Complete! (For Now
)
Finally I'm pretty much done. There's still a few tiny details I might iron out once
I get the time (busy with HELIOS at the moment for the most part), but for now
I'll leave her as she is.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how things have turned out. I won't claim to be the
first one who's ever done a similar mod, but I'm the first one I know of, and I think
it's a pretty neat idea for my specific usage scenario. Not having to use any add-
on cards has allowed me to use the internal space of the R4 in a very optimal
fashion for the hardware I've put in this rig.
Some Niggles and Thoughts
I'm not 100 % happy with the back plate, and if I had to redo it I would either have
somebody CNC it or at least find a workshop where I can use a drill press, but
considering nobody's ever going to see it anyway I'm actually still pretty satisfied
with the result. And now that the black fans are underneath the holes and the holes
have been painted inside and outside the errors in the hole pattern are actually
much harder to spot and don't just jump out at you anymore (at least not with
me
).
Also, the SATA power cable sleeving is not yet perfect, but it's just so much work
to redo it that I might leave it as is nonetheless. We'll see, maybe I'll get so bored
at some point that I'll feel compelled to redo the sleeving on those cables.
The yellow on the pump is a bit of an eye sore as well, but I haven't really found
a way to repaint the yellow bits so that they actually look good, so I'd rather have
that factory-looking yellow than a horrible paint job on that. I'm considering just
painting the entire pump black, we'll see. It's not like the yellow is very visible, quite
the opposite in fact.
I must admit that the SP120's, even though they are the quiet edition fans, are
not really quiet and the fan controller I've made has definitely been a good
investment of my time. So with the fans turned down it really is a pretty quiet rig,
especially considering that the WD R4's are enterprise HDDs and are therefore
not exactly the quietest of drives.
Aside from that I'm very happy with the rig, I think it's a pretty nice little machine.
It's not perfect, but with the means I had at my disposal I think I've done pretty well.
It's also been a very good learning experience, and I intend to incorporate the lessons
learned into HELIOS (which is one of the reasons I completed this project first).
Temps
Temps are pretty good at the moment:
- Ambient temp: 23.7 C
- Idle temps: 31 C, 31 C, 28 C, 27 C (four cores)
- Load temps (BOINC): 44 C, 45 C, 43 C, 42 C (stock voltages)
- HDD temps when CPU is under load: 41~42 C (RE4), 32~33 C (Red)
I will be overclocking this machine to some degree, but not too much. It still needs
to stay rather quiet. I will update with results when I have them.
Anyway, enough with the chit-chat.
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