[Project]: Big Bro' Prodigy (BitFenix Prodigy E-ATX mod)

[nikkop]

This... is so goddamn amazing.

Thanks, glad you find it attractive!

cannot wait to see this finished i like the idea of hiding the psu behind the mobo etc also have a question

your ud7 is eatx will it be inverted so it will fit? its the only thing thats bugging me from the picture of a mobo you have in there it looks like it barly fits that :-/

Thanks! The z77x-UP7 will sit just like this blue motherboard and it will fit I do have a centimeter to spare on each side so no problems regarding that

Looks Amazing Mate!

Thanks a bunch! Stay tuned

It just keeps getting more and more amazing!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA*head explodes*

AAAAAAAAAAAA THANKS!

nice mod dude...beat me to it lol was a idea i was having next haha...oh well you snooze and all that...love the idea ..cant wait to see this beaut finished

Thanks a lot. Haha, you can do the same concept, perhaps in a different way?
Just stay tuned! Thanks

looks good shame motherboard isn't something like an rog becuase that would have looked amazing but the mod is still pretty amazing

Thanks. I prefer the orange color scheme of the Z77X-UP7 before RoG. Don't you think the Z77X-UP7 looks good? :O It's the motherboard that will be used

awesome job mate

Thanks a bunch Ted Mosby!

Hey NIKKOP,

Looking awesome mate, you gotta be happy with that !!!

Hi kaney!

Thanks a lot! So far I'm very satisfied and I hope I'll be that in the end as well

Nice job mate, keep the updates coming!!!

Thanks a bunch! Stay tuned and you will see them

How is the airflow going to look like in this build?

I'm probably going to have intake in the front and an exhaust in the back and in the top. Haven't decided yet, will have to experiment
_______________________________

Thanks for the comments everyone!

The next update will be about and include the motherboard Gigabyte z77x-UP7. I will post videos of unboxings, testing and such things!

Stay tuned, can't wait to post more updates!

Best Regards
Nikkop

 

[AverageNinja]

Getting better and better, keep going mate

 

[nikkop]

Getting better and better, keep going mate

Thanks a bunch! Your word motivates me!

A little heads up for all of you!

Last week I was about to record the next update which will feature a video, namely unboxing the motherboard (Gigabyte z77x-UP7).
Unfortunately my memory card decided to give me a hard time by dying while I had set up my recording enviroment and such stuff, I got so mad
However I'm now waiting for my new memory card to arrive (a better one!). When I've received I'll be able to record, edit and post a new update.
The update won't be only about unboxing the motherboard but also about how the new motherboard will fit, what it will look like and stuff alike!

Take care everyone,
Thanks in advance
Best Regards
Nikkop

 

[berthez]

omg, this build is so inspirering, wanna get hold of Bitfenix like that and just mod the crap out of it, but first I need the right tools for it Nice build man. thumbs up!

 

[giannakos23]

oh god you are insane !!
i really want to see how this build turns out !!

 

[nikkop]

First of all, pardon me for inactivity here!
I've just arrived home from a trip to Budapest with my girlfriend and now her mother is visiting us, so my spare time is pretty limited.
But I'll try to get an update out as soon as possible!

omg, this build is so inspirering, wanna get hold of Bitfenix like that and just mod the crap out of it, but first I need the right tools for it Nice build man. thumbs up!

Hah thanks a lot, appreciate the comment
About the tools, get a multifunctional tool (like a dremel) and perhaps some kind of saw and you'll be good to go!
It's just your fantasy limiting you (so cliché!)

oh god you are insane !!
i really want to see how this build turns out !!

Thanks a bunch Stay tuned and you shall see!

Thanks once again
Best Regards
Nikkop

 

[Feronix]

Good to see you're still doing this project!
How was Budapest?

Looking forward to updates ^_^

 

[B NEGATIVE]

Thanks! I hope I can continue making your heart happy!



Thanks a lot! I appreciate that comment, hehe.
Stay tuned and you shall be served with updates!



