[Case Mod Comp 2008] Project aNn1h8t0r - Overclock.net

cruizer · 04-29-08

Project aNn1h8t0r is very exciting to me as it is my first for a competition and my second mod I have ever done. I've learned alot from modding "The Green Workhorse", and hopefully from my experience and the knowledge I've gained from DETAILED and VERY HELPFULL knowledge and work logs from OCN members I can make this build very satisfying, and maybe win some money to boot!

Now I'm a HUGE fan of AMD but with gaming and doing some cpu intense work I going with Intel on this build. This will be my first, performance minded Intel build. I also will, as a rule of this competition, be taking detailed notes and lots and lots of pictures.

Now at the VERY begining of this project I was convienced I was going to go to a water cooled setup, but with money restraints etc, I have switched back to air. I know with air I can get a moderate, but stable OC on this build and save a little money.

Components:

Materials/Hardware used:

4 casters
mesh
plexi
mirror plexi
spacers
6/32 allen bolts and nuts
pop rivets
rubber molding
self-etching primer
mouse sander
medium grit pads
bondo

I gathered most of my materials from local stores like Lowes etc...

At this point in the build I have not started any actual physical mods to the case it self, one reason is because I'm still up in arms about what exactly I'm going to do to the front of the case, I would like to do a tubine in the front but because it's been done and redone before I would like to break away from the norm but it almost seems like my only course of action to get air flow thru the front of the case.

Also at this point in time I have everything on order except for the processor (waiting for a good deal) and I have most everything here at the house, so weather permiting (we hit a cold patch here...current temps in the 40's and 30's) I will begin moding the case.

cruizer · 04-29-08

On 4/18/08 I recieved my motherboard from OCN member Gi_Manny, I purchased this for $145 from him which was a great deal in my mind. He was awesome to do business with, FAST SHIPPING, and VERY CLEAR COMMUNICATION!!!

Here are some pics of the unboxing

cruizer · 04-29-08

Also Gi_Manny was offering a Northbridge Danger Den Water block for this motherboard as well as the fan for the South Bridge. At the time I was going for a water cooling setup so I went ahead and bought these 2 items from him as well for $10 shipped! Awesome Deal...and once again FAST SHIPPING, and CLEAR COMMUNICATION!!!

Below are pics of the unboxing etc...

cruizer · 04-29-08

As with most things on ebay I'm quite skeptical of a good deal, I've been burned before. During the time I was making deals with Gi_Manny, I stumbled on this AWESOME deal on ebay almost too good to be true. It was for a XFX 8800 GTS G80 320mb, my guess a refurb, but as with all XFX products it has a double lifetime warranty, so it came to me with still a lifetime warranty attached!!! All for $112 shipped. This was from a seller that had a low rep rating so I was kinda scared to let go of my money....but I needed the card....

At first when I sent the money via paypal I kept asking myself I got had.....but by the next day the seller had contacted me telling me it was with fedex, and I would recieve the tracking number from them later in the day.....

And finally on 4/23/08 I recived my package from that seller....now skeptcal if it even works.....

Well today 4/29/08 I finally got to test out the card and it works perfectly, funny thing is I forgot to disable my overclock thru rivatuner that I had on my xxx card and this card actually was running at the overclock that xxx was running at with no artifacts for over 20 min using atitool.

cruizer · 04-29-08

My really big ordeal has been deciding on a case to use for this build....I didn't wanna buy a case, but if I had to I wanted it to be CHEAP!!! Well since I signedup to be in this competition I wanted to just find a case on the street waiting to goto the dump etc. I had 2 cases in my bedroom but neither one of them were good canidates for this build.

I tried to get in on the Rocketfish deal at my local BestBuys but I guess I waited a little too long before I went to go to either one of them, because neither one of them had one in stock....

During the start of this build I decided to start cleaning out my second closet in the bedroom and also my garage, and try to give this old stuff away to the OCN members here that need the old tech stuff. During the time going thru the garage I came across this old case that at first I didn't like at all for a build but after looking at it, it actually was made pretty well for my build.

