So, I have been lurking for the past couple of weeks and have seen some amazing mods, and found some confirmations on things that I would like to do wit my next rig. So I would like to first thank Captain Slug for both of his wonderful build logs the Mk.V and the Metal Slug. It was the Mk.V that showed me that custom computer cables were doable. I have been building computers professionally all of my life and a few things have always bothered me and at the top of that list was cable management. So as I am in the planning stages of this new build I have decided to post here to get my ideas out and get some feedback. This build is being centered around the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D, I have been looking at cases for the past month with very specific requirements in mind and while I liked the Zalman GS1000 Plus to an extent, I have completely fell in love with the Corsair Obsidian. There are a few things that I would like to change about the case and though they are not seriously massive mods I hope to be able to do some more artistic things with it in the future. My only failing is that I don't have the artistic and manufacturing abilities of some of the wonderful people out there that have made such amazing mods. The biggest thing I would like to change about this case is to reclaim the top 5.25" drive bay. I love that this case has that little flip down door that hides the USB/Firewire/Audio Ports its a great feature for most people who don't fill the front of there case with tons of gadgets but in this case its not only going to be redundant, but in the way. I am hoping that there is someone out there that has this case that could tell me weather or not this portion and the the power button next to it could potentially be removable. After removing the button and the i/o panel I plan on drilling the front of the case and adding the following: Delrin Vandal Resistant Illuminated Switch Black - 22mm Blue Ring - to Replace the Power Switch and either a Delrin Vandal Resistant Illuminated Switch - 16mm White Dot or the White Ring - as a reset switch I will also be adding a hard drive activity light to match these switches. I may switch the reset to a blue, I am not sure. The build will be Blue/Silver/Black themed and will consist of completely custom power cables (thanks to the inspiration again of Captain Slug) this is to match the motherboard that I have chosen. I have found silver jacketed wire from mouser.com, which is the only place that I can find it. I will be using a NZXT SEN-001LX Sentry Fan Dual Bay Fan Controller and would like to place that in the top two slots (the top being the reclaimed one) partially because this unit is short on the top and mounts on the bottom so I shouldn't have to worry about any mounting holes that may not exist in that top slot due to it not originally being a usable slot. Below the fan control will be the nMEDIAPC ZE-C128 Black Aluminum All-in-One Card Reader which sports not only the USB/Firewire/Audio jacks which I plan to remove but also a SATA port. The nice thing about this build is that most of the 5.25" devices I have selected are black aluminum which will match the case, unfortunately I cannot find replacement bezels for the Pioneer BDC-202 and BDR-205 BluRay Reader and Writer that will continue that trend. I have not decided if i should install a single height reservoir into the last 5.25" slot for the WC system I have seen a few that would look very nice. But that said I am open to suggestions on what I could use to fill that last slot. As for the internal equipment the current plan is as follows: 1 - MSI 790FX-GD70 Motherboard 1 - AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz Processor 2 - OCZ AMD Black Edition 4GB DDR3 1600 Memory kits (total ram 8gb) 2 - Sapphire HD 5870 Video Cards 4 - Samsung F1 RAID class 1TB Hard Drives (either RIAD 5 or 1+0) 1 - VelociRaptor 150 or 300GB Hard Drive (for Operating System) 1 - Ultra X4 1050w Modular Power Supply (With custom built power cables) The plan with the cables is to get Black, Blue, and Silver Wires and crimp down gold plated molex pins by A.C Ryan, and use blue housings. I will then wrap all the cables with similarly matching Blue sleeves and shrink wrap the sleeves with black shrink wrap. This may seem silly but I want the little bit of cable that is seen between the shrink wrap and connector to match the color scheme. I will most likely be using 100% Koolance water cooling products to cool the Video, chip, ram, northbridge, southbridge, and mosfet/drmos sections of the board. This will include a 3 fan radiator at the top of the case. I may also have to add a single radiator at the back of the case. The pump will be at the bottom of the case, possibly with the reservoir. I would like to get some input on the hardware choices as well as if I should go with a secondary audio card (Creative Labs XFi for instance) The primary use of this system will to game on as well as do other typical household computer stuff with. I will be driving 3 22" widescreen monitors for that wrap around gaming feel. I would also like to know if anyone else has done some serious modification to one of these cases and if so I would mind seeing some pictures. I had originally wanted to do a Yellow, Green, Black Scheme but the motherboard precluded me from doing this. Also I would like to thank everyone in advance for reading this wall of text, and look forward to your comments.
