Project Inspired

[iNoXiouZ]

Hello and welcome to my project log!

This project is called "Inspired" not because its divinely inspired or anything like that but because the project will incorporate many ideas/mods I've seen from many truly amazing projects before so a big THANK YOU to all you fellow modders .

The aim of the project is to build a PC that is beautiful to look at, to have high end performance and be very quiet. How hard can it be.
The Colour scheme will be Black and white.

- Mod List -
Cut out window in side panel
Cut out design in case roof for 360 Radiator
Remove HDD cage for 240 Radiator
Paint case
Sleeve PSU (paracord heatshrink-less)
Paint Motherboard
Paint Radiators + Fans
Cut acrylic tubing to suitable lengths
Finalize design for PSU and optical drive bay covers
Build SSD mounts
ETC.....


- Spec List -
Core i7 3930K
ASRock X79 Extreme 9
Radeon HD7950's (x2)
Seasonic Platinum 860W
Lian Li A17FB
D5 Vario Pump
Alphacool NexXxos Monsta 240 + 360
5 x Gentle Typhoons 1850 RPM
Phoyba 250ml Res
Many, many fittings
Acrylic tubing (solid)

Undecided on SSDs, RAM and Pump Top

A few sketchup designs:

The typhoons and 240 Radiator need a new look so out with the spray paint and sand paper
Painting the fans and radiator took ages as I didn't want any "orange peel", they're not perfect but I think they look good.

Amazing fans but alittle dull in grey

Much better

Radiator next! You jelly of my Haribo?

The quality of the Monsta isn't great out the box unfortunately, wonky stickers and a bad paint job

White Edition

Still needs alittle buffering but its almost there.

PSU Sleeving time! (My poor fingers!) :/

More sleeving pics soon

On to the case....

Sorry for the low quality pics, some of them were taken after work when there's no daylight, I was just to excited to wait!

Beautiful looking case I think

Time to disassemble

Poor case!

Before painting I need to fill in the un-needed holes and dremel out some cable management holes.
The motherboard will tell me exactly where to cut the cable management holes and also exactly how long the cables need to be.

Late X-mas prezzie to myself arrived

The Accessories

The "Game Blaster", it's an audio and LAN card, Looks beast I think Even this will be modded

Some dangerous looking thermal paste

Custom GPU plates, Not sure how I will mount these yet, I may just end up drilling holes in the acrylic and screwing it to the cards, but for now I'll try and think up a more elegant solution.

I decided it made sense to modify the motherboard tray next as when that's completed I can work out my cable lengths and continue sleeving, also I can start painting (sleeving whilst waiting for paint to dry).

I used the motherboard to mark out the cuts for the 24 pin, PCI-E, Sata and also front panel cables, I'll use the CPU bracket cutout for the EPS 8 pin(s).

I filled in the unnecessary holes so that the end result is cleaner, I had to use quite abit of filler and it looks a complete mess at the moment but it'll be fine once its been sanded completely flat.

First hole done:

Smile

I then realised I'm an idiot and didn't measure the cable connector width properly and had made the holes too small by about 1-2mm. So I filed off 2mm and now the connectors fit through the holes, still needs alittle more filing to make it neater (though noone will actually see the holes as the motherboard will be covering them).

Next is to get sanding! (oh joy )

 

[dragoonk]

Very very nice idea, I like to see mods, and yours looks like a major mod, I am pretty excited to see how this turns out and I'll definitely be following your progress log.

Good luck buddy!

 

[iNoXiouZ]

Very very nice idea, I like to see mods, and yours looks like a major mod, I am pretty excited to see how this turns out and I'll definitely be following your progress log.

Good luck buddy!

Thanks mate ^_^

I'm pretty excited too! I love building custom PC's

 

[dragoonk]

Thanks mate ^_^

I'm pretty excited too! I love building custom PC's

You're pretty good with those tools, I've seen you drill those holes quite nicely and you have proper tools too. This should be interesting.

 

[| raVen |]

Nice project mate

 

[CPMFW]

really nice work mate
i'll be following

 

[The Orange One]

I'll be keeping an eye on this!
Looks Awesome!

 

[iNoXiouZ]

You're pretty good with those tools, I've seen you drill those holes quite nicely and you have proper tools too. This should be interesting.

Well I've done some modding before so have some experience but I'm always learning

Nice project mate

really nice work mate
i'll be following

I'll be keeping an eye on this!
Looks Awesome!

Thanks guys!

I've managed to blag tomorrow and Friday off so I can crack on with getting the motherboard tray ready for painting and I also want to practice bending and cutting acrylic this weekend :beerchug:

 

[yassarikhan786]

Awesome job on the cutting dude, this should be good

 

[iNoXiouZ]

Thanks yassarikhan786!

