New Project time, My step son has started to take an interest in PC's, He spends a lot of time on his consoles and saw me playing BF4 on Mini Moto Mayhem. He couldn't believe how much better the graphics and audio are. I'd been thinking about doing him a PC and after a chat with my Partner we decided that as Mini Moto Mayhem was in constant use playing BF4, D33P THOUGHT was pretty much redundant. With a lot of componants not in use, just seems like a lot of money sat doing nothing. So D33P THOUGHT will be torn down to supply parts for his PC. (No whining please) After a clear out of the attic I has three cases that will be giving up their bits to make one, Hence the name BITZA (bits and pieces) Here's the donors : A ThermalTake Armor A30, An old ThermalTake Kandalf, the Corsair Carbide 300R probably won't be used. After some playing about I settled on orientation and some of the bits I'll be using ...The layout will be something like this : I just need to knit it all together, but this layout will give me plenty of room for the PSU, Cooling stuff and hidden areas to hide all the fugly. The colour will change and hopefully bring it all together looking pretty sweet. Here's that front radiator from the Kandalf It should clean up pretty well, it's going to need some cleaning though. After taking it to bits there's quite a fair bit of dust build up. The other side looks pretty ... I like this view so will swap over the brackets and have this side in view With the rad looking this good, I will be removing the mesh but had to remove the ThermalTake logo first. With the logo removed the mesh just slides out The brackets have been swapped over and the surround still fits as it was designed to do, the oval shape frames the grills quite nicely and final a few more shots of what I have in mind. So join me with this build as I beat this project into submission
Revised plan Getting all that to tie together would be a bit of a nightmare, so I've decided to use the Corsair Carbide 300 to house everything. It will save lots of fabrication and I can concentrate my efforts on the inside. So here's the case Not much of a looker is it ... but one thing it does have going for it is that it's very plain and simple and once all the internal drive bay slots were removed, there is plenty of usable space. I've decided to put in an angled mid-plate, this will extend across the entire case, Graphics cards and the reservoir will be mounted onto the mid-plate. The mid-plate goes right up to the mother board and will hide all the pcie slots, the atx connector will be boxed in as will the I/O section. The idea is to hide all the cables. I've mocked it up with cardboard to give me some idea of what it will look like, the cardboard will be used for templates
Hi Crappy I don't actually know what the rad is ??? it was fitted to the Kandalf case ... I like it. The build is basically using stuff I have lying around the house, I'm trying to get a gaming rig together for my step son, it's his first PC ... I'd like to give him the very best of what's available but realistically he could lose interest, He's autistic but does have a big interest in gaming and it's pretty much the only way he socialises. If he gets into it then I'll do him an all singing all dancing build but for now .... y'know
I was worried there for a second you were going to create some kind of Frankenstein O_0 But you revised the plan Good luck on your build. If it has 1% of the awesomeness of the previous project this will turn out fine
Yeah that was my thoughts exactly, The first ideas were me and my step son taking bits from cases and throwing them together .... looking back at the photo's it's pretty horrific ... but a good exercise, gets him thinking and gives me an idea of what he wants. This is a bit of a departure from the scratch builds I've done, My first case mod log kids are brutally honest and he's going to be very picky, if there's something he doesn't like (even the smallest thing) he will just abandon it (that's the autism side of things) ... so no pressure
Once it's up and running you should introduce him to minecraft. It's supposed to be great for autistic kids, building their own world and making whatever their imagination can come up with.
S'ry for the late reply, been a bit under the weather for the past few weeks... He does play mine craft on one of his consoles ... I've been winding him up and been showing him DOTA2, he's hooked but pissed that he hasn't got a PC to play it on But having said that DOTA2 has given us both some inspiration on the theme of the build and what I'm going to do with the paint scheme.
UPDATE 07/03/14 SHEET METAL WORK I've made my own sheet metal bender (brake) Nothing too fancy ... a few bits of angle iron, a couple of hinges and something to clamp the job with .... simples here it is doing it's thang .. and here's a bit of bent metal .. amazing ehh (yawn) So with all my bit's of metal cut out and bent a bit here's how it's looking It is looking really tidy and will do what I set out to do and hide all the cables and connections ... but it has left me will a dilemma. Do I go the whole hog and hide the graphics cards under the mid plate ? I'm very tempted as it will make it look super clean and save me a whole bunch of work.
I'd love to see a gpu. The case just looks like it's missing something integral without a 'card. Subbed, of course.
I'd have to go with egami on that one. But, why not both? If it's getting watercooled, just a simple window for the block. if it's not, i see it's a rear exhaust card, so you could have a hole in the plate for entrance into the fan and a duct running to it?
Nah man, use a x16 pci-E risers and lay the gfx card flat onto the angled metal plate with the waterblock pointing towards the window. It will look wicked.
I like the look, but as you say it is missing something, but I don't think a big slab of graphics card is the answer, I'm thinking of the reservoir running horizontally across the mid-plate. It's Watercooled card, the one I started with is a really old one that I checked in to get a feel for fit. Thanks man, I hope he looks after it, but hey at least it gives me something to mess about with and gets a project out there I see what you mean, Something pretty like what L3p done ? .. it's an option but I'm going to mount the GPU under the plate out of sight but in the same way you described I'll run a res across that angled plate
Reservoir sounds brilliant, actually. Now all you need is some of that Aurora 2 and you should have certain someone endlessly fascinated by the coolant patterns visible through the res.
I'm soo all over that ... I do have a fair amount of Mayhems fluids that Mick sent through ... including some Aurora2 ... yup it does look like that ... don't tell anyone Andy but between you and me it's not finished yet