Geared Up

I must report that the HIper PSU is not a dog after all. I tested it and it is rock solid. Possibly it was something about the loss of amperage across all those bulkhead connections I had setup. I have it installed right now on a 939 rig I just put together and am experiencing no issues.
 
Here's what up to date.

I've been attempting to get ahold of ANYbody that can laser/waterjet cut some final pieces of aluminum for me and haven't heard back from any of them This is what is taking so long to finish up this project.

In the meantime I've been sitting on some last bits of mirrored black plexi and I've decided to modify my front faceplate design just a little.

FACEPLATE2(Medium2).jpg
FACEPLATE2(Medium).jpg


It's a little more simplistic than the first but takes care of a lot of problems I have with the front of this case. Number one being that you can see all the cables I have routed through this area because of the LED in the Evercool fan. In the design the case front will be cutout where the casebadge is now and an 80mm round fan cathode and silver perforated mesh installed in it's wake.

If I like the way it comes out I'll be even more anxious to get this cut from aluminum. I have a piece of stock coming in that I won off of eBay.The circle cutouts in the large panel will be easy enough but I'm not too confident in my ability to cut that (separate) gear that is also shown on this version of the panel.

You'll also notice there's no provision in this design for any optical drives. That's because I realized that I hardly ever used them when they were installed anyhow. I removed it and installed it in that clear acrylic Beantech enclosure with another DVD burner so now I have a disk duplicator to play with.

In place of the optical drive I installed another harddrive in an Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler (minus the crappy plastic faceplate).

Image063.jpg


If you haven't tried one of these let me tell you that these work like MAD. It keeps that drive a full 5-6 degrees celius COOLER (26-28celcius idle, 30-32celcius load) than the water cooled one at all times.

I'll be replacing it with the black version though (minus the crappy plastic faceplate of course).

uhdc2.jpg


I'm also trying to get my hands on some Aquadrive faceplates so if anyone across the pond can help me out I'd appreciate it. I've been trying to get ahold of a an etailer there and I'm just waiting for some responses to emails.

Well that's it for right now. Later.
 
grumblemarc said:
Here's what up to date.

I've been attempting to get ahold of ANYbody that can laser/waterjet cut some final pieces of aluminum for me and haven't heard back from any of them This is what is taking so long to finish up this project.
Click to expand...

[email protected]
 
grumblemarc said:
Thinking about one of those OCZ units,. PCP&C or Antec PSU's. Checking reivews on them right now.
Click to expand...

Yes -- OCZ is awesome... so are the PCP&C ones, but your rig is saying "OCZ" to me for one reason or another. ;) The power stream 520 seems like it would be a good fit for your power needs, but the 600 would give you more long term flexibility. Anyways.

This is such a fantastic project. amazing looks. wow. I love all the perferated surfaces and lighting... the overlapping circular imagaes... and those cars stereo head unit glow trims on the front are a nice touch. heh... plus seeing your 120mm rad in the back of your v1000 is inspiring me to get off my a** and get mine installed. Anyways, kick-a** modding! :)
 
revenant said:
Yes -- OCZ is awesome... so are the PCP&C ones, but your rig is saying "OCZ" to me for one reason or another. ;) The power stream 520 seems like it would be a good fit for your power needs, but the 600 would give you more long term flexibility. Anyways.

This is such a fantastic project. amazing looks. wow. I love all the perferated surfaces and lighting... the overlapping circular imagaes... and those cars stereo head unit glow trims on the front are a nice touch. heh... plus seeing your 120mm rad in the back of your v1000 is inspiring me to get off my a** and get mine installed. Anyways, kick-a** modding! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks heaps. I'm waffling bewtween the OCZ and PCP&C. It's not pressing right now as I just want to finish off the exterior of the case. The interior is alsmost done and by the time the project is done I'll have all new mobo, CPU and Vid card in there.
 
Nice!! oh - and BTW, love the Deck kb! I got mine last week and really dig it... the "fire" version. It was smaller than I expected also... but no buyers remorse here. :)
 
Did you pick up the 10-keypad add-on? I haven't yet (have to pay for some Lasiks surgery begining of next month). People think I'm nuts for spending so much money on just "half a keyboard" but they just don't know about the Deck!