Hi Kaney!
YOU WANT MORE THAN THAT?! ARE YOU SURE?!
WELL HERE IT IS, ENJOY! :lol::lol::lol:

/Nikkop!

Modification of the motherboard plate and test fitting the PSU and the motherboard. - 03/2 -2013

Hey,

Hope everyone is doing well and that you’re hungry for an update! I myself have been pretty busy trying to finish a college course and an examination assignment in another course.
I have now had time to process all the images and do a update!

( Yesterday, I was shocked to know that my last project, G5 Unlocked, are at the top six best modifications for the month of January at Bit-Tech: An honor to me as a beginner modder.
Please check It out and cast your votes on your favorite builds!
G5 Unlocked by Nikkop | bit-tech.net)

This update will be about how I modify the motherboard plate to fit on the chassis, how I test mount power supply (many want to see this) and how it will look like with a motherboard test fitted! (What the teaser image was about)

Enjoy! Do not forget to comment or ask if you have any questions!
_______________________________________________________________

Okok, we begin by looking at how the motherboard tray’s I/O panel relate in size to the chassis!
As we see, it is a little bit off the page and will not go getting into the case, modification must be done!

I throw in the motherboard tray before modification to show that it is too long/wide and modification must be done.

I select what is to be cut off by first drawing a line and then add a bit of tape so I know how much to remove.

I tighten the plate to the kitchen table and prepare the jigsaw. Here it should be slaughtered!
(My girlfriend is worried each time I saw in the kitchen that I would "accidentally" cut in her nice table! )

We pull up and saw on! Can tell you that there is quite a lot of metal splinters flying here and there and sawed metal does not smell like flowers!
Do not forget to sweep up everything as it is barely visible, but becomes large piles of metal shavings if you sweep it up.

We try inserting the plate in the chassis when it has been sawn, and yes, it fits nicely!
You may wonder why I put it inside the chassis and it is because I want to see how it relates to the size and when I test fit, I have to have it inside the chassis because I haven’t sawn a hole in the bottom of the chassis yet.

However, we are not done yet! I have more to be done on this sheet and now you will see why!
Here is a sheet metal piece with the PCI-brackets, that's where you mount the video card/expansion card.

I follow the contours for the PCI-bracket and mark with a pencil so I know how much space it takes, even if I would take the brackets off.

There, now marked with masking tape what will be removed. I pull up the saw and saw on!

And here we have the results!
You probably wonder why I cut off so much of the plate width so it became thinner? - Keep reading!

Here is the plate inside the chassis! Sitting really good and just as I wished!
As you can see the tray’s I/O is now smaller but closer to one edge of the chassis!
Why? Well it gives me the space behind the motherboard plate. There I can put stuff that will not be seen through the chassis window.
Why would I want that?

Tadaaaaaaaa!
Yes, you see that right! The power supply will be placed behind the motherboard plate. In this way, it will not be visible through the window. There is also more space that will be used. For what we will see in the future! But PSU placement is fixed and it is perfect!
unboxing and review of the power supply comes at a later stage when I had time to try it!

PS! As you can see in the pictures, it is the power supply back placed against the front of the chassis.
Of course it will not look like this later, but it was just to show that it fits!
The power supply back will be placed against the back of the chassis, of course!

So okay.
Now we have modified the motherboard tray’s I/O plate to fit inside the chassis, and also managed to place the power supply.
But how will it look like with a motherboard in place?
I test fit a little fast with an old Gigabyte Motherboards for AM3 CPU.
This is not the motherboard that will be used later.

__________________________________________________________

I myself am very pleased so far and believe that this project will be awesooome to the end! I am at the beginning of the modification but it has begun to take shape, I’m so thrilled!

Or what do you think? Do you like the placement of the motherboard and power supply?
I myself am happy to say that I see much potential in this building and how compact and powerful you can get it.

I am more than happy to listen and hear what you have to say! So just comment on!

Hope you enjoyed this update!

Next update will involve unboxing and similar of Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP7
Take care and thanks in advance!
Best Regards
Nikkop

Erm....have you stuck a card in there yet to see if the power cables will go in? It looks awfully close to the Chassis/Panels....

