Not satisfied yet brother?
Andre's Z77 Personal Rig
- Thread starter andrevautour
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Not satisfied yet brother?
andrevautour
New member
well i never actually changed the leds yet ive just had them off for the last few days and as for cables i will never be 
i would not even consider them very tidy right now
i would not even consider them very tidy right now
andrevautour
New member
i found a way to hide that single led that was in view without having the re route it from the routing i wanted. i have some pictures i will post them soon. plus i did a few other small things as well.
CPMFW
New member
Keep them coming.
BTW, I had a little BF3 experience last night. Played a mission and noticed a strange occurrence. When I usually play I get almost full VRAM, well last night I was having only 850MB of VRAM full and no stuttering which leads me to belive that the game itself is buggy. Heard people with beefy machines had this problem as well, so... :huh:
Hi Andre,
Have recently started following your Z77 build. Looks great btw. Very impressed by your cable management and the overall look you have achieved inside the case.
A few questions if you have some time to respond. Where in TO do you find those tie mounts you use for your addtional cable management? Also have you found a store in TO that sells those H-Frames? Like your case selections too (although a few seem a little pricey). Thanks for your help in advance.
Have recently started following your Z77 build. Looks great btw. Very impressed by your cable management and the overall look you have achieved inside the case.
A few questions if you have some time to respond. Where in TO do you find those tie mounts you use for your addtional cable management? Also have you found a store in TO that sells those H-Frames? Like your case selections too (although a few seem a little pricey). Thanks for your help in advance.
andrevautour
New member
here are a few pictures that show how i routed the lighting.
initially i placed the mounts along the underside of the roof.
had it upside down for a while as i was working with the lighting. i still think graphics cards look much better fan side up.
you may notice in those two images that the cpu area is very dark and hardly lit up. this is because when i mounted the leds along the roof their light was being blocked by the sides of the fans and it wasn't able to light up the main area.
these are the led's for the floor
front
this is the roof shown here in this picture, and you can see there is a piece of steel that is wrapped around from the roof and it comes down at least a good couple inches. i moved the mounting points to where the batters are here on the inside and that allowed the lights to shine under the fan walls and into the main chamber, instead of just shining onto the walls of the fans light they did when they were mounted on the roof.
now the light is much more even
this is a picture of the new mounts on the window side
a few shots of the case without anything in the front.
so what i did to hide that one led that was visible through the window is turn it on its side and slipped it into the sleeving. the sleeving covers the majority of the light from and it and it's not noticeable at all when you look in through the door. this allowed me to keep the routing i wanted which lights up the case most evenly without having the modify the routing, but still taking care of the one visible led.
a few details.
i put a zip tie around these cables but it didn't do much. i may do more with those later.
i was experimenting with sleeved noctua fan cables vs unsleeved. i still dont know for sure what i will do with the fan cables now since i don't really like either way that much. unsleeved doesn't look as good but it's easier to route in tight spaces.
i also put a couple of zip ties around the cables on the psu end to tidy it up a little bit.
i ended up going with sleeved for now since the black blends in better.
initially i placed the mounts along the underside of the roof.
had it upside down for a while as i was working with the lighting. i still think graphics cards look much better fan side up.
you may notice in those two images that the cpu area is very dark and hardly lit up. this is because when i mounted the leds along the roof their light was being blocked by the sides of the fans and it wasn't able to light up the main area.
these are the led's for the floor
front
this is the roof shown here in this picture, and you can see there is a piece of steel that is wrapped around from the roof and it comes down at least a good couple inches. i moved the mounting points to where the batters are here on the inside and that allowed the lights to shine under the fan walls and into the main chamber, instead of just shining onto the walls of the fans light they did when they were mounted on the roof.
now the light is much more even
this is a picture of the new mounts on the window side
a few shots of the case without anything in the front.
so what i did to hide that one led that was visible through the window is turn it on its side and slipped it into the sleeving. the sleeving covers the majority of the light from and it and it's not noticeable at all when you look in through the door. this allowed me to keep the routing i wanted which lights up the case most evenly without having the modify the routing, but still taking care of the one visible led.
