[Intermediate] melanie - the rebirth

more here ~

Edited by FalloutBoy - 7/1/10 at 8:45pm

the vision ~

To build a flashy LAN box with lots of eye catching mods out of an old case my uncle gave me and parts I just happened to have lying around... well most of them. Then win this comp with it I guess!

the name ~

I always had my PC named melanie right up til last year when I completely rebuilt it from scratch. So this build has always been known as melanie. No sense in changing this now!

the make up ~

cpu - Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2180 (only spare 775 CPU I have)
mobo - EVGA 780i SLI
ram - Corsair Dominator (1066MHz) with Airflow Fan
video card - Galaxy 8800GT x2 in SLI
psu - XFX 650W XXX Edition
hard drive - Seagate Barracuda (320GB)
dvd drive - Slim Liteon DS-8A4S
case - ???

cpu cooler - Corsair H50
controller - Lamptron Hummer
case fans - 4x Cooler Master R4s (Green LED)


... and here lies ~

the case mods

- reverse atx mod

- floor ccfl mod

- back panel mod

- floor ccfl mod part 2

- front bezel mod

- front bezel mod part 2

- false wall mod

- the tidy up

- front panel window mod

- the paint job

- front io panel mod

- putting it all together

the hardware

- motherboard + cpu cooler

- ram

- video cards

- power supply

- dvd drive + hard drive

- switch baybus

the build log

- finished pics 1

- finished pics 2

- final words
Edited by FalloutBoy - 7/1/10 at 8:33am

the case, up is down ~

Well lets get this started. First off some shots of the stock standard case. Shes dripping with potential if you ask me, which you can't, as this is private.















Lovely little thing ain't she! Now to aid cooling, there will be vents in the top of the case and right now, that PSU is in the way. To combat this, its reverse ATX time where up becomes down! Heres how it went.





Getting the case in 2 peices was easy enough but I ran into some trouble getting it back together.





As you can see, the top and bottom lips are different heights and therefore when the back is flipped, won't realign. This was an easy fix though with some tin slips and a file. Just cut a small peice out of the top lip on both sides.





Now here are some shots of the now reverse ATX case. (Not screwed/riveted together here though.)











I ditched the hard drive cage around here somewhere too. Now an idea of what it will look like with some hardware installed.





I also took a few shots of my work space at this time of year.







Yes we have a peach tree right outside our back door.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 3/14/10 at 3:30am

underglow part one ~

I've always had a thing for neons under the chassis of a beautiful car. Long story short, I'm gonna throw some in the floor of melanie the same way.

The plan is to cut out 4 slits in the floor of the case and mount 4 green (2x 10cm and 2x 30cm) ccfls over eack slit. Then cover the floor of the case with some wood and sheet metal. This will stop any light shining anywhere except through the slits in the floor and onto the table. As a bonus, the wood should also help strengthen the case.

I'm starting by only adding the 30cm ccfl holes in the floor. The 10cm holes will be added afterwards.





Made the pilot holes with an angle grinder. Made the job so quick and easy. Then I used my jigsaw to cutout the slits.







Not to bad at all. Now this is a very rough idea of how its gonna look.





I also learnt not to touch this PCB when the power is on for the ccfls. It really hurts and I could smell my skin melting.

On another note, just wanted to say that through the whole modding stage of the build, the case will be held together with 1/8" screws and nuts. This makes it very easy to pull apart and put back together as I'm working on it.



Now heres one 10cm slit added. The front one will be put in the front bezel down the track.



Now because this PC will be sitting on my nice car seats all the way to town for the LAN parties, I'm gonna add some old plastic/perspex stuff to the bottom of the cuts to protect my seats. Should also protect the ccfl as its looking like it might be a tight fit so I may have to remove it from the tube?

Heres the stuff I'm using. Its from an old Thermaltake case. (It sucked).







Here they are cut out and with a few extra cuts in them so they fit snug on the bottom of the case without interfearing with the case feet.



They look quite dodgy but that doesn't bother me cause their on the bottom and I don't doubt they will be knocked about under there anyway.







Of course it will be held on with rivets when I put it back together to stay. Now heres another progress shot. Its starting to look better already.



