Case Mod - In Progress Project: CMC Field Server by E.E.L. Ambiense - Completed

The racks are in the mail and PM sent.

John

 

Awwh. Gotta love the Bit-tech togetherness..

That bezel looks swish... And those rasters came out very nicely indeed!

 

Ta dude's on a roll! Don't want to be accused of holding up something this cool. Besides, I'd have to live to be 300 yrs. old to use up all the stash accumulated in the last 20 yrs.

John

 

You are turning int Bit-Tech's Santa Claus.

 

Nah, I think he shaved off his white beard, right? He's still my Santa anyways.

 

Oct. 4th Update!

A bit of an update here. I'll get right to it.

I'm tired and I want something cold to drink. This week has been awful. Car's engine threw a rod last week. Needless to say my car will cost me $5000+ to repair it. E.E.L.'s rather POed right now. 'Nuff of that stuff.

Okay! Updates! Updates? Ah, yes....updates!

I was able to begin assembling the insides of the case and round 3rd base on this build. And I'm glad. I'm getting burned out, honestly.

Jhanlon303's gracious donation of some HDD racks went to good use. Thanks, John!! Well, only one of them anyways. It's all I could fit! But I needed some modifications to get it to go anyways. I'll explain.

The HDD's size would only allow it to go like this, and I had to modify the mobo tray a bit to shoehorn it in there. Which is fine. I didn't plan on running an EATX board in this build anyways.

Marking out the cuts...





No pics of it cut, as I had to concentrate. Sorry. I actually went into a trance of sorts and ended up building everything with minimal pics. I know, I'm a meanie.

How about some hardware, huh?

Mobo...





Should be quite fun...

And CPU...



Should be even more fun!

And the PSU. Of course...



After some sanding and lapping of the CPU block, and installing the BE CPU, I got it mounted on the mobo.



Here's the system while building it up inside the chassis. I mounted the pump inside the HDD housing. It's not where I originally intended it to go, but this works out better. The pump can now be actively cooled by the intake fan, so that's good. The HDD in there is one I nailed off of Hoopstick's first 'stick'. It cost me $1.25 for a Hoopstick sticker plus $5 for shipping, but the 500gb HDD was a 'bonus', lol. It's about a year old, used. Gently. And it's a WD enterprise drive. I've already formatted and scanned it. Nothing wrong with it! So in it goes.



I dropped my EVGA 8800gts 640mb GPU in here, after replacing the stock cooler with an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 8800 cooler. It's quiet, and it drops the temps quite a lot too.

I've started running hosing inside, and started filling the system.



I have so additional stuff to take care of, and I can close this sucker up and call it a day. Here's a shot of the BIOS screen after running it a while.



The CPU's sitting around 28 degrees, while the Koolance unit displays it at 30 degrees. The temp sensor for the Koolance unit works pretty good, considering I stuffed the probe against the bottom of the waterblock on the copper. Not bad at all. I'm happy. Of course, those temps will climb once I get an OS installed and especially when I start pushing this CPU too. But that's expected.

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Until the next update, I got nuthin'.

 

Sorry about the car engine E.E.L. $5K
Just glad the HDD rack fit where you needed it.
Oh, and I have a couple extra Guinness. I share one with you.

Nice score on the hard drive. Sata? /EDIT Never mind - yellow SATA cable DUH /END EDIT- I like SATA WD drives.

John

 

What did you do to manage to throw a rod? I always thought that was something that was caused by overrev.

 

first time iv seen a Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 8800 cooler actually used!

were you down shifting from 5th to 1st to blow a rod? You still use rods, F*** how old is that engine! been using belts and chains this side of the pond for decades!

 

Nice hardware this will be a nice system

 

Sucks about your car. Should just buy a whole new engine rather than repairing it. Will be cheaper.

 

Thanks, John! Thanks for the rack; you fixed the problem, man! And thanks for the 'dark stuff'; I could use one right now too.

Water-damage from Fay. Looks like in spite of my careful use of the car after the storm by not driving it for a couple days to let the water settle down, it still managed to get in there somehow. Car's also modified in the sense of the stock intake system was all torn out and replaced with a CAI and a by-pass valve. Water still made it through apparently. All it takes is a few drops.

I watched people driving in window-deep water like idiots during the rains too. I even saw a guy drive off the road into a canal, lol. The car literally disappeared, except for the roof, lol. Poor poor putz. He got out, but it was rather comical to see from about 50 yards.

Thanks, mate.

Thank you!

Yeah, that cooler really works great. A bit expensive, but it's quiet, and the temps have dropped 15-20 degrees. If you love your old G80 card, it's perfect. I'm happy!