Anyways. The vid card just bit the dust. bought it used anyways so it's lifespan was going to be limited since I did not know it's real history.It happened right in the middle of surfing and the screen just went bitmapped and hasn't recovered since. CPR doesn't help. Gonna have to bring the (2nd) backup 6600GT out to play for a while. Hell, I have the new board (VNF4 Ultra), chip (3500) and vid card (vanilla 6600 PCIE) sitting in a backup rig right now so I might just swap that in (except I don't have a block for the 6600. I was waiting to get the 7800GT after the Lasiks!).

I'm on the wife's lappy right now and it hurts. I'm having withdrawl symptoms.
 
grumblemarc said:
Did you pick up the 10-keypad add-on? I haven't yet (have to pay for some Lasiks surgery begining of next month). People think I'm nuts for spending so much money on just "half a keyboard" but they just don't know about the Deck!

I'm on the wife's lappy right now and it hurts. I'm having withdrawl symptoms.
Click to expand...

No - I didn't pick up the 10 key addition... I use my other rig for serious typing, when I need to... but really hardly use that anyways, so I do not miss it at all.. I much rather like re-claiming the desktop real estate again, so when I game my mousing arm and my WASD arm are spaced just right on the desk.. it's very comfortable, and I don't need to fuss "the gaming config" and "the typing config" ... it's all just "the config" now. :) or something like that. ;)

heh... I've been there... (me)"honey, can I use your laptop" ... (her)"WHAT?? What about your super ultra cool computers?? are they both broken??" .... (me)"well, kinda..." lol ..oi. I hope you're back up soon. :)
 
revenant said:
No - I didn't pick up the 10 key addition... I use my other rig for serious typing, when I need to... but really hardly use that anyways, so I do not miss it at all.. I much rather like re-claiming the desktop real estate again, so when I game my mousing arm and my WASD arm are spaced just right on the desk.. it's very comfortable, and I don't need to fuss "the gaming config" and "the typing config" ... it's all just "the config" now. :) or something like that. ;)

heh... I've been there... (me)"honey, can I use your laptop" ... (her)"WHAT?? What about your super ultra cool computers?? are they both broken??" .... (me)"well, kinda..." lol ..oi. I hope you're back up soon. :)
Click to expand...

hahahaha, yea well as you already know with me, im ALL about desk real estate. as for "the config" thats funny. you should see me, not only do i not liek to slide my keyboard, i rather pick it up and palce it, i have to do that for everytime i play games cuz im not a WASD'er and then i even figit with it whilst playin to angle it 1 degrees here 2 degrees there.

the next hahahahh award goes to the gettin ripped on for using the girl's lappie. thats why i have had my trusty powerbook for so many years (well not the same one, ive had about 4... one replacing the other) so no goin to someone else's machine. cuz thats the first thing they ask... "whats wrong with your super duper i cant use it mahcine? NOW you want to use mine?" to which i respond either very sweetly or very ruthlessly hahah
 
Well I have a backup rig and it has all the 939 parts I eventually plan on moving into THIS rig. I just grabbed the nearest computer I could lay my hands on at the moment.

I'm BACK on the main rig typing this up right now and I must report...IT'S NOT THE CARD!!! It looks like I'm losing amperage (as someone explained to me) through that bulkhead I have the vid card power wires routed through. I bypassed that with a direct connection to the PSU and I'm up and runing again. Kinda sucks as I have to rethink my design. But as always I have a "Plan B".

Now I may be jumping the gun as the card decides after it sat idle all these hours to just crap out on me again but at this time all seems to be working fine. Funny thing is that all the other power bulkheads seem to be able to power everything else up just fine.
 
This is one of my all time favorite case projects. Man, this is one hellova job. /subscribe
 
Quick update.

Got tired of waiting since I never heard back from and water/laser cutters for the final pieces I need done so I took a stab at cutting things myself.

I won a slab of 6"x4' aluminum that was 1/8" thick. I hacked off a 15.5" piece, drilled a couple of holes and attached a stainless Aquabay faceplate to the front of it. Needless to say the measurements are off because I SUCK at it but you cannot tell at all.

alfront8.JPG

alfront2.JPG


Here it is all polished up.

alfront15.JPG


Check that near mirror finish.
I didn't want to take it too far with the level of reflectivity because the rest of the parts are about this shiny.

alfront9.JPG


Here is how the faceplate gets mounted to the case. The rear end of the Aquabay.
You'll notice that since I'm not using the Eheim 1046 pump on it I hacked away the pump mounting plate. Actually I did that almost right after I got it.

alfront1a.jpg


Here's what it looks like with it ON the case.
The FIRST thing you'll notice is that there are no more optical drives and the fan controller is gone too. Actually the fan controller is IN the rig but I don't have pics of that just yet. Now I just need some more gear pieces cut and I'll almost be finished with this thing.

