Animus

Parts for the next phase of the project (2 bulgin switches and a red lcd temp monitor)

There's the donor bezel, I <3 Lian Li cases

A quick gander at the case with a couple of drive bays set in, there will be better pics up with higher detail on the front of the case, as soon as the project's done.

Made a run to Lowe's for a new drill and 3/4 inch hole saw, worked beautifully for the switches. Drilled out some holes for accent bolts and cut out the hole for the lcd and did a little filing with the dremel. Waiting on primer to dry now so I can hit it with some acrylic (tonight) and clear coat (tomorrow).

Also tomorrow, I should be getting atleast the major guts of this beast from newegg. Motherboard, processor, ram. I'm having some parts overnighted this week (ran out of accent bolts) and a new ruby orb cooler for the processor. Now just have to decide on the psu (I'm leaning toward a corsair) and vid card(s) I'm thinking dual 8800 GTs.

Well, I got a surprise this morning ... I go to work at 5 AM, and we had a flood. So I ended up staying home. Thankfully the UPS guy didn't have any problems, and I got some goodies:

I tried hooking everything up with a hard drive and video card I had layin around, but didn't do much good. I also goofed and bought a crossfire board instead of an sli board (newegg had it listed as sli on all but the last page of the description, where it finally says it's ATI Crossfire compatible) but the board is great, and this is a chance to get out of my comfort zone and try Intel and ATI. I'll be grabbing the new HD and GPU Thursday, after that I'll post some high res pics along with some 3d Mark, Super Pi Mod scores, etc. Basically, the mod is done. Just have to make the second one now :D

The board is pretty nice, good layout plenty of connectors for fans, and the 7.1 surround sound card is a nice bonus. Today hopefully I'll be able to get the thing running and mess around with the BIOS, overall though I really like the motherboard.

The only problem I've found with the mobo so far is the space around the cpu. Stock heatsink and fan BARELY fit between the board's heatpipes and sinks. SO, I think I'll have to nix my idea to put a thermaltake ruby orb in here. So, I'm on the lookout for a different cooler.

So I've got good news, and I've got bad news. I made a run to Best Buy today, picked up a pair of 500gig seagate drives, a pair of ati video cards, and an 800w power supply (along with a few games) got home and tore the computer apart, even got a wireless card and an aftermarket cooler for the video cards. Plugged it in, hit power ... nothing. Checked all of my connections, even tried starting it with the motherboard's power button, and it's as dead as a doornail. SO, tomorrow morning it looks like I'm going back to Best Buy to get a new psu. *sigh* Sadly, the motherboard has a 20+8 pin connection, and the 4 power supplies I have on the shelf atm are 20+4.

Well, the lights are pretty. But ... it's still not doing anything. According to the lcd on the motherboard it's trying to boot, but there's nothing showing on the monitor, it goes black as soon as I hit the power. So, I'm working with tech support from abit to try to track down the problem. It could be the psu I bought at Best Buy, I don't think it's the video card though since I've put 3 cards in, including the one that's in the PC I'm typing this from, and that card DEFINITELY works. So, we'll see. I'll keep you guys posted. Hopefully, I can get this fixed before Monday so I can actually install windows and try out the new games I bought.

Yeah, right now I'm testing just the bare system. I've tried each piece of ram individually in each DIMM seperately. (IE 1 gig of ram at a time) And even tried subbing in some OCZ Ram I have with the same results, I also tried switching out the ATI card for 2 different nvidia cards. A 7950 and a 7950 GX2. Right now there's a motherboard with processor, psu, video card, case speaker, mouse and keyboard with a monitor on my desk and I can't get an image on the monitor. I've even tried using different monitors with similar results (trying to eliminate every possibility.)

Yeah, I took the thing into Best Buy yesterday for a second opinion. So, tomorrow I'm going to get with newegg and rma the board and processor.

Bit of an update:
Just dropped off the motherboard and processor with FedEx, it looks like the motherboard did a number (as in burnt good on the processor) so ... I think I found the problem :P

Anyhow, hopefully in a week or two I'll be getting a new board and chip in, meanwhile I'm going to do a little more finishing touches on the case, and get a new power supply (Thermaltake Tough Power Modular PSU). I'm putting some collapsable case handles on top of the case, and doing a mesh window on the side of the case, I also ordered a Ruby Orb to keep the processor cool. I'm trying to find out how to disable or change the blue LEDs on the motherboard, since it doesn't really jive with the red light setup I have in the case. I love the back-lighting effect, just not the color. Also, I'm looking into video card possibilities. The motherboard says Crossfire enabled, but it came with an SLI Bridge. After a little light snooping, I found out it's not a mistake. And that there are some open source drivers that might unlock SLI on this board, so I'll be doing a little more research there (if I can drop a pair of 8800GTs on this board I'll be VERY happy). So, more as it progresses. I'll be working on the handles, and window next week. Meanwhile, I'll be cleaning up and prepping the other two cases for the mod.

Yeah, I was thinking along those lines after a little research, in the end I've opted to replace the board entirely. My wife wants a new computer so she can play some games with me, and she oddly enough wants a blue themed computer. SO ... she gets this motherboard, I wanted SLI anyways. So it works out for me. I'm looking at this board for my own system:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813188024

And I'm going to put the abit one inside a Cosmos case in a month or so when I get to work modding hers (though it'll be a somewhat lightweight mod project, it should be good)

So, this new board will allow me to put in the Ruby Orb I ordered, and a pair of superclocked 8800 GTs from evga. Today I'm going to be painting the dominator cooler, mouse, and a few other odds and ends while I wait on parts again.