phase's Shuttle SN41G2: Update: Page3, 24thJuly. RGB LEDs

Well my first project log, and its not even a real one as lots of the work is done and will only be updated sporadically.

The base is:
Shuttle Sn41G2 V1 silver,
Athlon XP 2500,
512Mb Corsair 3200,
Radeon 9600PRO,
Samsung CDRW/DVD combi-drive,
Seagate Barracuda 120Gb.

The aim of all my mods is silence, style and looking as if they are meant to be there. What some may call a sleeper I also hate wires, and am going for a black and silver colour scheme.

Ive had this box for almost a year now, and some people may remember the mods on it, posted last summer.

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early mods
silence: so zalman ZM50 heatpipe cooler on the 9600 and Zalman NB cooler on the Northbridge. As with most shuttles the rear fan grill has been cut away, and the stock fan replaced. Having tried, Panaflos, Noiseblockers, Nexus and SilenX, i would rate the Nexus 17db fan as the best (quietest while not making my CPU explode), available from Kustompcs.

Double Stealthing
For those that havent heard of this before its like normal stealthing but having a second 'stealth' layer, where the fascia would be. Nobody wants to see beige, not even when a drive is open!


Pic of both cd and LS120 (now dead )



The CD drive was then dyed black, and remounted.


And a layer of thin black mousepad was added to remove any vibrations coming from the cd-drive out through the tray, and to help silence the slight 'wind noise' when reading CDs.

I also had an LS120 drive which was firstly covered by the standard shuttle bay plate, which folded down as a flap, and then had its standard front replaced with a nice aluminium one. Again, double stealthed. I have to thank madmac for the inspiration for the LS120 cover, and mine deviates only a little from his. By using an LS120, which has an eject button like a CD-ROM rather than a mechanical one like a normal floppy, i didnt need an eject button and used the flex in the mounting to press the eject button.


like the CD-ROM, black mousemat was used to neaten up the inside of the flap, and make sure nothing scratched my stealthing job when it was shut!


Heres a pic of the back side of the floppy flap. The sprung part was removed from the stock front, and mounted using little bits of plexi to a coolermaster bezel, which obviously had a slot for the disk cut out. I also mounted a piece of aluminium from the CD-ROM double steath onto the flap to complete the aluminium front.

Sadly a couple of months ago the LS120 drive died, and instead of replacing it internally i just got a USB floppy drive, which ive used about twice since! Ive just included these pics for historical value really!

Front Rings
Although i think the G2 series of shuttle cases is the best looking so far, the stock power LED is stupidly bright! i mean eye melting! So in an attempt to temper that, and just cos it looked cool, made the clear rings around the power and reset buttons glow instead. There will be more details of how to do that in a later post.


glowing power rings.

Thats it for the first instalment.

RoB

 

Part 2: PSU

Pretty simple stuff really. I sanded down and spray painted the PSU black, sleeved all the wires with black expandable sleeving and replaced all the connectors with black ones, as well as shortening/removing any cables i didnt need, including shortening one molex lead to just 5cm long.


black sleeved psu


mounted in the shuttle, you can see the NB cooler here too.


I also replaced the stock fan with a (slightly) quieter one, but connected the control the the motherboard header so that it can be controlled by speedfan.
I also trimmed off the PSU grill and mounted the flange from a bass tube around it, and painted the sticker on the fan black to match everything else.

Lead
Quite a silly mod, but i think its cool:


One standard kettle lead


one clear 3pin plug


one fairly silly power lead!

 

Part 3:
CD-ROM and stealth molexes


After sanding down the case i sprayed it black, not that this can be seen, but i want it to match!

Now, to help get rid of wires, i decided to stealth the drive cage's molex cable inside the CD drive case.

But first, some dremeling was required:

A rectagle out of the drive cage


A bit out of the supporting aluminium


And a perfect fit.

now i added a black female(?) molex to lower part of the casing, having soldered wires to the inside of the stock power connector, about 2 inches from the front of the drive, just about where my dremeled bits in the drive cage are.