Looks very interesting tho. Subbed.

 

[nikkop]

Good to see you're still doing this project!
How was Budapest?

Looking forward to updates ^_^

Haha thanks! I will get this beast finished. How long it will take is something I don't know tho, a lot of other hobby's and school takes up my time, and a girlfriend of course! x)

Budapest was nice. Enjoyed good food and nice sight seeing. I enjoy seeing cultural stuff when I'm on trips and Budapest is full of old architectures, buildings and stuff. Maybe not the best season to visit the capital but was good at least and I'm satisfied. Cheap beer and wine isn't too bad either, lol ^_^

Erm....have you stuck a card in there yet to see if the power cables will go in? It looks awfully close to the Chassis/Panels....

Looks very interesting tho. Subbed.

Thanks

No I haven't tried as I don't have any GPU at the moment, but I've been counting and yes it might be very tight, but I will get it to work. I do have a centimeter or something like that to spare behind the tray so I can move it back to be able to fit the cables for the GPU.

That's also why I haven't attached the tray yet, I wan't to have a GPU to experiment before doing so ^_^
But I will try it soon enough, hopefully ^_^


Best Regards
Nikkop

 

[giannakos23]

really nice...but i think it is going to be a pain in the arse to hide cables etc !!

 

[nikkop]

Hello my friends at OC3D!

really nice...but i think it is going to be a pain in the arse to hide cables etc !!

Thanks!
I hope and I think I will be able to fix it nice and without too much hassle! Let's hope, haha

Anyways! Here's an update for all of you!

UPDAAAAAAATE! : D

Unboxing of GIGABYTE z77x-UP7 and test-mounting in the case - 12/03 -2013

UPDATE 12/3 to 2013

Hello dear readers!

I've finally managed to fix material for a new update. A lot of crap got in the way. First my SDcard would die, then the microphone wouldnt want to work, then had my computer formatted etc.etc. Everything that could happen did happen

Here's the update thou!

I would first like to say thank you to GIGABYTE for supplying me with this motherboard to make my project come true!

This update will be mostly about unboxing of the motherboard z77x-UP7.
The unboxing will be in the form of a Video and photographs of the box, the products supplied within and the way motherboard looks inside the chassis!
Hope you'll like it!

If you're wondering when more modifications will be made on the case I can tell you that next update will for sure be about some sort of work around the case.
This update, like I said will be an unboxing of the motherboard.

I'm also using my new macro lens in this update, so do not forget to look at the pictures! >

Let's go! Yiihooo!
____________________________________________________________________________________

That said, there will be an unboxing video complemented with pictures and text.
Here is the video anyway (My first unboxing video ever ^_^)

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpMu_Oi06PM


Complements with pictures and text:

Front:
Here we see the box itself. It is quite big and deep, of course, to make room for all accessories and extra stuff.

Symbols/Labels
Here are the labels that I said I would explain in this log:

• GIGABYTE OC Motherboard - GIGABYTE's official Overclocking motherboards.
• 32 +3 +2 Phase Power - This motherboard has 32 power phases for the CPU, 3 for the Intel HD Graphics and 2 for the of VTT (voltage to the RAM).
• Ultra Durable ™ 5 - Name of the durable components that are used on the motherboard.
• World Record 7.102GHz - This motherboard has kept the world record for Overclocking with an Intel Core i7 3770k. The clock speed was 7.102Ghz.
• Best of Computex 2012 - Tom's Hardware has appointed this motherboard's components ( Ultra Durable ™ 5 ) to "Best of Computex 2012".
• BlueTooth 4.0 + 300 Mbps Dual Band Wi-Fi - Features on the wireless networking card.

____________________________________________________________________________________

The back :

Here is some information on the motherboard and its properties. The ones I feel are important, I will take up here but also go through when it comes to the review of the motherboard (another update):

• Support for up to 4x Graphics , at the same time.
• OC BIOS - backup BIOS in case such the primary would become corrupt or fail.
• OC-Touch - Buttons for live adjust of the CPU ratio, BCLK, etc. (live overclocking)
• " True All Digital PWM Design "

____________________________________________________________________________________

Cover/Lid:

• IR3550 PowIRStage - Highest rated and most awarded Power Stage in the industry.
• 2x Copper PCB - double copper layer on the PCB.

