Project│Red Nineteen :: Custom PC, Readers' Drives - 23/10/06

Red Nineteen Project Log 31 - 12th July 2006 - Part B


^ Slowly but surely...


^ The cables soon mounted up, making a bit of a mess at the front.


^ Fitting the toggle switches to the front.


^ A shot from the inside, with 3 of the 3-pin connectors fitted.


^ The components laid-out on the sitting room floor, ready to be installed.


^ The cable mess increasing.


^ Final test run before everything goes in - this is also the first time everything was connected up, as previously I had just connected the odd fan to test. Luckily everything worked perfectly first time - so no re-wiring/soldering/sleeving needed!


^ The front-panel fitted to the case, showing the small gap between the drive cage and fascia. Trust me when I say it fits flush - the lower 120mm fan just fits between the two and the Vandal-proof switches would short-out on the case if it wasn't for the sleeving/insulation.


^ The floor is grey on the outside, only because I ran out of Nissan Red and forgot to paint it until I realised when I brought it indoors.


^ Showing the motherboard in place. The Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 suits the 'Ferrari' feel of the case.


^ The front cable mess increasing still.


^ Another shot - the masking tape is holding the PCI-slot window whilst it dries from the epoxy.


^ A low-down shot, showing the PCI slots and how '3D' the raised logo is.


^ The rear of the case, with the Tagan 530w EasyConnect PSU in place. They should also name it the not-so-easy-disconnect PSU, I cut my fingers on something as I tried to unclip one of the cables.


^ The NEC DVD-RW drive going in - a perfect fit I must add!


^ The drive in place. I'm glad I picked the NEC as the DVD logos on it are embossed, not stuck on.


^ I almost forgot - the Samsung SpinPoint 250gb SATAII drive! Not much room to squeeze it in...


^ Sorry for the quality of this shot, it's the best of 4 I took - it's showing the mauled IDE cable - I removed the second part of it as I only need the one connector for the DVD-RW.


^ Most things in now, with lots of cables going everywhere.


^ Remember the 2 LEDs that I put on extensions from the fan controller? They've been tucked into the front to light up the upper and lower 120mm fans.


^ Here's the lower one poking through a hole to the front (bottom-left).


^ I removed the P4 connector as it isn't needed, in fact I've never used one before. I cut the 4 wires on the cable to different lengths, so they wont touch each other.


^ Final image for this log - showing the invertor box mounted to the under-side of the drive-cage!

It took me a total of 6 hours to put it all together! I didn't want to drop anything, or scratch it - so I took my time and made sure everything fitted as best as possible. I re-routed many cables 3 or 4 times until I was happy too. Read on for the final pictures of the finished project...

 

Red Nineteen Project Log 32 - 12th July 2006 - Part A

It's finished! Well, apart from benchmarking, overclocking and adding on the Ferrari badge to the front fascia, it is complete - on with the pictures!


^ Excuse the poor quality, I took these late last night...


^ With the side-panel removed - note the CCFL affixed to the case floor, the second is directly above it in the top of the case.


^ A close-up of the top, no blowhole mess here!


^ Showing the rear, with the Tagan 530w PSU, PCI-slot window and 2 x 80mm Akasa Amber fans, with BBQ mesh!


^ A close-up of the rear. The motherboard plate looks a bit sparse, but there are 6 USB ports there, giving a total of 10 at the back of the case!


^ Showing the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64, which is very quiet now that it is connected to the fan controller at the front - spot the 2 x 1gb DDR2 PC6400 (4-4-4-12) Corsair TwinX sticks.


^ The front lower 120mm fan, with the cabling kept to the sides of the case.


^ A close-up of the inverter, drive cage and cabling. All but the CCFL cables are sleeved, either as standard, or with the carbon sleeving I purchased.


^ Showing the 4 x USB2 ports and the Firewire port.


^ A close-up of the 2 x 80mm fans and the 120mm of the Tagan - these should keep the CPU nice and cool.


^ The front fascia, nice and clean. You'll notice that the case is red/black with hints of silver touches, such as the odd bolts/screws, switches and buttons. Not that I've studied a Ferrari closely recently, but sticking to their style.


^ Showing the bottom of the case, which is grey. Of the whole rig, this is the only part I think could have been improved.


^ As I purchased an OEM AM2 4000, I didn't get the X2 badge, but I've got the Arctic Cooling sitting here, along with a bit-tech badge - available from Kustom PCs - their older logo. Afterall, it's where all the inspiration for this project came from.

 

Red Nineteen Project Log 32 - 12th July 2006 - Part B


^ Showing the side which most don't see once it is in place.


^ What do you think?


