Dicehunter
Resident Newb
That little blower fan actually came in extremely useful when I use to run Crossfire 4850's, Really did help shift a butt ton of air out the case as the 4850's didn't have blower style fans.
Rise of the triad, The 2014 Area 51
- Thread starter AlienALX
- Start date
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
Aww dude that looks the shiznitz, Nice job 
AlienALX
Well-known member
Thanks fella. Because of the way the PCI brackets tilt it should look really lovely once fitted into a PCI slot
Just got to crack out the wiring and find a SATA run (shouldn't be hard the PSU came with aboiut fifty lol) and chop all but one off. Then tomorrow I will fit the SSD and get it wired up
Just got to crack out the wiring and find a SATA run (shouldn't be hard the PSU came with aboiut fifty lol) and chop all but one off. Then tomorrow I will fit the SSD and get it wired up
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
That looks butt tons better
AlienALX
Well-known member
Yeah for every cable tie, comb and what not it just gets better and better Really have fallen in love with it now.
Without Tom and WYP I would have been screwed, 'cause there's no way I could have bought a PSU like this and got all the fancy blue cables.
I realised something the other night too, which was so cool it blew me away.
The case itself is active. What I mean is, in certain games (most of the big ones) the lights on the case change during play. So for example in Dying Light if I am in a safe area the case lights go out completely. As soon as I venture into an area with infected in the lights all go green.
If I turn on my torch (flashlight) they all go white. If I fall from a ledge and splat they all go red. If I am dying they faintly pulse in red.
It's really truly mind blowing. My other Area 51 (the '09 model) did it too in Metro Last Light and other games and I thought it was broken. I never paid attention to the case and compared it to the game, so I just figured there was a short in the wiring that became apparent when the rig was under load. I dunno, bad PSU or something.
Now that I know it's deliberate it amazes me every time I watch it in action lol
Really have fallen in love with it now.Without Tom and WYP I would have been screwed, 'cause there's no way I could have bought a PSU like this and got all the fancy blue cables.
I realised something the other night too, which was so cool it blew me away.
The case itself is active. What I mean is, in certain games (most of the big ones) the lights on the case change during play. So for example in Dying Light if I am in a safe area the case lights go out completely. As soon as I venture into an area with infected in the lights all go green.
If I turn on my torch (flashlight) they all go white. If I fall from a ledge and splat they all go red. If I am dying they faintly pulse in red.
It's really truly mind blowing. My other Area 51 (the '09 model) did it too in Metro Last Light and other games and I thought it was broken. I never paid attention to the case and compared it to the game, so I just figured there was a short in the wiring that became apparent when the rig was under load. I dunno, bad PSU or something.
Now that I know it's deliberate it amazes me every time I watch it in action lol
AlienALX
Well-known member
OK so as I hinted at elsewhere I am now preparing the rig for Crossfire. A couple of weeks back I looked into the rig and it seems that you can not fit two Fury X radiators into the case because of the placement of the fan holsters that you have to bolt the radiators to.
So for a while I was just thinking "screw it" and was going to get a Nano. However, now that I have seen just how much faster Fury X Crossfire can be over Fury X Nano I decided it was time to get out the modding tools again, something I really did not want to do on this computer.
However, I spent today thinking hard about the situation and after lots of measuring and testing placements I have made an adapter that shifts the radiator up 10mm to make sure that it clears the one in the bottom. If you take a look at this picture you will see I have labelled the fan spaces 1, 2, 3
OK. So I already have a Fury X rad in position 1. However, if you bolt the fan onto the supplied bracket for position 2 the radiator hits the radiator in position 1. Not only that, but Alienware do not supply you with all three fan brackets they only give you two. Try to buy another one? £38 please.
So what I have done is make a plate that bolts to the fan bracket and then shifts the 120mm fan mount up into the case toward the top by 10mm. With this done the radiators then clear each other by about 3mm. It's very tight but I am pretty sure it will work, phew.
The only remaining problem now is that I need to mount a 120mm fan in the top position to bring air in for the CPU cooler which is bolted in the back only I don't have the bracket and I am absolutely loathe to spend £38 on a piece of plastic.