____________________________________________________________________________________

The Motherboard

Here we have the motherboard, the monster Z77X-UP7 ! (Attached to a motherboard plate).
As we can see pretty quickly it's a highend motherboard with many PCI-E lanes many SATA ports ( 10 to be exact ) and some other features such as Debug LED and many types of connections . It also has some other surprising properties (which are not visible in the picture but I will go through in the review), eg 2x 8PIN connector to the CPU (EPS12V) for additional power supplyment , for example Extreme Overclocking . It has also, as I mentioned above, 32 +3 +2 power phases overclocking buttons 2x Ethernet ports etc.

I will as I said go through all of that when it comes to doing a review on the motherboard. Here's however a couple of pictures on the z77x-UP7!

____________________________________________________________________________________

I continue with pictures of the contents and some explanatory text

All content is placed on a table so we can see them all!

CF & SLI Bridges - So we can run multiple graphics cards simultaneously.

• Crossfire bridge for dual AMD graphics cards.
• SLI bridge for dual Nvidia graphics cards.
• 3x SLI bridge for triple Nvidia graphics card.
• 4x SLI bridge for four Nvidia graphics card.

3.5" USB 3.0 Bracket - A solution so we get 2 USB 3.0 ports.

WiFi & BlueTooth Expansion card - So we can run WiFi and BlueTooth on a desktop computer, wireless!
I am looking extra forward to this as I have an ethernet cable through the whole apartment which is just in the way all the time. Wireless internet will solve this nice!

eSATA Bracket - Solution to example run internal hard drives as externals.
Looking forward to this solution as I have an internal hard drive that I move around with sometimes.

Measure-voltage cables - Cables for reading genuine hardware voltages in the motherboard.
Should be fun to read hardware voltages and compare with those softwares are reporting.

GIGABYTE sticker! - Mount it wherever you want! ^ _ ^

In addition to the above, I have shown you that we get 6x SATA cables , motherboard manuals, drivers for the chipset and expansion card and such things.____________________________________________________________________________________

The motherboard in the case:

Now we have seen the motherboard a bit, but how does it look in the case?
I took a picture with the motherboard in the case to see how the final product will look like, and to be honest, I was very impressed!
This will be badass, looking forward to it a lot!

The case without feet and handles.

The complete case, however without the side plate.
The colors just goes so extremely well togheter, I'm impressed! Imagine this color scheme, gah! Loving it!

____________________________________________________________________________________

Finally:
That's what I had to show you this time!
Sorry this update has taken its time. I shouldn't blame anything but myself but I've messed up and in addition this video has actually taken a long time to do Took a lot of time to do the voice-overs (I had to record the voice after the video). But now it's ready and hope you liked it!

The next update will be with some modification, of course! I'm sick psyched to continue modifying and hope you are trhilled for it aswell
However, I can say as a warning that next update might take a while.
The reason is that I have been appointed " Test Pilot " for the Asus PadFone 2 . I will be using the product for a specific time and then do some kind of work (atm I have a diary, a thread at a forum and so on). Since this "test pilot thing" has a deadline, I will prioritize that for the moment
Since I also have an exam coming and two courses to be completed, some time will be spent there.
But an update will come eventually!

Comment or question if you'd like please, I get happy when people write!
Thank you for reading and following!

Have a nice day,
Thanks in advance
Best Regards
Nikkop

 

[Kopesetic]

Oh man, now I want that board! And it looks incredible in this mod. I can't wait to see more updates!

 

[The Orange One]

That Mobo looks great!

 

[Mgutierrez33]

fits snug as a bug in a rug. Can't wait for the next update (whenever it is you manage to get to it... stupid life and education getting in the way of fun).

 

[Sir-Weasel]

One word and one word only:

NICE

 

[Feronix]

Still in love with this build log

Looking forward to seeing the components and cooling added!

