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Cube

D

davidmyers

n00b
Joined
Jun 12, 2008
Messages
13
I've been working on a new SFF system for a little while now and considering the amount of modding (compared to my normal amount anyways) I decided that I'd go ahead and post the progress on here. Sadly because I didn't think of it when I was doing work, I don't have any pictures pre-mod so far. But luckily I'm not completely finished.

I started off with an original APEVIA X-QPACK that is all black and has windows on all sides. My color scheming is going to be ALL black and blue. Those are the only colors I really want to see at all. Also, I'm going to having blue lighting that will have the option of being sound activated and it will be hooked up to the sub channel on my soundcard. The first thing that I did was to go and buy some black spray paint that was designed to adhere to almost any surface and I painted all of the aluminum so that the entire case was truly black.

The next thing I did was to install some things. I'm using a ASUS P5E-VM HDMI motherboard and it's having a black PCB was icing on the cake.

I replaced the stock case fan with this wonderful 120mm Scythe fan.

The dvd drive that I chose for the case is the Samsung SH-S203N.

To fill my second 5.25" bay I was lucky enough to find one of the very last black Sunbeam Lightbus' online.

I bought a Scythe Fan Controller to fill my 3.5" bay and it controls the 120mm case fan and the ram cooling fans that came with the 4GB Corsair Dominator that I bought for my system.

I also had to replace the stock PSU that came with the case because 450 watts just wasn't going to cut it for a high end gaming pc. So I bought the SILVERSTONE ST70F 700W. I chose this PSU for four reasons. The first being that it was black, the second is that it's modular. The third reason I chose it is because there aren't any lights in it that I'm not going to be able to control and the final reason is because it was short enough to fit in my case without any major issues.

My first HD is a 150GB RaptorX drive. They appear to be phasing them out now, but I was lucky enough to get one while they were still around. Because of where the HD cage is at in this case, I have a prime spot to mount this HD and have it seen. The only problem is that the HD cage orients the drive in a way that is un-friendly to my idea of seeing the HD window on the RaptorX. So I decided to put the drive in the opposite way which has the cabling against the front panel of the case. To get the cables to the drive I had to take a dremel and but a rectangular hole in the support bracket for the HD's right near the front panel of the case.

This is all of the buying that I have done so far and because I am pretty much broke at the moment, it will be a little while until I am finished buying parts, but I've got more to do that just stick in parts. I have more that I have already done, and pictures that I need to upload, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to do that. I hope you enjoy my PC. :D
 
oh yeah, ...

please bring some structure to your writing, it's all one big block and is hard to follow.
 
Unless of course the cubical text is supposed to be reflective of his case. Or something artsy like that.
 
How did u fit the PSU ? In its specifications it says its 160mm deep.Even with a short optical drive there would be only a couple of cm left to squeeze the connectors in.I have a 140mm deep modular PSU and a 17mm deep optical drive and i had a hard time to plug the connectors in and bend the cables.Any pics ? would be interested how u did that.
 
Sorry about the wall of text, I didn't even think about when I was typing it. I was just trying to get as much done as I could because I was short on time. I'll take some pictures of the stuff here in a little bit.

The fit with the cables definitely is a tight one. I have to have the main power connector plugged in when I put the PSU into the case. There isn't enough clearance to move the main power connector in and out of the PSU when it's in the case. It's not that bad of a sacrifice though. I was dissapointed however when I found out that they were stopping making the short cable set for my PSU =(.

By the end of the night I should have some pretty pictures for you and I'll work on formatting that giant wall of text that I posted.
 
Ok, so I took several pictures to give you a good idea of what's going on in the case at the moment. First though I'd like to acknowledge the fact that the case is a mess and things are not all in order. I'm in a phase of getting things in the case and testing them and figuring out the layout. When I finally install everything, the cabling will be nice and pretty.

First picture is just of the front of the case (minus a black faceplate on the DVD drive b/c I'm still working with it;) ).
P9020329.jpg


Next are side views and the back.
P9020330.jpg

P9020331.jpg

P9020332.jpg


Next I have to tell you about my DVD mod. I found an awesome idea for a DVD drive mod in CPU magazine like a year ago and I kept the idea. Basically you just cut a hole in the top of the drive cover so that you can see the cd's in the drive. Considering the placement of the DVD drive in this case, it's the perfect thing give the top of the case flair. Because God knows we could all use some more flair (lol for officespace people). I then took two leds that I had bought and mounted them inside the drive to shed some light on the discs.

P9020335.jpg

P9020338.jpg


Here is a pic of the hole I made for the HD cables:
P9020333.jpg


And here is a pic of the cables coming from the PSU. What I have to do is take out the DVD drive, plug in the cables that I need, and then shove the DVD drive into the cables pretty much and screw the drive in while holding pressure on it. The cables are fine and it just barely fits. The important thing though is that it DOES fit. :D
P9020343.jpg


I'm also going to have some leds shining light from the inside of the case coming out on the front panel. There are little slits in the plastic right on top of where the handle rests when it is swung down and I have the area circled. The light will shine down from these slits onto the handle and the desk.
P9020340.jpg


I'm using a cuttable led strip that is on thin circuit board. The original strip had 18 5mm piranha leds on it and I cut it down to 9.
P9020341.jpg

P9020342.jpg


They're brighter than my blue cathodes and they're going to be providing the light on that front panel.

Here's a tiny video of the computer turned on.
Cube video
 
Looking good so far man, all I got to say is I hope you are going to clean up those cuts on the DVD drive, but other than that looking good.
 