I am continuing to think about this and am trying to come up with ideas on how to do it.
More soon !
So for a while I was just thinking "screw it" and was going to get a Nano. However, now that I have seen just how much faster Fury X Crossfire can be over Fury X Nano I decided it was time to get out the modding tools again, something I really did not want to do on this computer.
However, I spent today thinking hard about the situation and after lots of measuring and testing placements I have made an adapter that shifts the radiator up 10mm to make sure that it clears the one in the bottom. If you take a look at this picture you will see I have labelled the fan spaces 1, 2, 3
OK. So I already have a Fury X rad in position 1. However, if you bolt the fan onto the supplied bracket for position 2 the radiator hits the radiator in position 1. Not only that, but Alienware do not supply you with all three fan brackets they only give you two. Try to buy another one? £38 please.
So what I have done is make a plate that bolts to the fan bracket and then shifts the 120mm fan mount up into the case toward the top by 10mm. With this done the radiators then clear each other by about 3mm. It's very tight but I am pretty sure it will work, phew.
The only remaining problem now is that I need to mount a 120mm fan in the top position to bring air in for the CPU cooler which is bolted in the back only I don't have the bracket and I am absolutely loathe to spend £38 on a piece of plastic.
I am continuing to think about this and am trying to come up with ideas on how to do it.
More soon !
AlienALX
Well-known member
OK so the adapter bracket is now complete as I painted it last night. I will take a pic or two as I put it all together later on.
Next up was figuring out how I can fit the top intake fan to the PC without the £38 fan bracket. Then I had a brain wave (careful now) and remembered seeing fan magnets in an issue of CPC many moons ago.
They look like this.
You fit them to each corner of the fan then simply attach them to your case. Job done almost. They come with little nipples on (hehehe) that may need to be shaved off because they won't be going into a normal fan mount hole set.
So hopefully they will do the job.
Next up was figuring out how I can fit the top intake fan to the PC without the £38 fan bracket. Then I had a brain wave (careful now) and remembered seeing fan magnets in an issue of CPC many moons ago.
They look like this.
You fit them to each corner of the fan then simply attach them to your case. Job done almost. They come with little nipples on (hehehe) that may need to be shaved off because they won't be going into a normal fan mount hole set.
So hopefully they will do the job.
AlienALX
Well-known member
I thought of that but will try the magnets first dude. Basically there are slight bumps in the case where the £38 fan bracket goes and I need to be able to lift above those. Those filter things are very thin.. In fact, you can actually buy magnetic tape stuff which I guess would work too.
I'll try shaving off my nipples first though
I just moved the Fury X into the bottom slot and oddly it's now running X16 (it was X8 before). Time to do some research on the 5820k and lanes I think, though I am assuming I will end up at X8 X8 or something like that given I run a X4 SSD.
AlienALX
Well-known member
More headaches... When I was planning on how to get the radiator to clear width wise I completely and utterly forgot about the depth. As you will see in the following pictures, it matters. It matters so much that using a fan in 'push' configuration (IE behind the radiator) will then make the radiator foul the hoses on the lower radiator.
Any way, it's been solved now and will work (I just tried it but I've put the camera away now). Anyhoo, here is the adapter bolted together just so you can see how it works.
I did not realise either that the blue area there would be visible so I am going to make a graphic or something for it. This is how it looks stood up, and you can clearly see the offset here that I've added by making the plate.
OK, so we take a nice thick fan that just so happens to be the side thickness as a Fury X rad.
And then this pic shows the fan fitted into the position it will be in soon.
I then add the pretend 'radiator' and.
And it clears, just. However, as I mentioned previously, I forgot to take the depth of the radiator into consideration. After a moment of sheer panic (seriously my mouth went so dry it was like I ate 10,000 digestives without any milk!) I then realised that if I mount the radiator first and then fit the fan on the other side in 'pull' mode that the radiator will then have plenty of depth when fitted, phew !!!!
Any way, it's been solved now and will work (I just tried it but I've put the camera away now). Anyhoo, here is the adapter bolted together just so you can see how it works.
