NZXT Tempest User Community - Page 197

Thanks for the quick and detailed response! +rep

This is my rig right now:



Front panel, so far I've replaced the stock blue "LED bars" with purple leds, just a test as i had them laying around. Much work to be done on a unified color scheme





Panel on, panel off; I'm really liking the grill which replaced the stock mesh. Gives the stock LED fan a whole new appearance.
As far as cable management, I built this when I was 12 so I bought way too many case accessories like temp probes and auto fan controllers that I never use. Too many front panel connections and cable clutter in the back.

Also, about the front fans, I'm thinking a shroud tunnel would be great to reduce noise and provide better airflow. However, if I want to put shrouds on both front fans, will there still be room for 3.5" hard drives? It seems that the shrouds would either require removal of the cages or extend far into them at best.

Thanks again for the help Fateful, I can't wait to upgrade my rig with your suggestions . Buying the "king of airflow" certainly came with a lot of fan noise lol but it's great to see that it can be resolved.

Most of the "Fan Noise" is actually coming from the resistance that the meshes and grills provide, the actual stock fans are pretty silent. As for the cable management, that's decent for a 12 year old.

As for those LEDs you rigged up, If you have read up on the tempest club you must have seen how many times I've tried to rig up my own white LEDs but I have always failed. Either the LEDs eat too much voltage and crap out or the resistors burn out. I have bought two kits from FrozenCPU and the resistors they use are beyond garbage. I'm thinking of trying red LEDs on the front strips but I would prefer not to wire them myself. Do you know anywhere I can order pre-wired kits? If not tell us how you wired up yours and what kind of LEDs you used because this could come in handy if I decide to do it myself.

I remember when I was younger, I did the same thing and too many front panel gadget because I thought they were important.

I didn't actually use any resistors for my LED's, but they seem to be fine. I pulled out my multimeter to make some measurements beforehand, though:

I'm pretty sure that the LED's draw power from the +5V line and ground on the PSU. Then there's a resistor of 70 ohms or so (according to my meter; this is measured between any blue and black wire), and the LED's are definitely in parallel. The resistor drops the voltage down to 3.33 V, a perfect voltage for leds. Also, the resistor limits the current to a max of 50ma per LED channel. I went to Radioshack and picked up these "pink" leds which are rated to have a forward voltage of 3.3V and a draw of just 20ma. These were 5mm though, so I just cut the stock led holders to fit and hot glued the new ones in.

As for your LED's, what happens exactly? Do they actually burn out? Overvolted LED's usually experience a gradual change in color when the voltage is too high, unless its like 12V or something. Still, they should light at least for a split second. If they never lit, the forward voltage might not be high enough or there could be a short somewhere. I would try measuring the voltage you have across a single set of black and blue wires, and matching your led's based on that. I agree though, it sucks to have led's burn out since they're deceptively expensive at retail (mine were $2 each!)

PS. I noticed that you want to use red LED's. If so, be careful since they usually come with a much lower voltage; all the one's I've seen were rated under 2V. You might be able to run them at 3.3V, but their lifespan would take a significant hit. But as long as the voltage matches, you should be good in terms of keeping your led safe.

Finished my front I/O panel mod! I think it looks pretty good, especially considering I had no experience before starting this project

Sorry for the double post, but I've just been sabotaged!

Brother's written off my ODD by knocking it off my desk. Looks like the impact has damaged the tray mechanism. I found the same model available for £15, and an extra few £ means I'll have it Thursday!

With any luck I can re-use the casing for the old ODD with the new one, meaning no need to spray a whole ODD again!

Sorry to hear about your ODD being ruined dude, I completely removed mine out of the system to make room for the Max 2 Duo. I use my ODD as an external drive now.

Oh and excellent job with that I/O Panel btw.

Edit:
Hmm, Can't decide which is failing. My scythe fan controller or one of my shark fans. Sometimes when I'm sitting here one of the fans will just shut off, leds and all. It seems to happen when the RPM of that one fan fall between the region of 950~1050 RPM but it doesn't do it all the time. Perhaps once every two days.
Edited by Fateful_Ikkou - 8/14/12 at 10:58am

Seems very odd I'm having some problems too, though I think it's my SSD's. Either they're failing, or they're not happy about being in IDE mode. Of course, to change mode, I need to reinstall Windows. For that, I need an ODD

Edit:
The SSD's were fine after the modding, so it's not that. I have reformatted them a few times, ome say it's the worst thing you can do to a SSD, others say it's absolutely harmless unless you use deep reformatting techniques. The problem is that everything just seems so slow. Steam is terribad and I can't even think of running any games from it. But the web is slow, windows explorer frequently hangs.
Edited by evil_scotsman - 8/14/12 at 11:19am

To switch windows to AHCI please use this Fixit patch from Microsoft. First run the patch then boot into the bios and switch to AHCI, Next load windows.

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9741862

This may help, but more testing has found that the problems only appear when I have both SSD's plugged in. When my "Steam + games" SSD is unplugged, everything else runs fine...

Edit:

Tried to run Crystal Disk Mark on my Steam drive, came back with this.



It's borked, isn't it?

Edit 2:

My Steam SSD is defintely damaged, can't access it to retrieve my Steam files.

I've got two plans of action now. Buy a 256GB M4, swap it out with the 128GB M4, and sell the 128GB M4, then use a 1 or 2TB WD Caviar Black as general storage.

OR

Just do away with the SSD's and get a 2TB Caviar Black, use that for everything.
Edited by evil_scotsman - 8/15/12 at 9:09am

evil_scotsman you just can't seam to catch a brake. I suggest you try at lest to have one SSD as a boot drive as you can then add a second SSD later and wont have to reinstall windows.

Now then to the main reason I popped into the tempest thread. Behold my window swap mod. It does look pretty sleek even if i do say so myself.

And the flip side.


I know this has been done before but at least in my case I did it by using the original window mounts. Used a cutting disc to make the holes in the new window. It's not 100% perfect as you can see the cuts if you look very closely.
Edited by Bit_reaper - 8/16/12 at 4:06am