As far as the DVD drive goes, I'm waiting to see what happens. I found an acrylic piece that houses the disc stabilizer that is made for a samsung drive similar to mine that should fit. Ideally, I'll be able to get that acrylic piece, remove the metal brace that is currently holding the disc stabilizer and just clean up the corners of the giant square that will result. If not, then I'm going to have lots of detail work to do to fix the aesthetics of the mod.

One good note about the DVD drive though is that today I got all of the wiring done for the leds in the drive. Previously I just had them jerry-rigged to the Lightbus and now they're legit-ish. Let's say, custom legit.

This is the first time I've ever done alot of these things like spray painting metal, using a dremel, wiring electronics, etc. If you have any tips on that kind of stuff or see anything that I should improve on, please feel free to let me know. This is my first attempt at any kind of modded computer and I'm trying to make sure it ends up pretty cool. :D
 
Well, I was able to finally get those acrylic mod pieces for my DVD drive. I ordered them from http://www.customxps.com. They are normally bundled with their XBOX 360 full case mod kits, but I was able to get just the DVD mod pieces. I just got them in the mail today though and haven't had a chance to do anything yet. I'm going to have to do a tiny bit of cutting of plastic to get it to fit perfectly, but hopefully I'll have a chance to work with it soon. As soon as I start working on it I'll post some pics.
 
I'm sorry it's been so long since I last updated, but I didn't have many new developments and was busy. I've finally gotten a picture uploaded of my DVD Drive with the acrylic mod pieces that I ordered. (I'll do a higher resolution image once I get my camera back)

09fc0ccc0e78.jpg


Since I added that new piece, my DVD drive has become slightly taller around that area. Because of this my case it scratching the paint off of the drive. So I'm going to be dremeling the case where it comes in contact with the drive so that I can widen it up a bit.

Because of Christmas I have gotten my CPU and HSF. The CPU that I ended up going with was the Q9550 and the HSF is the Zalman 8700. The first reason that I chose the Zalman was b/c of the black fins with the blue leds. Plus it's the best hsf that will fit in my case. Although because of the fact that I want to be able to turn all of the lights off inside of my computer the leds in the zalman will either just be snipped or the entire fan will just be replaced with a scythe 120mm fan :D.

In preparation for this and having the computer running, I'm finishing up all of the cabling, modding, aesthetics, etc. This means that I will be posting images of finished things and of small changes/more details of the modding. Hopefully within a week I will be posting the final pics from the new computer.

Bear in mind that I will still be needing four pieces of hardware before this computer is finished: 1.5TB storage drive, Asus Xonar Sound Card, Razer Lachesis Mouse, and a Sapphire 4870 1GB (although this might change to either an XFX version or just a newer series card by the time I get the money). So after this next set of pictures I will likely be done with updating this worklog other than posting new pictures with a new pieces of hardware in them.

Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are all welcome. Let me know how you think I'm doing with my first mod and how well I'm sticking to the black and blue theme. I'm also going to be attempting to have the cabling extremely neat and non-visible, so let me have it.
 
I did something similar in my old Pentium M desktop build, which has been mostly parted out.

A nice way to finish off the drive mod is to trim it. I used some rubber outer sheathing from an old USB cable split lenghwise. The nice thing about the trim is it looks nice and provides a little bit of cushin between the plexi top and the drive. You can (and should) do the same thing to trim any hole you cut and feed wires through.

tn_DSC00718.jpg

red spindle led, wired to 5v internally:
tn_DSC00666.jpg


Here's a hole I cut in my Antec 900, trimmed the same way to keep the wires from getting cut:
DSC02228.jpg


I like the clear plastic spindle. You def need to get better pics so we can see what's going on. Good luck with the QPack, it can be a challenging build. Especially if you care about cable management.
 
I got my camera and here is a high quality shot of the updated dvd drive mod. (Bear in mind that it is waiting on a fresh coat of paint.)

P1020402.jpg



That usb cable for trim is a great idea. I'm not quite sure yet how I'll be able to implement that, but I'm certainly going to try. That would definitely make those edges look better.

I have some black heatshrink, do you suppose that would serve the same purpose? My main issue with doing it is that my shape is a square. Also I don't want the trim to get caught on the drive bay. Did you have to modify your drive bay to prevent this from happening or from it scratching your paint?

I'm working as fast as I can to get things finished and will hopefully starting posting some new pics either tomorrow or Monday.
 
You can also buy small diameter tubing and slit that open, or car door edge trim maybe. I didn't have to do anything to the bay to get the drive installed. Because the trim is flexible it bends out of the way and back when installing, IIRC. I actually don't quite understand how your paint is getting scraped up.

Anyway, good luck!
 
Thanks for the great tips on that. The square drive bay hole that you slide the drive into is what is scraping the top of my drive. Apparently the acrylic piece adds enough height to the drive that it makes it scrape the drive bay so badly it scratches the paint.

I think that I'm going to use the heat-shrink tubing and see what happens. I can always take it off and start over if it doesn't turn out how I want it to. It would certainly be the easiest way of implementing it for me. I'll do it tomorrow and will post it either tomorrow night or Monday. It just depends on how it goes. If it works out I'll do pics etc, but if not I'll just say that it didn't and attempt to explain why.

Tomorrow I'll be finishing up my led wiring. I'll also be re-borrowing the dremel so that I can fix the aforementioned drive bay issue. Plus I'll be trying out this trim idea on the dvd drive. Hopefully this will lead to me getting lots of new progress pics posted on Monday.

I'm hoping that Monday will see me finishing up all of this small stuff; we'll see.
 
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