I did not realise either that the blue area there would be visible so I am going to make a graphic or something for it. This is how it looks stood up, and you can clearly see the offset here that I've added by making the plate.
OK, so we take a nice thick fan that just so happens to be the side thickness as a Fury X rad.
And then this pic shows the fan fitted into the position it will be in soon.
I then add the pretend 'radiator' and.
And it clears, just. However, as I mentioned previously, I forgot to take the depth of the radiator into consideration. After a moment of sheer panic (seriously my mouth went so dry it was like I ate 10,000 digestives without any milk!) I then realised that if I mount the radiator first and then fit the fan on the other side in 'pull' mode that the radiator will then have plenty of depth when fitted, phew !!!!
AlienALX
Well-known member
I now have everything but the GPU which I make the final payment for on Friday.
3x 24 pin cable combs (I will cut these to make 8 pin combs)
3x Glacier pro fans (even though I miscalculated and only need two lmao)
1x 3 pin fan splitter by Shakmods.
1x MNPCtech skull grill to match the others in the rig.
1x modded radiator adapter, though I fear I will need to order some more acrylic and make another one but I won't know until I try..
I'm quite looking forward to getting it all done now because my desk is terribly cluttered :S
3x 24 pin cable combs (I will cut these to make 8 pin combs)
3x Glacier pro fans (even though I miscalculated and only need two lmao)
1x 3 pin fan splitter by Shakmods.
1x MNPCtech skull grill to match the others in the rig.
1x modded radiator adapter, though I fear I will need to order some more acrylic and make another one but I won't know until I try..
I'm quite looking forward to getting it all done now because my desk is terribly cluttered :S
AlienALX
Well-known member
The Triad is finished. I swear, it's finished*
Apols for loss of picture quality. The clouds came over and I had to use a desk lamp.
My adapter plate worked very well and it did fit. You couldn't fit a fag paper between the rads, though, but that's unimportant. What matters is it's all sandwiched in there and is working beautifully The fan on the magnets tucked up into the top beautifully.
Let's give it some welly !
And I ran Firestrike.
Note, the cable ties are only being used to 'train' the cables. Once they settle and stop bending back I will remove them.
*I swear that's it. I promise I will not upgrade this rig any more, or spend any money on it. If Fury X prices drop I absolutely will not fit another one.... And then...
Another butterscotch candy?!?!
Apols for loss of picture quality. The clouds came over and I had to use a desk lamp.
My adapter plate worked very well and it did fit. You couldn't fit a fag paper between the rads, though, but that's unimportant. What matters is it's all sandwiched in there and is working beautifully
The fan on the magnets tucked up into the top beautifully.
Let's give it some welly !
And I ran Firestrike.
Note, the cable ties are only being used to 'train' the cables. Once they settle and stop bending back I will remove them.
*I swear that's it. I promise I will not upgrade this rig any more, or spend any money on it. If Fury X prices drop I absolutely will not fit another one.... And then...
Another butterscotch candy?!?!
Doomslayer
New member
Yeah, Yeah, We have heard that before 
AlienALX
Well-known member
Warning : Massive post/s coming up.
Just to catch you all up. I have never ever finished a rig. Not on the modding side. I am aiming to completely finish this rig before moving house soon. So it's all hands on deck, but let me catch you up a bit.
First of all let me say that even dropping to 32" 1440p did not help the Furys much. They were still VRAM limited, even when I dropped back to one card. So I sold one of them, sold my Asus 760 Mars, sold a Titan Black (the last one) and bought the Titan X (£480) and a used 980 Hybrid kit (unused shroud) £40 and a back plate £17.
The 1080 was still a month away and I caught some one panic selling. In the end it all turned out good, because she's a demon clocker. Any way, without further ado here is the latest.
After suffering with two Fury X for about a year I decided enough was enough. Crossfire was crap and broken and even on a single card I was running short of VRAM. You don't even want to know what that's like... So I gave one Fury X to my wife and sold the other and ended up buying a Titan X for £480 recently. I also ordered a back plate from EVGA Europe (thanks guys, best packing of ever !) and bought a second hand Hybrid kit. Just one problem, it was the 980 version. So let's see what I did about that shall we?
