Project : FX-57 MaxPC RotM, Sept.2006!!!!!

Hey guys! Putting the wraps on my next mod, and wanted to keep my moddin bruthas in tha' loop!

This thing has been a labor of love. It was built for the 2005 Coolermaster Case mod competition. I finished it (mostly), and made the submission deadline.

The top scoop was made by hand out of aluminium, foam, fiberglass and bondo. I have a desire to finish this scoop (the inside needs a little bit of work to smooth it out as well as additional paint to even the color out) and wrap up the case,





You see that orange light strip to the right? That is a layer of UV reactive orange acrylic being back lit by a UV meteor light. It makes the edge of the drive bay pulse/chase/strobe!!! I also have 2 red meteor lights on the belly of this case. with the same lighting effects available to them too.














I then took a break for a bit, and then went back after it, modding a mouse (paint, LED color change, mouse wheel dyed black like a tire), and took a Saitek and pulled the blue LED's out and replaced them with white ones, then painted the outside to match the color scheme of BOSS. I'm going to put some BOSS striping and graphics on the keyboard. I also have an actual classic Mustang grill emblem that will make it's way onto the mod eventually.

Here is the computer/keyboard/mouse all together.







Not done... but getting Daaaaaaamn close!


The hardware is as follows:
AMD FX-57
ECS KN1 SLI Extreme
Gigabyte 6800GT x2 (SLI)
Crucial Ballistix Tracers (2x512MB)
Coolermaster Hyper48 Heatsink
Coolermaster RC-531 case
Plextor PX-712A SATA DVD Burner
CoolerMaster CoolDrive3
CoolerMaster RealPower 550w (modded into an SLI)

A *major* shout out and thank you to AMD, NVidia and Crucial for their support of this mod and generous support of the modding community. I could not have done it without your assistance. Thank you BW, SH and LP... you guys are simply the best!!!


Also, CoolerMaster... your contests and enthusiasm for building *personal* computers is second to none! Without the CM Modding contest this last year, and the prizes from winning the stages...this machine would not exist. Thank you for your support of our beloved addiction.

If anyone is interested, I will start porting my actual work log on this beast over. If not, and you just wanna enjoy the pics... that is cool too!

But, bit my fellow bit-tech brethren... I bring you my latest mod, based around a Ford 1969 Mustang Boss 302...

 

Are you kidding me i can't freakign wait man! looks hard core!

 

Dude... Sexy, V-E-R-Y sexy...

 

Man it looks sweet! Cant wait 'till you start your log here

 

Looking good, as always

 

Sept. 24th, 2005 - Ground Zero

Ooooo baby.
Lemme tell you something. Brainstorming with the wifey can *really* pay off!

I had a completely different tact that I was going to take on this next rig... but the more I thought about it, the harder it was going to be to pull off. Cuts being too complicated, painting process to prone to error or too expensive... experimental acrylic work...

yadda yadda yadda...

After all of that, I now have a good, clear project plan. Sometimes just having people to conversationally bounce stuff off of is the best thing!

So...

Here is a quick shot of all of the equipment I have, one big group shot:


The case this is based off of is a silver RC 531. All alum front bezel... and the front of it, I feel, is actually going to lend itself very well to the following inspiration:





I found this little tidbit, and will buy it tomorrow. Dress it up and put it on the front of the machine right over the front intake (just like on the radiator)


Coloring will be just like the first picture, orange body, black striping. Case frame will be black, and for the cabling, I plan on using either stainless steel or chromed conduit to route all of the cables through, and will bend it to fit. (Kind of like the brake lines/hydraulic lines in the engine compartment. I may use some clear tubing for some cable runs as well, which I will custom light. This 2nd option is more of a trick for the "if I have time" section!

The side striping will actually go all the way over the window, actually dividing the window space into 3 parts, with the vertical curve happening on the side window panel closest to the front bezel. I am thinking about this graphic on both sides (just like on the cars) of the case, possibly windowing both sides as well. I will paint the whole case and window the orange color, then I will lay down the vinyl graphic stripes, then I'll clear coat the whole thing until it is level and smooth (Vinyl not leaving ruts on the surface). I *may* paint the striping, if I feel comfortable in the procedure. But I'm thinking vinyl since I am under such a time crunch.

