thanks for the advice SPNKR. Yea thats what i was thinking; although the black with white logo looks nice on its own it may be drowned out by the black interior of the case. White with black logo though will make it pop more. Anyway what I will do is I will start with white, as it will need an undercoat first, then install it and see if it works, if so I will keep it and then put the logo on it. Anyway this is last on my list of things, want to try and sleeve all the PSU and Sata cables first. Got my delivery of the white sleeved extenders yesterday but couldn't take pics lastnight as it was too dark and my camera is lame Will do Saturday morning though when get some light into my study. Will hopefully have the mdpc-x stuff by then as well
The white extender cables from Kustom PC. Will put these in tomorrow and access whether I should replace the black heatshrink with white, there may not be much of a noticable difference to bother doing it but we'll see tomorrow
Update 24-07-10 ok following on from my delivery of the NZXT white extender cables they are now happily installed Before: After: And some cable tidying behind the motherboard tray. I have to say there is extemely limited space behind the tray in the Define R2 (half inch), this is compounded by the bitumen on the side panel. Hopefully Fractal Design will sort this out in the R3, and I have told them about it, even bit-tech said they took customer feedback and applied it to the R3 such as the smell of the silicone gromets and bitumen. The extender connectors have to stay flat against the tray. Lack of cable tidying: A bit better cable tidying: Those red sata cables will be covered with the MDPC-X sleeving soon Oh and have to wrap them in white electrical tape first so the red doesn't show through; MDPC-Xs advice, thanks! And I will tidy them much better when that is done, as well as the Sata Power cable. And guess what happened as soon as I had finished and turned on my PC? the doorbell rings and who is it? The postman with my MDPC-X Sata sleeving gggrrr, well this will have to wait until next weekend!! Not sure why but they gave me a little blue small sleeving as well for free anyway thanks MDPC-X! Oh and the Sata power connectors; through-caps and end-caps. Anyway please help me with this I need some advice!! And finally sorry for the poor pictures my camera is very old and lame, like over 5 years old, flash is broken and everything will get another soon, hopefully by the end of this project to take some good ones!
Advice? Hi Guys, well still waiting to do my sleeving of the SATA data cables this saturday. Tomorrow my white electrical tape is being delivered for this. Couldn't get any in local stores, all out! I had to settle for 19mm as well which will be a bit annoying to work with. Anyway I need some advice, just looking at my SATA power cable recently as I want to remake this. Check out the connector which plugs into the Cooler Master M1000 PSU. It is completly different from other connectors I have seen. Can anyone offer any advice on this? Has anyone removed this type of connector before? And what type of pins are these? There definately not the standard Molex pins hhhhmmmmm If I can't sort out this connector then I don't know what to do with this?? I may write to Cooler Master to find out about this if no one has any info in this Also something crossed my mind which I should have thought about before! Temps!! My CPU is overclocked and in my old CM Stacker the case was very open with mesh on both sides, top, bottom and front, so lots of air coming in! The Define R2 has almost no ventilation!! I checked my Temps and my CPU as hitting 80c at full load in Prime 95 aaahhhh. I have decided to replace the Fractal Design fans at the front and back as they only shift 39cfm. I will replace with Sharkoon Silent Eagle (golfball) fans as they shift 50+cfm and still have the black and white theme. I may also add two additional fans at the top but there is not much space above the Fenrir so don't know if they will fit, if not I will have to go with Slim 120mm fans by Scythe, but they are all black
The Bit-Tech review did note the problem; After something of an outcry they conducted a re-test with more fans installed and garnered much better results. If you're going to struggle to fit 25mm-depth 120mms in there, try thinner fans? Scythe's Slip Stream Slim is just 12mm thick. [EDIT]Sorry, I didn't notice you'd already seen those. You could probably pop them apart and paint them if you really wanted (I wouldn't), but seeing as they're crammed right up in the top of the case I don't think they'll be exactly glaringly obvious anyway.[/EDIT]
Thanks pureSilver. I didn't realise that Bit-Tech did a re-test, i never saw that!! Anyway I choose the Sharkoon Silent Eagles because they had the white fans and the golfball texture which I know reduces wind resistance and hence noise, and their rated CFM is much better than the Fractal fans. So that settles it then, Sharkoon Silent Eagles it is!! Lets see how much they can brink my system temp down! I will replace the existing Fractal fans, see what the difference in temp is, and then add the two extra top fans with the Silent Eagles, if the don't fit then I will go with the scythe. But definately put an extra Silent Eagle at the bottom of the case. Not on the side panel though don't like the sound of that considering how much I take off the panel will always have to disconnect the fan, call me lazy
