Looking great!
The air brushing really tops it off.
Printable View
Looking great!
The air brushing really tops it off.
Not a bad idea lol. I'm going for a high-security nuclear building type of thing. Kayin is sending me some of his special UV green coolant that will just be the icing on the cake to this thing :D
Thanks! I've got more to do on the interior as well still :D
I've got some of this and some of this on it's way for the PSU and all it's associated cables. I swore after I uni-sleeved the PSU cables in my Red Comet mod that I'd never do it again lol. Well once I saw those colors from MDPC for the sleeving I HAD to do it. The PSU's wires are all de-connectored and stripped of their stock sleeving awaiting my shipment :D
Ok so in regards to the sleeving, how should I sleeve it while integrating both colors? I've got more copper than gray. Should I do mostly copper and a random gray here and there or would I do copper with gray on the corners or what? Any ideas?
I think you "whould" work on your spelling :P Other than that, I would say either do the random gray or maybe use certain colors for certain kinds of cables? Like gray for 6/8 pins and copper for 24 pin?
I don't see any spelling errors :whistler:
I was thinking of something like that. I was originally planning on doing the 24-pin in all copper, but I think it'd be too much. Maybe alternate copper and gray (like I did with the red and black on Red Comet)?
You could do that, or maybe, if you're planning on sticking to single colors for the other cables, do a block of 4 or 6 in the middle of the 24 pin gray and the rest copper, or vice versa? Make it look like its 3 cables instead of 1 big one?
Then, when you're done, you could do my psu too :D
that' not a bad idea, I may have to give it a shot :D
Let me know how it turns out. Or better yet, post lots of pictures! People love pictures! :D
oh there will be pics, don't worry :D
I've got some work done the past few days, but not enough for a full update. I'm awaiting some parts today and waiting for my MDPC-X sleeving to show up :D
Hopefully I'll have an update after the weekend!
You know they make mettalic sleeving in all sorts of colors and s@#t
lemme try and dig that website up that i sent the other guy making that all aluminum/copper sail looking case.
http://cableorganizer.com/chrome-sle...-sleeving.html
(gold)
http://cableorganizer.com/mylar/
Look around and there are tons of finish options, i guess the above link (1st) is paintable as well.
thanks for the links, but I've got the copper and titanium colored stuff coming from MDPC-X already :D
Ok so I said I'd post an update LAST weekend. Well I got a ton of modding done, but no time for an update :facepalm: I'll be modding most of the day today, so expect something later tonight :D
You better update!
How late is later??? :D
not going to be today lol. I was busy getting a review done and buttoning up part 3 of my integrating electronics series. I was planning for tomorrow....but BF3 opens tomorrow...so I might be playing that after work instead, we'll see lol :whistler:
Whenever I get to a mailbox, you have incoming mail.
Update time!!
I cut a piece of mesh to cover the holes left in the side panel and put some trim on it to dress it up a bit then hot-glued it into place.
I also got a bunch of random parts soldered to the ProtoStack dev board to make it look more industrial-ish. All I need to do is wire up the LEDs that this board will be controlling.
Thanks again to NZXT for sending me a 2M red LED strip!! I removed the module from it's PCI slot bracket and mounted it to a spare standoff hole on the backside of the motherboard.
Then I removed the motherboard and hot-glued the LED strip to the case under it.
Looks pretty sweet :D
I also tested the fans and my fan controller and found that for some reason the Sentry 2 wouldn't even get the Turbine Master fans to even start spinning. :? If you tapped the blades by hand they'd spin right up, but not from a dead stop. So I replaced them with a pair of Gentle Typhoons and a sweet ACRyan radgrill
I also got my Indigo Extreme TIM installed on the CPU
Next up I got all the UV LEDs sleeved. I started with the 2 3mm ones that go into the CPU block, then did the 5mm one in the res and also swapped out the 2 3mm blue ones in the flow meter with 2 3mm UV ones. The camera makes the UV look super bright, but with the coolant I'll be running it should look perfect. :D
I also got 3 more WD Caviar Black 500GB drives to go with the one in my current rig. I plan to put the OS onto the 96GB SSD then do a RAID 1+0 with the 4 500GB drives.
I got the SATA cables sleeved with the copper sleeving from MDPC-X. I must say, their sleeve is THE BEST! Dirt cheap and looks great!
Speaking of sleeving, I did the PSU. I wasn't going to, but I had to. I did it with a mix of the copper brown and tungsten gray from MDPC-X. I did ALL the wires. I ended up cutting and extending the 8-pin CPU wires so they'd reach without needing the adapter that Tt included with the case. I also cut off the un-needed cables and heatshrunk the ends inside the PSU to keep things clean. Enjoy :D
That's all for now!