The middle portion of the front of the case will be black as well. In keeping with the BOSS and the Mach1 motif's of the early 70's, this will be a nearly matte black color. I will put this matte black on the center section of the front bezel ( the area with the vertical bars) running from the base of the front, to the top, and all the way down the roof piece, stopping just over the rear of the power supply exhaust.

I am entertaining the possibility of a blow hole, should the design allow for one.

For the fan grills, I'm going to go over to a hobby shop and then to an RC shop up the street, and see if I can get RC Car rims that look like those CRAGAR style 5 spoke mags (kind of like the 1st pic) and I'll mod those into fan grills!

Lighting will be done with White LED fans. I may be popping in a white CCFL to provide internal light as well as a ground effect.

One little trick bit that I am also thinking about is taking the gauges out of a Musketeer 2, reprinting their backing, and embedding them into the top of the case (just above the top most 5.25 bay) and having them facing forward, but recessed like in dash gauges), angling them up at about 45 - 80 degrees.


I'm going to start drawing and working graphics tomorrow (I hope), then I'll go looking for the paint I need... (big grin)

I'm thinking about a slimline optical drive (hellooo DFWDepot!)

 

Everyone had their favorite cars...
The Fastback Mach1/Boss has always been one of my fav's.

I'm also a big time fan of the Chevy Bel's and the old 51 Merc's:


When I get my own place, and have room, I *will* get me an old Merc, and rebuild/chop/hot rod one of those old lead sleds!

Camaro's are great too, but have usually fallen 4th or 5th on my list.


Let's not get into a war on this, Stang vs Camaro is almost as ferocious as AMD vs Intel!

 

Oct. 7th, 2005 - more goodies!!!

I've received a few things for the mod!







Oh man.... those video cards are BEAUTIFUL!!!
They are *so* going to add a presence to this mod.... yummy!

All of the fans are white LED fans, the IDE cable is copper clad to go with the whole "car cabling" theme.

The Sunbeam lumpy cables are strings of LED's on a quick connect. Already wired and ready for action... I plan on using these for an "under motherboard" light mod.

The CoolDrive3 is for my hard drive, as I thought it was a trick looking bit of CM product that seemed to match with the late 60's theme of the Stang... (all of the currrent CM CoolDrive pieces are LCD/digital readouts).

NVidia threw in some cool little stickers that are almost metal in feel and appearance. One may work it's way into the rig!

MMmmmmmm..... the fun is about to begin!

 

Oct 7th - Ghetto post to show my plans... please forgive me!




Here is the gist of what I am going.

The striping will actually frame the main center window on the side panel. Where the "BOSS 302" logo is on the original striping, will be "BOSS (insert proc speed here)". This writing will only be on the window side of the mod, striping will be on both sides. There will be a smaller window cut above the top stripe (maybe) to show off the cabling if I am so inclined.
(edit: I figured out how to accurately get the striping *and* properly italicized lettering on both sides... so it will match! YAY! Let's hear it for learning curves and not giving up!)

Bottom of the window, matching the typestyle of the sticker, will be the word "BOSS", which will be cut out of sheet metal (maybe aluminium), will have the screws mounted to the back side of the letters (thinking 2 screws on the straight part of the "B" and then 2 on the "S" one on the top and one on the bottom. These screws will then go through the acrylic underneith it, through another backing piece of aluminium (to go under the sanded acrylic), then feed the screws through spacers, then through the case to nuts awaiting on the back side of the window panel. This should allow the boss logo to stand off the case, and with the sanded acrylic sandwiched between more or less 2 pieces of aluminium, I'm hoping to bottom mount 3 or 4 red LED's into the logo. The LED's would actually be firing their light into the back of one of the blacked out letters, it would then bounce between the layers of alu, and reflect more light into the sanded acrylic. This will hopefully cause a nice glowing efect of the boss logo that is raised up.

