Project: ZX Gold - Sponsored by OCZ!

[TheGreatSatan]

Sponsored by http://www.pcmodhouse.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/ocz_logo1.jpg.w180h61.jpg

Here's my 37th project in ten years of modding.

This project all started on May 26th of 2011 during an event where all the vendors and potential vendors visited the Micro Center where I work in Brentwood, MO. On one of the counters, my Rage in the Machine (http://www.pcmodhouse.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/at_mc2.jpg.w560h747.jpg) project is on display and it was quite the hit. I spoke a bit with the OCZ rep who asked if I could build an OCZ theme case for customers to see in the store. They even said that they would provide me with with a ZX series power supply and a Vertex 3 SSD drive

The victim case is the Coolermaster Enforcer

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It has a nice 200mm intake fan that glows red and will have to be changed

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Behind the bezel is a filter for the fan too

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My first mod on this case will be removing the door. The main reason is to expose the drive bay covers and to remove the Coolermaster logo from an OCZ theme case

Fortunately, all I had to do was take out the screws

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And there we go

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Then I removed the drive bay covers and the mesh

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Now I have to deal with the holes from the door hinges

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I just had to use a little bit of Bondo and Q-Bond

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While it bonds, I tear down the case to just what I want to paint

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Then I tape off the top and back to prevent an over-spray

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I used a Gold fleck paint similar to my Ark Reborn mod

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The drive bays and mesh will get the same treatment

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This the simplest of mods. Any case will really shine with a little bit of paint

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Back to my bondo job. I used a spare fan to quickly blow the adhesive dry

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I sanded it down to paint, but quickly realize that I'll need a little bit more bondo to make it perfect

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I really don't want to spend the money on a new 200mm fan and don't want the red LED one that came with the case either.

Instead, I just removed the LED's

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Once the gold fleck dried I reassmebled the black innards. I really like how it turned out

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[x88x]

Nice affect. :up:

[Twigsoffury]

is the center piece (blades and magnet housing..deal) of the rear chassis fan going to be gold as well?

[TheGreatSatan]

I'm not following you....

[Twigsoffury]

I'm not following you....


http://i51.tinypic.com/2v84zrl.jpg

like that, only gold and with out a flower.

[TheGreatSatan]

I could....I could also put an OCZ logo there

[diluzio91]

why not leave the shroud of the fan black, paint the blades gold, and make an OCZ fan guard?

[Twigsoffury]

why not leave the shroud of the fan black, paint the blades gold, and make an OCZ fan guard?

now that would be cool.

Even something like this (except with a OCZ logo) on the mesh grilles would be over the top to

http://pics.shorty.org/files/4/Public%20stuff/gtfan.jpg

[TheGreatSatan]

Sorry for the delay. I went on a ten day vacation then came back to ten days in a row of work. My frst day off and so I got some modding accomplished

I finished up the bondo job and reassembled the front panel

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On to the parts list. The brains behind it all will be the Intel i7 2600K

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Two components provided by OCZ are the 1000 Watt Gold PSU

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And this 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 Solid State drive

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Don't forget, two 8GB kits of OCZ Gold DDR3-1333 which I had to get myself since OCZ no longer makes memory

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The i7 will get a hefty overclock and keeping it cool will be the Corsair H60 with gold 120mm fans

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The motherboard I chose is the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H

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And the video card I wanted the most was this 950MHz Super Overclocked 560ti

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[Fuganater]

Watch out with that PSU. Mine blew up in about 2 seconds.

[TheGreatSatan]

I'll kill them if they kill my computer!

[BS Mods]

Looking good. I love the gold.

What are you doing for wires/sleeving?