A small update for you

I got some more sleeving done, so far I've done 2 x 6 Pins (PCI-E), an 8 pin, the molex cables I need and I'm almost finished on the second set of 6 pins, after that all I have left to do is the 24 pin cable and a sata power

I decided that instead of having to either try and sleeve the double wires (two wires going into one pin) or solder the two wires half way up the cable so that the connector ends look neat, I'd instead just remove the +2 pins altogether which looks much neater and I also don't have to try and hide the +2 pin cables around the back of the motherboard tray.
I can always just add the extra ground wires back in at a later date if I ever decide to upgrade the graphics cards to something that requires 8 pin(s).

A cheeky demo shot with my hot assistant, a GTX480

Hours with an electric sander and 120 Grit sand paper produced a smooth(ish) mobo tray with the excess metal filler removed, still have to sand it with 800 Grit in prep for painting.

Top case panel masked up....

And Marked up ready for cutting

But before I take the drill and jigsaw to the panel I've decided to see if I can source a replacement panel from Lian Li if I need to, I'll hear back tomorrow with a quote. If the price is high then I'll likely out source someone to machine cut it for me, but if a replacement panel is cheap then I'll give it a go myself as I would like to do as much of the modding myself.

Anyways thanks for checking out my project log so far

 

[The Orange One]

Looks great so far dude! Love the Sleeving!

 

[iBeInspire]

I love seeing project's like this from talented modders
Top-class sleeving there mate

Also doesn't hurt the project shares it's name with mine xPP

 

[Xayer]

I love your project, it's amazing

 

[iNoXiouZ]

Looks great so far dude! Love the Sleeving!

I love seeing project's like this from talented modders
Top-class sleeving there mate

Also doesn't hurt the project shares it's name with mine xPP

I love your project, it's amazing

Thank you for your kind words guys ^_^

I'm finalizing the SSD enclosure design at the moment, I'll post up the design later

 

[The Orange One]

Can't wait dude!

 

[Cloudie]

Looks like this is going to look great in the end. Keep up the good work!

 

[iNoXiouZ]

Thanks Cloudie, I sure will!

SSD enclosure Concept

Alright then, I don't want my SSD's hidden away and I also don't want them just placed on the floor of the case so my idea is to integrate them into the PSU cover, this way they'll be on show and the placement makes cable management a breeze.

Below is the enclosure that will be screwed into the PSU cover, it's a really simple design comprising of three pieces of acrylic.

The mounting holes in the enclosure will be tapped and the holes in the PSU cover will be countersunk to give a clean look.

I may carbon rap the SSD's so they fit in better with the colour scheme, or I may use smoked acrylic.

 

[The Orange One]

Looks Promising Dude!

 

[iNoXiouZ]

Argh! what a nightmare the past week has been There was a pretty serious fault in the house electrical circuit which meant getting out an electrician and also meant ripping up the floor boards to try and find the fault, expensive and time consuming.

I wanted to get started on the SSD enclosures which meant using a dremel but with the electrics tripping every few minutes I couldn't progress much

Damn life for getting in the way of my modding progress.

Anyways I did manage to sleeve the 24 pin and I've started painting the case.

The stock 24 pin, this picture was taken so I had a reference for the pin layout.

Some of the thinner wires came straight out of the pin and left the pin still in the connector Nothing a drill and 2mm drill bit couldn't sort out though

Alot of high end PSU's now have double wires, meaning that two wires connect into one pin which makes them really differcult to sleeve and ugly, so to avoid the ugliness at the connector ends (where you'd see it) I cut the wires apart and soldered them back together in the middle of the wire, this part of the wire will be behind the motherboard tray out of sight.

A quick look at the 24 pin connected to the mobo, most of the 24 pin wont be visible as it'll go straight under the mobo and behind the mobo tray

I've been priming the case bits with etching primer....My ghetto 'washing line' to hang my case parts for painting using clamps and paracord.

I've decided to have the roof panel machine cut for a price of £25 rather than cut it myself as it's cheaper than a replacement panel and I know it'll look awesome. My design has been sent off I'm pretty excited! just hope I measured everything correctly...

Thanks for looking.

 

[iNoXiouZ]

I'm buying PC bits as and when I can, here's a small selection I received yesturday and today.

2 x 120GB Sandisk Extreme SSD's
The first HD7950
16GB (4 x 4GB) Samsung Green 1600Mhz DDR3
Arctic Cooling MX-4 for the GPU's

The first HD7950 I ordered was a HIS reference card, but unfortunately it has a green PCB and although the backplate covers most of it you can still see some of the PCB near the crossfire fingers. I'll be returning it under DSR.

The HIS card:

The MSI Card: (Brown PCB will have to do )

A look at how the card looks with the backplate, I like it

This Samsung green RAM is TINY!:

I also bought a Antec PSU tester to make sure I didn't mess up the wire layout or soldering, all seems good

I've not just been shopping I've also been painting, all the priming is done, I will need to sand everything before the gloss black goes on, it's going quite well so far

I've given my GTX480 to a friend as he was using a HD5450 so now I'm using the MSI HD7950. I couldn't resist a little overclocking
Turns out its pretty good, 1100Mhz with 1.060V Unigine Heaven stable, I'll continue testing tomorrow.

Thanks for looking