Project: Frozen Sun

[The boy 4rm oz]

Lol *rant*.

[CerealKlr]

I'm at the library. the old man got smart and took the door down... I really thought that "Tresspassers shall be hanged" sign would work longer. At any rate, we booked a solid 8 hours work yesterday, so this update may run a bit long.

We settled into buiness w/ the easy stuff, I popped all of the door springs back into place on the case (which dampen noise). Once I did that, I reriveted the window onto the side panel.

At first, we were going to mount our LED fan on top of the case, but we decided we didnt have enough window area to spare, so we mounted it as an exhaust fan at the back facing inward.

Next, we bolted together most of the case. I was pretty happy with the end result!

As I slaved away over sleeving, dad mounted our wierd and very cool drive bay fan.

After which, my father went mad and turned this:

Into this:

Did I mention he cut himself to pieces in the process?

While he was going ape with the power tools, I was busy melting fingers and cutting wires attempting to sleeve too many wires to fast.

Now, the fun part. If you look closely at the picture below, you'll notice ugly pieces of plast ic that look like screen protectors. Well, those are VITALLY necessary to install an ATX board (which ours is) to prevent it from shorting out. The fun part is, they are mostly transparent, small, and lost in one of over 15 large boxes full of unsorted junk!
After half and hour and a mild panic attack on my dads part, we found them, thank god.

Of course, with that done, nothing was stopping us from mounting our precious mobo!

bask in the glory:

Anyways, thats it for last night, stay tuned for our work today!

[Xpirate]

Sometimes I just can't believe how lazy the boy is....

If laziness was a disease the boy would be terminally ill!

Quit being so hard on the boy Darth, it's Easter weekend for crying out loud.

You guys have done an excellent job on this case. It's good to see a father and son work on a project together.

[The boy 4rm oz]

It's really coming together now.

[Darth Dad]

[quote=Xpirate;179414]Quit being so hard on the boy Darth, it's Easter weekend for crying out loud.

If I wasn't hard on the boy he sleep in until 1:00pm every day. We would get no work done at all. For example we are taking today off (lazy bum) it is currently 11:30am and the boy is still asleep! Besides he appreciates the structure the beatings add to his life. They let him know that I love him and am thinking about him.

Happy Easter (or the holiday greeting of your choice) to all of those reading this thread...

[CerealKlr]

<Insert Politically Correct Holiday Greeting here> </Politically Correct>!

Hiya guys, just got on the computer. My dad slipped some sleeping pills into my water last night, so I didn't wake up 'til about 11:30!

Anyways, boy do I have the motherload for you! This update is rated R for partial nudity. You guessed it in one, we stripped our GTX today! We also did more sleeving....

First off, my dad went outside to grab the flow meter mount I coaxed him into spray painting. I'd say it looks pretty neat mounted, eh?

I do wish we had some Harlequin to slap to it rather then black though... it seems slightly out of place.

If you havn't guessed, the floating circuit board top right is the flow meter's circuitry. We're probably going to mount it out of sight though, instead of somehow flying.

Next up, we took our MoBo out and armored it. the CPU cooler requires a rather large support block apparently... FUN!

Note to others doing this: we lined up the support piece by sticking long screws through the 4 holes it screws in at. That way, it took minimal jockying to get it lined up propely with the holes on the MoBo insulator (it was attatched using a one-time adhesive backing).

After that, we mounted our 500GB HDDs in their removable box, and mounted a giant fan on the whole assembly.

Remember now, this will be a full TB if memory in RAID0!

Suddenly, by the pricking of his thumbs, father knew evil was afoot! He quickly scanned the basement, searching for the culprit. His eyes locked on our work tables, and then the counter. "Thats it!" he thought. "Clean, boy, clean!" He yelled maniacally. In other words, Dad was afraid of losing stuff in the mess that was now our basement, and had us clean it up before we got back to work.

BEFORE

AFTER

(Yes, we blew up the counter so we didn't have to clen it. thats why we don't have a photo of it.)

Once that was done, my father and I got to do something actually interesting. If you are under 18, you must have parental permission to continue reading! We stripped our GTX to bear circuit board.
...
...
...Do not look further if you are an unnacompanied minor!
...
...

Oooh.
Ahhh.
What a body, eh?

However, we did have a reason to strip the card, it wasn't just impulse. We needed to mount our awesome plexi water block!

You are permitted to drool.

Now, enough of the peep shots, lets get to business! First off, we had to remove the giant fan cooler off of the GTX. This was particularly nerve-wracking because the thermal material used between the cooler and the card was uncooperative (my father was scared... *poop*less as he bent the card this way and that to break the seal.) Not only was that great fun, but he also had to search for missed screws twice before he got them all! Now, for a limited time only, *offer expires when TBCS closes,* you get to see the underside of the cooler!

Not much to look at, huh? Anyways, we cleaned the old thermal compound off the gfx card, purified its surface, and used Arctic Ceramique to bond it to our new water block, all of which went smoothly. What was less smooth was the ridiculously large number of screws that all had to be tightened equally to stop the card from warping!

Well, my father and I were very happy with the way it looked... until we mounted it...

The slot is wrong way up! No one will ever know of the work we went through to beautify it! Oh well... theres plenty lore pretty stuff we'll be putting in!

Mounting the card at all was no fun either. After 15 minutes of playing with it, we realized the screwless card holder wouldnt QUITE fit the GTX. We popped it off and used the huge thumbscrews that had originally held the doors to hold the cards (on the theory we could buy more, and because dad liked the way they looked.)

And finally, more sleeving. :\

When will this torture end!?

Whats that? You want a sneak preview of what is to come? You're dieing to see what the case looks like with a few random lights thrown in? It's your terminally ill grandmother's last wish to see it, and she won't live until next update? Well, we got to ogle it! We plugged a few random lights in, shut off the lights in the basement, and thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the case. Even with only about 4 lights tossed in (out of about 30 XD) it looked awesome. You really wanna see? realllllly? Well, you better stick around 'til next update! i'm not posting it until then!

[The boy 4rm oz]

So that's what My GTX looks like without the cooler. Oh well I will see it up close eventually when I install my Swiftech MCW-60 on it.

[CerealKlr]

The IRS has caught up with us! Thy just reposessed our house. :'( Luckily, my Aunt and Uncle had a pad they said we could live in until we got out of this money scrape. Check out the new lair, nice huh?

[The boy 4rm oz]

Just something I would like to point out. The voltage regulators on the 8800GTX get extremely hot, these aren't covered by the stock heatsink or by the water block you are using. The regulators are in the center of the card just right of where the stock cooler ends, they are two black squares about 1cm squared. They are just left of the 3 capacitors in a row. I strongly recommend putting a heatsink on them if you have them, I did and it has made a huge temp difference on the chips (to touch).

[Darth Dad]

Boy from Oz - Thanks for the info... I did not know that We will have to get a heat sink for the GTX card...