well if its only 2 wires then its easy. mine had 4, two went to the board and 2 to a rather large capcitor
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well if its only 2 wires then its easy. mine had 4, two went to the board and 2 to a rather large capcitor
ooh, I see. yeah, I just had one wire going from the switch to the board, and another going from the plug to the board. pretty simple. back in the old AT case days, probably 1997 or 1998, I moved my stuff to a new case, didn't see the sticker on the side of the PSU telling me how to hook it up to the power switch on the case (no m/b pass-through back then), and I hooked it up wrong. Killed the circuit breaker in the apartment...twice...before I figured it out LOL. Also nearly fused the connectors together. Amazingly enough, when I unhooked it and then did it right, everything was fine!
Don't have any pics yet, but I haven't been totally idle this week. I just this morning figured out the best way to mount the PSU's PCB board, fan and daughterboard. If you look in some of the prior pics, there's a large opening door on the right rear, and a boxy 2-level room inside. I'm going to either cut a hole in its lower floor or remove the floor entirely, and the PSU PCB will go on the base under there. It'll stick up slightly above the original level of the floor, hence the need to cut a hole or remove it depending on how much area the PCB covers. But this way it'll be visible as a machinery-laden floor of the engine room. I'll then figure out other large pieces of "machinery" and such to add to the room itself. I'm going to mount the main power switch from the back of the original PSU down there too, so I can easily reach it without removing the top of the case. I mounted the original 140mm fan on the part of the original case of the PSU that it was attached to before; this consists of 2 sides of the original case. The fan is mounted vertically, with the adjacent side at the bottom bolted to the base of the computer. Doesn't really take up any more room than the fan by itself, and the fan should approximately line up with a hole I previously cut in the wall of that engine room. The power plug will go wherever it fits best. I'll need to clip the 28 cables on the modular cable connectors and then solder in extensions. I will mount it under the raised motherboard so the PCI-E power cables can be hidden under the board. They'll come out from under the front of the board and go to the video card. The old location of the PSU was too far away to do that; those cables and the aux power cable for the CPU had to run across the top of the board. By moving the modular connectors under the MB, I'm hoping to clean it up a little more.
power supply is done pending plug-in to make sure it still works right. I was all set to do it last night, but ran out of energy :) I'll probably hook the computer up to it tonight, turn it on, and make sure the PSU doesn't get too hot. I seriously doubt it will, but my case, as someone pointed out, is a bit of a fire waiting to happen. So without further ado, the pics (and yes, the wires look a bit messy. Nearly all of them will be under the motherboard when I put it back on, but I will probably at least make an attempt to straighten them up).
First off, the rear engine room whose floor I will be cutting a hole into so you can see the PSU that is now under it. you can see the 140mm fan through the existing hole...and I need to paint that sticker black:
And shots of the PSU (thermaltake toughpower 650W, had it for several years now):
I mounted the main power switch in a spot that should be relatively hidden yet still accessible I hope, through the hole in the floor. The idea is that I can flip the switch without having to pull off the top of the case. I'm not too worried if it isn't reachable, I won't be any worse off than before. And I mounted the modular plug board in a spot where the PCI-E cables can now run under the MB and still reach the video card, instead of running over the top of the MB like before. I'll mount the SSD HD under the motherboard toward the front of the case; previously it was where the PSU now sits.
bunch of rare, mostly on-set photos from Star Wars...I had to post this one, I laughed pretty hard at the caption:
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/30...oto-23#content
EDIT -- it works! not that I had any serious doubts, but I've never taken apart a PSU before, so there's always that nagging "what if it explodes when I plug it back in" thought in the back of my mind...LOL Anyway, I'm typing from my own computer for the first time in what seems like a month and a half.
the motherboard is kind of sitting right on top of the modular power cords. Dangit...they were too tall by a millimeter or too :rolleyes: oh well. I probably ought to make the motherboard riser a little taller. but not tonight.
The front end. A hint of the wiring hell that lies beneath the motherboard...