So I decided to keep it for the build on 4/23/08, it's a mid-tower case, 3 external 5.25 bays, and 2 3.5 external bays, it's missing the internal harddrive bay so that's something I'll have to come up with. I still have concerns with space in this case being that I'm putting such big components in it, so airflow is at the top of my list....

With this case I am planning a bottom intake consiting (2) 120mm fans mounted on the bottom outside of the case blowing inward into the case. Instead of mouting a fan at the top for a blow hole like I did with my previous build, I've elected to cut out a major portion of the center of the top panel, and float a piece of acrylic or plexi, with a sand blasted and engraved logo of the project name on it. This way it serves as a VENT, and we all know hot air rises. Plus with the fans blowing from the bottom up this should ventilate the case very well.....

As with other builds, this will have a LARGE window on the side, I've also thought about putting some mirrored plexi inside the case to help reflect the UV Blue light everywhere in the case and hitting any thing and everything that is UV reactive.

Color shemes have been hard for me to visualize for some reason but I'm thinking about BLUE with GREEN, I oringinally wanted it to be BLUE and RED but with the uncertainty of RED being ACTUALLY Red instead of PINK I opted for a color that is usually dead on which is GREEN.

So I'm going BLUE UV cathode tubes....4 in all, and the cables sleeved or made with UV reactive GREEN.

cruizer · 05-05-08

NEWEGG just surprises me all the time....I ordered over $400 bux of stuff on April 31st and it was all delivered to my door on May 1st! That's right 1 day shipping!!!....and it was 3 seperate boxes.

First off tho, I ordered a gaming mouse and mouse pad for use playing games on my new rig...I'm using it now and I must say I'm totally impressed with these....

Cyber Snipa "Stinger" 3200dpi gaming mouse

Cyber Snipa Aluminium Mouse Pad

Like I said I'm very impressed with this combo....and I just knew I had to get away from the wireless mouse I had already, it was doing great but with the new mouse set at the same dpi, the cyber snipa pwns it hands down.

Well here is some pics of all my new stuff I recieved for the build...

Box 1....what could it be????

DVD Drive

OCZ REAPER

and some AS5

Boxes 2 and 3

Corsair 750w psu

Blue UV lights

Fan Filters (dunno if I'm going to use them or not)

Tuniq Tower 120

(3) Scythe fans

Woohoo....the parts bin is starting to pile up

Well today is Cinco de mayo (however it's spelled), today I'll adventuring into my bondo, and trying to sculpt the front bezel, I can't paint anything yet I'm still waiting on my switches from Hong Kong to get here so I can figure out placement etc. I will also start drilling on the case etc.

I bought alot of materials this weekend, I will post some pics later today or just when I get the chance, I got casters, paint, couple of tools etc for this...all in all I spent about $150 bux this weekend on this build.

One thing that sucks kinda is I need a 4.5 inch hole saw for these fans and well the only one I can find is at either Lowes or Home Depot, and at either store that hole saw runs for almost $40 bux, when the 4 inch hole saw is only $13 bux....can someone EXPLAIN why there is almost a $30 dollar difference for a half an inch?????? This seems very stuipid in my eyes.....I bought a whole hole saw kit from Harbor Freight for like 16 bux and it goes from 4 inch to 5 inch holes but no 4.5 inch.....just seems really stupid. So I'm not going to be paying for that 4.5 inch hole saw, I'll just use the 4 inch hole saw and hope for no decreased airflow.

Actually on the bezel I'm going to use the 4 inch saw...but on the bottom of the case I'm going to try to make some pretty 4.5 inch holes, just going to be a pain.....

Anyway....next post will be of the work I accomplished today, no matter how little...LOL....

cruizer · 05-11-08

Well I think I left off on the 5th of May, and I've been real busy, not so much on the project just in rl. Anywho this is what I've completed so far and some more stuff that I recieved lately.