a few details.
i put a zip tie around these cables but it didn't do much. i may do more with those later.
i was experimenting with sleeved noctua fan cables vs unsleeved. i still dont know for sure what i will do with the fan cables now since i don't really like either way that much. unsleeved doesn't look as good but it's easier to route in tight spaces.
i also put a couple of zip ties around the cables on the psu end to tidy it up a little bit.
i ended up going with sleeved for now since the black blends in better.
andrevautour
New member
hey man, thanks!
the mounts are just from a hardware store, the ones i am using are from Lowes. i haven't seem them yet in any stores nearby, i actually just found that because someone on here was using one. i would like to see one in person though and have a look at it. i will let you know if i find somewhere.
i know all the cases i have been looking at have been expensive, but i do think i will probably be getting a more expensive higher quality case next time around. i would like to see all of the ones i'm looking at in person though before i made up my mind.
do you have an ongoing build or a build you are starting? i'd love to hear your specs and talk hardware if you want.
Hey thanks for your quick response. Going to grab some of those mounts asap. Your interior has motivated me to do some improvements. Hardware should be listed in sig below. Just waiting to see what happens with new AMD 8000 and Nvidia 700 series. No real practical need to updgrade at the moment (used primarily for strategy gaming) but lots of fun to evaluate, decide and then make the changes. Just getting caught up with your latest updates - like the LEDs - have been considering doing something similar but never found the right product - or clean way to install. How do you like the new memory? Very happy with my Kingston Hyper X - but am just running it stock at 1600 - never any issues
andrevautour
New member
no problem,
for lighting i have the bitfenix strip stuff but those are way too bright in white. the nzxt sleeved kit is not as bright on the low setting but i still would prefer it to go lower to create more a a 'glow' effect instead of just lighting everything up very brightly. the blue bitfenix is very deep and nice though as far as blues go, but you can run it all around the case since they only come in 12cm, 30cm and 60cm.
i love kingston hyperx too. i have had a couple 12gb triple channel kits for x58 and it is lovely. i think its the nicest looking low profile memory and the shade of blue is very nice.
i really love the look of kingston hyperx predator and i may end up with some of that in the future when 'may' move to a lower profile cooler.
i had a lot pf 8gb viper xtreme and it was lovely, beautiful stuff but i ended up getting 16gb of intel extreme stuff which is just viper 3 with a blue heatsink. its been good, no issues but memory is fairly uneventful really.
will you be posting any pictures of your setup?
Thanks for LED info. Agree with your preference of obtaining a nice "glow" - and not overpowering with bright lights. Have a blue theme right now (from a blue LED case fan) so may look at the blue you mentioned just for a small addition. Still getting caught up on your latest iterations - you do a nice job with both the work and in capturing what you have done. I see you have moved the drive bay back to the front - like it both ways but maybe just a little cleaner with the way you have it now - but really it looks great both ways. Have a non modular PSU here (didnt realize the big benefit of modular when I got it) so I have a little more of a cable mgmt challenge with some of the extra cables. Its not too bad right now but not even close to how clean yours looks - will try to post some pics for a before and after once I get some of those mounts and can find some time to do some work. Like how you have done the 6/8 pin GPU cables and am going to see if I have that extra hole on my PCB for my Twin Frozr. I notice you get the cables nice and tight - I am always a little concerned about things maybe being a little too tight - and maybe pulling or pinching something too much. Any advice in this area? Notice you have a little twist in some of your cables too where they attach - any advice? Once again many thanks for your posts, pictures and responses to my inquiries. Much appreciated.
Hi Andre , Nice job on the LED's and the cabling. The led's are much better and show your system very well now .
Have you decided which case you want next? , I have to agree with you on the Lian Li cases , they are very nice. One of the things I like is , most of their cases have a card reader.
I keep looking at the Caselabs Merlin sm5 or sm8 , I really like the Magnum m8 but I'd have to find someplace to put it , it's huge.
But the options are endless with Caselabs cases.