First of all I ordered some brushed alu in blue (it's vinyl with alu film on). I covered the areas on the card I thought looked best.
Here is a pic of that, though this was taken at night. I also covered part of the shoulder too, as you will see later.
I did not want to use the stock fan as I heard they are very noisy. So I bought a Alphacool Eloop (same as Noiseblocker just come in colours) and a PCI slot fan controller.
The fan.
And the controller. This was after I had taken it apart, desoldered all of the wires, braided them, modded it so the braids fitted it and then put it all back together.
Then it was time to measure the shroud inner part.
Chrome vinyl. This stuff is really slick and my plotter was having issues with it so I glued it down to some paper so the plotter could get a grip.
Load up the plotter...
Then it was time to design what I wanted on there. Design.
Send to plotter..
And then cut
After lots of fiddly picking and swearing we have....
That's better.
One shiny new back plate.
Erm....
Precisely one hour later.
And in.
Back plate.
And some quick and dirty overclocking.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/12101880?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi every one. I figured I would share my latest mods. Maybe to inspire some, maybe just to give you a few ideas I've discovered
First up - hose management. Yeah, I know that no one usually bothers trying to make AIOs look better they just look kinda crappy and that's it. I saw this about a week back now and liked the look.
It's not my rig but it gave me a good idea. If you look closely at this pic -
You can see I have issues. Basically the radiator for the Hybrid on the Titan X needs to be fitted with the hoses at the top. It's so that it doesn't foul any of the wires. The problem is the hoses are very long and want to follow gravity and poke out of the side of the rig by about 5". That means I can't get the side back on unless I tie them to the hoses on the CPU AIO. And I don't like how that looks at all.
So, first thing to do was to find out what they actually are. It turns out they are hose clamps for nitrous systems on cars. Here they are here.
First up I needed to know what sizes I needed. So I ordered a set of vernier calipers.
Both AIOs are around 11mm, so I ordered 11mm clamps.
OK, so what I want to do is basically bolt straight through one into a second creating a + or X shape depending on how you look at it. Basically the hoses on the CPU AIO are around 90' in the opposite direction of the hoses on the Hybrid. So I am going to drill through one clamp so I can bolt all the way through two clamps. To do that I have ordered some specialised bolts.
And a M3 tap. (not an actual M3 tap...)
I also need a spacer, because they do not butt up against one another.
TBH it's kinda hard to explain it (and I'm not so good at that any way) so just keep an eye on the log and it'll all eventually make sense.
Moving onto the second part for today. Basically I want to make my rig look as clean as I possibly can. I mean tiny little details. So I decided that even though they looked far better with the back plates on, both of the sound cards did not look how I wanted them to look.
I am running an onboard Soundblaster Recon3D (going into one headphone amp) an Asus Xonar D2X (going into another headphone amp) a Soundblaster Titanium HD (going into yet another headphone amp) and a Asus Xonar U1 USB sound card that runs into the B&O speakers on my monitor and a Bose Acoustimass sub. Yeah, that's a lot of sound gear but that's what I have been doing lately more than anything else. Just chilling to music
So yeah, there were a few things that irked me about the sound cards. They were, in no particular order.
1. I will start with the D2X. First of all there's an orange disc/light diffuser inside the card. Fitted into it are four yellow LEDs. So there's a ring on the face of the sound card (cut out through the alu shield) that glows orange. Not only that but there's a hole cut out of the shroud along the spine so you can connect AUX devices and it too is ugly.
So let's deal with the Asus first. First mission, remove the back plate and take it all apart.
Then cover any viewable part of the orange with gloss blue. You won't see this when the sound card goes in but I don't care. It will also stop the orange disc glowing orange and lighting up the case in a pee colour.
I decided to use two 5mm blue LEDs, so got to work cutting off the yellow ones and soldering on the blue ones.
I then got out the braid and made my little LED cluster as tidy as I could.
Fit the modded parts.
Measure the disc size.