 

[berthez]

Epic work on this build log man. You are showing how much potential the mITX case has and you make it an ATX case with your mod, its truly inspiring. For the hard drives I would suggest you make some custom hard drive cages behind the motherboard tray, it looks like you got plenty of space there when you managed to fit your power supply there, so it shouldnt be a big problem, I think you can manage to get plenty of hdd's behind there. What do you think?

Awesome work !

 

[kaney]

Hey Nikkop,


how you doing its been a while !!!

You may remember I am playing with the "Orange Box' and I am suffering the same problems in making things fit and still want everything to look nice. It is too taking me bloooody ages to get this project finished, It is shelved for now but will pick this up again soon, It similar to yours but If you remember I plugged for the mini ITX mobo. Love how yours is currently looking but its fitting the rest of it in is the skill !

I must finish mine so we can compare notes plus this would be a great reference for others

 

[nikkop]

First of all I must say I do really like OC3D's community and all you people. You are so friendly with your comments and suggestions Feels like a tight family even thou I'm a newcomer, hehe

Oh man, now I want that board! And it looks incredible in this mod. I can't wait to see more updates!

That Mobo looks great!

Thanks! Indeed, I love the orange elements, goes so well with black! Overall the looks of it are something extra. Can't wait either! hah,

fits snug as a bug in a rug. Can't wait for the next update (whenever it is you manage to get to it... stupid life and education getting in the way of fun).

Hah that expression made me laugh, lol
Indeed stupid life and education! Why can't life only consist of hours meant for modifications?!

One word and one word only:

NICE

Four words and four words only (and a smiley):

Thanks a lot mate!

Still in love with this build log

Looking forward to seeing the components and cooling added!

Thanks a bunch!
I'm currently thinking about what cooling to use for the CPU. I'm probably going to water cool it, but what setup? Remains to be seen!

Epic work on this build log man. You are showing how much potential the mITX case has and you make it an ATX case with your mod, its truly inspiring. For the hard drives I would suggest you make some custom hard drive cages behind the motherboard tray, it looks like you got plenty of space there when you managed to fit your power supply there, so it shouldnt be a big problem, I think you can manage to get plenty of hdd's behind there. What do you think?

Awesome work !

Thanks man!
Yes, even though Prodigy is a pretty big mITX case, it's still a mITX case . You seem to think like I do! haha.
Yes I will keep the hard drives behind the motherboard tray as there is some space that can be used for that I do currently use 1 SSD + 1 Hard drive, but I'll try to get 1 SSD + 2 Hard drives inside.
About the cage for the drives, I'll find something out. Maybe I can mod the one that is being supplied with the case and make it fit

Hey Nikkop,

how you doing its been a while !!!

You may remember I am playing with the "Orange Box' and I am suffering the same problems in making things fit and still want everything to look nice. It is too taking me bloooody ages to get this project finished, It is shelved for now but will pick this up again soon, It similar to yours but If you remember I plugged for the mini ITX mobo. Love how yours is currently looking but its fitting the rest of it in is the skill !

I must finish mine so we can compare notes plus this would be a great reference for others

Hi Kaney! I'm good thanks! You?
Yes it's been a while unfortunately
Ah, that explains why I haven't seen your log for a while . Looking forward to see how it turns out. Get that case of the shelf and start working on it!

The motherboard and PSU will fit without any issues at all So will cooling for the CPU and I should be able to fix a nice spot for the HDD's. What I'm thinking about is the GPU (if I get any). I do not own any GPU at the time, unfortunately, but I'd like to get my hands on one so I can see if the placement will be ok and if it would work out ^^

Indeed!
Mine will take some time to finish. As I also mentioned I won't be able to do anything for a while, but once I start again I'll try to be as effective as possible!

Nice to hear from you again,

Thanks everyone for your kind comments!
Best Regards
Nikkop

 

[AverageNinja]

I like that mobo in there! :I
Have you tried getting sponsors? (Not sure if I missed anything)
I think you deserve sponsors with something as unique as this!