum for consistancy.

 

How about this, would be quite easy to make (ive done it before) is use an old lian-li (i used plain alu 1mm thick) and make the flipdown out of alu, and for the IR area cutout a small hole and throw some DARK tinted acrylic (you could use tint spray on clear acrylic) i think it would look schweet if done properly

im currently trying to find ways i can hide drives in my new U2-UFO as there is no drive bay door or drive covers as standard, so i may be making my own door for it or stealthers

 

Could work, I'll need to look into getting tint spray. Regardless I know it's definately one of the weaker areas at this point so it will see some sort of treatment before this mod is finished. Maybe I'll try and fix up the old one I made (still have it) and find a way to attach it, and if it's not in good enough shape then just try and make another. After a v2000b and a PC6077 I've got quite a few spare drive blanks.

 

good man

i think that is the only let down in your mod at the moment!

if you fix that this mod will be that bit extra

 

Meh dammit, went to check the movie listings in another tab and firefox crashed retyping time..

The wiring should really be promising once it's all done too. If you noticed, I finally put all the 5 hard drives on one sata chain (before two were on normal molexes), and getting the spacing right on that is REALLY hard since it's gotta be pretty accurate and it's near-impossible to both measure and keep the wires in the right place when pressing them into the right-angle plug. I probably won't do any sort of sleeving on that line since it's really difficult to deal with, just make sure it's well-hidden. Unless I can find some sleeving big enough to slip over the molexes and not look stupidly big (need to check my sleeving arsenal).

Anyways, I'll be right-angling the wires to the optical drives and other stuff at some point too. I wanna make sure the locations are final, but I also need to figure out a good way to deal with the Audigy drive as it uses a floppy for power and I dont' have the right pins to crimp one and I'm not sure if I have an adaptor anywhere. I'm also not sure whether or not I wanna pre-emptively add in another molex into the line where I think I may put an Aquaero display at some point if I get one.

I also now need to figure out what I did to the internal USB cable for my card reader... somehow it's just being stupid. I've had it act up on me before but can't figure it out this time. Luckily the external cable works fine, so if I can't fix the existing one (which if I can't, I can remake as I DO have the right pins for doing that I think, although not the wires) I'll need to find a clever way to route it. That's a matter for another time right now though.

With some luck I can get the molex line done up tomorrow. I was thinking of using an XLR-type plug to bring it up from the bottom, but that will probably be too bulky.

 

in my u2-ufo im planning on making it nearly 100% modular, all fans will be on phono plugs to make it easier to remove/change them and what not, and all lighting will be on phono plugs, with diff voltages etc etc

my sata/ide drives will all be 90 deg molex/sata plugs as they look cool i like XLR plugs but they just look to bulky! id prefer making modular molex with a female molex at the bottom of the case.

take care and mod on

 

ohh yeah, and the fire fan grills... i dont think they look right, then again i dont have any fan grills... ever

 

Well, I quickly made the right-angle cable. I just ran it down the same little cutout thing that the SATA data cables are going through, so it's pretty neat. It's probably three or four feet long - long enough to run down the entire length and width of the case so it can be hidden very well (not to mention sleeved black). As of yet the two inches between the drives is just plain wire, not quite sure the best way to deal with that as it's really too short to sleeve. I did the Audigy by simply making a molex->floppy adaptor about an inch long, seems to work fine. Left out the "extra" molex as it would be easy enough to fit in as needed and I don't really know where I'd need it anyways. Pics later, it's midnight and I don't feel like doing any formatting.

Also thanks for the feedback on the fan grills. I wanna see what other people say first, but I may leave them out. However I kinda feel like that area needs something shiny, it's pretty bland at the moment, save the CF vinyl on the PSU.

 

Still keeping it looking amazing. Loving all the cable management, this is continuing to impress me

 

Very clean Mr. Firehed. Yes, Bit-tech's resizing our photo's to 650x480.
Is there a third pump in this picture?
I have to agree. The Audigy's breakout box looks out of place. You will come up with something, I am sure of that..

 

double post, see next page pls