And then cut a double thick vinyl circle from matt black. This is solely to stop any bleed through the orange.
Then to address the nasty AUX connectors. I took out a sheet of flexible plastic. This is the stuff that goes "wooka wooka" when you flex it lol.
Mark.
Cut it out, cover in matt black vinyl and glue in place.
Noting now that the circular accent is no longer orange but blue.
And the spine looks a whole hell of a lot better than it did before.
OK. Now the Soundblaster XFI Titanium HD also had a huge hole along the spine. The only thing located in there was a front panel connector which would kinda look like poo if I used it and poo if I don't. Now sadly it wasn't recessed like the sockets on the Asus card so I had to get out the snippers and cut the connectors back so that a spine cover could fit in place. Here it is finished, using the same materials and process as the D2X.
And here they both are fitted back in the rig. The only thing bothering me now are the edges of the PCBs as they're clearly not black. I will address this at some point soon with some model paint and some ear buds. Shouldn't take too long. I'm holding back the rig pics because I have a couple of other mods going on that I don't want to show yet
But yup, I modded two sound cards lol. Next up - modding the Asus RAIDR to get rid of that nasty red lettering.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey guys what's up. I have now completed the hose dressing and I have to say not only does it look super nice but it has also pulled the GPU hoses back into the rig so I can now get the side on. Hurrah !
However, as I pointed out before I am now concentrating my efforts on even the most minute of detail. So of course, after I had tap cut the thread for the blue bolts and it stuck through by about 2mm I was not happy. However, the thread cut kind of loose so for safety (so it doesn't just all fall apart into the GPU) I have ordered one of these in blue.
It's just a simple M3 locking nut. It cost me three quid.. For one nut.... Worth it though
In other news I have realised that due to the channel around the outer edges of the rig blue LED lighting will not be possible so I have ordered two 6" cathodes.
I know, white LEDs for show... I like coloured lighting though I think it looks far better in person than white does.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today I decided to tackle a few jobs. There are certain parts of the PC that I don't like that I can change. Again, all minor details but I want them to be right. There is a side panel connector that fires up the LEDs and the cable looks like ass.
It's been bothering me for an entire year. So I figure what the heck I will just unplug the cable from the connector and braid it. Nice and simple... Wrong ! the cable is fixed to the connector and it's all one part. This meant about an hour of stripping down the case before I could get to this, the whole ruddy thing.
But man, so much better.
And hose clamp win. This has completely sorted out the hoses and they now sit inside the case where they belong without fouling the side panel when I fit it..
I've also decided that come next week I am going to replace all of the fans. The rubber gaskets on these fans are just dust magnets and very hard to clean as all that happens is the dust gets dragged across the rubber making it even worse. I still need the nut to cap off the bolt so it doesn't look nasty like it does now but there seems to be a long waiting time for them.
I am now in the process of beginning to sort out the PSU 'Box in' but I want to approach it differently to how I did it before and it will be in several pieces due to the shape etc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey all. I am still working some stuff out in my head. That as well as having a mound of marked out plastic sitting on my desk and tools etc.
Any way, the shroud I am thinking about building is all well and good but I need a way to get the GPU cables out of it. All of the others can stay where they are but the GPU cables are kinda floating in space right now so they would need to be routed. And the problem is they need to come out of the shroud in some shape or form. Right now the cables look pretty tidy but if you look at the rig you can see how the GPU cables are.
So, I decided they will come out of the shroud at a set point and hopefully run in a nice straight line up to the GPU where they can be plugged in. Problem is how to make them look stock. It's about the detail again.....
After lots of searching high and low I finally found out that Corsair sell grommet sets for their cases. At a measly £3.99. Problem is they're out in the EU somewhere so the shipping is £8
Ah well. £12 for a stock look is fair enough I guess (cue muted grumbles). It's kinda like when I bought the EVGA back plate for $1 on sale and the shipping was £17
So that's them there. I had a bit of a splurge this month on headphone gear (addict, me) so funds were tight. Then I realised I have an enormous sheet of 5mm acrylic in the boot of the car that I was going to dump (the old windowed panel from the 2009). So yeah, that should provide me with more than enough material to make all of the pieces.