^ Lights on - the 2 LEDs in the 120mm fans, the 2 CCFL tubes and the fan controller, along with the power/reset buttons.


^ The right Bulgin switch is the power button, with the power LED - the left switch is the reset switch, along with HDD activity LED.


^ Showing both sets of Ferrari lettering.


^ The top CCFL leaks light out of the slits in the top of the case.


^ The lower tube lit.


^ A shot showing all of the peripherals - a standard Microsoft Keyboard, a Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 (seems very good so far) and the Acer F-19 Ferrari LCD Monitor/TV, which gave this project its name.


^ Lights on!


^ The DVD-RW open.


^ Another pic.


^ Complete with a Little Britain mouse-mat...


^ A view from the rear...


^ One last shot of the two.

As mentioned previously, I'll be adding some high-res pictures in the near future, along with details of overclocking and benchmarking of the AM2 rig.

The project is finished, in terms of modding, though I'm awaiting the delivery of a ferrari badge, similar to that on the front of the Acer F-19. This will be put on the front fascia, between the two Vandal-proof switches. This is pretty much my first serious mod, as the Pink PC only really required painting. I've done a lot to the old Enermax - see the first few logs. It doesn't resemble the original too much. The case proved to be very good to work with and enabled me to modify a lot of it. As standard, it provides 3 x 80mm exhausts and 1 x 120mm intake.

Next I plan to mod my fileserver, before I put it into the loft. It currently has about 400gb of drive space, but I hope to be upping that to 1.4tb or so. I think there will also be a few modifications to the Yeong Yang cube case, but nothing as drastic as this mod.

Any questions or comments about project Red Nineteen??? Post away!

 

Red Nineteen Project Log 33 - 12th July 2006

Final Specs!

CPU|AMD AM2 Athlon 64 4000 X2 (1mb per core, L2 Cache)
Motherboard|Foxconn Nvidia Nforce 590SLi
Memory|2 x 1gb (2gb) Matched DDR2 PC6400 C4 (4-4-4-12 stock) Corsair TwinX
GPU|Leadtek 7800gt (256mb)
Cooling|Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro, Arctic Cooling Accelero, 2 x 80mm Akasa Amber, 2 x 120mm Akasa Amber
PSU|Tagan 530w EasyConnect
HDD|250gb Samsung SpinPoint SATAII
CD/DVD|NEC DVD-RW ND_4570A
Case|Originally Enermax Twilight Midi
Monitor|Acer F-19 - Ferrari styled LCD TV/Monitor, 19", 1280x1024, 8ms
Keyboard|Microsoft Standard Black Keyboard
Mouse|Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 Wired
Mods|Filled-in blowhole; custom front fascia; complete respray; merged rear 2x80mm fans; modified side-panel window; ferrari styling; custom sleeved wiring; modified nexus fan controller and any more that I've forgotten to mention!

One side-note, I never originally intended this mod to end up as a Ferrari one. In fact, it was going to be black and blue, but once I had purchased the LCD Monitor, I decided a revamp was needed - it then went from there...

Time - from 9th May 2006, to 12th July 2006, a little over 2 months - with at least 14 hours a week spent on it.

Cost - around £1000. Components came to about £800, mod supplies and paint another £200 or so.

 

From this, taken a year or so ago:



to this:

 

Nice one! like the colortheme. But you should heatshrink the P4 cables looks kinda dangerous. Anyway good job!

 

They should be fine, as they're cut to different lengths, so cannot come into contact with each other - they're also sleeved and tied tight to one of the others.

 

nice

i can only say about 3 things

1. Wouldn't the front fans look better with some fine mesh on (modders mesh ?) as this would make it look more like a car (they don't have bare intakes)
2. Cable management - there's quite a few cables there, but if routed nicely, i recon they would disappear quite nicely
3. P4 connector, not really a criticism, but a) i think it would be safer to heat shrink the end, if 1 of the wires turned round, it could touch an end, or you could touch an end b) if you mean the 4 pin supplementary connector, its used by most medium -> high end boards, including A64's although its now being phased out for a 8 pin supplementary connector

 

ooo, love it

 

God dam spectacular, one hell of a Ferrari mod and it looks totally legit next to the Acer monitor, the color is dead on and the badge for the front of the case will set it off great. And the case looks red, even the red acrylic, it doesn't look pink or crimson, it matches the monitor and the paint job great...

The NEC drive also goes well with the black fascia and the embossed logos and DVD markings on the drive fascia finish are much better than stickers or inked logos...

And BTW, is it as quiet as you wanted it to be? With the fan controller you should be able to slow down the fans to just the correct speeds and get it to hum and not whirr...

