Scratch Build – In Progress Project C-Macc's 2 - Sub zero arcade system..... :)

Yeh with the help of some of the people of this forum and 0C3d ive got this far. Once the set is complete with a few extras such as tubing ill get some photos knocked up.

 

looking good man.. fine soldering

 

Bit more work.

I managed to get a couple of New boards there not as good as what i wanted but they will do the tick.

First we have the basic components layed out





The we solder them in and here are a few pics along the way ->










That's 1 UV meter ready. Both have been built but ill be fitting them another time as im out of cash for the moment lol and need to get some other parts.

As for the water cooling pics this is what i have so far.






As said before all parts are second hand on the water cooling side as is the PC but hay we all cannot get stuff given or discounted even when we try. Thks goes out to the members who are helping me get this all together though with out your help this would not be possible.

 

That is some really nice WC gear. The LED PCBs turned out really well also.

 

wc looks sweet

and the pcb is good to

 

mini review of some more lights

Lighting a PC is a complex task at best. First you have to think of the colour you would like it, then you have to think how to place the lights and then to top that all off you will have to hide all the wires.

Why oh why is it so complex or does it really need to be.

Stuff the single LED's placed all over the case with all the extra wiring. Why not go with 1 light only.

Stuff the choosing the colour why not have them all. Fancy lighting effects not a problem.

I introduce to the Remote SMD Lighting strip all you LED Lighting solved in 1 little envelope from Hong Kong.

The RGB Lighting Strip runs from 12 Volts and can run anything from a 15cm strip right up to 15 meters to light up a whole room if you like but that might be just a little over kill for a PC. The RGB Led Light strip I have is 30 Cm long which will do for inside of a case or in my case lighting of a Control panel for a Arcade system, I am working on.

The Kit comes with the following Items

1 x 30 SMD RGB Strip Light
1 x Remote Control RGB Lighting Box
1 x Remote

You can all so purchase it with a 12V Power supply but since I didn't need one I just got a standalone kit.

The RGB Light

The RGB (which means Red, Blue, Green) Lighting strip is 30 cm long and is enclosed in a polyethylene heat resistant plastic that is about 4 mm thick with 4 male pins on one side and 4 female sockets on the other side so that you can join more strips together. It all so has m3 Sticky tape on the back so that it can be stuck any ware you like inside a case.





My 30cm RGB light Strip contains no less than 12 RGB 5050 SMD's spaced at 1" apart. On the back side is some lettering for Ground, Red, Green and Blue with a arrow to show which part connect to the Remote Controller Box.

The strip itself is completely flexible and can be bent around corners how ever I would not recommend you try to put it in a 90 degree bend else it will likely to snap or fracture the flexible PCB that the LED's are connected to.

A quick bit of advice DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY INTO THE LIGHTS ONCE ON. (you have now been warned)

The Led Strips can also be cut to length and there are markings on the back of the strips of the LEDs to show you were to cut and these are at approx 15cm Appart.

Strip length: 30cm
Strip width: 1cm
Strip height: 4 cm

The RGB remote Controller box.

This is a simple little white box that controls the input voltage to the led's. It all so Has a Infra-red receiver LED attached so that you can use your remote with it.

If you are placing UV lights in your case I advise you not to have the Infra-red LED Receiver any ware near these as it will upset the system and will not work correctly as the spectrum of light that is given off by the UV led or light will over whelm the Infra-red receiver and it may not work correctly.

The controller box also has 2 mounting hole but it is so light you will be able to add Velcro or double sided sticky tape and attached it any were you like. There is also a Lead that has 4 female connector's for the LED's to connect to and this is about 2" long. In theory you should be able to extend this if you wish.



Last but not least is a 12v Input female input adapter with the inner pin being the +12v and the outer being the negative. do not get this mixed up or you will kill the controller.





Now to connect the Led Strip to the controller if you look at the Female lead you will see a arrow this will match up the RGB strip so that you do not get the polarity mixed up when connecting the strip. Again make sure this is correct or again you will blow the led strip and possibly the controller.



Next add you power from whatever power source you will be using e.g 12 Volt Yellow line on the Power supply or a 12v power adapter.



you are now ready to go.

The remote control.

The remote is a lovely little piece of equipment and will allow you to change the way the LED light controller acts. It has several features that I will explain below with the picture.



1) Will turn the brightness of the led up or down this has 6 stages of brightness from low to intense.