Also, talking of detail again. If you look closely you will see that the fets and VRMs are cooled by a large spiky heatsink with an odd plain alu cover on it. The reason I think it's a cover is because I *think* I can see two screws holding it down. Strange ! any way, if they are indeed screws then I will be taking that off and painting it black. If they are not screws I will fashion my own cover from alu sheet (got) and then paint that black and put it on with some double sided foam.
First job up though will be changing the fans out for these, which I've also ordered
In an effort to reduce the noise of the PC I have ordered three of those. The fourth is on a fan controller (it's 2300 RPM) and the others I ordered are 1200 RPM.
I am removing the push/pull from the CPU rad as I hardly ever overclock the CPU any way.
I now need to do some tests with 5mm acrylic to see if I can tap M3 threads into the edges of it without it splitting. If not I will have to glue it all up but I would rather use nice pretty blue bolts to hold it all together.
Just to catch you all up. I have never ever finished a rig. Not on the modding side. I am aiming to completely finish this rig before moving house soon. So it's all hands on deck, but let me catch you up a bit.
First of all let me say that even dropping to 32" 1440p did not help the Furys much. They were still VRAM limited, even when I dropped back to one card. So I sold one of them, sold my Asus 760 Mars, sold a Titan Black (the last one) and bought the Titan X (£480) and a used 980 Hybrid kit (unused shroud) £40 and a back plate £17.
The 1080 was still a month away and I caught some one panic selling. In the end it all turned out good, because she's a demon clocker. Any way, without further ado here is the latest.
After suffering with two Fury X for about a year I decided enough was enough. Crossfire was crap and broken and even on a single card I was running short of VRAM. You don't even want to know what that's like... So I gave one Fury X to my wife and sold the other and ended up buying a Titan X for £480 recently. I also ordered a back plate from EVGA Europe (thanks guys, best packing of ever !) and bought a second hand Hybrid kit. Just one problem, it was the 980 version. So let's see what I did about that shall we?
First of all I ordered some brushed alu in blue (it's vinyl with alu film on). I covered the areas on the card I thought looked best.
Here is a pic of that, though this was taken at night. I also covered part of the shoulder too, as you will see later.
I did not want to use the stock fan as I heard they are very noisy. So I bought a Alphacool Eloop (same as Noiseblocker just come in colours) and a PCI slot fan controller.
The fan.
And the controller. This was after I had taken it apart, desoldered all of the wires, braided them, modded it so the braids fitted it and then put it all back together.
Then it was time to measure the shroud inner part.
Chrome vinyl. This stuff is really slick and my plotter was having issues with it so I glued it down to some paper so the plotter could get a grip.
Load up the plotter...
Then it was time to design what I wanted on there. Design.
Send to plotter..
And then cut
After lots of fiddly picking and swearing we have....
That's better.
One shiny new back plate.
Erm....
Precisely one hour later.
And in.
Back plate.
And some quick and dirty overclocking.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/12101880?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi every one. I figured I would share my latest mods. Maybe to inspire some, maybe just to give you a few ideas I've discovered
First up - hose management. Yeah, I know that no one usually bothers trying to make AIOs look better they just look kinda crappy and that's it. I saw this about a week back now and liked the look.
It's not my rig but it gave me a good idea. If you look closely at this pic -
You can see I have issues. Basically the radiator for the Hybrid on the Titan X needs to be fitted with the hoses at the top. It's so that it doesn't foul any of the wires. The problem is the hoses are very long and want to follow gravity and poke out of the side of the rig by about 5". That means I can't get the side back on unless I tie them to the hoses on the CPU AIO. And I don't like how that looks at all.
So, first thing to do was to find out what they actually are. It turns out they are hose clamps for nitrous systems on cars. Here they are here.
First up I needed to know what sizes I needed. So I ordered a set of vernier calipers.
Both AIOs are around 11mm, so I ordered 11mm clamps.