Top will have a blow hole, spacing will likely only allow for an 80mm, we'll see. If I do go for this, it will have a blower intake style cover like seen on the hood scoops of the Boss. Not the dual nostril NASA style intakes, but the single center raised air scoop... except in this case, it will be an exhaust vent.

The center/front of the computer will be a matte black to go with the factory finishes at the time using a less reflective black on the hoods. The center line and the bezel plates will all have the same matte black paint job. I will apply thin masking tape to the tops of the grill ribs that run from the top to the bottom of the case. After the black painting, I will pull the tape, and the tops of the grill ribs should have a single, polished stripe running all the way to the top. I'm hoping that his effect will resemble the hood/front grill area of a car.

I'm pondering the idea of corp logos like what hot rodders do with the products they use. Putting them on the lower body panels or hood lines... I'm considering that for this mod....

The Mustang hood ornament will get gussied up, repainted with a good red/white/blue stripe job, and get mounted to the front of the case, just over the 120MM intake fan.

Main color scheme is orange and black, with red accents under the mother board, as well as a metor light mounted into the bottom of hte case, firing down to the area under the case... pulsing red. The raised BOSS logo will use red LED's, the video cards and the CoolDrive both use blue LED's (I will need to see how hard it is to change them to red), and the fans are currently white. I may change those to redm bepending on how things come out. I like to change up the colors in the case to make sure it is not some sort of monotonus color through out... plus whte seems to reflect better off of shiny stuff....

Feet for the case will likely be either polished steel legs, or something with my chrome vinyl wrapping applied to it, and keep the case up high enough for the under case lighting to work.

 

Oct.8th - trying to find my mags...

Ok... stealing inspiration from MNPCTech... I'm going to create 120mm fan grills using the center hubs of one of the following hubs:


or


Which one do you think would work better? I will be using spacers similar to the boss logo, raising the grills off of the surface, but I want the centers to look like the old 5 spoke Cragar mags... these are as close as I can get them...

 

Oct.9th - Striping is done!!!

Striping is done!




The line art is clean!
I can now work on getting this cut!

 

Oct.9th - fun with a hole saw...

Working on some fun with the Drill Press... (que 2001 Space Oddessy theme)


I had bought this a few months back, to be used on my next mod, well... guess what, my next mod is here!

So, I started practicing with 120mm holes (actually a bit smaller, I did not want to hit the frames, only the areas around where the fan blades would be. No filing done to finish these edges. These are the way they came out.)

Some junk acrylic I had laying around:



Aluminium:



Computer steel:




What is the wonderous tool that I am using?
This cool little beastie!!!


It has a ruler on the top of the tool that allows you to slide the blade out to the desired diameter. It will cut all the way out to 4 inches in diameter, and all points in between...



The blade depth is adjustable as well, so you can really customize the hole that you cut! I'm sold! Anyone with a drill press, be on the look out for one of these beasties! I plan on putting this to good use on this BOSS mod!

 

Oct.10th - excitement on the bench...

Okay...okayokay... 'kay 'kay 'kay

The reason I am so excited?
The last of my parts arrived today.... oooOOOooo baby! I'm a happy camper tonight!

So, what's a hardware freak to do except put it all together and make sure it all works!!


All of my parts lying around the bench...


My drool inducing processor...


Awwww, all nesteled in and snug in her bed...


With the HSF mounted:



The powersupply I'll be using:


Planning on dropping the blue fan, and replacing with a white fan, like what the front and rear fans will be... assuming that the white fans are not too bright. If the white carries too far, then I'll stick with 2 white, and leave this one blue.


Fitting the cards with the big ass heatsinks is going to be quite a challange, as the onboard molex for the PCI-e slots sits pretty damn close to the actual slot. And the molexes on the power supply are the easy disconnect ones with the bowed push tabs. *SNIFF* *SNIFF* What's that? You smell a custome cable job? Damn! So do I!



With both cards installed, it is going to be a cable management fiasco, but I look forward to the challange:



All lit up and powered on:


The blue lights below the graphics cards are actually blue LED's that are hard soldered into the motherboard itself. They blink randomly, just for effect. I happen to like them!