It looks like I'll be getting a water cooling setup too, more on that later (ie, when it actually arrives). My next task is to figure out exactly how to add in a large radiator, a reservoir, and a pump...since I didn't design my case for any of that. Still, it'll be a fun challenge and should result in a quieter machine.
Oh yeah, and I ordered and received a bag of powdered walnut shells :D
It's a 10 pound sack, way more than I need. But only $13 :D Helloooo sand. This is the same stuff they used in the Special Edition sandcrawler re-shoot....built a whole little environment on top of the ILM building for it to drive around on. For my purposes, this will be the covering of the base I will build at some point.
:D congrats on getting the switch to work.
I've had a psu blow up on me before, scared the life out of me, massive unexpected flash & loud bang and a boost of smoke, was kinda sleepy before & the most awake I have ever been after, the psu had a voltage switch on the back and I must have accidentally switched it, as soon as I switched it on BANG!!! for a second I thought I was going to die lol, scary, so have since not dared to mess with my psu's, hope the effect doesn't stay with me forever as I'd like to mod a psu or at least the external wires some time.
The powdered walnut will give a good effect to it, unplanned water cooling should be a bit of a challenge, but as you said it's all part of the fun of modding :):up:.
dang man. :eek: I'm REAL glad I didn't know that before I modded my PSU, I might not have dared LOL.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waynio
Those walnut shells will also come in handy to create a sandy dust on the crawler's horizontal surfaces. I'm hoping that it'll be the final touch that perfects it...we'll see. Hopefully more pics tonight, I want to try and get the paint job finished.
paint job's getting there. this paint effect is actually pretty subtle, the pics didn't come out all that well (night, flash washed everything out, no flash + yellow lights = weird colors), but they'll give you the idea. The initial rusting color was a mix of orange and rust, but mostly orange. It contrasted too much with the brown, so I added rust color around the edges of most of the orangey spots, then swiped with a paper towel to remove most of the rust paint to make the effect more subtle. The glossiness of the orange spots will be gone soon, I'm going to hit the whole thing with a final clear flat coat. Looks a lot better in person than in the photos:
no flash:
more pics coming this weekend, I'll make sure to take some in daylight, and standing back so you can see the effect from a few feet away, which is where it looks best.
I thought I'd post some pics from the beginning of the build up til my first post here, then a skip ahead to what it looks like right now (as in 5 minutes ago).
These start back in April of 2007...
this is what I started with. the line drawing of the front is out of the star wars guide to vehicles book (I think). the photo is out of the "sculpting a galaxy" book, and it was this photo that got me started on version 3 of the build. You'll notice one of the fronts is wider. The film model is the narrow one. The model had to be a certain width, about 17", to fit the computer parts, and I didn't have space to make it proportionally longer and taller. So basically, except for the cockpit and rear engine pieces, mine is one scale width-wise and a slightly smaller scale height- and lengthwise. It works though. Unless you had the film model right next to it, nobody will notice.
I built a posterboard mockup first - I learned on the first 2 models that despite all rational attempts to suss out the proper measurements, there were certain ones that just didn't come out right. doing this in posterboard first allowed me to fix those problems before moving to MDF. Also meant I had ready-made template pieces. And, 2 years later, I used these posterboard pieces as the "skin" glued onto the outside of the MDF pieces.
starting to make the parts. I used 1/8" MDF for everything but the base; that's 1/4" MDF. I used a utility knife and thin aluminum ruler as a straightedge. Made for some VERY tired arms and fingers. someday I'll have the space and $$ for a proper table saw.
I made a cardboard mockup of the space the computer would occupy, so I could figure out how much interior space was leftover and could be used for the inside modelling of the crawler.
construction begun! this was the first part to go together.
the front section. hinges and superglue are how I acheived the odd angles. It's very slightly skewed, but luckily it's not really noticeable.
the empty shell. no window frames yet around the cockpit.
added the upper floor and the window frames (they're matchsticks...)
the upper sections of the 2nd and 3rd models, not long before I tossed the 2nd one. You can see why I wanted to rebuild it...
