stargate125645

List of Build Log Entries:
Cable Sleeving Part 1: Post 2
Lapping the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Black: Post 3
Cable Sleeving Part 2: Post 21
Component Installation: Post 31
Cable Management: Post 32
The Finished Product?: Post 33

Introduction:
With my CPU being two years old, I feel it is time to upgrade from my last build. I have been debating whether to go with Phenom II (AM3) or i7 for this round. After much deliberation, I finally decided that I wanted to get something as future proof as possible since I will probably be using the same CPU for another two years. That means Intel, unfortunately for my wallet.

That leaves me with needing to decide a theme. After seeing the new Antec 1200 and deciding to purchase it, I really liked the build quality and the black finish, so I decided to go with a black theme. Moreover, with the cable management possibilities I will attempt to portray a "stealth" look to the project. Two names then come to mind, borrowed from the U.S. Air Force: Raptor and Nighthawk. Most people would assume that a build entitled "Raptor" would center around a WD Raptor or WD VelociRaptor (and indeed I have 4 WD Raptors that I will be using in this build), but as this build is more gear towards a stealth look I want the name to reflect this. Thus the name "Nighthawk," which as many of you know is the U.S. Air Force's nickname for its first stealth fighter.

Preliminary Build Design:
Below are the preliminary specs for my build. Cost is not much of an issue, but I am not going to spend another $100 on something just to get another 20MHz out of a component.

Chassis: Antec 1200
Motherboard: Asus P6T
CPU: Intel Core i7 920
RAM: 3x2GB OCZ XMP Ready DDR3 1600
GPU: Visiontek ATI Radeon HD 4870X2 (from current rig)
Sound Card: X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional (from current rig)
HDD (Main): 4-36GB WD Raptors in RAID 0 (from current rig)
HDD (Storage): 750GB WD Caviar SE 16 AAKS Model (from current rig)
PSU: Ultra X3 1000W (from current rig)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Black

The items subject to change are the motherboard and RAM; these are just the least expensive I have found thus far in my search that allow the overclockability that I want. My goal is to get a 4GHz 24/7 stable overclock on the i7 and have the RAM going 1866MHz at the same time (this should be feasible at 9-9-9-28 timings).

I intend to use at least one of the AeroCool XtremeTurbine fans from my current rig in this build - namely on the door panel and on the HDD cage mount. I will keep the original Antec TriCools in the case so as to keep their fan controlling capabilities intact.

On my current rig I have the CPU fan controlled via a rear PCI slot, which is somewhat difficult to access at present. With each of the fans on the Antec 1200 already having fan controllers, I am going to use the Vantec Nexus 205-B to control the HDD cage mount fan, the door panel fan, and the CPU fan. This will be much more convenient! In addition, the Vantec Nexus was sleeved for my previous build so that is less work ahead for me.

I still need to find black chipset cooling that isn't crappy, but I will go with silver if need be (such as an HR cooler from Thermalright). I don't want to lap again since the TRUE Black took me several hours, but I will if it will help that much.

The final look of this build should provide an aura of stealth and mystery when looking at the rig on the inside. Cables disappearing and reappearing, components melding into the background, and coolers rising from the motherboard tray, also making the build look "fierce," for lack of a better word.

So I guess this is where the intro page ends. Feel free to comment, make suggestions, etc. on my components, my ideas, or whatever. I can always use more ideas, too!

__________________
Links:
[ Project Nighthawk (NEW!) | Project Ablative Armor | G15 LCD Program Archive ]
[ Intel Core i7 Voltage Limits | Overclocking Effects on Benchmark Scores | Explanation of LCD Terminology ]

stargate125645

Cable Sleeving Part 1

On my previous build, I had 2 major cable sleeving sessions: the Thermaltake Armor internal cables, and the Vantec Nexus 205-B cables. As such, I have gotten used to the nice look of sleeved cables and in fact have become quite proficient in the process. Considering I was anticipating having to lap a new CPU cooler to fit my black theme, I figured this would be one of my easier and less time consuming "mods" anyway so there was no reason not to do it.

