Metropolis RED mod (title changed)

[Vaantal]

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY..it's my birthday...doo da doo doo..
anyways.. I finally settled on components. I got everything but the CPU, i'm waiting to see how much this whole adventure has cost me before I can commit to what I can afford for the processor.

here goes

mobo- Asus A8N-SLI Premium
Vid- EVGA GF 7800GT 256mb
RAM- Corsair ValueSelect 2Gb
HDD- Western Digital Caviar 250Gb SATAII 3.0Gb/s 16mb cache
Sound- Audigy2 ZS
Optical- Asus DRW 1608P2S (dual layer DVD burner)
OS- WinXP Pro (upgrading to Vista once it's available, I just hope everything is compatible)

Future upgrade will be to get another vid card for SLI and another HDD so I can set up RAID1 for security

I know that i'm not original at all with this set up, but I didn't feel like this was an area I was comfortable experimenting, I wanted tried and true with easy overclocking.

jeremy

[OvRiDe]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Now with that being said.... and you have the parts now....

GET BACK TO WORK and finish the mod.. Slacker.. hahahah

Ahh.. I'm just messing with ya.. Looks like a pretty solid setup to me.

[Vaantal]

I know... I have been itching to get this thing going for 2 weeks now. I sent some frame parts to get polished to a chrome finish 2 weeks ago, and the guy keeps telling me he hasn't had time to do it. If it's not done by this weekend then i'm gonna tell him forget it and just paint the parts like I had originally planned.

Now i'm gonna go read the user's manual for my new motherboard...(grade a geek here<---)

Yippee skippee tech manual

[SgtSteve]

Not too shabby. Good luck with that motherboard though, it's pretty hit or miss. I have a FUBARed one behind me I cant RMA. S'alright though, my A8N32-SLI just came in.

Happy birthday and keep up the good work!

[DaveW]

I'm guessing the number of people who actually know what FUBAR means is pretty slim-the way i've been told it's an old navy term meaning F*cked Up beyond all recognition.

I'm not actually sure what RMA stands for myself. I might just be being tired, so if it's something obvious let me off the hook, right guys?

Vaantal, i also love reading the manuals for motherboards. They don't exactly work for intellectual posing on the bus, but they're a nice read on the toilet.

Did i really just say that?

-Dave

[Vaantal]

Okie Dokie... you all got me, It's not really my birthday, just felt like it was because all the new goodies. I had an old birthday song in my head and it extended to my fingers when I posted, but now I know the love I can expect when it really IS my b-day.
Anywhoo! I heard that about these boards as well, but I felt it was more on the positive than negative so I gave it a shot.

Dave..funny, but ...go get some sleep man.

I finally sold my Alienware on ebay, so now I'll have the cash to pay for all this stuff.

I'm feeling good about being able to finish this thing up in the next 2 weeks. stay posted

[jdbnsn]

I used to have the same motherboard and it worked fine for a while, then started giving me lots of problems. All in all, I think it was a good board and I got rid of it more because I wanted a crossfire ready board than the problems it was having. I really think the problems were more due to my lack of knowledge than defects, I'm sure yours will work fine and it has lots of cool features! Metropolis RED is coming along great and I think you're doing some great work, can't wait to see it done! Keep it up!

[Elum!nal]

Hi

Nice mod there,think its going to be realy cool.
Btw it was my birthday yesterday to and now i can start moding to :p

[Vaantal]

Big update today, I have been a busy boy I have been working steady for about 23 hours in an effort to get this thing finished up only to end in disaster.. well, not complete disaster, but enough to really piss on my Wheaties. I have also realized that I need to stop and take pictures more often. Live and learn I 'spose.

Let's start at about 5:00 pm friday evening. I finally went and picked up the pieces that were being polished. I think they turned out great, you be the judge.