update 31/07/10 Ok guys, managed to sleeve a couple of sata cables today with Nils lovely sleeving. I was going to sleeve 3 of them but I realsied that one of them was less wide than the other two so wouldn't have filled the sleeving nicely. Will do that one and the eSata cable from the front panel next week, anyway on to the pics. The stuff ready: Taping up: Almost done one, this takes a little time: Ok both done: OK sleeving time, try and cut the sleeving as close as poss: After a few trims: Ready to Heatshrink: Heatshrink done (wasn't happy with this one, not enough heatshrink covering the sleeving): This connector was annowing to get the sleeving over: Both sata cables done for my HDDs: OK some glory shots, I love MDPC-X sleeving it almost makes me cry with joy ;') You might be able to tell with this one that I didn't tape one sata cable as densely as the first one, there is a stripey effect showing through the sleeving. OK so obviously after taping up the cables and sleeving them, they become much more ridgid and tough. So it takes a little bit of work to bend them in the right position. This is where I would have liked to measure and cut and re-crimp the sata cables, but it seemed too much trouble to get hold of sata data connectors. Anyway this is them inside the case. You see the bundle of black cables? Those are the front header cables, they will be sleeved and tidied properly soon. From the front you bearly notice them: OK.....so the plan for next week, I get paid so will be ordering the Sharkoon fans. I will order 3 to replace the two Fractal fans in the front and 1 in the rear. I have 3 because Fractal gave me a free one due to having to replace the eSata cable from the front header with another cable they provided in the box. I will keep one Fractal fan to go at the bottom of the case. The other two I will sell so if your interested they will be on ebay next weekend. Also I didn't sell my 3xZaward golfball fans yet, they are transparent, have blue LEDs and white sleeving, so if your interested those will also be up next weekend. I was going to add some fans to the top of the case, but look at this image, the Titan Fenrir leaved no space at the top for even the Scythe slim fans to fit there. Just enough room for the 8pin CPU cable!! SSooo hopefully the Sharkoon fans will add enough extra airflow to keep my CPU load temp below 65c. I will also be ordering a molex remover and some min-fit pins, plus some small white sleeving and heatshrink from MDPC-X, this will be to create my new Sata power cable and sleeve the front header cables plus the Sharkoon fan cables in white. I may also order a white sleeving pack to do the ATX, 4pin, 2x6pin and 8pin cables from the PSU. Finally, here is the white Hammerite spay paint that I will use to do the top of the Fenrir, this is last on the list though, want to get all the sleeving out the way first.
It seems you hit a simple snag with the sleeving. When you expand it over the cable it always shortens. You need to make the sleeve a bit longer than what you need.
yea thats what i did, then spent time trimming it bit by bit, anyway i trimmed one too short and the others aren't perfect, but i'm happy with it first time sleeving anything bigger than a fan cable UPDATE: Just wanted to add an update without bumbing the thread. I tested the Hammerite spray on some aluminum and I didn't like the finish. I wanted to test this "Hammered" finish to see the difference between matte and gloss. It has a kind of dimpled effect but is still a bit glossy, it doesn't look very neat though. So I will order the "smooth" finish sometime soon and hopefully that is more of a glossy finish. To do the logo I want to look for a matte black but Hammerite don't have matte so have to look elsewhere. Will add an image of the "Hammered" finish later so you know what it looks like incase your pondering to use this paint. UPDATE 2: Also Saturday night I sleeved the eSata cable coming from the front header panel. I was trying to remove the Sata cable from the front panel (it is a 90 degree connector) but this was impossible it was very well secured to the front panel input. I can remove the USB and HD audio cables but this one wouldn't budge. Anyway I didn't sleeve the whole cable just the visible part and secured the end of the sleeving with a cable tie and of course the visible part with heatshrink.
update 07/08/10 Hey Guys another update. Not sure how many of you are watching this thread, but anyway Got 2x Sharkoon 120mm SE modular fans, I got these ones because there are 1200rpm as opposed to the 1000rpm ones. What I will do is stress my CPU for 1 hour using my current Fractal Fans and get the temps, then install these and stress for another hour, probably leaving the computer off for 1 hour inbetween to allow all components to go back to room temperature. Then I will post the results later tonight. Got some more sleeving, a pin extractor and pins from MDPC-X. I got these pins so I could create my own Sata Power cable. If you have been following this thread you will know that my PSU is a Cooler Master M1000 and I had posted a pic of the Sata Power connector that goes into the PSU which is different from regular connectors. Someone suggested that these are mini-fit jr pins. Anyway I ordered pins from MDPC-X which should be compatible with ATX, PCI-E, and Sata Power. BUT LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!!??!?! the one from the connector has an arched top while the one from MDPC-X is square. Can someone help me identifity this pin or at least tell me if the MDPC-X pin will still work? Sorry for the bad quality pic!!! On that note, I have ordered a new digital camera, just a point and shoot but much better anyway. It is a Canon Ixus 105 so should be posting much better quality pics in the future, much apologies for previous pictures
This is -awesome- man I'm definetly following this, especially given that I'm going to be getting my NXZT extender cables (in black!) for my system once I get my case back from it's powdercoating
cool, what colour are you powder coating?? and what is your colour theme, do you have a thread on this, would like to see