OK, so what I want to do is basically bolt straight through one into a second creating a + or X shape depending on how you look at it. Basically the hoses on the CPU AIO are around 90' in the opposite direction of the hoses on the Hybrid. So I am going to drill through one clamp so I can bolt all the way through two clamps. To do that I have ordered some specialised bolts.
And a M3 tap. (not an actual M3 tap...)
I also need a spacer, because they do not butt up against one another.
TBH it's kinda hard to explain it (and I'm not so good at that any way) so just keep an eye on the log and it'll all eventually make sense.
Moving onto the second part for today. Basically I want to make my rig look as clean as I possibly can. I mean tiny little details. So I decided that even though they looked far better with the back plates on, both of the sound cards did not look how I wanted them to look.
I am running an onboard Soundblaster Recon3D (going into one headphone amp) an Asus Xonar D2X (going into another headphone amp) a Soundblaster Titanium HD (going into yet another headphone amp) and a Asus Xonar U1 USB sound card that runs into the B&O speakers on my monitor and a Bose Acoustimass sub. Yeah, that's a lot of sound gear but that's what I have been doing lately more than anything else. Just chilling to music
So yeah, there were a few things that irked me about the sound cards. They were, in no particular order.
1. I will start with the D2X. First of all there's an orange disc/light diffuser inside the card. Fitted into it are four yellow LEDs. So there's a ring on the face of the sound card (cut out through the alu shield) that glows orange. Not only that but there's a hole cut out of the shroud along the spine so you can connect AUX devices and it too is ugly.
So let's deal with the Asus first. First mission, remove the back plate and take it all apart.
Then cover any viewable part of the orange with gloss blue. You won't see this when the sound card goes in but I don't care. It will also stop the orange disc glowing orange and lighting up the case in a pee colour.
I decided to use two 5mm blue LEDs, so got to work cutting off the yellow ones and soldering on the blue ones.
I then got out the braid and made my little LED cluster as tidy as I could.
Fit the modded parts.
Measure the disc size.
And then cut a double thick vinyl circle from matt black. This is solely to stop any bleed through the orange.
Then to address the nasty AUX connectors. I took out a sheet of flexible plastic. This is the stuff that goes "wooka wooka" when you flex it lol.
Mark.
Cut it out, cover in matt black vinyl and glue in place.
Noting now that the circular accent is no longer orange but blue.
And the spine looks a whole hell of a lot better than it did before.
OK. Now the Soundblaster XFI Titanium HD also had a huge hole along the spine. The only thing located in there was a front panel connector which would kinda look like poo if I used it and poo if I don't. Now sadly it wasn't recessed like the sockets on the Asus card so I had to get out the snippers and cut the connectors back so that a spine cover could fit in place. Here it is finished, using the same materials and process as the D2X.
And here they both are fitted back in the rig. The only thing bothering me now are the edges of the PCBs as they're clearly not black. I will address this at some point soon with some model paint and some ear buds. Shouldn't take too long. I'm holding back the rig pics because I have a couple of other mods going on that I don't want to show yet
But yup, I modded two sound cards lol. Next up - modding the Asus RAIDR to get rid of that nasty red lettering.
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Hey guys what's up. I have now completed the hose dressing and I have to say not only does it look super nice but it has also pulled the GPU hoses back into the rig so I can now get the side on. Hurrah !
However, as I pointed out before I am now concentrating my efforts on even the most minute of detail. So of course, after I had tap cut the thread for the blue bolts and it stuck through by about 2mm I was not happy. However, the thread cut kind of loose so for safety (so it doesn't just all fall apart into the GPU) I have ordered one of these in blue.
It's just a simple M3 locking nut. It cost me three quid.. For one nut.... Worth it though
In other news I have realised that due to the channel around the outer edges of the rig blue LED lighting will not be possible so I have ordered two 6" cathodes.
I know, white LEDs for show... I like coloured lighting though I think it looks far better in person than white does.
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Today I decided to tackle a few jobs. There are certain parts of the PC that I don't like that I can change. Again, all minor details but I want them to be right. There is a side panel connector that fires up the LEDs and the cable looks like ass.