Overall I'm kinda happy the way it turned out but there are many problems with this version that need to be worked out. A LOT of misalignment due to the lack of measuring skills. I think I've solved that dilemma. I also hated that I had to move the fan controller INTO the rig. The cuts were just too difficult for the tools that I have at the moment. But mark my words it WILL see the light of day again. The way it looks right now is just too plain and PRONE to fingerprints. AAAARGH!!
 
Hey!

Long time no update! And guess what? STILL no update. Just waiting for some response for waterjet cut parts so I'm still hanging in there. I just bought one of these from FrozenCPU.

ramcooler.jpg


I know I don't need to cool my RAM but it looks cool. I'll let you know what I think when it arrives.
 
Okay now that's just pure bling factor right there, but goddam does it look cool.
 
Let me know how the Hydra-Pak ram cooler works out? Nice hunk of metal! How did you finish it?
 
Same as with the rings. A lot of sandpaper, Maas polishing cream, and a lot of elbow grease. It actually polished up faster since it was one solid piece of metal.

I'm anxious to see how the ram cooler works out.
 
Just got the Hydra-Pak in today and I must say it's an interesting piece of hardware. I'll try to get pics up the weekend.

It looks like it got here yesterday but I wasn't here. I was over in Nashville getting a Lasiks procedure done with a Bausch & Laumb laser. I now have 20/15 vision just one day after the op and I was told it would only get better. SWEEET! In the dark lights are giving off a halo effect that should go away over time. Vision is a little blurry in the dark but that, I was told, was to be expected and will also clear up.
 
wow nice. all the better to see your mods my dear.


anyhoo, i REALLY wanna see the ram cooler in action, how you got it to work in yer system (im thinin of a secondary complete loop for myself) and pics + write up. anxiously awaitin it mane.
 
After a long hiatus from this project I got some free time to try and get closer to finishing up this mod. Although I doubt I'll ever be truly finished this is about as close as I've come.

First off we have this...

neonfront.jpg


...and this.

neonfront1.jpg


This is the front aluminum faceplate that I carved up a while ago.

fronts1.jpg


I took one of these.

cathodefan.gif


And simpy chucked the fan away then coupled it with one of these.

Billetgril.gif


I also chucked the honeycomb grill as it did not fit with the theme.
It will eventually be replaced with a small geared ring like I planned.
Right now it's got the regular old fan grills on it but I am whipping up
the round mesh ones as we speak.

Here's a shot from the back if you can make this out.

rearcathode.jpg


I also did some swapping out of components and the blowhole rings are
also getting a nice polish today.

So here's how the case looks right now.

overall.jpg


AI chucked the Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler and I added the
Innovatek/AquaComputer hard drive rails to the second drive.
I swapped out the Danger Den rad for for an Aquacomputer one.

aquarad.jpg


I added another bulkhead fitting for a PCI-E extension to be run
through for the vid card.

evga78.jpg


And mounted my old GPU cooler onto it.

Let me tell you this was the most frustrating part of the whole
ordeal. I thought that simply hacking off the voltage regulator
portion of the cooler would make it fit onto the new card easily but I was
WRONG.
I mistakenly assumed that the only difference between the 6800 cooler
and this one was the voltage regulator extension. If you notice there are 2
capacitors right at the lower right hand corner
of the stock cooler.

evga78a.jpg


I had to notch out a lower part of the corner of the
cooler to allow the smaller cap to fit and then found the the cooler was
still too long across. It hit the larger cap and cost me about 1/8" of
clearance. So close yet so far. So I took my orbital sander to the right
hand side of it and sanded off that nearly 1/8".

Here's what it looks like finally monted to the card.

gpublock.jpg


You can see the rough spot I left in my frustration. It JUST fits now.

Here is where the Noise Isolator is sitting for now until I can get my hands on
an Aquaero.

fancontroller.jpg


So this thing. The pass-through for the ATX connector. Ugly.
Don't know what I was thinking.

cobh2a.jpg


And this.

ramcooler1.jpg

Would not fit my RAM with the heatspreaders on them
and I wasn't about to void my Mushkin warantee. I sold it to someone
on another forum who could use it.

So that is it for now. When I finish polishing up the blowhole rings
I'll get pics of those.

Later.
 
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