Temp update Since I replaced the rear and one front fan (top) with my two new Sharkoon fans my temps have gone down almost 10c. Temp Before Core 0 Load: 0% Low: 50c High: 52c Load: 100% Low: 50c High: 86c!!! Temp After Core 0 Load: 0% Low: 44c High: 46c Load: 100% Low: 44c High: 75c Well as you can see the high temp is much better, still not great, but better. I'm still not happy with the temp so I will probably order another Sharkoon for the front intake (lower). Although I posted a pick of the space between the CPU cooler and the top fan mounts before stating that there is no space, I still am going to try squeeze a couple of fans in here. I will try with the new Sharkoon that I order BUT in order to get it in there to see if it fits I have to take out the CPU cooler first, fit it, and then put the CPU cooler back to see if it has any obstruction. If it fits then great and I will put two up there. If it doesn't fit I will order a slim Skythe and test that. As for the other stuff I was doing yesterday; I sleeved some front header cables: the Power/LED cables and the USB header cable (I will post the pics next week as I am getting a new camera). All that is left on the front header is the HD Audio cable which I am waiting for MDPC-X to get pins and crimper for this in October so I can take off the attached AC97 connector and just keep and sleeve the HD Audio connector and cable. Why do they still include the AC97 connector hardwired to the HD Audio connector?? makes it look so ugly!! Anyway will sort this out last probably. The plan next week is to test paint some aluminium in preparation for painting the CPU cooler. Have some "Smooth" white and black spray paint on the way. Also I have to order a MDPC-X crimper as the one I have from PPC is lame and doesn't crimp cables well. Once I get this I will do some test crimps to see if the Pins I got from MDPC-X are compatible with my PSU (see previous post for difference in pins). Finally lastnight I was attempting more cable tidying. As taping up black cables with white PVC tape and then sleeving them with white sleeve makes cables much more ridged it is much harder to cable tidy. If I wanted to do "no comprimise" cable tidying behind the motherboard tray, the only option is to use cables at the exact length I need. This means of course creating my own extenders at the exact length I need, and also finding out how to crimp normal Sata Data cables. This is definately another plan in the works, I am a bit of a perfectionist like most people on here, but unfortunately this will take time to make beautifully routed cables, but eventually it will work!!
I haven't got a thread as of yet, thinking of starting one once I get my case back but we'll see My theme is red and black (oooo, cliche) but hey, not bothered!
Looks good. Question though; aren't the CPU cooler mounting holes in a square pattern on Intel boards? Could you rotate the Fenrir by 90 degrees, or would that not work? If you could, it would bring it into "AMD orientation", with the air blowing up and out of the top of the case, where there is plenty of room for a couple of fans.
Yea I did think about that, but the width of the Fenrir might clash with the RAM. I will have to test to see if there is space for the RAM, unfortunately they have extended heatspreaders making them taller than the base of the Fenrir. Also I could move the RAM one socket to the right which could give enough space but aparently (according to the mobo manual) they should be installed in these sockets to make use of dual channel
sorry guys for no updates this week and this weekend will be pretty uneventful apart from the fact that I have a new camera and will post some nice pics hopefully I will be showing the sleeving that I done last week of the front header panels, the test spraying that I have done and will also do a logo test spray for the heatsink. Just found out that the Define R3 has been released and I am desperate to find out if it is better, these are the improvements that I would have made to the Define R3, and if they are not included I think I will be dissappointed. 1) Extra space between mobo tray and side panel 2) Extra space for roof fans 3) Using a normal Sata connector instead of a right-angle connector on the front panel 4) Firmly attaching silicon gromets to cable routing holes in mobo tray 5) Easily removable front fan filters (which I think they have done) 6) Creating the front door out of metal and not plastic as it feels too flimbsy 7) Create a front door swapping system so that you can change the way the door opens 8) Use white sleeving and/or connectors for the front panel cables 9) Improved side panel latching mechanism Thats all I can think of for now, hopefully the R3 address these, but I doubt it
I knew those Skarkoon fans would work on there butb I was a wuss to try it out. Thanks and I will be ordering a couple as my theme in my case will be black and white perfect
Am really injoying readin the this thread. I also noticed the R3 has launched. Hopefully a BT review soon. How quiet are you finding the case with all the extra fans?
oh thanks! uumm well I don't have that many extra fans, I replaced 2 of the fractal fans, the rear and one front. Still have one fractal fan (lower front). But what I found amazing was the difference the Sharkoon fans made with no extra noise!! Unfortunately I am getting a but of noise from my PSU fan I'm not sure what the problem is, but when I startup it makes some noise which dies off after about 10 mins, sounds like the fan blades are hitting a cable. I think I will replace the fan in the PSU with a Sharkoon as well. Anyway the plan is to clean and re-sleeve the PSU so will replace the fan once this is done. I am also thinking of re-painting the PSU with a matte black as opposed to it's current gloss. Anyway I am going to go picture crazy tomorrow so hopefully will have some good shots. However tomorrow in UK its supposed to be raining again so there will be no nice natural light, Sunday seems like it might be better. I was going to do some test painting this weekend too but if it is raining all weekend, what can you do??