It's been bothering me for an entire year. So I figure what the heck I will just unplug the cable from the connector and braid it. Nice and simple... Wrong ! the cable is fixed to the connector and it's all one part. This meant about an hour of stripping down the case before I could get to this, the whole ruddy thing.
But man, so much better.
And hose clamp win. This has completely sorted out the hoses and they now sit inside the case where they belong without fouling the side panel when I fit it..
I've also decided that come next week I am going to replace all of the fans. The rubber gaskets on these fans are just dust magnets and very hard to clean as all that happens is the dust gets dragged across the rubber making it even worse. I still need the nut to cap off the bolt so it doesn't look nasty like it does now but there seems to be a long waiting time for them.
I am now in the process of beginning to sort out the PSU 'Box in' but I want to approach it differently to how I did it before and it will be in several pieces due to the shape etc.
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Hey all. I am still working some stuff out in my head. That as well as having a mound of marked out plastic sitting on my desk and tools etc.
Any way, the shroud I am thinking about building is all well and good but I need a way to get the GPU cables out of it. All of the others can stay where they are but the GPU cables are kinda floating in space right now so they would need to be routed. And the problem is they need to come out of the shroud in some shape or form. Right now the cables look pretty tidy but if you look at the rig you can see how the GPU cables are.
So, I decided they will come out of the shroud at a set point and hopefully run in a nice straight line up to the GPU where they can be plugged in. Problem is how to make them look stock. It's about the detail again.....
After lots of searching high and low I finally found out that Corsair sell grommet sets for their cases. At a measly £3.99. Problem is they're out in the EU somewhere so the shipping is £8
Ah well. £12 for a stock look is fair enough I guess (cue muted grumbles). It's kinda like when I bought the EVGA back plate for $1 on sale and the shipping was £17
So that's them there. I had a bit of a splurge this month on headphone gear (addict, me) so funds were tight. Then I realised I have an enormous sheet of 5mm acrylic in the boot of the car that I was going to dump (the old windowed panel from the 2009). So yeah, that should provide me with more than enough material to make all of the pieces.
Also, talking of detail again. If you look closely you will see that the fets and VRMs are cooled by a large spiky heatsink with an odd plain alu cover on it. The reason I think it's a cover is because I *think* I can see two screws holding it down. Strange ! any way, if they are indeed screws then I will be taking that off and painting it black. If they are not screws I will fashion my own cover from alu sheet (got) and then paint that black and put it on with some double sided foam.
First job up though will be changing the fans out for these, which I've also ordered
In an effort to reduce the noise of the PC I have ordered three of those. The fourth is on a fan controller (it's 2300 RPM) and the others I ordered are 1200 RPM.
I am removing the push/pull from the CPU rad as I hardly ever overclock the CPU any way.
I now need to do some tests with 5mm acrylic to see if I can tap M3 threads into the edges of it without it splitting. If not I will have to glue it all up but I would rather use nice pretty blue bolts to hold it all together.
Nice to see you back dude, its also lush to see you still using that PSU x
The hose clamp idea is amazing, Id love it if you could post a link to where they came from please!
The hose clamp idea is amazing, Id love it if you could post a link to where they came from please!
AlienALX
Well-known member
Thanks fella, good to see you too !
Yeah the PSU is still hanging in there haha. Got some minor coil whine on the TX which I read could be down to the PSU but no plans to change it.
The clamps are 11mm and come from Ebay. Because they're car parts they're cheap. Maybe soon some one will realise their potential and slap PC GAMING on them and the price will rocket but right now 11mm clamps are around £4 a pop. I bought five (so £20 or so) the spacer washers were £5 and the two blue bolts (one I never used) were £6.
Even the little nyloc nut to make sure it doesn't all explode was £5. Joke tbh !
But yeah they are called hose separators and they come out at 11mm..
So a rough example.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AN-6-AN6-...689190?hash=item3f28471ea6:g:CaoAAOxy4t1SdavN
But if you just search "11mm hose separator" you should be overwhelmed with results
As I said they're for nitrous systems and stuff like that but they worked brilliantly in making the hoses behave and stay inside the rig
