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Introducing Project: "Jack in Da' Box"

H

Hallis

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 26, 2001
Messages
4,556
Hello fellow [H]ard modders!!!

It's been quite a few years since i did anything more than put parts in a case and I don't think I can hold off any longer. The idea started after i built my i7 rig and had nearly an entire PC's worth of parts left over but without a case. The motherboard is a mATX board and that opened up the world of some of the smaller cases that are out there especially the "cube" cases. I happened across a thread where somebody had had a Lan-Gear "Da Box" 100 that they weren't happy with as it wouldn't fit their 2x5870 CF setup. From the initial pics it looked a serious mess. The case internals were scuffed up from repeated install attempts and fiddling but the outer shell was unblemished. I was able, after suggesting an alternative case, to purchase the case at a reasonable price. It should arrive 6/3/2010 according to UPS.

What I had in mind, and this is where the handy name comes in was to build a Jack of all trades PC. Get it!?!?!?! Jack in Da Box!!! *looks around, crickets chirping*...

Basically what I'm trying to accomplish is to re-purpose some of this hardware into a PC that can fill several roles. I want something that can be a server/folding/lab machine but also have good enough hardware to pick up and take to a LAN party or a friend's place for some gaming goodness. I don't expect this machine to be cutting edge or hard core but it's not going to be intended to. You know the old saying "Jack of all trades. Master of none." Well that is the goal here. There won't be any massive 4ghz i7's, no watercooling (not yet anyway), and no GTX 480 SLI setups. I want it to run, for the most part, cool and power efficient when in server mode. But what it will also need is likely some help in the ventilation and space efficiency area.

I have nothing but the utmost admiration, respect, and outright jealousy of those on here that can work up a design in CAD, machine, and produce absolutely stunning works of art to house their hardware but in that area i have absolutely ZERO skill. So i'm taking it back to my roots, as it were. When i first got started in modding the Chieftec/Antec cases were God and sites like Procooling.com, VoidYourWarranty.net, and even HardOCP were still new to watercooling and manufacturing pioneers like DangerDen, D-Tek, and OCWC were testing the waters (no pun intended) as to what worked and what didnt to cool off our old Pentium 3's, celerons, and T-bird Athlons/Durons.

You may be asking yourselves.. "Why not watercool that little sweetie!??" And the answer is that as much as the industry has evolved in the last few years with the exception of the Corsair H50 and similar products water just doesn't offer the hands-free operation that good air coolers offer, and also. I dont have the budget to spend $200+ on a good setup and already have a half-decent air cooler.

So in the old style there is going to be drilling, cutting, painting, soldering, and likely some swearing along the way. I want to see how efficient I can make this case with the existing hardware i've got.

PC Hardware I've got:

Motherboard: Asus M3N78-VM
CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9550
Heat Sink: Noctua NH-U12P
Ram: 4gb Patriot DDR2-800, 4gb OCZ Gold DDR2-800
Video: evga GTS260 Core 216 896mb
Optical: Pioneer DVR-2920Q

PC Hardware I'm going to need:

Hard Drive(s)
PSU: will definately want to be modular
Some fans. Dont know what size just yet.

Possibly a small RAID card, not sure if im going to go that route or not just yet.

PC Modding Supplies I'm going to need:

Honestly I dont even know where to begin there. I'm going to need everything lol. So i'm going to, starting tomorrow, make up a shopping list. I'll be shortening, sleeving, and re-soldering PSU connectors, fan tails, LED leads, and everything else to make it all purdy, I'm going to be opening up at least a few new holes in this thing so will need either fan grills, mesh, or both, paint, various connectors & molex pins, Dremmel cutting wheels, many caffine drinks, The list goes on.

Any ideas, suggestions, or comments would greatly be appreciated. I'm seriously out of practace so I am going to attempt to take my time on everything. Pics will be posted tomorrow when the case arrives at my door. I'm so excited about doing a mod again.

