OmegaNemesis28

Remember this old thing that Cyber Druid made for me for winning the OCN winter giveaway 2 years ago? Yeah, it still was never ever finished. Procrastination to the extreme (2 years) FTW!

Guess what? It's back and I'm actually going to finish it this time!
Disclaimer: I am not to be held responsible if I do what I usually do and never ever completely finish it!

So, is Omega here going to actually mod something or is he just going to stick things in his case?
Good News: yes, there will be actually modding occuring.
Bad News: This further increases the chances of this project never seeing an end.

Continued on the next post.

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OmegaNemesis28

What exactly will I be modding?
Well, for starters - how about some custom built from scratch lighting? I like that thought.

Here's the game plan.
Here we have our friend, the OCN Flame logo (courtesy of CyberDruid and Syrillian's acrylic handiwork, the dream team).


What are those little dots? Those are to be LEDs. Thanks to member Du-z for helping me with the planning and stuff of the journey I'm about to embark on.



Pain in the ass? I think so. Do-able? It certainly is. Doing it nicely? Errrrrr, well, I certainly can't. XD





Some 66ohm resistors (I think)





Messy soldering at first, but my rusty soldering skills improved as I began to get around to my 5th LED out of the 13









All wrapped up and jacketed nicely. At that time, I was like "holy :turd:, only 12 more to go -.-"



4-6 hours later





All taped down. Note, this is only temporary until I can glue the LEDs down and wire them up. It looks (kinda) better later.



ZOMG WIN





It looks kinda cool right? Nothing new before though. Kinda lame after you stare at it for a few minutes.
That is where............ the micro-controller comes into play



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Ok, instead of going straight to the Arduino for the lighting, I decided to work on the 2 year old case that I never got to put together completely.

Here we have some nice LED fans.





Installed on the top


On the back


And front


There was a problem with the case where I had no freakin idea where these pieces needed to go. They're for the drive.





Finally after about 2 hours or so, I finally figured out after 2 whole years that I had to put them in length wise. Holy :turd: let me tell you what an epiphany it was. I even cracked out a massive Arizona Green Tea after that.







Its really meant for raptor drives with the windows cut into them, but considering this isn't going to be a performance PC and more so a folding rig and some gaming when friends come over.... I figured to hell with it and will put standard 250GB drives in.

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OmegaNemesis28

Here is the little story about my precious Striker Extreme. If you've seen my original rig, this is the mobo that started it all. My first rig ever. Let me tell you over expensive 1 way trip to hell I paid for. I believe the rig came to a grand total of about $6,000. At the time, the 8800GTXs were about $900 themselves. And I bought 2 of them. I don't regret them one bit. Not at all. It was the mobo, the ram, and the Lian Li case I got that I regret. Well, the Lian Li case I loved - but it was sooooo small. It is what led me to get the Lian Li V2000 which I'm currently using, its the same case but triple the size. It also had Koolance water cooling built into it which worked great but at the time caused more problems ontop of the bajillion others I had with this GOD FORSAKEN PIECE OF :turd: MOBO!!!! I swear to holy hell, this thing was absolutely hell for me. Between the random errors and the shorting out.... ugh. I RMA'd it twice, and my 2nd time - I said to hell with it and bought, my 2nd mobo mistake, an EVGA 680i along with a Quad Core upgrade from my E6700. Boy, those were bad times because the EVGA mobo is a whole other story. Anyways - why am I going to use this again even though I know its a hellish byproduct of ASUS? Well......... It was sitting there and I said to hell with it, I'm going to save myself a few bucks. I'm not going to be using it awhole lot except folding so it can't be that bad.



The problem is, I had some recent computer problems. I used the Striker as a temporary test bed just to screw around. I must have shorted it or something because there was smoke and the whole 9 yards (love that silicon smell, let me tell you). I think it is dead. So, instead of going straight to the lighting I decided to run some tests before I do what I always end up doing - putting it together, finding the thing is dead, and being the lazy ass I am - not finishing the project.

My E6700 - also my first CPU. Going down memory lane. This thing went through that hellish trip and not once has it failed me. It's a very very very good CPU.









