Well, a few weeks before finas i was poking around the PC hardware classroom and I noticed an old scuffed up SGI O2 workstation sitting witht he other old and broken "donations" that people toss to our school. Boy was I excited. I asked the teach if i could keep the computer and case if it was alright with him, and he let me. So now I've been sitting and looking at this thing for a few weeks and am trying to decide what in the world I'm going to do with it. So after a few brainstorming sessions and some time in sketchup, I've arrived at a fairly good idea of what I'll do. somehow (not showing sketup files, wanna keep you guys guessing or surprised) I'm going to cram a beast of a gaming/workstation into this tiny little bugger and make it look sexy. dead sexy. HARDWARE MSI 865GM2-LS mATX P4 mobo P4 2.8E "Prescott" core 1 gig kingston HyperX PC4000 Gigabyte RADEON 9800XT 256mb dual 120gig WD special editions Laptop CDRW / DVD Aspire 520w PSU my goal is to use the PC3700 to push a 1ghz+ FSB and keep the system rock solid. This will require plent of airflow in the case to keep everything running happily. i will be using two 120mm fans o intake and exhaust air. In such a small space that should prove to be sufficient airflow. This will require both front and rear intakes. I'll use those tri-blade style fan guards to cover these, cuz they are the sweet fn grills I've seen. I'm onna use either that brand new ****tech heatsink or the latest thermalright hsf with the heatpipes. Those two both have great reviews and should definately keep this beast cool. I maybe incorporate a side intake fan to blow on the CPU/RAM/NB area if the system temps show that I need to.the PSU will be mounted upside down and caseless to the top of the metal chassis to try and keep it from taking up too much room. the HDD's will be mounted up top and in the front to keep them out of the way and minimize visible cables. i will be mounting the hardware wATX style with the mobo upside down. To spce up the boring motherboard side of the case i will be using a 4x20 VFD with a red filter. now onto the aethetics. the reason I called this new comp "CO2" is because I will be using carbon fiber to cover what was normally the blck parts of the case and the white inside body of my apple pro keyboard. I will probably also use it to cover the back panel that I will need to make from scratch. the blue part of the body wil be painted in a metallics red color. and the internal chassis will be painted a flat black color. I have a bag of 100 red LEDs, so LEDs will be used to provide lighting as its HARD to find a deep red colored CCFL, most are pink. I will not restrict the side ventilation slits, and will use those to provide a UFO style glowing underneath and around the case.the mobo and gfx card are both red and I will try to get anything I can to match this color scheme. All the hardware will be either red or black. I'm going to swap out he blue heatspreaders for red or black ones. Probably black to break up the red mobo. i also chose the wATX formfactor to show off the graphics card and other hardware. All cables will either be sleeved in black or red nylon sleeving. 'll also be making a trip over to the performance-pcs website and picking up black molex/AX/P4 poer connectors for all visible connectors. i'm going to change out the blue lighting in my mosue and keyboard for red to match the theme of the case. I'm probably als going to put a few LEDs into my monitor. I'ts also going to be a goal of mine over the summer to see if I can watercool this lil beast. That will effinately prove to be a challenge, unless I can get my hands on one of those little 12v pumps. heres where I'm at so far:
Sounds like a promising project. I'm staying tuned. Good luck fitting all that stuff in that tiny O2.
well, I was in autozone tonight and was looking at the paints and i decided to change my color scheeme around. i will not be using a red metallic paint o the exterior and a black for the frame. Instead I will be using Duplicolor Metalcast to give the chassis a nice red anodized look. I also picked up some Duplicolor Miage paint. I choose the ice color, its a black/sparkly silver. the mirage paint should compliment the carbon fiber look very nicely. I shoul have pics tomorrow f my progress thus far. I have the next two days off of work so i should get most of the paint work done.
How's it going with the pics? Would love to see what you've been up to (I have a bunch of O2's lying around at home), don't know what to do with them yet though.. Everything looks very promising!
mhh nice projekt i'm also thinking of a o2 conversion but they are hard to get in germany @spirp i want one
I love the O2's they are the perfect sized cases for me I've got two here one I've converted already and one for a future conversion if I find time for it n0l4k you can get them from ebay if you are after one
They often come up in the United Kingdom and your more likely to get some1 to ship to german from the UK , it would be cheaper as well
man your lucky having got one of those cases.. i always look on ebay and bidding sites for them.. but I can't seem to find one.. I wanna make a htpc with one.. lol.. can't wait to see more pics
wow, I kinda fell short on moey for a while there but now im selling my current PC and in a week or wo will have cash for all my new parts. I started working on the layout of the hardware in SketchUp. I'm gonna have to model the waterblocks and radiator and at least the chassis at some point here. I have the hardware orriented this way to allow for the radiator to be placed in the top drive bay. Instead of using a DVD burner im using a laptop DVD/CD-RW drive. I'm going to try and pick up two 80GB drive to use in a raid array, tomorrow. In the next week this model should progress a bunch to show my progress in layout. I havent gotten to paint the chassis yet, because its been horribly cold lately. I'm gonna be using the paint botths in my school to finnish that off.
Forgot to mention, for mounting I'm going to go buy a couple long threaded rods and bunchs of plastic/rubber washers (dont want shorts) and make my own custom length standoffs. There is about 1/8" gap between the optical drive and the mobo with plastic between the two to stop shorts on the mobo. the drive will be mounted using gromets on the bolts to reduce vibrations, same for the ard drives, too.
Woah, I am incredibly impressed with the project you have going, most notably your detail in planning this out to the individual chips in sketchup. Would attach the model cause I want to take a better look at it. Carbon fiber rules.
actually I should make note that I found those parts in the skecthup component thread on these forums. the mobo and gfx card arent exactly like mine so ill have to move the cpu socket and ATX power socket to their correct spots. The back panel ports arent important to me, as I'm jsut gonna cut a hole in my custom back panel and use the mobo's provided I/O sheild. This isnt me being lazy though, I want to keep my upgrade options open. This is reflected in my choice of mobo and my PSU (different one than shown in first post). My mobo will support prescot chips and my psu will support the next step in aTX power (forgot its name) and it has lots of power available on the 3.3 and 5v lines to allow stable over clocks. Most of my planning is done cardboard mock ups. I jsut wanted a 3d model to get EXACT measurements. I'f you have ever seen Mashie's wonderful SGI O2 mod then youll notice that he put a VFD module in the opening on the side of the case. My optical drive will be flush with this open and will be windowed to allow you to see the disc thats in the drive spinning away.
I'm going to use a heatercore from www.dtekcustoms.com a maze4 radeon block watercooled northbridge (needs help reaching 1ghz+ fsb) and for the CPU I have two options. maze4 and leave the P4 heatspreader. cascade/RBX and remove heatspreader to put the block directly on the die.
That sounds like a plan. I have a maze 4 sitting here, I just need to part with the money to purchace the rest of my components (and somehow find the time to make it all work) Why bother with the d-tek rad? Couldn't you use a chevy truck heatercore or somesuch?
Only 35 bucks, and will come with the proper fittings instaled and sealed. I put one of these babies in a friend's PC and it outperforms my current BIX by a vary large difference.
great sketchup modelling - exactly what i was hoping for when i started the sketchup thread (see my sig)