Since I am going to keep the Antec Tri-Cool fans in the case in order to maintain their built-in fan controller capabilities, I needed to sleeve each of the fan cables as well as the usual front panel cables, so there was a fair amount of work ahead of me.

I am a firm believer in using things around the house to get the job done rather than buying new tools, so you will see things like my Leatherman, glasses screwdrivers, and a hair dryer lying around in these pictures as I use them to do much of the work rather than paying for needless, more expensive "specialized" equipment. (We'll get to my lapse in judgment regarding the purchase of a Molex pin remover later...)

As you can see, there are lots of cables to sleeve! There is also the issue of the white wire bundle clip at the top of the case (why paint the case black and use a white clip? Stupid Antec!) that I will probably replace as well at some point but for now it'll remain.

I did not want to sleeve wires I wasn't sure I was going to use, so I only sleeved the LED and switch wiring.

Fortunately Antec decided to use black wiring for the USB and SATA cabling so if I do use those I won't have to sleeve anything - a simple black zip tie will do the trick. You can see that I did not sleeve all the way to the base of the front panel like I did with my Armor. This is because I could not find a simple way to remove the front panel like with the Armor, so there was not much room to maneuver my hands - I instead moved the sleeving up far enough so that there is no noticeable difference unless one were to actually crane his or her head inside my case to view back there, so good enough.

Another view of the front panel sleeving completed:

Things look much nicer, but the fan cables now stick out so they are next in line for the spa treatment.

Due to the configuration of the Tri-Cool cables through the wire clips on the side of the drive bays, sleeving those would not have been an option - cables would be too big and the clips were a pain to get the wires in and out of. Instead, I sleeved far enough so that the shrink tubing went behind the drive bays but not far enough to interfere with the wire clips of the drive bay. However, this wasn't the only issue with sleeving these cables! They are all pass-through Molex plugs, and despite my research no one had made any guides or explanations as to how to dismantle such a plug. Furthermore, a thread asking about this on these forums received little attention, so I had to wing it. As it turns out, there is a little door on the two wires that are actually connected on the pass-through plug:


Once the door is pried open, the Molex plugs can be removed and the sleeving and heat shrink tubing slid over the top, as seen below:

You will notice that the aforementioned "door" is open in this image; it simply snaps shut when the plugs and wires are in the proper positions. I would like to add that I purchased a "universal Molex plug remover," but it was a colossal waste of money. Back by popular demand my arse - FrozenCPU lied to me! The remover didn't even work well for the male plug, which has a larger diameter! Using a small flathead screwdriver (the size that would be use for repairing a pair of glasses) worked much better and didn't cost me a thing.

Repeating the Molex removal and sleeving process for each of the 120mm fans made things look much nicer...


After about half an hour of attempting to remove Antec's Big Boy 200mm fan, I gave up and decided to do something similar to the front panel and just sleeve it enough that any viewer would not know the difference. Unfortunately, I also ran out of sleeving at this stage, but it was my last fan to sleeve and the wires were near an opening behind the motherboard tray so I was able to avert a catastrophe. The following picture illustrates the small amount of sleeving I had left as well as how close to the fan I had the sleeving go.


With all the sleeving completed, the final step was of course to put everything back into the case, and voila!


I hope you agree that it looks much better than before! I realize most of these cables will be hidden behind the motherboard tray anyway, but it can never hurt to make things look nice even when they can't be seen. You may also notice that on some of the above pictures it appears as though the sleeving is very thin and all but transparent. This effect occurs because the sleeving is shiny and my camera felt it necessary to use a flash in order to produce a decent digital image, so the light was bounced around inside the sleeving and lit up the wires. In normal lighting the cables look more like that last image I showed - black!

So that's it for now. Stay tuned for my next entry!