Decided to try something new instead of Artic Silver 5. Some Shin Etsu I found on OCN which linked to ebay for like $3 a tube. Got like 5 syringes. I can't tell you how many times I've had people say either "I didn't know you're a diabetic" or "YOU DO DRUGS?!!!!!". People love to rip through my room because it is filled to the brim with video games, hardware, books, loose change, and other misc cool things (I guess?). People just love to do it, and since I got the Shin Etsu - people freeze up when they peek in my little draw with my commonly used stuff.



One thing I don't like about the Shin Etsu. It's kind of pasty. Not like Article Silver 5 which is more liquid like and is easy to spread. I had some trouble spreading the Etsu around. It was sticking to the little metal roller I had but barely coating the CPU itself



My cpu heatsink - used this before in my friends rig. Other then that I've never done air cooling before. These push pins, for the record, are THE dumbest things to EVER EVER EVER be created. I don't have hatred for anything else in computer related things as much as I do push pins.











Here we go. First problem with the :turd: that is the Striker Extreme.
The Southbridge's heatsinks are 5 freakin feet high. The heatsink doesn't fit!!!!!



Had to install it without the proprietary fan.



Then slipped it on, but it doesn't completely blow into the center of the heatsink now, but its not a big deal.





Also my first RAM. The Tiger Direct guy convinced me to guy these. They seemed so cool at the time.





An 8800GT. I have 2 of these for the rig. But for now, just testing the mobo, we're going to use only 1.







And - the freakin thing works! Holy :turd:!





Got to 3.62ghz before convincing myself that the mobo is useable. Don't know if its stable, but I'm probably not going to go that high considering I don't want that much heat output in the room.



I'm hoping to do the lighting next. But we'll see.

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OmegaNemesis28

Meant to do this last night but I fell asleep while Youtube uploaded.

Decided to route the wires in a cold cathode box thing I had from my previous rig.



Looks alot better then what I did, trust me



Put the mobo on because its now time to...



Resistor array soldering



And arduino programming



Messy, but I blame the EXTREMELY oxidized soldering iron, the giant solder coil, and my lazyness for not going out to buy something else.





Time for programming





Now at first. It didn't work. I was flipping out. I thought maybe I blew something or I broke maybe the array or the soldering was bad. I was really mad and almost gave up.

Then I realized..... I never uploaded the freakin program to the Arduino!!!!!!
I wrote it, but never uploaded it.... I had no words



So, I finally uploaded it. But my big LEDs still wouldn't work. The main center ones wouldn't fade on and out. I was like, it HAD to be a soldering problem. I went back over all of it. No problems.

Look here........


I had to be pins 11, 9, 6, 5, 3.
I never setup pin 5 in the program.



Twice now. Ugh.

Anyways - the final result.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMkmroXSXCk"]YouTube - [Projec

VOTE NOW

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OmegaNemesis28

Assembly time





:turd: - lol - acrylic cases suck at wire management. Oh, especially the tiny cases LOL







2 8800GTs - folding baby





2 250GB drives







Just about done. The wire management sucks. But it doesn't really matter because....





Tada



Here is the other side





Just 5 more or so things to do.

1)Install Windows 7
2)Buy a DVD drive.
3)Program the Arduino the our winner - choice #5
4)Paint the DVD drive
5)Paint the SATA cables (may skip this step)

I'm HOPING is all. When putting in the arduino into the case, the soldering kept falling apart. I had to redo them twice. I'm willing to bet something is wrong but won't know until I get Win 7 RC.

Oh and I would like to figure out what the hell these are for



They aren't feet for the case. Already have those, and these aren't sticky anyway.

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OmegaNemesis28

Finished

The rig is finished as far as I'm concerned right now. I'll mess around with painting the DVD drive when I get back from vacation and summer ends.

I am giving the rig to a friend. Temporarily until the end of the summer. We just wanted to play games and stuff with each other over the computer like Age of Empires, Left 4 Dead, and CS:S but he doesn't have a PC. I'm making him "one of us". So I figure until the end of the summer, he can use this rig because it'll be the most use aside from folding its going to get.

Here is the final video, when I get it back maybe I'll post more pictures off the new CCFLs I put in.
The video is actually about a week or 2 old, just forgot to update

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Kamikaze127

Subbed <3 Omega

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.kami
Good bye OCN.

Diesel Phreak

I love working with LED's I have a few projects i've done with them love to see what other people do with them. subbed

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My Antec 300 Case Mod

Rick Arter

Nice this looks sweet cant wait to see more!

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Swiftes

You better finished this one!

Love you really

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The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.