This was the big moment that I had been waiting for.. so I started putting the case back together finally

Right side

Left side

Back

Right side with window on

Once I got this far. took some time to screw it all together and make some tweaks so the side panel fit back on. This was the first point I realized that I should be taking more pictures..anyway

the next thing I did was to install the feet and handles I got. They are handles that I got from work that are designed to go on cabinet doors, but I felt they fit in with the look perfectly

getting ready to drill

feet on

handles on

a look at both together

I installed the mobo,psu,dvd,HDD, and fan controller temporarily so I could start with the wiring.

next up was the fan block. the trick here was to get the wires from the fan controller box into little project box I made ages ago, and then get all the fans wire, sleeved, and molexed.

The fan controller was pretty simple. I opened it up to find that it was modular... what a treat (no soldering required)

so... all I had to do was move the molex power supply to the inside of the box, create a new tail at the right length to install to the power supply slot in the project box.. repeat the process with all three fan locations and....voila

wires have been run to the project box

all finished up and ready to slide into the frame

the HDD activity wire got spliced into the Activity LED on the front of the case, and I'm not sure what to do with the temperature leads yet. Im not sure it's worth having the extra wires running around in the case

next up was the fans, pretty simple. I just spliced in wires to make the tails the length I needed, sleeved them and added the black molexes to plug into the fan box.

[Vaantal]

From here I don't have any pictures of getting the cathode inverters installed, and all the wiring involved in them. I had my headphones on and I worked for about 4 hours and never realized how much time had passed or how long it had been since I took pictures...soooo
I installed 4 cathodes-(2) 12" white and (2) 4" red. One of each on both sides. All the wires are sleeved and the inverters are nestled away under the hardrive. The power ends of the inverters will be plugged into the other project box I made with the chrome RCA jacks.

wiring plugs

finshed

'since I missed so many of the during pictures all I can show you is the end result

this is the fan controller box. The far right silver wires are from the power supply and the rest are to the fans

another view.. this view shows one of the white cathodes running vertically up the face of the frame.

this pic shows a lot. the red and white striped twist of wires is the fan controller HDD activity lead that is spliced in by the front led. The large sleeve of wires is the 13 wires coming from the fan controller (3) each fan and (4) for power. We also have the 2nd power cable from the psu that will power the lights and the water cooling pump (more on this later). The leads to the switches for the lights run from the inverted box to through the 3.5" cage to the switches, and finally we have the RCA plugs from the lights plugged into the power box. There are 2 blanks that I can use to add more lights later if I want. There are 2 switches up front that control 2 plugs each.

heres the setup for the light switches up front. I needed them to be removable in case they don't work or ever need maintenence

Then I got started on some of the watercooling parts. putting the waterblock on the cpu and mobo, as well as the vid card

thi next pic is a little out of order, because it has very little of the wiring showing, but it shows the mobo installed with the vid and sound card and shows the waterblocks installed

That's all the pictures I have for this update.... but the story continues. I made so much progress that I decided to get started on the watercooling setup. I did a number of final touches in preperation for this.

I got all the hoses cut and clamped....oops! wtf there aren't enough clamps. fine I will just use zip ties (first bad idea)

btw. remember way back when I was planning on using compression fittings and lot's of pretty parts for this water cooling... well I could'nt get the fittings to work properly, so I scrapped the whole idea and simplified.. this afforded me less stress by just running the tubing in a straightforward manner.

time lapse.. all the tubes are in and clamped (so I thought), I plugged the motor into a spare psu just to fill the system before I fire it up for real for the first time, At this point I was so excited. The pump is on and the tubes are filling and running, and the air bubbles are bubbling to the surface.. woo hoo! I need more fluid..woohoo turn off the pump to get more fluid, and..crap why won't the pump turn back on.. hmmm power lead still works..wait is that a leak yep, OMG and another ..stupid leaks. STUPID PUMP

moral to the story. Watercooling for beginner's is touch and go. Verdict. I just ordered a new pump and automotive style screw down clamps.

More pics to come. The mod is almost done. Just need to finish up the watercooling system and some final fit and finish issues.

Stayed tuned.. and thanks for caring Have a good night.

Jeremy