Project: Dark Carbon

[SXRguyinMA]

[rendermandan]

well guys, Apparently, what I asked for from Christmas was too expensive for Santa, so today I ordered the rest of my components. Here's what I got.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz

OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) Dual Channel Memory

EVGA 01G-P3-1284-AR GeForce GTX 280 SSC Edition 1GB

-The only other piece of equipment I need is hard drives. But I plan on pulling my raptor drives with the windows out of "Motorized Madness" -they will be seen through windows in the front panels.

I also need a backup storage drive for the hot swappable drive cage. But that will come later.

Other than some lighting, that's about all I need to buy for DK.
I should have some pics of the stuff I've been working on this weekend tomorrow night for you. -Although, I'm starting to feel sick. So, I'm going to head to bed now.

Later!

[The boy 4rm oz]

Hope you had a great Christmas Dan, shame Santa didn't get you what you wanted .

For the backup drive you should get a Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB drive, they are faster than 150GB raptors plus they hold a lot more and are slightly cheaper (here in oz anyway). They also come in a 500GB or a 750GB flavor.

[rendermandan]

Ok everyone, Sorry I didn't get the pics up yesterday. I spend some time pulling the hard drives out of Motorized Madness so I could get those mounted.

Here is where I'm at so far.

Last time I left you, I had cut the tinted plexi panel or the top window. Well I chose to try the Clear 3m double sided tape to hold it in place. We'll see if it really works or not.

I also made an aluminum mount for the servo.

I mounted it below the mother board panel. just next to the PSU.

I had to make a mount for the ball joint on the tilt up panel.

I then added some ball ends and some 4/40 threaded rod.

That should do it for the motor. I just have to configure the servo controller.
Basically, as soon as the power is turned on, the panel will lift up. and when the computer shut down, it will close. -No fancy programming, just simple, yet effective.


I moved on to drilling some holes for the water tubing.

Here you can see the water block I'm using. If you look closely, you can see where the rubber grommets will go up by the right side panel.

Here are the rubber gromments I'm using. 1/2" dia. inside hole.

I got out my stepped drill bit.

And drilled a couple 5/8" dia. holes.

Then I pushed some red tubing through the holes to see how it would look. Not bad!

Next up was the hard drives.
Here are the two I pulled out of my previous case.

I want to use these hard drive cooling fans. I'm going to have the aluminum anodized next week along with the back pci panel.

So I needed to cut some slots in the hard drive panels to make them fit.

Using the same method as I did on the top panel, I cut out a "U" shape.

After doing some gluing, Here are the housings with the hard drives installed. and the aluminum shrouds in place. The fans have been removed temporarily.

This is what they will look like when installed. (although red anodized of course). I'm also going to make a CF piece to fill in the top gap.

The last thing I had to do was to cut a hole so you can see the hard drives from the front of the case. So I removed the two side panels.

Then, usin a 3 1/2" hole saw, I made some CF dust.

And this is how it looks from the outside.

Well, thats about it for now. All I need to do is mount the hard drive boxes and the inside is basically done, except for routing wires and holes with grommets for the wires.

After that, then comes all the detail work on the outside.

Later,

[jdbnsn]

Wow Dan, you are kicking some ass on this rig! I definitely like the idea of the HDD's showing through the side of the case, very nice touch! What are you using to paint those aluminum angles? I was thinking about painting mine but I don't know what type to use.

[Vision]

DECENT

keep up the good work
Vision

[The boy 4rm oz]

HDD coolers look great with the CF bezels mate. Have you thought about putting some red mesh in front of the HDD windows? I think that it may look quite good.

How do you find those step drills? Are they easier to use than a standard hole saw, do they make neater holes?

[rendermandan]

What are you using to paint those aluminum angles?

Thanks man!
I"m using Krylon X metal paint. http://www.krylon.com/products/xmetals/
Got it from my local Ace Hardware. about $8 a can. I will warn you, it takes a couple coats to get them to look really good. the more coats you do, the deaper the color. However, it does scratch off easily. I've had suggestions to clear coat mine, but I just don't want to take the time to wait for them to dry. All the aluminum brackets I've painted so far, will not even be seen, unless you remove the bottom. The aluminum that will be seen, like the pci back panel and hdd fan frames will be a true anodized. I called a local shop yesterday, and I"m going to drop the pieces off next monday.

How do you find those step drills? Are they easier to use than a standard hole saw, do they make neater holes?

I got a 3 pack from Harborfreight. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=91616

and yes, they do make a clean hole. They work really good in metal.

[SXRguyinMA]

keep up the good work

[Kumo]

Insane.

I like the HDD coolers final look.