The rest of this mod can be found in underglow part two ~
Edited by FalloutBoy - 5/16/10 at 3:33am

center of attention ~

Time for some old hardware renewal and theres no better place to start than the motherboard. As I've said, cooling will be playing a huge part in this build and cause this is a PC that will be taken to LAN parties, it will be on air.

With that said, here she is dust and all.







Notice how dirty it is especially around the CPU socket. No idea how it got like that. Little thermal paste explosions perhaps?...







With that nice and clean time to reaply the thermal paste on the mobo chips.



Also while the stock heatsink was off I cleaned the whole board.



New paste is on so back on goes the heatsink and here it is all back together and cleaned. I also removed all of the stickers to make it look neater and I lightly polished most of the silver. Really made a difference.











Another thing I'm doing to hopefully aid the cooling of the NB is replacing the stock fan.





Sure looks beefier!





Added the all important sleeve and replaced the stock brown connector with a new black one.



Zip tied the cable tighly to shorten it and now to get it mounted.









As you can see I just used zip ties to mount it. Too easy!



Now I think it would be easier to also include the CPU cooler in this update aswell, not that theres much to include. I wanted a nice shiny TRUE or something but since this is an older case, I could fit no such cooler. I needed a cooler that worked well and also had a low profile. Solution - H50. I asked around alot and its pretty water tight so I shouldn't have any issues with it leaking during transit and its the prefect size for the case and layout! Here it is.



Now for the one mod I did to it. I resleeved it cause the stock sleeve was see through and this sleeve will be in plain sight.







Also since 2 of my 4 fans will be on the rad, I'll also include the pics of them here too.





Also sleeved the 3 to 4 pin adapters.



Thats it for this one!
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 4:59am

this very moment ~

This post is about the ram but in saying that, the most part of this modding will be done to the ram fan and by modding... well its just cosmetic. So just enjoy some more pics.

My Dominator 1066mhz ram I got free with my mobo when I bought it ages ago. Nice!



And heres my old ram fan in all its ugly glory. (I swear I didn't mean to make it look even worse by taking a blurry shot of it). Lets neaten it up anyway.



Pulled it apart to clean and resleeve.



Also took all the blue stickers off. Looks much better now.





And don't forget the all important sleeving.





The paint on the screws was a bit chipped so I just respayed them. Finaly we have this!


Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/26/10 at 10:42pm

name in lights ~

In my opinion, every back side of a case should still have some detail. This case is definatelly gonna have some as its back panel will always be on show. I was originally just gonna paint 'melanie' on it in green but went with a different (much harder) aproach.

First up, I thought this was amusing. Its a screenshot from modern warfare 2.





See it?... Now the idea for this mod is to cut 'melanie' out of the side panel and light it up with green light. To do so I first went into word and found my perfect font and printed it out. This is how I went about it.







I used electrical tape to hold the name on the panel while I drew around it. Its really easy to peel that tape off paper.



Finished marking it, now time to get out the jigsaw again. Would be oh so nice if I had a laser cutter or water jet... I'll just use what I've got.









Thanks to some of dads needle nose files, the end result is much neater!

Time for the acrylic.









Quick work with the jiggy!

Now the idea is to light this up with green LEDs so it glows at night. I still want it green during the day though so I'm gonna put some green paper behind it.





There are the LEDs sleeved and heres the paper.



Just got some A4 and sprayed it with green paint.

This mod will be put together in a future post after I paint the panel. Its pretty straight forward though. Glue the acrylic on, mount LEDs and attach the paper with tape. I'll then get some black cardboard to cover all that to neaten up what can be seen from the other side. For now, I'm done.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 5:23am

hey good looking ~

Lets start out with a story. The cards I'll be using are my trusty old 8800GT's. I wanted to do them a favour and get them some nice aftermarket cooling but at a high price and only found on ebay in the states... sorry but they will just have to stay stock. That said some new thermal paste and a coat of paint will make me happy and them cooler in both ways.

Heres the stock card.









There is a second but that won't make an apearence for a while yet. Now check this out!!







No wonder these 8800s get so hot, There almost no thermal paste there!