2) These are the on / off buttons

3) These will change the colour of the Light to

R = Red
G = Green
B = Blue
W = White (R,G,B in one go)

4) These will change the colours of the lights as per the colour on the buttons. This will Give you a extra 12 colours to choose from.

5) These buttons in this group will make the LED react in a different manner and can be seen in the video I have done for you all to see.

Flash = All the colours will flash in sequence
Strobe = all the LEDs will Turn on and off (producing a white only effect)
Fade = All the colours will fade from one to the other
Smooth = Like fade the colours will change from one to the other but much more slowly and give a nice effect.

Below if a video of it in action. (this was taken on a small phone)

 

That thing is really cool.

 

Yeh there not to bad once fitted it looks pretty good compared to a normal set of cheap led's

 

A few more updates (just small ones)

Lapped the cpu block and all so the q6600 just two pictures in progress shots




CPU Loop being cleaned and water leak testing on the work top. Im testing the kit with a 12v power supply so need need to use a PC power Supply at all wich is good.



This whole loop has cost no more than £70 to put together from second hand parts.

Im still working on building the GFX card loop again most of the parts will be second hand but im not to far off.

All i need now is another second hand or recon 2 x 120mm rad and a 8800 GT VGA Cooling Block and ill be sorted.

Once all fitted the PC will be slightly over clocked but the main case for the cooling is to keep the whole system quiet and running cool.

 

cool leds man.. and cool wc

 

While im still awaiting to be able to afford more parts ive been working on some thing else ...

early concept designs just for you to look at ...

 

I'm liking the shape, very unique.

 

weather its gets built or not is another matter to be honist as i have some other plans in mind as well. The only problem with these build's are how much it costs. A pc build costs half is even less as much as some thing on this scale.

Mind you saying that this sort of build all so doest seem to pull the investors in neither think they'd rather invest in a plain old painted case with a stupid side window haha.

 

very weird and awesome!

 

Now that is a project, respect to that man

 

well been playing with the Water cooling kit and managed to get the q6600 over 4 ghz but i would not run the system at that speed once fitted so turned it back down to 3.8 Ghz and she will be ready to be fitted once i get some more pain

 

That's a very nice OC, I have my Q6600 sitting at 3.2GHz now and am surprised how much faster everything is over the stock settings, even boot times. I am going to go for 3.4GHz after my exams next week.

 

Have to be honest running at 4ghz was oky but personally didn't see a massive difference except my temps were running to hot and this for sustained game play on emulators would have killed the system alot quicker. Ive moved it down to 3.6 Ghz now and the temps are move over stable and seems to be fine. so im thinking the sweet spot is 3.6 Ghz.

So it a nice over clock and every thing seems to run alot faster and the FPS is up on the larger emus so im happy.

 

Oky been playing a bit more for stable over clocks only ...

My result is so far im up to a 57.9% over clock stable. That's 3.789 ghz Over clock Testing over 4 hours.



My max temps are 45c on 95% load wich i may consider quite good witch such a large over clock only on a duel rad and there is no NB/SB water cooling just on air with only the CPU being water cooled.

It would be interesting to see the results on a 3 x 120mm rad but since i don't have one it isn't going to happen any time soon.

I think how ever ive hit my sweet spot there with temps VS over clock about right. If i go any higher my temps start to rocket and that is some thing im trying to avoid. Esp since this is going to be using emulators wich will hammer the CPU more than the GPU as 80% of emulators are CPU dependent such as mame.

I allso been Bench marking SF IV (new one) and im getting arround 200 Fps with every thing set to full so i know the system can handel SF with out any problems what so ever wich is excellent.

So not only is this mod a nice mod its all so a considerable nice little over clock as well so ill be getting the full benefits of what it has been built for.

Now i need to get my arse into gear and get it all fitted into the base and figure out hot to fit the rad in properly so that it doesn't impeded the air flow and i can keep this over clock with out any problems or excessive heat build up (nice challenge) once it is encased in the lower section of the arcade system ...

 

They are very nice temps really, you could shave a few degrees off with an extra rad probs but for a machine like yours why have the OC so high? My Q6600 at 3.2GHz and my 8800GTX (OCd to the max) run on a 240mm and a 120mm rad and my CPU will never push past 44c at 100% load in Prime95, it idles at 26c and at gaming load hits 36c.