I really haven't done much...mainly because I ahve been busy with work, and away on holiday. however, I might as well post an update for you all. Firstly, I finished the radiator. It got clearcoated and is mostly polished up with rubbing compound. It is rather reflective. I finally set BlakIce up, mainly to test some new parts. Sadly, the 9700pro died a horrible, smokey death. It had lived a long and hard life..but that is a different story. It's changed a bit since that picture was taken. My two 120mm titan fans got LED'ed. Heres how (note that these images are cickable): A Titan 120mm aluminium/chrome fan. This mod basically involves adding LEDs to the four corners, and running wires form them to the central hub of the fan. First off, the fan is disassembled in the usual way. The PCB is removed. A drill with a 3mm bit is used to drill four holes in the plastic hub of the fan. These line up with the four spokes. A Dremel clone, with a grinding attatchement. This will be used to cut a V shaped channel in each spoke, to carry the wires. Each channel is cut deep enough to hold the two wires and the superglue which will hold them in. The completed frame, with a channel in each spoke: The four superbright white LEDs are tested in series at 12 volts. They only draw 19mA total The legs are bent to allow them to fit into the holes in the fan corners. The LEDs are then inserted into the holes, and wires soldered to them. I used category 5 cable, and soldered in series. Some hot glue holds the LEDs in place. The completed fan in the dark. Not a bad finish, it almost looks like a clear fan would I then used the same method to LED. It took about 4 hours work total. So it was most pleasing when, 20 minutes later, I knocked the floppy drive into one of them, knocking off two blades. It was equally enjoyable to watch the other one short itself out for no reason a few seconds later...it tries to work but refuses to spin. Well, after I got over the initial trauma of losing £30 of fans and a load of hard work, I went off and did what I always do when I break stuff...order some top-notch replacements. These will arrive shortly in the form of some 120mm Panaflo beauties. Also in this update...the motherboard mounting. Holes were drilled, and tapped using the standoffs in a nutdriver. Standoffs in place. you can also see what will soon be the hard drive mounts. A close-up for no particular reason. Some Sunbeam CCFL's were parted from their tubes to cut down the size... ...And plonked onto the motherboard tray. They will form the motherboard backlight, and under-case lighting. The invertor was also freed from it's case. Some duct tape protects the contacts on the bottom. The test motherboard in place. And with the cathodes on...not much to see. With the lights off, we get a nice effect through the board. A close-up of the southbridge area. Finally, some new hardware. I've added another 120GB SATA (giving me 240GB or RAID 0 goodness), replaced the Audigy Platinum with an Audigy Platinum eX, and the dead 9700pro is now a GeForce 6800GT. As stated above, some nice fans will be following shortly. Sorry about the pictures, I don't have Photoshop instaled right now. I'll resize and compress ASAP.
I'm curently working on a sheet to diffuse the light, so it spreads over the board. It's basically a sheet of frosted perspex with a lot of channels cut in it, to spread the light out. It will sit between the standoffs. It will work in the same way as an LCD backlight. Code: ================================================== Mobo |\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/| Cathode O|______________________________________________|O Cathode ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Motherboard Tray And I still can't find my Photoshop CD! So sorry.
Holy smokes that a big radiator. Were did you get it? And its nice to see someone else making there own led fans. i like the backlight on the motherboard . Keep it up!
omfg, that looks sweet! I didn't know that motherboards were translucent like that... I just might have to get 4 or so red cathodes and to the same.. Very impressive!
I've used GIMP before, and yes, it's pretty good. I'll find my CD...and failing that I'll just stick the files into BlakIce (the thing on the table) and sort it out from there.
Yaaaargh!!! Well, today I spent a few hours getting the backlight panel done. I cut out a piece of scrap plexi and frosted it first (to see if the ridges really were necessary). I test fitted it with cathodes, but it wasn't bright enough. Then, takign the cathodes off, I snapped one. So it's a wait until Friday for a enw cathode. Later on, while adding ridges, the router slipped and mashed up most of the sheet. In fustration I took a hammer to the remnants of my backlight. Ahh well...I'll try again tomorrow.
yeah your the first ive seen to implement a mobo backlight.. the effect is amazing.. too bad its not going to plan much, first the fans, then the ccfl and the router.. but, seems you have determination to get this mod done right.. good luck hopefully you've kept the alu fan surrounds.. and then just mod the panaflo blades/assebly onto these.. they are just so nice, it would be a shame not to use them
To be fair, the modder doing Hypercube would technically have been first (although I seem to remeber others before).
Oh, damn you reading my mind and telling everyone my ideas!! Yes, that was my plan. The Panaflo's are 40mm thick, I was either gonna have a bit of the blades sticking out (not a good idea), or mod the cases into a hyrbid. As for backlight, I'm gonna scrap the whole plexi sheet idea (I'll still post the pics I took), and bang in a load more cathodes instead (either 3 or 5). They draw little power, produce little heat, and cost next to nothing. JavaDog, yeah I'm probably not the first...but then again this was a kinda accidental discovery I made a while back. The story goes: The AN7 which will feature in BlakIce does look more sexy than the A7N8X Deluxe does...a nice gold/white shine. To be honest, I didn't think this would be too popular. If you liked that, then stay tuned, since I have a lot more stuff like that in the pipes (slightly literally)...BlakIce is based upon the white glowy theme (much in the same way as HyperCube).
Oh, go on then: Test setup: Wanted to see how it was looking. All the dead hardware went in there to size it up. Bits and bobs in place. The dowel is to hold the (working) PSU in place. I ahve decided not to use this 550W QTEC, Instead I'll be using a FSP 350WP, since I like reliability. Now for the backlight: Offcut form an old case window (it's from a hella old premod that I modded to hell abd back, then threw away...trust me it was that crap). Marked up with my trusty mobo. Cut with circular saw (forgot the pic) then powersanded. Nice and frosty. Cathodes placed at each side, with faithful duct tape around the edges in an attempt to keep light in. Cathodes on, in the daytime. And at night (oooooooohhhhh). I found the effect to be very beautiful..in my opinion it was prettier than the motherboard...I might implement this in the actual panels for the case! With motherboard in place. Apologies for the poor photo. As you can see, the effect is not great. I decided that it would be necessary to etch the grooves in the plexi. So I start peeling the tape off... Oops, that broke it. I was rather annoyed at that. But I continued... I then set about cuttingg the grooves with a router. One slip later and the whole thing was ruined. I took out my anger out on the sheet with a hammer (nice crack marks, though...I should put the remaining cathode back and see if they glow). Grrrrrr!!! Ahh well, with another 4 cathodes arriving on Friday (£1.44 each!), I shall soon continue with the backlighting. Apologies again for the pic sizes and compression...I'll do it later tonight or tomorrow, honest! Xp out.
To be honest i don't think that cathode and grooved plexi would work well, too much loss of light. Perhaps a Luxeon side emitter would do the trick. On the other hand 5 CCFLS with some kind of random throbber would make it look even better.
Don't give me ideas! These cathodes don't dim normally, they fade along the tube, much like a spectrum analyser on a stereo. It would be exctremily pretty to have them babies throbbing. Thanks coorz, Macroman.
Nice project you have here Its a pity that I havn't seen it before this though. I was quite excited to see you using angle alum. because that is the part of my project that is currently holding me up, but I'm afraid that I can't steal your method of attaching the L channel Oh well... Nice looking project, I'll make sure to check up on it.. Keep it up! -Brad