The original design of the fan chamber. Air was supposed to come up through the white pipes, into the gray ones and into the chamber. I tried zip-tying 80mm fans blades to the gray pipes to make them spin…didn’t work. Anyway, the idea behind the design was to have a solid roof. Unfortunately, airflow wasn’t all that great, so I ended up going with the now-current screen mesh covered holes in the roof.
originally, I was just rebuilding the upper section, so in this photo the lower part is leftover from the 2nd crawler. It wasn’t til June 2009 that I scrapped that portion and rebuilt it, mainly because the old treads were just a tad too large, and they just didn’t look right.
My first attempt at cockpit lights. These were leftover LEDs. I had no idea what I was doing (read, no concept of resistors) and I fried these poor little lights. One even exploded…
The results of my 2nd attempt at the lighting. Definitely better. Still not ideal, in October 2009 a different section blew out, and I rewired (see one of my initial posts) all of them with resistors, etc etc, and attempt #3 was much better.
the original wiring was crazy – I had each individual light in parallel, with a fan speed controller at the beginning of the whole circuit acting as a resistor. I now have strands of 6 lights + resistor in series.
looked cool at night though. The blue light was from a fan that’s since been painted over.
A shot of the cockpit before I glued on the ceiling. R2D2 is leftover from an X-wing model kit, and along with the metal motherboard tray, is the only thing that’s been on all 3 models. The chairs are paper. The control panel is a printout of a Cessna control console. I skimped on detail here because you really can’t see much from outside. R2 is glued into a paper collar, which has tabs that are glued to the floor. This ensures that he will never fall over, since I’d have to tear off the ceiling to fix him.
I tore my hair out for a long time trying to figure out a mechanism to keep the main loading door shut, but with the mechanism invisible at least from outside. It wasn’t til, in July 2009, I added interior walls and ceiling to the main bay, and covered the resulting gaps between inner and outer walls with posterboard, that I hit upon the idea of gluing magnets on the backside of the posterboard in the gap, and recessing flat pieces of metal in the door. Now the inside of the door is covered too, so the metal’s not visible either, and it works perfectly!
rebuilding the lower section took a couple months. I scrapped the original base and most of the treads. I kept the washers (masquerading as wheels) and the vinyl floor matting that I used originally for the tread. The vinyl is now an interior tread, and I hand-cut almost 600 individual treads out of styrene sheet. The worst of it was that I initially used a silicone-based superglue to glue the styrene to the vinyl…and discovered AFTER finishing all 570+ that the glue didn’t really bond the two. So I had to pop all of them off, scrape off the glue from the vinyl, and ended up using a 3M general trim automotive adhesive. Handy stuff, that. Also used it when I glued the posterboard pieces on the MDF.
These are the two bays with retractable ramps between the tank treads. On the first 2 models, these were nothing more than squares with holes in them. On this one, I still didn’t get it quite right (lack of decent reference material until long after I made them), but they’re a lot better.
The first posterboard panel to be glued on. I used a ruler and pencil to draw the panel lines, then my trusty metal ruler and an x-acto knife to slice up the panels. As I sliced, I put down a low-tack tape to hold the pieces together. I then sprayed adhesive on the back, slapped it onto the model, then pulled off the tape. Worked really well, although the panels with the opening cutaways were a major pain.
That last photo above was taken September 21, 2009. Here’s what the top portion looks like right now, March 6, 2010:
And the lower portion (it’s in my extra room next to my desk so I can use it; the top is in the living room since I’m working on it).
Great work on the paintjob and PSU! I love the look of the PSU spread out like that. :D
man this thing has come a long way. loving it.
THE OUTSIDE IS DONE!!!!!! 3 years in the making and I finally finished the darn thing. I'll move on to the inside soon, but for now, I'm gonna enjoy the way it looks. I *might* do another, much heavier, dusting of pastel powder - the initial pics below are what it looked like before I sprayed with a flat coat to seal the powder, and the flat coat really took away a lot of the pigment. It still looks somewhat wind-scoured, but it's more subtle. Maybe that's better...let me know your opinions (keep in mind this thing is supposed to be enormous).
this shot is looking up under the rear of the top section. I had started cutting out the floor of the engine room (lying on the floor on my back...sawdust in the face, etc etc) so the power supply would be visible.
