DarkDemon - A CM Scout that just wants to be different

Dark Demon - Work Log

Hi to all
This is my first work log, pretty sure it will show though.

A brief intro to myself. I grew up in the UK and moved to South Africa as a teenager. Since I can remember I have been interested in technology and gadgets
My first proper computer was a Commodore Amiga 500plus, it got a 1 meg ram upgrade done by myself about a year after having it Then the family always had computers and the business's always had computers. My next computer that I could call my own was a AMD Athlone 1400(still running), this got me through a good amount of years with many hardware swap outs as parts fried.

I studied visual art at a private college after leaving school(stuff like DTP, Jewellery, photography and so on...).
I have done shop fitting & sound installations in shops/restaurants and a casino.
I worked for a point of sales company for a year as their only technician doing allot of cleaning/fixing/constructing and installing of Micros 2700/3700 and windows based machines.
Basically I love anything electronic

I have been gainfully employed since leaving school in the restaurant business. I started out as a waiter and have moved up over 10 years to a administration manager. My current working schedule is 3 hours a day 6 days a week
I worked for http://www.x10hosting.com as a volunteer staff member(senior account manager). After a year and a bit of helping free-loaders with their website and hosting problems I called it quits as the pay(none what so ever) was not worth the effort. I had learnt allot(which is why I did it). I can now code in (ajax), php, JavaScript, HTML & a little Perl. I can work with SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase and Firebird databases.

After all of that you should understand my love for making things and working with my hands.

I broke down my build in to phases, so with no further a do...


Edited by DefecTalisman - 6/15/10 at 8:40am

After a couple of months of research and scouting out components I ended up buying from two e-tailers (http://www.ikonicit.co.za &http://www.landmarkpcs.co.za) and one supplier (http://www.esquire.co.za)

I went through to Esquire(a supplier) and got my Intel i5 750 2.66ghz, unfortunately they are a supplier that has cheap crap. I got my chip from them for the fact that they are cheap and saved me the price of my case over other e-tailers and shops.

Then in the next couple of weeks I struggled to find stock on anything half decent in this damn country. Eventually it seemed it all was coming together and the first package to arrive(or collect in this case) from ikonicIT consisted of,

• Motherboard - EVGA P55 Sli,
• 2x CM 2000rpm red LED fans,
• 1x psu ruber vibration mount,

then the next day the best stuff arrived from landmark pc's,

• Case - Coolermaster Storm Scout (yippie, I struggled my poes off to get this baby),
• PSU - Antec True Power 750w Blue (wanted the none blue, also struggled to get a decent mid range psu),
• RAM - 2x 2GB G.Skill Ripjaws 1866,
• CD Rom - Sony DVD writer(none light scribe),
• Hdd - Western Digital caviare blue 320GB, 16mb cache,
• TIM - Mx2

All I was short was a GPU, so a trip to Esquire again for a cheap GTS250 and I was set.


Now when I got all of this I was working a 6 hour day and only had 1 day off a week, so I didn't want the build to roll over a couple of days, otherwise I will get distracted and also I didn't have the space to have stuff lying around(to many people around, to much to go wrong). So I set out to put it together over a evening/night. With the help of my loving fiancé, we/I was done with installing every thing with absolutely no cable management.


Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/20/10 at 10:18am

This Consisted of minor stuff like addition of hdd cooler, UV red PCI dust covers and a set of red(more like pink) Vizio ccfl's. Again no wire management, didn't have any cable braid or the time and space to have it all out again.



Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/21/10 at 6:57am

This was after a little prep and planing. Again it all had to happen before the next working day(24 hours). So after work at 6:30pm(had to fetch the lady) I set out to tear the whole thing down and start sleeving some cables with the one pack of decent black braid I could find(never to be seen again, I can't braid in this ****ry) and another happy pack of red crappy braid. Myself and my fiancé braided every fan & every cable in the case.
Whilst the case was apart, I cut the top and front 140mm blow holes out with a Dremel and heavy duty cut off wheels. Touched up the cuts with black paint and stuck rubber U-channel around the front hole(to stop snagging my hand on it when taking off the front bezel).



I drilled and filed a hole into the aluminium top bezel to insert the ccfl switch, at the same time soldered another wire off the standard scout light switch.


I flipped the power supply from fan up, to fan down as I was trying to get all red light inside. Much happier with it this way, no chance anything can fall in there.

I had purchased a H50 that had been the part that inspired this phase, so pre-emptively I had made a mount for the H50 out of a old CD ROM casing. When I came to check if the mount and H50 is going to fit on the night, I had missed the fact that the rad had a bubble(the res) on the top and bottom . So my nifty little mount ended up getting ripped to shreds and bent to make do(wasn't going to stick the Intel cooler back in there).


I used my R4's from my window as push/pull on the H50 straight up and the corsair fan went on the window as a temporary solution.


I ended up finishing at around 4am(fiancé faded around 12pm) and all was up and running.


A day or so later I added a custom LED harness that I had wired to run off the 5v the scout light switch.


Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/21/10 at 7:01am

This was something I had been trying to get done since a week or so of getting this case(fan was sitting on my desk for months). I had a red u400 perspex window cut and fitted a 200mm CM storm force fan on there This puppy made HUGE differences to temps in the case.
Again I had made a little something due to lack of stuff in this country. I custom made a 200mm fan grill from a old 400mm desk fan and some lugs





I then decided to sand down the bottom ccfl light tube as it just didn't fit in the side rail nicely.


Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/21/10 at 7:06am

This is the current phase and what has happened so far is as follows:

• I wanted a way to hide my cables in my hdd bay, but not the hdd itself,
• A new way to mount my H50 &
• I was inspired to make a custom filter for the front of the case & dust proof the front bezel.

So over a couple of weeks I set out to fabricate the above.

I went to a place called Metal Centre and got some of off cuts of aluminium


I got some aluminium honey comb mesh from a car place


I got a cheesy skull gear knob


A CM Excalibur fan


Some more LED's, some consumables(epoxy, putty, paints, industrial double sided tape, 1.5mm copper wire(red, yellow & black), lots of cut off wheels for the Dremel.


Here is what went on and where I am at now. I stopped taking photos when working, as aluminium & metal dust and my phone aren't the best things together.


Sunday my fiancé and myself set out to put our new 50l compressor to good use(the reason I bought it), we tore down the whole case and cleaned it out with 90%alc and lots of love.

I added two 4" ccfls and another invertor. Hooked both invertors up to the same switch I had previously added to the top panel.


I removed the custom LED harness as I had used the wrong wire for it and had ended up with some circuits flashing and others not(will get around to doing another with better on hand experience).

I removed the standard scout 120mm exhaust fan and put in the new Excalibur.


Every time I looked at the back of the case I was annoyed with the graphics card pci bracket being silver and everything else black, so I popped that off and sprayed it matt black.


I have now added the hdd. cover and the H50 bracket. They both fit very snugly


So now that is where I sit now. I have a few things going on at the moment. The skull thing, which is done but the thing I want to mount it on isn't. I am also looking at moding my custom 200mm grill(a moded custom fabricated grill :s)
Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/19/10 at 11:59pm

Reserved for phase 6
Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/19/10 at 4:48pm

Reserved for phase 7
Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/19/10 at 4:48pm

Reserved for phase 8
Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/19/10 at 4:49pm

Reserved for phase 9
Edited by DefecTalisman - 5/19/10 at 4:49pm