 

Looks amazing. Well done!

I love the colour and the ferrari logos! The blowhole trip really tidies things up! I feel the only thing you could improve is the wiring. I would spend a good hour or two just zip-tieing the hole thing .

Thanks for the wonderful project log!

 

I really like the black with a red interior theme, is that a ferrari red color.

 

I was worried that the acrylic or lighting would look pink, but it is all very red, I think it's enhanced by the red interior. And the front badge will set it off well, as mentioned, it is the same as the Acer's, the Schuderia (sp?) Shield.

As for noise, you wont believe how quiet it is. I amazed myself actually, as throughout I had heard each individual component, but not the whole system together with all the fans and fan controller. It is whisper quiet at medium speeds. Full speed it is noticable but not loud - though there's only 2'c or so in the difference between both speeds, so I'm running it them all at half speed. The fan controller allows me to trim down the CPU cooler noise too, as it is probably the loudest thing inside and that's saying something.

It seems as though the motherboard drivers aren't giving Windows apps the correct temperatures - they're reading 50'c+ in Windows, but in the high 20'c's in the BIOS - and it's definately 20'c+ as everything is cool to the touch.

I understand what you mean by the wiring, it could all be tucked out of the way and in the past I've spent ages zipping it all up. But I've deliberately left them poking out and hanging a bit, so as to stick with the theme - it resembles an engine bay slightly I guess. They're not obstructing air-flow and I want to show off the hours of work I spent sleeving them!

I hope the project log isn't too long, as there's 100's of pictures on these pages with lots of ramblings. But hopefully it documents everything well enough.

It isn't, as Halfords don't stock Ferrari paint unfortunately - it is a Nissan Red colour though, forgotten the exact number but it's in the log somewhere - all 33 or so of them!

Thanks for all the comments guys!

 

Just a quick post to show you two pictures of the rig in the dark:





Not great quality I know - but I'll try and get some dark shots when I take the high-res pics.

EDIT: I've installed Far Cry and BF2 on it this evening and both run blisteringly fast with everything at max - a huge change from my previous gaming rig, where everything had to be on the lowest... looking forward to overclocking and benchmarking it soon.

 

Wow, this looks great. I did however notice that the top PCI slot doesnt have any cover or anything.. in all the pics i could see it, it is open. Are you planning on painting a slot cover in the red when you get more paint?

Another minor thing that i think would make a slight difference would be to add another led to the top right of the case as the cct stops 2/3 the way down the slits. I think that would be cool if done right.

I know you said you were done, and i dont want to seem like an ass (although i do most of the time)

Anyways, brilliant mod, i loved the whole thing. And i cant wait to see what you do next

 

Thanks for the comments scifi3018, you're not an ass, I think criticism can only be a good thing...

I didn't actually think about the PCI slot until I put it all together. I thought the GPU would utilise the first, but there's nothing on the motherboard that would. I could paint a blanking plate, so will look into that.

I would have put the CCFL in the centre of the top, but the top of the drive-cage obstructs it. The case could do with 3 more LEDs - one as you say, then one on the opposite sides of each 120mm fan - as there's only one per fan as it is.

Although my fileserver will be going in the roof, the modding bug has bit me, so I'll try to come up with something a bit different for it too... time (and finances/fiancee!) will tell!

 

What do you mean by this? Is this your next mod? And what do you mean by going in the roof?

 

Ah, sorry. I may or may not have mentioned it, but I don't want to trawl through 33 logs!

My old gaming rig has been my home fileserver for the past year or so and we recently wired power up to the loft/roof/attic of the house, along with a network cable from the house. So in the 'very' near future, my fileserver will be 'migrating' into the roof for 24/7 storage/backup.

It's currently housed in a stock Yeong Yang server cube, but before I put it in the roof, I want to modify it - so my next project will hopefully be it.

 

Looks realy nice! the black and red fits very well together Looks _much_ better than it looked original!

But I think you should consider mounting your HDD with some Rubber rings (75mm long ones) Like this It takes away lots of vibrations and noise You can get the rings at a plumber.

And the DVD doesn't match the front so i think you should take your time to paint it.

And you should paint the USB and FIREWIRE brackets on the back red or black, I prefer black

 

It gets hot up in the attic... definatly during the summer, not where i would want my fileserver...
I hope you plan on doing w/c and running the Rad inside a a/c vent... (acually, unless its a 1 story home there wont be any a/c tubes in the attic i dont belive...

Are you planning on integrating it into the house? IE rad inside a/c tube...
Or is it just going to be a computer in the attic?

Honestly the only benifit of this is that the computer noise wont disturb you, and its out of the way... though it seems a coat closet would do the same...