And now the pics from today, after I sprayed the flat coat:
Any advice or thoughts on the additional super-heavy pigment coat (which becomes much more transparent after the flat coat) are appreciated!
Wow, that last coat really made a huge difference. You're right though, the sealer did kind of dull the look...though I think that might be a good thing in this case. The thing is supposed to be ancient, after all.
The stripped PSU looks sweet in there. I had a thought though; instead of just painting the label on that fan black, maybe replace it with the logo from some Star Wars corporation?
Also, as a side note, if that capacitor were to scale.....I WANT ONE! :twisted:
LOL! yeah that would be one heck of a capacitor, wouldn't it! I like the fan label idea....I'll have to figure out if in any of the stuff out there, there's info on what company was supposed to have built the sandcrawler. And if I can't find anything, maybe I'll come up with a "Tatooine Mining Corporation" logo...TMC. or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
And also, I couldn't believe how much of a difference the pastel made. it took the model from "got dirty on the way out of the factory yesterday" to "trundling around in the desert for the better part of a century."
AWESOME!!!! :banana: The flat coat really helped the aged look.
thanks! yeah, it's really the powder pastel that gave it the aged look. the flat coat dialed the whiteness back a bit (ok, a lot) but I think I like it that way.
Courtesy of www.outoftheboxmods.com and Danger Den, I have a little package on the way, I think it was sent today.... :D :D :D :D :D
gutting part of the interior to make room for the massive 15" long blackice gtx360 rad and that sweet looking reservoir is the next step. I already know where it's all going...just wait. All I'll say is it'll be at least partially visible and part of the model's interior, and of course it's gonna look real cool.
Is that the vomit care package???
LOL, I ain't knockin it. the hoses are a little green....but they'll either end up painted, or not visible. No worries. The fans will be painted too. As will the pump. Dunno about the reservoir yet, depends on how it ends up fitting inside and how visible it is.
Hey whatever works!
Hmmm, what ever will you do with that res... :twisted:
you could ask Danger Den so send you a different color (white, black, silver, etc) tubing in 3/8" 5/8" then just give me the tubing back when you see me next. If you want to come to PDXLAN 16 I bet Danger Den will give you a seat or two at their table!
oooh...that's tempting. I'll have to see if I can afford the gas....that's a looong drive from LA. wire flex tubing is a good idea too - is that yet another DD item, or is that a home depot item? although, I can run the tubes through pieces of PVC cut to fit just the visible area, then the tubing can do all its bending in the hidden areas. I'll have to think on this one, probably take a look at the different options to figure out what'll look best.
Or copper tubing in the visible areas. :D
Im not sure if this is what you mean, but if it is its genius!
you're gonna slide pvc joints over the tubing and install them with cut aways
allowing the fluid to be seen yet blending into the interior nicely.
I suggest leds backlighting the cut aways to illuminate the fluid.
dude this is looking amazing:D George lucas would have been proud!
I'd thought of that LOL - my only hesitation with it is that I don't have anything other than a hacksaw that can cut copper, so my feeling is that it'd be too labor intensive, especially when I'd just be painting it and it wouldn't look much different than PVC.Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
man...I'd love to say yes, that's exactly what I meant. What I meant was that the tubing would run inside PVC pipe cut to fit the area that's visible when the side flaps of the crawler are open. In those areas, the pipes would fully encase the tubing. The bare tubing would come out of the pipes in between walls into non-visible areas, where it could bend and go to wherever it needs to go.Quote:
Originally Posted by mofo
I hadn't originally intended to leave the fluid visible or lit...technologically I think would look too advanced for an ancient, beat up sandcrawler. But maybe not...I agree it would look awesome, I'll have to think on that one...