That sleeving looks smexy. :)
Looks great! I'm uber jelous for the WC RAM XP
man its all coming together!!
think some black velco straps around some of those sleeved cables would look nice? (like on the video card)
Really like the red led's around the mainboard and the UV lights in the blocks and such.
them UV lights actually ought to help kill off microbes in your water system lol!
I actually put some small black zip ties on the VGA cables to clean them up a tad, they look much better now lol. As far as microbes I don't think I'll have that problem with the fluid Kayin is sending me :D
Love the shot of the PSU with the warranty sticker broken! :twisted: Do you get a deal with MDPC-X or something? It seems pretty pricey to me to do a whole system in single sleeve with shipping from Europe. Granted it does look better than anything else out there.
Build is coming together nicely, should look awesome when it is finished!
@TheMainMan - Its only $0.22 per foot + about 9euro for shipping. Whole system sleeved for around $80. Where other sleeving is $0.59 or more per foot making sleeving a whole system well over $150.
Ahh, thanks for the explanation. I hadn't priced out other sources beyond the cheapo kits at a local store (I use them for builds for people who don't care about interior looks). I've been looking at the MDPC-X stuff for a long time but haven't been able to justify that kind of cost while still being a student, so I just get to drool over the pictures of those of you who can:)
the MDPC-X stuff is only like $0.20USD/foot lol it's CHEAP
I put some zip ties on the PCI-e cables to clean them up a bit
I also picked up these sweet aluminum hose clamps for all the 3/8" tubing. I wanted the same ones for the 1/4" but they were all out, so I got the standard plastic clamps
I picked up this Bitspower radgrill for the rear fan
But the green wasn't cutting it so I painted it to match the rest
I also got a pair of Lian Li blank 5.25" drive covers and some military switches.
I taped, marked, drilled and mounted everything :D
The other holds a 16x2 LCD and a Bulgin button.
I decided to go with a single LCD versus the 2 for simplicity's sake, and the fact that I only really needed one anyways. I also painted both panels to match as well.
Now I figured I'd do something different with the 1/4" clear tubing for the RAM. I wanted them to do something rather than just be there. So I tried some different routing setups and settled on this one. I cut up some spare plexi I had laying around, sanded, drilled and painted, and here is the end result. This will look sick once the fluid is in there :D
That's all for now. I've been working a lot with the coding for everything lately. All that's left to do really is finish the switch wiring, finish the airbrushing and integrate the flow meter into the coding one the system is up and running!
Another update :D
I designed, etched and assembled the 2 circuit boards I'll be needing now that I'm only using 1 LCD. One board will house the ATMega328 and all it's associated components as well as have all the I/O pins for the accessories. The second board will mount to the LCD directly and allow me to use a 2x5 ribbon cable instead of the breadboard-friendly layout as the LCDs come.
I used Fritzing to create the layouts and the PCBs.
I started off by laying out everything in the breadboard view.
I used that to create the PCB layouts as seen here. From the breadboard point to the ready-to-print PCB point was about 2 hours. This consisted of moving parts around the boards to get the best possible layout.
Next I created etchable .pdf's (done with Fritzing) so I can print out the boards. You'll notice one side is mirrored. This is because when you transfer the image it'll come out oriented correctly.
Here the boards are printed out and cut out. They are printed with a laser printer onto inkjet photo paper. The reason for this is that the toner, which is plastic, will not adhere to the inkjet photo paper. This will allow it to be transferred to the copper clad with an iron.
Here are the top sides all transferred.
Here I've drilled a set of holes and inserted pins through them. I use these pins to line up the back side traces for transferring.
Fast forward a few steps and you've got a pair of freshly-etched and drilled boards ready for assembly! The blobby-ness on the traces is from a sharpie. If you get mostly good transfer but have a few little patches where it didn't stick you simply use a sharpie to draw it in. It works as an etch resist almost as good as the toner itself.
And here we have the pair of completed boards. I still need to test these to make sure they're working 100%
That's all for now!
so you use solder for the traces? thats pretty cool.
No, to cover up the copper traces to prevent rusting/oxidiation.
I do wonder, is it possible to control the contrast with the microcontroller?
no the traces are copper as you can see in the pre-assembled pics. I put solder on the traces to keep the copper from oxidizing :D I'll have a nice in-depth tutorial in my Integrating Electronics series in part 4 :D
we posted at the same time lol. I do suppose it would be possible. All the pot does is send between 0-5V to the contrast pin, PWM may achieve the same result, but I'm not sure if the LCD will enjoy PWM on it's contrast pin. I'll have to play with it and find out. I've always just set the contrast and put a dab of hot glue on the pot to keep it where I want it.
Touche.
+rep for being on the same wavelength 500 miles away lol.
Now you've got me wanting to play around with pwm on the contrast pin lol. I'll do it and let you know :D
Thanks for the knowledge. :D
A lot of people actually use an airbrush or something similar :D