I took some other night shots, but I could not hold still enough for good shots. I'm going to take the tripod out and see if I can get some good light shots.

Now, here I go again on more inspirations, and I need your input.

1) The primary external color scheme is to be Orange/Black, with touches of Chrome. Internal, I'm thinking right now, to have the frame painted black, white intake and exhaust fans, red under motherboard lighting and under case lighting, and blue on the gigabyte coolers and the power supply fan... red, white, blue. Thoughts? I get so tired of the single color LED blending.... I guess since I had so much fun on bling, there is no saving me from led blending from here on out!

2) With my new little tool toy, it occurred to me that since I can make circles *any* diameter that I want, I should be able to create a circular air manafold! (Kind of like this: http://www.mustangv8.com/en2/modules/xoopsgallery/cache/albums/album02/aao.jpg)

Following up on an idea from earlier from PoMan, I'm going to design a graphic for the side of the air scoop up top (that is actually an exhaust vent.... but dont tell anyone... ) that will feature the text "6800GT powered" on both sides of the scoop.... or some verbage to that effect. heheheeh

WOO HOOO!!!!

Please let me know what you think of the above ideas. I'm trying to find ways of using what I have, to lower the ammount of new build that I will need to do, allowing me to concentrate on the cutting, paint and finish of the case.

The cabling is going to be a real trick, but I have a friend with a good conduit bending set, and I should be able to borrow it to custom build my cable "lines".

 

Oct.11th - strip out the fans on the video cards...

Warranties are sooo over rated...

Strip down the 6800GT's





Here I started asking one of my friends about the fans I was shipping him for surface mount rework. Wanted to know if he wanted me to take them all the way apart.

 

Oct. 12th - stripped fans, showing the LED locations





Here are the pics showing the locations.

And, while out there tearing apart perfectly good fans... I remembered that the power supply had a "watt vu meter" for the floppy bay/ . Plugged it in, and it was a backlit blue.... so what's a modder to do? Break that lil freak open! See what makes it tick!




If my wiring memory serves me correct, this is a 5mm LED running straight off of the 3.3v line!! I think I'll make it either red or white.... depending on what I find on 5mm LED's.... or possibly 2 3mm leds (one on each end of the vu meter...) hehehhe.... it just keeps on going...

 

Oct. 15th - Blood in the machine...

Well... this *officially made the mod mine...
--------------------------------

So. while pulling apart the case tonight, and clearing the frame, I decided to gut the power supply, and test out the fans... see how my replacement white LED fan would compare.




Let me say this, the fan in the powersupply is a MUCH stronger fan that what is purchased in the retail channel.
Just how stong you ask? Well, the PS fan pulls .45 amps while the retail case fan that I bought pulls .13 amps. There is a serious rpm difference between the two fans, and major airflow in favor of the existing power supply fan.

While testing the fans, the PS one started to fall... I reached for it...
ow OW!!! @(&$*(&@#@&#!!!!!!





after 10-15 minutes of papertoweling and compression on my finger tips, I finally stopped the bleeding. I took that little experience as the fan telling me "I aint a normal fan, and you had *better* put me back in the power supply if you know what's good for you... foo!" I'll figure out another way of getting the white light....

Also of note, the Coolermaster power supply uses a 3 pin molex connector, just like the fan header on the motherboard... except that they rewired it a bit, they flipped the 12v and the ground, but left the signaling wire in place, go figure... so I had to pop the pins on the retail fan and shift them a bit to make sure they would work properly.

I took a ton of pics of the strip down, nothing really interesting there. Just some pics for later use to show before and after, possibly an article on the case, we'll see.

But, I figured you guys would get a chuckle outta my misfortune...

 

Oct.26th - video fans are back!!

Sorry for the delays, I've been doing lots of planning and sitting in the garage just looking at the case... kinda one of those meditation things, I think my wife thinks I've really lost it this time...