heheheheee, thanks! Now if only I could, with dignity, walk over to the new Lucasfilm buildings across the street from the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and say hey guys, so I got this really cool thing I been buildin'...George might like it...Quote:
Originally Posted by p0Pe
yeah...somehow I think I'd end up looking like a weirdo LOL.
k, some of the water cooling setup is here, specifically the items from Outoftheboxmods.com
Opened the box, and amongst copius amounts of packing peanuts was this behemoth:
And these two little mystery mummies:
This one was a little more obvious - the pump:
nice looking Danger Den waterblock, socket AM2:
Danger Den DDC pump with clear acrylic top. I'd originally planned on painting the whole pump, but that clear top looks nice...so I may detach it, paint the pump itself, and stick the clear top back on:
This is one SWEET reservoir, custom made by someone on Xtreme systems (not sure who). It even has a cold cathode, presumably UV from its black color, to illuminate the bluish spiral inside. :D Also has 2 plastic mounting clips.
whoa that's...GREEN. probably will make the tubing not visible, much of it will run in areas that can't be seen from the outside, and the few bits that can be seen I'll probably cover with PVC pipe to make it look more like pipes inside the crawler. I also don't expect to use all of it - the components will all end up being located in fairly close proximity to each other.
oh man....this rad's HUGE. normally I wouldn't mind, but I'm a little worried about fitting it into the model along with the above reservoir...
I was told it'd need some cleaning/vacuuming/irradiation with gamma rays....they weren't kidding...time to bust out the air compressor and clean this puppy.
Unfortunately I can't set all this up just yet - Danger Den is going to be sending me some more goodies; the only totally necessary bit will be mounting screws for the cpu waterblock. But, they're sending a few other things that'll be incorporated into the loop, so there's not much point in leak testing yet. More pics soon...
Heheh, you might be surprised how quickly tubing adds up...I have ~10-12 feet in Zeus...that really came as a surprise once I started actually fitting it.
Nice score; lots of shiny. :D
I would not recommend using an air compressor on the rad; I would be concerned that the high air pressure would damage the fins. To clean off my rads, I use a small brush attachment for my vacuum. In absence of that, a small brush or cloth to loosen the dust and just a normal vacuum hose should work fine and not risk any damage to the unit.
yeah...hehehee....you could be right on the tubing. it'll be interesting to see at any rate. as for not using the compressor, those are good thoughts. I've used it on heatsinks before with no damage to them - it's not a real high-pressure compressor. it's a little Badger compressor designed for airbrush use. But I can just as easily use the vacuum :)Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
emailed danger den about it...but then had to scratch the idea as my girlfriend just found out she got accepted to a month-long summer opera program...in Italy! woo hoo! so now we're going to Italy this summer.... :D I won't be there whole time, but at best I'll be coming back a couple days before the LAN, and I ain't crazy enough to try and drive 1,000 miles a few days after coming back from Europe. :PQuote:
Originally Posted by DarthBeavis
On that radiatior, the air compressor ended up working fine, got most of the dust off. I'll probably hit with the vacuum to try and get the rest. Next step is to mount it. it's going to have to go over the motherboard - not the ideal spot, but I built the internal parts of the crawler so close over the computer parts that I can't raise the motherboard up without it hitting stuff. The radiator's so big it won't fit anywhere else. i'm envisioning bent metal bars, sort of an upside down U shape, going up and over the motherboard, with the rad/fans sitting on top of that, and warm air venting out the holes in the roof. I plan on tackling it by making cardboard mockups first to ensure I get the angles right, then making the pieces out of aluminum.
actually...new thought....if I hinged the bars and left the tubing long enough, I could lift the rad out of the way without having to drain it and unhook it when, say, I want to stick an extra card in there or change the RAM...yeah. I'll do that.
My favourite part of this is the incredibly detailed engine area, but the rest looks like it fits like a glove, the exterior is looking very awesome now :) :up:.
I'd like to go to italy some time in my life, should be a good trip have a gooden m8 :).
1,00 miles is a crazily long drive though, america is so huge, must be a tad strange having to get a plane or an extremely long drive to another state yet it's in the same country/language, well it'd be strange to me anyway lol, uk is so compact & easy to get to anywhere in a decent time :).