First off, I went to do some shopping and went to Harbor Freight, Lowes etc to look for some parts and tools....

First stop was Harbor Freight......when I got there I new I needed a 4.5" hole saw but couldn't find one but I found this awesome (this is what I thought at the time) kit with all kinds of sizes just no 4.5" it had 4" and jumped to 5". I thought well heck I'll just make it work and it won't really matter if a .5 of an inch of the fans isn't visible.

well it made it through the plastic case pretty well....

after trying to make it cut the metal of the case for some time this is what I ended up with.....just a ring where a hole should be....

yup....kinda ruined the teeth on the hole saw...apparently carbon steel won't cut this so I decided I would have to bite the bullet and goto Lowes to pick up the 4.5" hole saw which was like $36 bux, twice what I paid for the kit at Harbor Freight but this had an added bonus, of actually saying "FOR WOOD AND METAL"

pretty aint it...LOL

well it cut thru that like a hot knife thru butter....but now wait a sec.....the hole on the metal case is bigger than the bezel.....just GREAT!!!.....

I tried and tried and tried to get it to cut the bezel from the front side with no luck it would try to throw it across the garage. Then it dawned on me.....hey drill from the inside of the case out......and here is the result...

And actually I usually have some 4" pvc pipe here at the house for making speaker enclosures etc....but I was out...and it never dawned on me (cus I always use the outline of the pipe and a jigsaw to cut the holes in wood) that the outside diameter is 4.5" so I picked up a scrap from my local plumbing supply for 50 cents...LOL

OK...now for the fan holes on the bottom of the case.....

Lineing them up and getting spacing right so they will be far enough away from the casters etc....

After that I figured out how much I want to cut outta the top of the case for the vent and also for light to come up and make the name plaque glow....

this is the approximate size of the lettering on the plaque...but the size of the plexi itself will be much bigger than that piece of paper...

ok...everything is cut now, fan holes on the bottom and vent on the top.

Now for placing the casters and marking the mount holes for them.....I picked these cool casters up at Harbor Freight!

Now I had to be careful on the placing of these cus one side would be awefully close to the motherboard tray...

Disassemble time!!!

Now everything is ready for bondo, primer and paint.....

New delivery......my switches.... Well after fooling around with these switches I bought from hong kong I came to realize that they just won't work for this application....Something I should have asked the seller is what voltage the LED's were, cus now that I have them it's an apparent 12v, which as most of you know the led's on a board usually opperate around 3.3 volts. BIG BUMMER

Pics of the switches anyways...

After the troubles with these switches and being bummed out I decided to go with some vandel switches from mnpctech, and going to get some blue LED's from the SHACK and some chome LED holders....

Now for MY WAY of ghosting a optical drive....."THE RIGHT WAY"

Ok....now I know for some of you ghosting a drive is not having any type of switch at all seen, and some of you LOVE double sided tape....My way of ghosting a drive tho is having a switch and status LED NOT on the drive but on the case....YES you will not see the drive at all, but there will be a switch and status led on the front bezel somewhere.....

It's pretty simple if you have common knowledge of soldering and just some common sense.

Take the cover off the drive...

Use a paper clip in the manual eject hole on the front of the drive to open it and extend the tray this will allow you to take the front bezel off the drive and slide it outta your way..

Locate the switch and the LED on the circuit board...

Identify their corrisponding solder points on the board...

Now that you see what your going after...now you gotta figure out how to route the wires to thoes points....This drive was farily easy, just need to drill a hole big enough for the 4 wires to go thru...

picture with the back circuit board replaced and wires ran..

OH AND DON'T FORGET TO KNOT THE WIRES FROM THE INSIDE OF THE DRIVE!!!! This will help in the future if for some reason you should pull on the wires you don't disconnect them from the board....

Strip a lil bit off the ends of the wires...

Solder them securly to the board...don't use too much solder tho....this will help from not making a jumb between two points....