If you want the bluray drives to match why not just take the bezels off, spray them and reattach them? If you want an extra sound card look at the Asus Xonar series, they're brilliant for audiophiles so if you want a 5.1 surround sound system or a pair of good headphones they'll make the world of difference. If you're hellbent on getting the 5870 in xfire then fair enough but you'd probably be better getting a single 5970 and overclocking it a bit, there's more of them around and the chip should be able to be overclocked to dual 5870 speeds. especially if you're using WC As for the hard drives, get the Samsung F3's, they're surprisingly faster than F1s, and the Velociraptors are really outdated now, so look into SSDs (I'm not too read up on them, sorry) It also might be worth looking at i7 setups, if you get a few more posts going there are a couple of i7 boards going on the for sale forums pretty cheap at the moment, and tend to outperform the Phenom chips Hope this helps Sean
Thanks bigsharn, Actually the problem is they are plastic and I want them to be aluminum, it seems to be the one thing that lanli worked out with there universal covers and stick on covers that are unit specific. It seems I will most likely be doing some sort of stealth mod to the DVD's Apparently the case blanks are thin aluminum panels that are glued somehow to the case blank itself so hopefully there will be some way to make that work. As for the video cards, I just realized that they came out with the 5970's I may just end up crossfiring a pair of those but I am as of yet unsure. I have looked at the Xonar series it seems that it is very popular, I have always wondered what happens with the audio when its pumped threw the hdmi ports, it seems that the video card uses its own processor when outputting audio threw HDMI, is this a correct assessment, or would it utilize the Xonar? The reason I ask is because there will be an occasion were i will get the kick to connect the unit up to my Projector and 7.1 surround system. I will have to go and find out more about the F3's I did not see them when I was searching, one of the other things I liked about those particular hard drives was the seven year warranty on them. So I will definitely look into that. As for the Velocorapter's they are fairly new and are very competitive to solid state drives and are typically larger. you can read about it here on toms hardware site. As for the core i7 issue. Personally, I use 100% AMD and I have been using AMD ever since there Pentium 75 replacement chip. For some reason I am very brand loyal and was kinda pleased that my favorite video card company was purchased by my favorite chip manufacturer. Either way I avoid Nvidia and Intel at all costs, the funny thing was I was actually thinking of getting a low end Nvidia card originally so that I could use it as a dedicated Physix processor but ever since they gimped the drivers I am not giving them a dime. I know that I can by pass it but, if my money isn't good enough for them they cant have it. Sometimes my brand loyalty seems like a fault, but ... I make do I guess. One of the other things that I am excited for is the AMD overclocking utility that will work with my Motherboard/Memory/Chip combination that will allow me to download known stable overclocks for that combination.
I just looked up the F3 and looking at them side by side they have the same stats across the board, though the F3 is about 60 dollars cheaper. The only difference stated on the newegg site stated is that the F1 is RAID optimized, and also has a seven year warranty vs. the F3's three year warranty. Also acording to samsungs website the F3 has a Max Data Transfer Rate (Media to/from Buffer) of 250 MB/sec vs. 175 MB/sec on the F1. Do you have another site I could look at that would show me different access times?
I was thinking more along the lines of get one 5970 to replace the two 5870s (it's cheaper in the long run, especially after getting the aftermarket/WC coolers) As for the Velociraptors that article was published 04/21/2008, and the SSDs are smaller but they're a hell of a lot faster, a 60Gb one would store Windows 7 on it with ease, and as budget doesn't seem to be a factor for you, you can easily afford another one as a scratch disk for the Spinpoints The only site to compare the F1s to the F3s are here on bit-tech, I'm sure they've done reviews of the two