P.S. After typing this, I added "sleeving" to my browser's dictionary. So many red lines...

__________________
Links:
[ Project Nighthawk (NEW!) | Project Ablative Armor | G15 LCD Program Archive ]
[ Intel Core i7 Voltage Limits | Overclocking Effects on Benchmark Scores | Explanation of LCD Terminology ]

stargate125645

Lapping the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Black

My previous build utilized a Tuniq Tower 120, and was my first experience with lapping a CPU heat sink. My black theme for this case narrowed down my choices of coolers - namely to the TRUE Black and the Xigmatek S1283 Dark Knight. I liked both, but people implored to me that most of the benchmarks don't show the processor overclocked very high and so the Dark Knight is able to keep up with the TRUE. I intend to have a 3.8GHz overclock 24/7 minimum so I want the best and the brightest, and this landed me with the TRUE Black despite the increased cost.

The TRUE is nickel plated, so I knew going into this that I'd have to sand through a layer of nickel; I wasn't sure what to expect from the black coating, and frankly underestimated the amount of nickel I'd have to sand off the base. I did anticipate needing more sandpaper than last time, though, so I ordered a couple of glassless kits from EasyPCKits, both of which you can see next to the typical Thermalright discrete packaging:

You can see that I purchased a 1366 bolt-through kit for the TRUE as well. Thermalright does offer a Socket 1366-compatible TRUE, but it is not black. Yay for spending more money!

Thermalright packed the TRUE quite well.

The white box contains the included bolt-through kits and back plates in individually sealed packaging.

Taking the TRUE out of the box, one can see that the black finish is evenly coated over the entire cooler, and that the base is relatively smooth. In fact, it was flatter than I had expected based upon people's comments.
You can see the reflection of the plastic packaging off the base - but don't be fooled as this was not a mirror finish (I wasn't expecting one, mind you). Pictures of lapping results are often taken at angles because this allows a reflection to occur even if the base is not entirely smooth or a mirror finish. This is why I take pictures head on, as I did with my Tuniq Tower 120, to show the true quality of the finish.

I had glass left over from previous lapping kits (2 pieces to be exact), and I've learned that it is easier to put the sandpaper on sideways and tape it to the back. Duct tape is the handyman's secret weapon!

This creates a flat surface of sandpaper upon which the heat sink base is moved.

I have a larger piece of glass from an old frame that I use as a solid base underneath the sandpaper setup. The duct tape creates enough friction with the large piece of glass that the sand paper setup remains stationary when moving the heat sink over the sandpaper side.

What you can see in any of the pictures is the bucket of water I use to lubricate the sandpaper so that metal buildup does not occur (I wash off the piece of sandpaper every couple of minutes in the sink as well), or the can of compressed air that I use to remove the dirty water from between the heat sink base and the heat pipe cover plate.

An easy way of making sure an even lapping is being provided to the heat sink base is to draw on the base with an indelible marker.

I started at 400 grit sandpaper, thinking I wouldn't have too much to remove. I am glad I had extra sandpaper from the Tuniq Tower 120 lapping!

A couple of swipes later it is apparent that the middle of the base is higher, indicated by the lack of the black finish and indelible markings on the center of the base.


After several more sets of swiping and "x" markings there is still some black finish left on the base.

You can also see water on the sandpaper in this image; a few sprinklings of water was sufficient in preventing metal buildup between washings.

Several swipes later and it is obvious that the base is becoming more level, but still no copper...

This was an hour or so into it and at this point I was about ready to settle for getting the mirror finish on the nickel and calling it good, so I moved to 600 grit.

The base started to look much better, but of course the copper started to appear (see the corners of the base), requiring me to continue until all of the nickel was removed...


I moved back to 400 grit sandpaper, and gradually more and more copper started to appear.

The majority of the copper first appeared near the middle of the base, indicating that it was still not yet flat. I didn't need to use any markings on the base during this transition because the spread of the copper performed the same purpose.