Shane
 
Here some pics. 56k Warning. I'm putting the links in here rather than hosting the images till i learn how to post thumbnails. lol. I'll work on that tomorrow when im less tired.

http://premium1.uploadit.org/Hallis/DaBox/DSCF1039.JPG
http://premium1.uploadit.org/Hallis/DaBox/DSCF1040.JPG
http://premium1.uploadit.org/Hallis/DaBox/DSCF1041.JPG
http://premium1.uploadit.org/Hallis/DaBox/DSCF1042.JPG
http://premium1.uploadit.org/Hallis/DaBox/DSCF1043.JPG

Impressions. Well overall I like the case. IT has a lot going for it. It is well laid out for the space it takes up and the window, although held in with double-stick-sided tape. That being said it definitely needs some construction chances most specifically in material. I saw in the original Da Box thread that they made special emphasis on the thicker aluminum for the shell & faceplate to make them more sturdy feeling. Well I thing they are too thick. The shell is hard to take off because you have to pull it apart a bit so it can clear the structure. and with aluminum so thick that's not always good enough, it fits tight so you get scrapes. Which leads me to #2. The powder coated/painted? finish on the chases is very weak. it's scratched and flaked off all over the place. And the material the chases is made out of is much too thin. It's very easy to bend the motherboard tray and other sections. So I think they should make the chassis thicker and the shell/bezel thinner. I don't have exact dimensions but the thickness of the aluminum on my little Shuttle XPC's shell is spot on.

I also think the front bezel is too plain and I HATE HATE HATE HATE the coarse/deep/whatever you call it brushed aluminum finish, it's too grainy. I believe it should be smoother. And i think they should have kept the air vents that were in the prototype's front bezel. And lastly the power and reset switches feel extremely extremely cheap.

All that being said i think there is hope yet for it. I'll know once more once I get everything test fit so i can measure for wiring. If i can afford it i may be making an order from FrozenCPU and one from MNPCtech.com. I've got sandpaper, Dremmel cutting wheels, and a few more things that i picked up from Home Depot yesterday. We're getting close to actually starting.

Shane
 
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Case arrived today. She's definately a little beat up. Will have some pictures up tomorrow. And will do some test fitting to see what ive got to work with.
 
Well life got in the way of test fitting and photos.. i got aboslutely ZERO done today. With technology anyway. The girlfriend met the parents though and that went well.
 
Good to hear that the GF meeting parents went well.

PSU recommendation: Check out the following:
$100 - XFX P1-650X-CAG9 650W Modular PSU
$120 - Corsair 650HX 650W Modular PSU

HDD wise, these are some of the fastest consumer drives out now:
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$56 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Good luck!
 
I've been eyeballing the Corsair PSU's as well as the Seasonic X650 Gold, After the review i saw in the PSU section that seems like an AWESOME psu. Extremely efficient, a little pricey but the few extra bucks might be worth it.
 
You're going to want a Silverstone PSU with short cable kit in Da Box. Long power supplies are going to give you grief and possibly interfere with your graphics card.
 
I was actually looking to shorten and re-sleeve the PSU cables. I did look at the Silverstone PSU's & short cable kit and will consider that.
 
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Second post updated with some pics of Da Box as i received it. It's seen some love. and will need some love to be purdy again.
 
MassiveOverkill said:
Hallis, I just finished up my second Lan Gear MOM (the proper name for Da Box):

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1523957

Hopefully it will help you with routing your cables. I highly suggest remove the pop-rivets as shown in the pictures and replace with screws/nuts so you'll have easier access to your components.
Click to expand...

The routing of your 24pin cable helps a theoretical question I was going to need to answer eventually as my motherboard's connector is rather high on the board. I'm still considering the Silverstone PSU and short cable kit though. I'll need to Google and see if i can come up with some cable lengths. I think Newegg had them on the specs sheet. If I can get away with not having to shorten that motherboard cable I'll be much happier.

I'm going to do some test fitting tonight. The girlfriend came over again and after work and decided to monopolize my entire afternoon. But she made her Taco Soup so I wasn't about to complain :) that's why I just posted the empty pics and no test-fitting ones. Was too close to bed time and i was tired as hell.