I regrettably passed up on the chance of an expenses paid trip for me & my air cube & other uk modders to campus party europe in spain madrid, was very surprised by the invite & not ready for it, not been out of the uk in 17 years & not even been out of manchester in quite a while, I'm just not a very outgoing person, part of the reason I started making my own cases so chickened out of going along :(, I already know I'll regret it when I hear of how good it was.
Going to be getting on a college course soon though so that'll get me used to socialising again, got a touch of agoraphobia at the moment :redface:.
So I worked on it a little this weekend (spent the weekend mostly being lazy). First had to put it "up on blocks" as it were, since the outside is done and I can't flip it upside down anymore. First order of business for water cooling prep was to pull out the cooling fans from the top portion of the model. I pulled the roof panels off so I could get to all the screws holding the fans in place. I tell you guys, the most valuable lesson I've learned with this is NEVER think "Oh I'm never gonna pull THAT out again." I've had to eat my words on that one so many times on this build, it's kinda stopped being funny. The fans were a pain in the butt to pull out.
this shot's looking up from the floor into the interior. If you look at the two cooling fans in the middle of the photo, and from the center of the bottom one, look right, you'll see the back end of a large red LED that illuminates the rear engine room. I'm 99% sure I'm gonna have to move that light (gosh @!#$@#@$@#$) to make room for the radiator mount.
Looking down from the top, after fan removal. Incidentally, those gray pipes are coming out, and will be replaced with a couple of Danger Den reservoirs. the reservoirs will serve a similar visual function as the pipes, and are slightly narrower diameter, but otherwise about the same size. But, they'll also serve a vital computer function, and I like that I'm able to integrate these, the pump, probably parts of the radiator, and the power supply into the details of the model as well as being working computer parts. :D
there was a fan here too, blowing on the video card. won't need it once the WC loop is set up:
The radiator mount (with the Blackice 360 rad from Outoftheboxmods.com ). nothing is screwed down yet, I have some calculating I need to do to figure out exactly where it'll fit before I screw it down. The good news is it looks like I bent the aluminum bars at nearly exactly the lengths I needed to - they're just a tiny bit too tall, but I think I can bend the bottom tabs slightly more to shorten them, really just a 16th of an inch or so.
I'd been going to make the mount shape more of a trapezoid, but when it came time to bend the bars (by hand, using a vise to hold one end....I tried pliers but didn't have enough leverage), I realized why make the shape more complicated than it needs to be? :)
Heheh, I know the feeling. That was basically the story of my life any time I tried to do any work on mightyMite. If there's one thing I learned from that, it's to never expect something to always be a certain way....because odds are you're gonna want/need to change something eventually.Quote:
Originally Posted by artoodeeto
Exactly. I still need to cut out some stuff from inside the top of the case to make enough space for the radiator to fit, in addition to moving that LED out of the way. That's why I didn't make a ton of progress this weekend - it's gonna be a PITB rearranging things AGAIN in there, and I just didn't feel like tackling it. Conversely, I REALLY want it done. 'twil be interesting to see how long it takes that feeling to win out over the procrastination feeling. I'm guessing maybe tonight for more progress...Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
:) Excellent, like the radiator mount, simple fix but definately looking good :up:.
Thanks - yeah, definitely a simple solution. It has to be, since I have the limitation of trying to work something into the space available rather than designing the case around the stuff that needs to be inside. To that end, I ordered 3 of these, the 1600rpm version:Quote:
Originally Posted by Waynio
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catal...5f3db1f2f1dc6f
I realized that the standard 2.5cm thick fans that outoftheboxmods.com sent me weren't going to work, they made the radiator too thick for one of the roof pieces to fit properly (it has a portion that's indented), I wouldn't be able to easily grab the internal carrying handle, and the reservoirs may not have fit very well. So these new fans are only 1.2cm thick, which should make things a lot easier. Once the WC loop is together, obviously the CPU fan won't be in there anymore, and I plan on retaining the speed controller I already have installed. It'll run the 3 rad fans, and while a 1600rpm fan isn't that loud, I'll be able to make the things silent when I want. of course, the system as a whole won't be totally silent, there's the 2 Asus fans on the outside of the case and the PSU fan, all of which make a little noise. But it should be quieter than it is now.
