Right, back with another one. So for this one it's not about spending money. I want to build a very small LAN rig I can take on holiday with me and hook up for our LAN night. As such it doesn't need to be terribly powerful either. All of the work here will be on the case, not the internals. I will probably change the cables to orange and white, we will see. Many years ago (like, 10) I built my first ITX rig. For nothing more than the fact I was bored. It was a silly idea, as I had all of my cash tied up in the big PC, but I did it any way. Well this PC ended up going to my aunt sans the Titan Black which I sold to Sam (Jinq). Since then she has daily driven it. It looked like this when I gave it to her. And this inside. Only with a Quadro in there the same as a GTX 480. I am now getting it back. The board in there is one of these. So I shamelessly stole @Arboreal 's idea and called it Orange Crush. The RAM in there is faulty and has to be underclocked, and besides it is only 4gb dual channel. So two 2gb sticks. Not good enough. Thankfully my mate sent me some 1866 DDR3 down last year (Vengeance) and it is 16gb, more than good enough. The CPU in it is also poo, a Pentium anniversary edition. So that is coming out, and. It will also get a 980Ti I got from Tree also, with a 1080Ti cooler on (FE). Again, more than enough. The case has already been quite extensively modded. I know I know, I cut the fan wire hole in the wrong side. It has a plastic cover on I made, so I will paint that. Talking of paint. That will be 99% of the work here. I am going to go mental, with a full blown custom paint finish that will require lots of stages. I am going to remove the Mayhem fan grille on the side that did not go to original plan, and put that on the fans at the bottom. This will stop me getting smashed in the fingers by fan blades when I move the rig around, something I remember being really annoying. That will leave a gaping hole in the side, and so. The 240 Radguard is what I have in mind. It is lovely polished silver anno. So to match that I got a handle. I went with 9" (that is what she said) in brushed stainless. The look I am going for? think 1950s cooler. Paint scheme is in my head, but I CBA drawing it so you will just have to bear with me.
Yep, Gigabyte Phoenix with Gen 4 Xeon in a diddy case has been in my mind for years. That orange underlighting, I can see it now. What it won't have is my Orange Ballistix Tactical Tracer RAM Now it comes to fruition! I'll be wanting some royalties....
bugger off you teasing bastud TBH we may need to talk about that, because I remember the RAM just fitting and it was as low as RAM gets. I know Vengeance is not low, though I am not adverse to ripping off the spreaders and swapping them for the silver ones on the crappy 4gb. Also to note. What I meant when I said the Mayhems grille never went to plan. That was supposed to be meshed, but something went wrong with said mesh. Looking back at the original log it seems I built it in April 2015. So not quite as far back as I thought. Top fan is going to be fun, it is 100mm made for the case.
Hmm reminds me, I need to stock up on 3m fine line tape.... OK, so like my Bit Tech logo a while back here is some precision expert artwork laying out how the paint will look. Good thing I paint better than I draw huh.
hehe wait til you see the chrome legs I’ve got lined up The CPU arrived this morning here at home. The stainless handle arrived at mums (where I’ll be working on it) and the paint has shipped. I may have to build a spray booth in the loft. Way it’s been raining yeah I don’t think I’ll have much choice really.
Paint arrived at mums today. My aunt is bringing the machine over on Thurs and I will be there Friday. I also forgot that I bought an orange 20 pin atx connector for the tag build but never used it, so I think I will make custom cables given there are so few. However I think I am just going to buy a set of extensions and just re pin the male ends. Mostly because of cost. It will cost me twice as much to buy wires and then braid them myself. Thankfully I also have lots of pins that I didn’t use either, so again more money saved. It’s not a good time of year to dump tons of money in a project as in a few weeks I need to buy all of the presents for Xmas and stick in my share for food. Oh and beer.
OK got. Handle got also. Took it apart, which was really annoying (I forgot how much I hated this during round one) and fitted the Xeon and RAM. It's not a 1080Ti lol. It's a 980ti in drag. Still, more than enough power for what I have planned. Somehow I had forgotten that I broke the USB3 header on the board, and snapped a RAM lever. Oh well, doesn't hurt it much given the whole front IO is going any way.
OK so I have now taken it all apart. The orange plexi was what was under the silver dinoc. Sheesh, what a coincidence. Nothing needed on that then. The main shell is here. All scrubbed clean. Am not going to refit the Yate fans that were in the floor, as technology has moved on and thinner fans are now available.
Right. This is literally it. I have white extensions to mod already. The cooler on it is awful. Has these terrible plastic push pins and does not fit properly. For the sake of that much I will fit a new cooler.
OK so a couple of mods done. The first was to remove the IO PCB and cut it down, leaving only the power button and power/HDD LEDs. This was done because the USB 3.0 header is dead (it's only one pin but I CBA trying to repair it) and I don't need front USB ports. I will CNC a plate to cover that on the front, and give it some identity. Need to file the board a bit and tidy it, but yeah that's that done. I then solved a mystery. See, when I took out the top slim fan it was deffo a 120. But I remember trying to put a fan in there before (like a different one, orange IIRC, Xigmatek rings a bell?) but it would not fit over the slot pins that have the threads in. Well the same happened here. Turns out the holes are different grr. So, I got out my drill bits and slowly drilled out the holes on the fan until they were large enough for it to go over regardless. It now has a real fan in it. Not that piddly little thing in there before. I need to cut down some M3 bolts (got all that) and that will be that done. Next up was remove the Mayhem grille. This should have been mesh vented but the mesh I bought was trash and money was very tight back then. So it ended up with a piece of horrid tinted extruded plastic in there. Paint has held up well tbh. It was Hammerite IIRC. Any way, I then got to see what a superb job I did here. And then got into a panic. I could NOT find the Bitspower radgard. Turns out it was in the loft, oh super.... Any way, I will take that. Looks bleedin' lovely that does.
Starting the car, by Handel. Need to make a curved washer out of acrylic. But hey, it's straight so there is that.
Oh.. I thought you had one of those piddly drawer pulls you can pick up for $2. You could build a whole rig around a chunk of pipe like that.
Yeah it needs some beef mate lol. So scan. And then. To get this. Machine X4 and plastic weld. Then sand. And. Will be frenched onto the case, then painted body colour.
Looks great even still blocky. You might need something similar on the inside to keep the bolt seated properly.
Rubber washers prolly. So it didn't all go to plan. The JB weld had not set, and started peeling. At which point I couldn't work out where I was, so I put some white paint down. Might have been a mistake. We will see.
OK well that didn't go well. The JB had not set correctly, god knows why, and a lot of it peeled. The sides frenched in perfectly though. Back needs some work. Oh and ignore the top, once the handle goes on you can't see the step. Rubber washers will be ordered. I then had a rush of blood and decided to put some paint on as I could not see how it really looked. This was kinda stupid, as I did not remove the gasket or the IO board etc. Oh well, isoprop it will have to be. But, it seems my anger at the paint coming out like crap through a goose was unwarranted, as it dried nice. Remember, this is just a test area. Needs a tiny bit more tinkering, but pretty much there.
I thought the Frenching would be to blend the curve of the pipe and the bracket. -Well, no. I thought that word meant you would be using your tongue somehow...
lol. What wasn't funny was my order from OCUK.... Nothing. So yesterday I sent them an email. The cables were out of stock. Thanks for telling me 'n all. So they shipped out the wee cooler and fans, and I just ordered this set. Cost me £40. It is not meant for mine, but the good thing is the pins are all correct so all I need to do is remove the cables and directly swap them out. With the bonus being all of the cables are there. Molex, SATA the lot.