Shane
 
I installed the motherboard, a power supply, and video card yesterday to get a feel for how tight things would be. I think the biggest difficulty I am going to encounter is the fact that the 24-pin ATX connector is right underneath the hard drive cage. So I'll likely have to mount the hard drives after i slide the motherboard in. Other things are somewhat tight but fit without rubbing. Figuring out the airflow pattern I want may be tricky but shortening cables on the power supply and using some short SATA cables should help me accomplish my goals nicely. there are enough fans all over this case that changing air direction in any one zone should be as simple as a fan flip. As such I don't think I'm going to need the Silverstone short cable kit as even that is too long. The longest cable I'm going to need is the 4-pin P4 connector and that can be nearly full length as i ran it all the way around my motherboard and i worked out great.

Going to be placing orders from www.MDPC-x.com, MNPCtech, FrozenCPU, and possibly a few others for some customizing gear like fans, grills, sleaving, connectors, etc. this Friday after I get paid. Hopefully i'll have enough cash to get everything I need in that area. Ordering a power supply may have to wait till the next paycheck.

Once I get all the supplies in the mod photos will begin :)
 
Turns out I had a little more money in the bank than I thought so I may get to make a few of my orders before friday :D. Going to be taking down an inventory of how many and what connectors I need, how many fans, adapters, splitters, thingies, and odds and ends.

Also there is going to be at least 1 window. probably at the top of the case, made out of Modder's Mesh, I was thinking about one for the right-hand side but as the fans are mostly blocking that side there is little to see. And I am going to do something, although I haven't figured out what yet, with that bland-ass front panel. I'm thinking of going old school and just tossing a few 120mm fan grills/holes for a little more direct airflow.

Also as far as color scheem goes I was wanting to do red/black.

I'd like to intergrate this picture in there somewhere because i LOVE me some Harley Quinn..

logo.jpg


Shane
 
I have some more pics to post up but wanted to post that I am making some progress. I'm going to be using a spare PSU that I had laying around as it should fit the bill. But one thing I did notice though is that It is long enough to deny me the use of an 80mm fan in the front location. This will mean some creative thinking on air-flow. But I believe I have a solution. I was originally not going to use the little pop-out 120mm fan mounting that goes over the PCI slots but It seems that, with this in mind, it may give me the airflow pattern im looking for and also provide me with positive air pressure inside the case. ANNNDDDDDDD..... put cool air down near where the video card can pick it up and use it for cooling. So that little piece of potentially sad news turned around into something fortunate.

How often does that happen?
 
Sorry for the lack of updates guys. I've been sick the last few days and have gotten very little done. I didn't even get on the internet after I got home yesterday from work. So you KNOW I have to be sick!! I really shouldn't have even gone to work but I couldn't spare the hours.

I ordered quite a few things from FrozenCPU yesterday. The fans im going to need and mostly hardware to shorten some of the cables on my power supply. I'd originally planned to get the ATX Pins & Crimper from MDPC-x but decided to get them from FrozenCPU to save me international shipping and hassle.

I was going to order a TON of sleeving also but can't bankroll that on this paycheck. So maybe in a week or 2. But what I do plan to start getting done this week is some of the initial stripping and re-painting of the chassis.
 
Good news is that the FrozenCPU order came in on Friday. The bad news is that was all trumped by discovering a rotten hole in the sub-floor in the kitchen, and the 2 days of repair/re-floor that happened a few days later. I still haven't recovered from the sleep loss suffered last week and I don't think I'll EVER get all the residual dust cleaned up.

Good news is that the kitchen and adjoining living room now have new floor. I'll post some pictures of that too.

In the meantime. God I'm wore out. Think I'll stop by "Vato Zone" and pick up some of the last remaining painting supplies I'm going to need like a few scotch bright pads, self etching primer, and a few cans of ceramic based engine enamel which I plan to use on the chassis.

I used some of,, I think it is Dupli Color, engine enamel on an external HDD enclosure. And despite the bad choice in colors* the finish feels GREAT and is very solid.

* - I thought Chevrolet Orange and Black would look great, but in retrospect they ended up making it look like a Halloween ornament lol!!!

Shane
 
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