1st off, big shout out "THANK YOU!!!" To PoMan for coming through in a BIG way for me. I had 3 fans that were pretty dang small! All of them (2 from the video cards, and one from the chipset cooler I won from CM earlier in the contest) had little surface mount LED's on them. My big ass fingers have a *very* hard time with little, itty, bitty, witty things... (cue Indiana Jones theme here) PoMan to the rescue!

I needed to normalize the colors in my case, seeing as the fans are white (Intake, exhaust, blowhole and power supply fan), and the under carriage lighting will be red (under the case and under the motherboard), the fans on the video cards were more of an aqua blue and did not match with the theme. So... how does one go about changing the color of an LED that is hoplessly soldered onto the PCB's ??!?? You call for help, that's how! And PoMan bailed me in a big way!

Check this out!!!

Before:


We discussed what I wanted to do with the fans, and then settled on the proper color, and he took care of the rest! This man is a PRO!!!!

What was originally blue is now a nice, glowing white!



Now, the neat bit about this next shot, is that when I got the device (an active, heatpipe chipset cooler from CoolerMaster) it had a fan in it that lit up blue. For some that is cool and all, but I don't particularly want blue in my cases anymore. So, in the Craig Tate mentality, I tried to change the color to purple for use in Lupine... everything I tried (all of which involved putting some form of red coloring over the blue LED to try and blend it to purple, that was ghetto) did not work. PoMan *not only* pulled the blue LED and replaced it with our decided upon white LED, he also noticed that the PCB for the fan was actually setup for 3 LED's and he filled the remaining 2 other spots!

So... not ony is this the *only* white "Blue Ice" chipset cooler, but now instead of one LED to light it, I have 3 to light it!!! Think I'll change the name of it from the "Blue Ice" to the "Ice Cube" or something like that. Then, as if that wasn't good enough, the guy hits the part with some cleaner that he had at his disposal, and got a large portion of the ghetto painting I did to the fan trying to change it's color!!! Just took it over the top in my book! Thanks bro!

The 2 video card fans for the Gigabyte cards will are just gonna absolutely *snap* in those shiny, gold reflective heatsinks! And since they wil be SLI, the card on bottom will be lighting the card over it, I'm anticipating some nice light play there! Also, remember that the fans had a shroud of their own that was anodized to a near yellow/gold match of the heatsink color?
(Image here:
)

Well, I'm going to take those little shrouds and hit them with some matte black paint to add accent to the white light that the fans will be providing now! It's gonna look soooo cool!



I have more to post, I gotta get something to drink... more in a sec!

 

Oct.26th - striping sized,

Mmm'kay... started butchering the case out last night... you guys know rough cutting the fan grills out, gouging out where you dont want metal, etc.

I have shots of those but they are all so boring, no need to post. You guys know the drill!
(modder humor there...)

But, I went last night up to Kinkos and hit one with a large format printer. I Had my graphics printed to the native size. I wanted to make sure that my measurements that I "thought" during the design process, were accurate... this is how the stripes will lay out on the computer. Try to look through the blue tape and the stripes underneith.




That mesh work is going to take some bondo or mesh/fiberglass, we'll see what is needed.

now, the neat thing about these stripes is that right there where the word "BOSS" is, the stipes are actually stopped. So, if I want to space the stripes out a bit more... I can do it!!! But, the plan is to cut the window in the middle (where I cut the paper out of hte center of the sideways "U". Anywhere you see grey metal or white paper would be caution orange. This is what may allow me to drop the bottom stripe just enough to get it past the mesh work, so that I am only cutting on straight metal, and not trying to patch up the mesh work that was pressed into the metal.

I have to leave enough space @ the bottom of the window frame for the elevated "BOSS" logo to be built up and added on below the striping. I need metal to tap into for strength, so I dont want to cut too much away.

I've also found some sweeet acrylic square cubes that will work great after being wrapped in that "Chrome vinyl" (from Lupine), hoping that it will look like chrome metal legs!

Anyone know of a place where a person can by metal speaker grille mesh? I just need a little bit of it...

 

Damn Pics are down! Would like to have a look

 

Woah. Absolutely brilliant.