[TheGreatSatan]

Leaving them black

I added an amber light strip to the top 200mm fan

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And then I attached the two 120mm Gold fans to the H60's radiator in a push/pull configuration

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Time to assemble, with the processor first

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And then I attached the H60's block with a little bit of IC-Diamond

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On to the video card. I was going to paint the shroud gold, but all you'll see from the window is the copper heatpipes anyway

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I like how the power supply is completely modular and still makes a point to label what plug goes where

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And my favorite feature of this case is a true USB 3.0 plug and not some cable I have to run out the back to a waiting port

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I'm still waiting for the 16GB of OCZ RAM to arrive so in the meantime I'll be using a single stick of Kingston to boot up and to get into the BIOS

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The happiest time for a PC builder is firing the computer up for the first time and it works like so

http://www.pcmodhouse.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/p1080879.jpg

[x88x]

Looks great! :up:


The happiest time for a PC builder is firing the computer up for the first time and it works like so
Agreed. Though, for some reason I'm always a little surprised when they actually work...I have no reason to think that they won't, and I trust my skills not to have broken anything, but I'm always half expecting it to fail. :lick:

[licenseless]

The happiest time for a PC builder is firing the computer up for the first time and it works like so


:up: i agree

[BS Mods]

Looks great! :up:


Agreed. Though, for some reason I'm always a little surprised when they actually work...I have no reason to think that they won't, and I trust my skills not to have broken anything, but I'm always half expecting it to fail. :lick:

Lol - I'm with you!


This black and gold combo killer! It's nice to see something different once in a while. :up:

[billygoat333]

I also enjoy the black and goooold. lol

[TheGreatSatan]

I made a stencil of the ZX logo

http://www.pcmodhouse.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/p1080883.jpg

And transferred it to the frog tape

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Then I reused the same gold paint from the Ark

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I also found these embossed letters at Auto Zone, but I had to paint them Gold

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Then I sanded off the Corsair logo

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So I could add the letters

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Here's the SSD bracket

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I want the SSD lable to be visible from the window, so I cut away most of the brackets' surface

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Then I got rid of the ugly white PSU sticker

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And mounted the DVD drive

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And then painted it to match

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Now to install Windows 7

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I don't get why the 2600K only scores a 7.6. I'll retest the memory once I get the 16GB in

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[Fuganater]

You should hide the DVD drive. And I like the CPU cooler mod.

[TheGreatSatan]

So, one thing that has been bugging me is the black plastic rivets around the window. I'd leave them if I was planning on adding something to the left panel, but I am not.

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I also don't like how the back of the video card is blue. Especially in an all black and gold case. To fix the problem, I'm going to wrap it in mesh, except that mesh is made of metal and may short out the card. So I need a substrate

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I cut out the metallic paper to fit the card, including the notch where the cable goes under the card

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I use two sided velcro to attach it to the card. If need be, it can be easily and safely removed in the future

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The mesh I'm using was taken from the front panel of an Antec Three Hundred that I painted red for my Spiderman case

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I cut it down to size and cut the notch out too

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Then I painted the mesh and the replacement rivets too

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Once dry I add it to the card and attached it to the metallic paper with hot glue

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Time to go back to the gold rivets and signing my work. Like I've said many times before:

Modding is a form of art

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There's the rivets in place

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My 16GB of OCZ gold RAM arrived and a strange problem came with it.....

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Before I had the RAM I was using a single stick of Kingston RAM in slot number one and it was flawless. When all four slots were occupied with memory the computer would cycle on and off every few seconds.

I tried every combination of the memory and it runs fine when slots two, three and four are occupied. It's only when I put the forth stick in slot one that the rebooting cycle begins. I know the RAM is fine, because I've tried them all, each alone in slot number one and it boots just fine. I read the manual and it appears the system will still run in dual channel with 3 slots occupied, so it seems this system will just have to do with 12GB instead of 16

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Once the memory is seated, I boot up and begin benchmarking it. When the computer is on display at Micro Center it will get a hefty over clock by the staff

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When we get it over 4GHz, I'm sure it'll do better

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Now that the mod is finished I realized that the right side logo is kind of boring, so I added a bit more to it.

I may still tweak it again

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[x88x]

Looks great dude! :D:up:

[TheGreatSatan]

I tweaked it a bit more

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Having three sticks of 4GB OCZ RAM gave me 12GB total but I lost dual channel capability.

I couldn't figure out why the computer would loop with four 4GB sticks in, but wondered if it was something to do with the OCZ memory being 1.65V and the board wanting 1.5V RAM instead.

So, to solve my memory issue I pulled out two of the 4GB OCZ sticks (leaving two in) and put in two 2GB 1.5V Corsair sticks instead. The system now runs just fine, still with 12GB installed and running in dual channel.

I re-ran Unigine's Heaven benchmark and my minimum frame rate tripled, but my score went down a tad.......?

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