Now I'm off to start figuring out what I need to cut out of the top's interior to make room for this beast...more pics later today I hope.
so over on pdxlan, Boddaker just informed me that my crawler computer case is no longer the only one in the world. I rather liked it's uniqueness, but apparently a guy over in Hungary just built one of his own:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=182872
looks pretty good - there's definitely some aspects that if I did mine again, I'd imitate what he did.
so now I'll just have to console myself with the fact that mines the only WATERCOOLED sandcrawler in the world LOL...
Just pulled these parts out yesterday. The gray pipes will be replaced with dual Danger Den reservoirs (should be receiving those soon).
After I pulled out the fans. Note the wires crossing over the middle. I didn’t absolutely have to rearrange them so they don’t cross, but I decided to just to make sure they don’t interfere functionally or visually with the radiator or fans.
Test positioning the radiator. For those of you who got to see this in person at the Exploratorium, this sort shows you how big this rad is (or if you know how big the rad is, then how large the crawler is). I decided to position its front flush with the front of the open chamber, and the rear part thus juts a little further into the back.
After I cut out the last bits that had held the fans in place.
Test fitting the top onto the base, with the metal bars in place. The weight of the top now rests on the metal bars, they’re just a hair too tall, so I bent their legs out slightly to shorten them vertically. It probably won’t make much difference, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Note the notch in the vertical piece behind the rear metal bar. That was a big pain to cut out with a hand-held x-acto knife with a saw-type blade.
Because the rear rad screw holes don’t and can’t line up with the rear metal bracket, I may bolt a couple of extenders to the bracket that will then run to the screw holes on the rad. No weight will rest on these extenders, but they’ll secure the rad to the bracket. For the front end, it looks like I may be able to scoot the front metal bracket a little further forward, and if necessary scoot the radiator back slightly, to get the screw holes to line up directly with the bracket.
The LED that I had to move. It may look like it’s positioned strangely from this angle, but in fact it’s in the ceiling corner of the lower part of the rear engine room.
Wire re-soldering detail. These were among the wires that I moved so they wouldn’t run over the middle of the case.
Overall shot of the re-done interior. If you look at the back right section, opposite from that re-located LED, I need to still cut out some of the floor to make room for the pump and hoses that I’m going to mount to the base. I’ll mount it on some kind of stand so it looks like it’s part of the upper section machinery, and hopefully I’ll be able to have a dummy pump on the other side for symmetry purposes. This will be roughly level with the radiator, and the reservoirs will mount to the rad I’m hoping in a way so they’re located similarly to where those gray pipes used to be.
ok guys, just got an email confirmation that my parts are on the way from Danger Den...so here's what I'm going to be installing from them this weekend:
2 Rad Reservoirs with (simple) custom mounts I designed and they made for me (their normal mounts were likely too big), plus the custom one pictured earlier in this thread
GTX285 waterblock
6 feet of clear tygon tubing (given how close some of these components will be, I think that's more than enough)
danger den logo 120mm fan grille to go on one of the fans on the radiator, to be visible when you look through the vent opening in the top
extra pump - only for looks, but I figure it'll be good to have a backup if the main one dies
some thermal grease and a whole bunch of fittings, both for the new items and to replace some of the green plastic ones I have so they all match
I'm also going to receive the 3 120mm low profile fans in the next day or two from PerformancePCs, so I should be all set to go on water cooling setup this weekend. Needless to say, I'm excited :). Pics as soon as I get this stuff!
Woo hoo! Clear the calendar. We'll be looking for pics.
You'd think so, wouldn't you. ;) I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you at least come close to running out...WC loops use a deceptively large amount of tubing.Quote:
Originally Posted by artoodeeto