(sorry for the poor quality pic). You can also see the re-routed activity LED wire hangin out of a gap in the case.


Here you can see the CD-drive in place, and the short power lead to go to it.


and a fairly awful picture of it connected!

clearly, at the moment this only supplies power to the CD, and as ive got a hard drive id like that to be powered too!

so using some nice black wire and some black 90degree molex connectors, this happens:


back side of the drive cage, with both cd and HD with power.


Another shot of stealth molexes, before the cd drive was painted.


and a shot of the drive cage ready to go back into the shuttle. Complete with black single device IDEs, which need to have their connectors and ends dyed black still. They are routed below the hard disk but still inside the drive cage, through another neat hole, which you can see above, just above the IDE headers on this motherboard.

RAM

Another not really needed mod, but one that helps the black component theme.

my nice corsair ram came with nice silver corsair heat spreaders:


which were then placed in a freezer for about half an hour, and ripped off!


with nice shiney black ones put on in their place!


Speaking of black components, whenver possible througout this case, black thumbsrews are used. I also use a mixture of small o-rings and silicon fan dampening kits to keep vibration to a minimum.


especially on the included 'friendly' feet.

still to come:
hidden front port wires, more glowing rings and a nice infra red remote.

RoB

 

Very nice mate as always!

Love the stealth molexes as you know.

 

Lookin' good! I like the color scheme, it's almost too black!

 

distinctly l33t as ever

As a mark of respect I shall bless you with my 500th post....

 

great job! does the "90 degree molexes" have any purpose, or is it just for the looks?

looking forward to your next update

 

Nice attention to detail and neat workmanship

 

Ooh, bravo on the stealth molex. I may have to try that, it looks awesome!

 

Rather ingenious idea on the shard molex connectors on the optical drive and HDD.

 

I love that molex mod, very practical in a shuttle, what guage wire is that?

 

Yes, I agree with Ggnome on this one...

 

standard PSU wiring is 18 guage

 

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Thanks g-gnome, with inspiration like orac its hard not to go for attention to detail!

Acid Burn: The 90degree molexes are solely for looks, well i guess they cut down on cables which may improve airflow and plausible temperatures....but nothing noticable! i just think they look cool!

 

You gotta stick some 240 v led's in the plug !!!! uber at lans

 

Looks really good! Nice work with the molex connectors!

 

Love the molex on the optical drive, fantastic idea there

 

That is an excellent mod. Might have to implement your idea in a system I build later on in the year.

 

hehe i thought you guys might like the stealth molexes! Its hard to think of original mods to do! but i try!

Well onto the next update....

Front Panel
more rings
Well, after i converted the power LEDs to rings and decided that they looked cool, i had to do the same to the others!

The HD LED is in its standard position, and where the power led would have been is now the CD drive LED, its a very simple one as the samsung drive i have only has a single colour for accessing and reading.

Firstly i had to drill holes just below where the clear plastic bits are, to mount the leds in.


Here you can see the holes for all 4 rings. For those that havent seen a naked shuttle, the aluminium front has a plastic bit behind it, which one can drill holes in! The circular lower bits on the left have clear plastic bits in, they are what we want to light up. The holes should be drilled just below where the clear plastic goes, and then made a bit bigger with a sharp craft knife. The ring around the power button is larger than the other 3, so ive used an led at the top and the bottom. (and you can see the first hole i made, which i mucked up )

Then i filed and sanded down a 3mm led to fit into the hole and illuminate the clear plastic from below. The back side of the LEDs can be seen in the picture below after theyve been hot glued in and wired up to a small header.

When filing and hot glueing the leds in, make sure that they are no higher on the front than the standard plastic, otherwise the aluminium front will flex over them and it wont look as good!

And the final result:


RoB

 

very nice looking