An extra measure of security, since sometimes the solder could be a little bit higher than factory solder points a piece of electrical tape over the points will shield it from the metal case...

Finished product with the pigtales coming out the back....

These pigtales will be solder to a 4 wire plug and will make an easy connection to the switch and status LED on the bezel, this way it drive and be removed without any trouble at all....

More updates soon.....Just got a job so hopefully I'll have time to do my bondo, primer, plaque this week...and then maybe paint next week....I have a few more parts still coming in, and I still have to order my processor for this build.....just waiting on a lil money.....

cruizer · 05-12-08

Well I bought some bondo and now I gotta play with it....LOL....I'm using the stuff the guy at MNPCTECH recommended which has fiberglass in it, and so far so good.....I got to build up my areas that needed to be covered and build up around my turbine vent....

I let that set the better part of the afternoon...and when I came back it was hard as a rock, and made the bezel weigh like 2lbs heavier..LOL

Anywho now on with the sanding...because it was late in the day and also I only had one pad for my sander I only got about 10 min of sanding in today...tomorrow when I go for my oreintation at my new job I'll pick up some more sanding pads but I won't be able to work on it till maybe wed.
Progress so far....

Before sanding

After sanding...

I've noticed this stuff can be VERY shapeable...so I'm trying to keep that roundness to the front of the bezel as best as I can....with some more pads and some more bondo work I can get it there.....

cruizer · 05-14-08

I finally had some extra time today to work some more on this project. I also picked up some coarser grit sanding pads for my sander.

I could tell it was still rough when I got it out of the garage today, so I slapped on a coarse grit pad and went to work..and boy did it make a difference. I was able to really knock down the high points and start to really get a nice flat solid foundation for my next coat of bondo.

After I was satisfied with the way things looked and felt I then started to put on a THIN coat of bondo, mostly to fill up the air pockets etc that were left after sanding. I also used this time to extend out the bondo to make it look even more uniform. I let that coat set for about 10 minutes....

after that setup, I still was faced with a few pockets not filled....so I applied a 3rd coat to fill these in and to build up and even out the look of the bezel.

Also I have to THANK MNPCTECH for such PROMPT shipping on my items I ordered from them....which was

3 Vandal switches and 12ft of U-channel, I was going to use regular door stipping for cars but I like the look and flexiblity of the U-channel stuff I got from MNPCTECH. Also the Vandal switches are HIGH QUALITY!! and will make an ATTRACTIVE addition to this build...THANKS GUYS!!!

more shots of the switches...

these will be paired up with respective blue LED status lights.

I will, time and weather permitting, be sanding more tomorrow and hopefully if the bondo is flush and ready for primer, I might get to spray the first coat of primer, just all depends....COME ON SUNNY DAYS!!!!

cruizer · 05-17-08

Well now I'm getting a lil agitated with the whole bondo thing, but I'm making it work....seems like everytime I sand it down I got air pockets that keep appearing...even tho I'm putting it on smooth and with enough force to be filling out these dips etc.....anywho...I've applied some more bondo to help even out these problem areas now just waiting for it to dry again....

After I started sanding today...

see the pocket areas below...

better shot...

everything else is looking good tho....

more pit marks....

Third application of bondo.....

Now I wait to sand again....won't be able to till tomorrow it's still a lil tacky, I'm supposed to go on a lil fishing trip tomorrow but some things have come up that may keep me from going...If I don't go....I'll finish preparing the bezel, spray on the primer for the inside case parts and also the primer on the bezel, and hopefully will be able to finish priming everything this weekend..and possibly paint some during the week after work. I have also forgotten to cut out the window in the side panel which is a quick and easy thing to do, and I really don't think I'm going to cut in a design, I think it will just be a HUGE window, I still have to etch and sandblast my name plaque for the top vent, so I'll be pretty busy this week.

I also will have to order my processor before too long......

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[Case Mod Comp 2008] Project aNn1h8t0r

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