At this point I was becoming inpatient so I gradually decreased the grit number, from 400 to 320, 260, 220, and 180 grit before I started to notice the nickel being removed in significant amounts. It's the wrong order, but I wanted to remove as little material as possible so I didn't want to overestimate the necessary grit size.


At this point, 2 separate areas began to appear where the nickel was apparently much deeper than on the rest of the base.

However, I was getting close to removing all of the nickel so I went back to 400 grit.

I then moved to 600 grit, and ended up having to use 2 pieces of it before the nickel area remaining was small enough where I was comfortable moving to a higher grit number.


After a while longer, the nickel areas remaining eventually were much smaller, but their presence was taunting me so I decided to apply rougher sandpaper directly to those areas to remove the remaining nickel entirely.

Probably not the smartest thing, but I figured I'd get rid of the roughness in later stages.

Indeed, the rough copper patches seen above gradually disappeared as I went to finer grit sandpaper.

I did apply another "x" marking to see how level the base was, and after only a few swipes nearly the entire base marking was gone, meaning that the base was near level. My not-so-straight straight-edge confirmed this. With a flat base, the goal was no longer to remove copper but to get a better finish.

To that end, I did the usual steps of gradually increasing the grit number to get the desired base finish. From the 600 grit used above, I went to 800, 1000, 1200, 1600, and 2000 grit before stopping.

This would be that typical misleading picture angle I mentioned before.

And here is the view head on:

You can see that this finish is not as good as what I achieved with my Tuniq Tower 120. I still have 2500 grit and a few micron-sized grits remaining, but I am saving these to remove any oxidation that develops on the copper between now and when I mount the heat sink (not entirely sure when that will be). Creating a finer finish would not achieve significant gain for me for the effort it would entail, which is why I stopped here.

To help prevent oxidation prior to use, I wrapped the base in Saran wrap and placed it back in its original packaging.

Mmmmmm... Diet Dr. Pepper...

And there you have it!

__________________
Links:
[ Project Nighthawk (NEW!) | Project Ablative Armor | G15 LCD Program Archive ]
[ Intel Core i7 Voltage Limits | Overclocking Effects on Benchmark Scores | Explanation of LCD Terminology ]

stargate125645

Log entry 1 completed. Log entry 2 to come some time in the next week.

__________________
Links:
[ Project Nighthawk (NEW!) | Project Ablative Armor | G15 LCD Program Archive ]
[ Intel Core i7 Voltage Limits | Overclocking Effects on Benchmark Scores | Explanation of LCD Terminology ]

Acroma

Black always looks so darn good. Must have more pics^.^

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i7 920 @4.0 24/7 stable

Two 9800GTX's smoking single GTX 285s

stargate125645

I've got very little free time these days but I'll try to get the other entry finished this week. I have posted the pictures, though, if you want to guess the captions.

__________________
Links:
[ Project Nighthawk (NEW!) | Project Ablative Armor | G15 LCD Program Archive ]
[ Intel Core i7 Voltage Limits | Overclocking Effects on Benchmark Scores | Explanation of LCD Terminology ]

stargate125645

I added the lapping log entry. It was longer than I thought, and I even removed pictures!

__________________
Links:
[ Project Nighthawk (NEW!) | Project Ablative Armor | G15 LCD Program Archive ]
[ Intel Core i7 Voltage Limits | Overclocking Effects on Benchmark Scores | Explanation of LCD Terminology ]

Symek

Really like the work on the true black, i've been thinking of lapping mine but havent gotten round to it

stargate125645

Prepare to have several hours of free time!

__________________
Links:
[ Project Nighthawk (NEW!) | Project Ablative Armor | G15 LCD Program Archive ]
[ Intel Core i7 Voltage Limits | Overclocking Effects on Benchmark Scores | Explanation of LCD Terminology ]

BlankThis

Great job on the lap. That heatsink looks fantastic in black.
Looks promising so far

Keep it up!

~B~

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