Lol, yeah the rod busted right through the side of the engine. I kept getting 'check engine' lights on and off after the storm, and it was running a bit rough (which it wasn't before the storm), but the light kept coming on and off repeatedly which is usually a sign of a bad oxygen-sensor (located on the bottom of my car too). Looks like it wasn't just an oxy-sensor, lol.

After the phone call I had this morning, I feel much better. Looks like in spite of the insurance co.'s not-so-subtly accusing me of fraud (ahem), they have oddly determined it was water-damage from Fay (which I suspected in the first place)! Damn storm... So, I'll be getting a replacement used engine with half the mileage the original had, which was only 58,000 on a 5-year old car, plus a 1-yr. warranty on top of it too. I'm only responsible for my $500 deductible. I'm still out of $500, plus the almost two weeks of no car, but it's cool. I'm just glad I can put this all behind me. I need to concentrate on more important stuff, like my business and my mod projects! Thanks guys for letting me rant a bit.

And we return you to the regularly-scheduled mod project in progress.

 

Good to here about the car E.E.L
Looking good ,nice hardware

 

-

 

Say No more. I had a friend that tried going through high water in an Explorer. The poor guy didn't know the air intake was below the bumper. Most people don't think about the transmission, gas tank, and rear axle. It's not just the engine that can get water in it.

 

Love the mod so far. I have a pair of those ARK cases myself and was equally disappointed about the steel. Well, the first one anyway. Later on, I found an older one on craigslist that turned out to actually be full aluminum. Can't believe they gave you plastic handles. Mine were steel and they painted them to match. I guess ARK is making what used to be a great case cheap and crappier as they go along. Oh another thing, those little hinges suck. Baby them or they will break. Mine were made out of some pretty terrible stamped steel. Again though, the older case proved to be better again.

 

Oct. 13th All Done!

Alright, a small update.

I'll get right to it. I don't have much in the sense of progress pics or anything, but I did finish her up. I had drilled and installed a couple of green LEDs in the side of the front lip to give the panel some lighting. Yeah, she's purring right along quietly here on the bench. She's basically 99% finished at this point. I did some cable-management, and cleaned up a few things and dusted her out. I also polished up all the acrylic on her. All I need to do is re-cut the little piece of acrylic that flushmounts and covers the LED screen for the Koolance unit. The original was cut out of transparent green, and the display is red. To those not color-inclined, what happens when you mix the two? They cancel each other out. I thought of this when I was in the concept phase, but didn't think it'd be that bad. Well, it's bad enough for me to not be okay with it, lol. The only way to see the display is in total dark. And being the fact that this will probably end up in a store, we don't plan on going for the 'mood-lighting' theme in it. I figured I'll just cut a scrap of red or orange or something to put in there instead. I cut green originally because it's all I had laying around from another build and wanted to use up all the scrap, hahah. Oh well. Nothing wrong with being frugal, right?

It's been a relatively-painless build, amazingly enough. I enjoyed doing the special-fx makeup job on her. It was different from my usual MO. It was fun!

Now let's kick her to the curb so I can start on something new (of course, that's after I finish up Noire...).

Anyways, I've got some snaps of the case. For some reason, the OD green wreaks havoc with my camera, especially outside. I attempted to adjust the color-levels to natural compared to real-life, but it's still off a bit. I won't get OCD about it, because I know she looks like real OD green IRL. Hell, my best friend is ex-military, and he says it looks like a piece of equipment they'd use. My work here is finished.

I'd like to say a sincere thank you to all who posted in this thread, and provided constructive criticism or just kind comments. It really keeps me going. Sincere thank you to my friend, John H. aka jhanlon303, for the HDD cages. I'd be stuck without it, man! I'd also like to give a sincere thank you to my friend and Mawd Gawd Mr. "Overkill Bill" Owen for graciously offering the set of awesome black anodized machined aluminum case-feet that went on this build. They are top-notch compared to the plasticy junk that's generally available. I'm not just blowing smoke up his ass about them either. They really are friggin' awesome. Anyone who hasn't already, hop over to his kick-ass Case Mod Store MNPCTech.com and get some stuff from him. I'll hate you if you don't.

Enjoy the quick pics.















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No more updates, so I definitely got nuthin'.

 

this is one of those mods you cant help but enjoy! love it!

 

Thanks, mate! I appreciate that!

 

Well met! This came out excellent. Old grunge, worn paint, pealing lettering, all well done. The only fault I can find is a fault shared by us all - The shiny I/O panel and the external MB connectors. I've never seen a way to "age" these or give them any treatment that would make them "not be". This is just a great mod all around and I salute your skills (did the soldiers salute in the films?). What's coming up after The N build? Can't be without some ideas?
Well done.