Cleaned up and ready to go. Now for some paint.



Taped and scuffed.



Used primer on the bracket only as it will be in contact with the case. The rest of the card won't be rubbing on anything and the paint I'm using sticks pretty well anyway.



The reason I went with blue is cause theres no denying this card has a blue PCB and I thought it would be cleaner to keep the blue theme going here. Its a lovely shade of blue too. Rust-oleum Gloss Cobalt Blue. But as you will see, its only a small amount of blue anyway. And for those of you wondering why I just didn't paint the blue stripe over a black base, I simply prefer the look of the stripe being underneath the main coat of paint.









Drying in the sun!







And with the tape off...





Pretty damn good, now to put it back together. Heres What I did so not to loose the screws.



Works good until I can't remember where I put that!









Now you can't tell me that doesn't look way better. At least I think so. I was gonna paint 8800GT in the stripe but I like it the way it is.

Lastly, here are a couple pics to round up this mod.






Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 4:02am

underglow part two ~

So lets pick up where we left off. Next I'm cutting a thin piece of wood to fit on the floor around all the ccfls and so on. Then a nice piece of sheet metal to seal it all off and neaten the edges. Here we go.





Cut to size and roughly marked out.





Easy work with the jigsaw. I also drilled a hole straight through the wood for the center of the feet. It was after that that I ran into a slight problem.



With the rest of the case involved, the wood was too flush up against the front. Oh whatever will I do.



Once again a rough cut with the jigsaw and time for a break. But when I got back...



I found that my dog had taken over my job. I usualy hate seeing people post pics of their cats in logs, (honestly no one cares). But I decided to show this cause my dog could quite easily eat all your cats. Believe me!



Once he removed himself, I noticed he'd been for a swim recently, (sigh).

Back to it and time for some metal.



Used an angle grinder to cut this. Easier to cut very straight lines with it. At least I thought so at the time...





All squared off nicely! Now I finally have some green ccfls so time to get to work on fitting them.



First up I need to remove them from the tubes as the tube is too high to fit under the sheet metal.





Cut around one end with a hacksaw then pulled the tube through. Had to take the wires out of the connector to get it through the other end but that was easy done.





Positioned them with blutac and waited for dark just to see what they'd look like but I'm not sharing yet (though you've probably already seen the finished pics anyway hey).





Did some more cutting to the wood to make them fit and made a cutout in the corner of the floor to let the wires through.

Now with the wood finally about the right shape, I could screw it to the floor properly. To do this I bought some short screws and either used holes already in the floor or drilled some new ones where there weren't any. Then I just screwed straight into the wood.



Next problem was finding green 10cm ccfls. I finaly did then wouldn't you know it, they came into stock in one of the main stores I shop at straight after. Once again, (sigh).



Kept one in the tube as it won't have to squeeze under any sheet metal in the bottom of the front bezel. More on that in a later post.



Fits nicely just like the 30cms. Only issue here is that I need an extension for this one to reach the inverter but that won't be to hard to get.



This pic just shows a little extra cutting I did around the wood to make extra room for the ccfl cables to run. Lastly, here are some shots of the ready to go cold cathodes.



Only sleeved the part that will be shown on these.



Inverters will be held on with velcro.



And power cables fully sleeved aswell.



Finally, these adapters will allow me to connect both sets of ccfls to the same switch. They look old because I found them in dads shed. Will still work so all good!

Done!
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 7:19pm

the roots ~

So usually I also hate unboxing pics but I was so impressed with the way this new XFX 650W XXX Edition PSU was packaged, I couldn't help but share. Hope you enjoy it too!





















Kinda like a flower blooming! Anyway, the obvious mod I'm doing here is sleeving. I'm not even going into how I sleeved, just sit back and enjoy some more pics! These pics are just a few I pulled out of the cable sleeving guide I'll be making up soon so it could be a bit all over the place.

























As you can see, I removed the stickers aswell as they were going to be upside down in the case. Not sure if I'll put them back on or not yet. Time will tell. Now for some modular action.





Sleeved the most part of that cable green for a nice contrast with the others.





Bit of a messy update but were done!
Edited by FalloutBoy - 7/1/10 at 8:57pm