Have you decided which case you want next? , I have to agree with you on the Lian Li cases , they are very nice. One of the things I like is , most of their cases have a card reader.
I keep looking at the Caselabs Merlin sm5 or sm8 , I really like the Magnum m8 but I'd have to find someplace to put it , it's huge.
But the options are endless with Caselabs cases.
andrevautour
New member
no problem. the only thing i've found so far that does the glow effect is luminescent wire. it does exactly what i want. my dad actually has a couple of them left from way back in 2005.
he still uses them in he current x79 build.
you can see some pictures here although the pictures can't really recreate how nice the glow is in real life though, and i didnt have the monitor connected to turn off the power leds on the cards so that kind of effected the light too. i also would not have the blue fan in the front either but i would have just the wire around the edges only and that looks really nice in person.
http://forum.overclock3d.net/showpost.php?p=571343&postcount=10
thanks! really there was no noticeable difference in temperatures with the drive bays either way and i just didn't like the look of it in the middle, it just seems like an after thought to me and you can see it through the window. i also needed to add some more drives.
i hear you about the non modular psu, the best you can do is just put everything around the back and just do what you can with it back there.
the pcb is pretty rugged there it is meant for screws so a zip tie isn't going to hurt it -- notice that tom also does that with the gpu cables. as far as any other cables being pinched just make sure non of them are pulled extremely tight against any edges that might be sharp, but really it's not usuaully a problem i never hear of anyone cutting cables inside the case by having stuff too tight. just dont yank on anything too hard when you are working with it.
whenever i'm doing the cables i just sort of do it in a way that looks good at the time and sometimes i go back and readjust things so they look better later. the area where the cables attach to the PSU in the bottom is not a big deal there's no set way to do it as long as the cables get from there to where they are going.
hey,
thanks!
i still like caselabs stuff and lian li almost equally, but i think for myself i can see myself in in a lian li next.
the caselabs stuff has sort of a more utilitarian look to it which i think is very nice, but the lian li stuff has a slightly more sleek elegant look to it that i tend to like a lot.
still not sure exactly when i will move cases though.
i have a side table next to my desk where the computer sit and it would be just wide enough to accommodate the m8. i really like the wide stance, but i like thet tall shallow stance of the x2000fn. also there is a new wide case from lian li i dont know if you seen it called the d8000
http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/produc...x=628&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=138&g=f
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Hi, I saw your rig update and the pics and everything and I am impressed with the LED mouting and I think it looks really nice, I like the way the light comes from somewhere underneath and lights the power supply logo, that's how everything should look like, wish that case had an option to fit LED's to spread the light only on hardware and make it look important. Also looking at your high quality pics and the sleeving on the PSU cables, I really like those cables sticking out of the sleeving before being attached to the connectors, makes everything look powerful, and functional and not there for the sole purpose of looking good.
Can say I am a fan of the LED light and the black colors all around with the yellow here and there for the PSU and the big noctua fans that turn the contrast up a bit. That CPU cooler fan hides the blue memory really nice there.
Also the case, this is the first time I see it this clearly, and it looks really nice, I love the straight corners and the decent sized vent in the front.
Can say I am a fan of the LED light and the black colors all around with the yellow here and there for the PSU and the big noctua fans that turn the contrast up a bit. That CPU cooler fan hides the blue memory really nice there.
Also the case, this is the first time I see it this clearly, and it looks really nice, I love the straight corners and the decent sized vent in the front.
Seen this already. I think it's very interesting, looks better, the temps seemed pretty low, it seemed pretty quiet, the pump looks massive and I like that alot, the black shiny hoses are brilliant... if I was to build myself a custom loop I'd use black shiny hoses instead of the so overrated transparent tubing everyone uses. And!! you can customize it, add water blocks to your graphics cards... this one looks promissing. What do you think?
andrevautour
New member
I think i was waiting for something better than the h100i to come along and it only took one look at this to tell that it is very good. it's basically a proper loop with real tubing and a real pump that is pre assembled. that is exactly what i have been waiting for.
