Project: Antec 900 Revamp

[slaveofconvention]

If not you MUST put something in there, it's way too nice to just sit around empty.

Actually I think my PC may be going back into this case and I'll use my son's system for reviews as he never uses it since I gave him a laptop

[slaveofconvention]

So begins part II of this project - getting an actual computer into the thing...

First things first though - as with all my stuff, comes the preparation.. As of this morning the inside of the case looked like this...

Way too many colours there in the wires.... I was reading somewhere on here about using paracord as sleeving, and being cheap (and curious) I decided to give it a go. I bought 100 metres of each orange, green, and black paracord, along with a couple metres of 3.2mm glue lines heatshrink. As it turns out, getting 3.2mm glue lined heatshrink over 3.0mm paracord is, frankly, impossible, so I had to hold off for a couple days while I waited for some 4.8mm to arrive. Well it arrived yesterday and I wanted something to try it out on so here goes....

If you're curious as to how dense the paracord sleeve is (I know some cheap sleeving can show the cables because it isn't dense enough), take a look at this...

Frankly, it's great stuff - the ONLY downside is the slimness of it - anything more than 2 or 3 really thin wires just will not fit. It's ridiculously cheap compared to "proper" sleeving, and will, without a doubt, be my sleeve of choice from here on in. I chose glue lined shrink because I figured it'd hold better - I have had sleeving slip free in the past and didn't want that to happen again.

First up, the three Xigmatek Fans..

I had to cut the connectors off of the end as the round metal part just wouldn't fit through - fortunately in one of my boxes of parts, I have a load of those connectors so putting new ones on the end wasn't a problem.

Much neater. The glue lining works a treat too - it means you can use much less shrink than you might normally use. I've always put at least an inch of shrink on each end of any sleeving I've done, to try to make sure it doesn't come free. I took a gamble on the glue lined and used less than a third of an inch and it worked wonderfully. A closer look at this pic below and you can see the glue which has flowed to seal the joint almost perfectly.

Now for the remainder of the internal wires. The USB and Audio cables are already black (albeit rubber of some kind) so those didn't need any attention to get them black.

That leave the Power and Reset buttons, the HD activity LED, and the power connector for the Bigboy fan in the roof of the case.

Its a seriously tight fit getting even two of these cables through with the connectors in place, and I don't have spare ones of this type to rewire them, so I tried using a bit of non glue lined heatshrink to smooth them out.

This kinda worked but with two lots of shrink adding to the thickness, is was really hard work so I tried this instead.

Two connectors, one piece of shrink - and that worked a LOT better.

Wiring up the Bigboy fan was, frankly a REAL pain in the ass as it's wired awkwardly, but a chunk of stubborn and a lot of swearing and....

And finally, the inside with no coloured wiring visible (well except for that AC97 extension which I think I'll just cut off)

Now I know I went on a LOT about a pretty simple thing here, but I know there are a few people here thinking about sleeving with paracord so I wanted to make this semi-tutorial in nature - learn from my experience and pain heh....

Till next time when I decide what to do with the PSU as that'll be the last really big part of the sleeving....

[AmEv]

DO cut it off, please!



And keep it for custom header for scratchbuilds!

[slaveofconvention]

And I'm back with some more sleeving fun...

New 500w OCZ Modular PSU (don't tell the wife lol) - I've pretty much decided this case is going to be the retirement spot for my current Q6700 rig when I make the move to i7 (hopefully in the next month or so) - as that pretty much nails down the hardware that'll be in this chassis, I can get kinda pick and specific with my power cables....

The cables all come pre-sleeved but....

That just won't work for me - the weave is WAY too open.... Also in the box, a standard set of mounting screws...

Again, not going to work for me - I spent entirely too long getting this case from Silver to Black, I don't want to be putting the silver back, so in one of my spare parts trays...

Much better. Put the PSU in place for test fitting...

Nice black screws

And time to start work on the first of the power cables. This is going to supply ALL of the drives in the PC. I will almost certainly end up with one or at most two HD's in here, along with an optical drive, but I'm going to make sure I can put a couple more hard disks in. The PSU is bottom mounted in this case, so even the connector at the end of the line is upside down for my uses.

Time to remove all the SATA connectors (from both SATA cables)

Then a little work with a blade and we have nekkid wiring...

The old sleeving. The packrat in me wants to keep it, but the pedant is arguing that I don't like it, it isn't dense enough, so I'm unlikely to ever use it - why keep it?

Finally, the connector at the end comes off - standard ATX pin removal tool made short work of this...

And we begin - first 5 pieces of hollowed out paracord, and 10 tiny pieces of shrink.

And rinse and repeat..

Until....

Those connectors have been spaced out so the top one hits the back of the Optical bay at the top of the case, and the 4 below line up with the top and bottom of each of the 2 drive cages, meaning there are connectors for 4 hard disks, and plenty of room for air between them.

Test fit with 2 drives (I don't have 4 spare sata drives for this)

Looking pretty good

Yup, definitely happy with that - no slack, no coils of cables, and plenty of connectors for upgrades...

Next time, I think I'm going to tackle this lil problem. There's a 4 pin molex connector on the board itself. I also have a PCIe x1 USB3 card which takes its power from a sata connector, so I need to make a cable which will be nice and tidy, and end up with enough length to fill both of those needs....

[slaveofconvention]

Ok so the "next time" I mentioned in the last update is STILL next time - for now, I took on the hardwired cables.

Stuck a screwdriver straight through the warranty label on the OCZ PSU and cut the 4 pin 12v cable out. The vast majority of motherboards use the 8 pin version now so I don't see me needing it.

At the same time, JUST IN CASE lol, I cut the cables long enough to resolder and reattach and put some shrink over the ends to make sure they stay isolated inside the PSU.

Time to give that 8 pin cable the orange and black treatment. Instead of alternating the colours, I chose to black the black ones, and orange the 12v yellow cables.

The only problem is that it's harder to keep 8 cables (even thin ones) tidy than a single one, so I put the original open weave wrap back on.

All the extra sleeving made it a really tight fit getting the cables back into the PSU grommet though, even with the 4 cables I removed which used to provide the 4 pin 12v line.

I think I've decided to chicken out and NOT do the 24pin main cable - for some reason the pins in the 24 pin and 8 pin blocks are taking a scary amount of force to get out - I don't want to damage the cable and I kinda plan on hiding the majority of that cable behind the motherboard tray with a couple of minor mods still to be done.

It's a shame (and evidence of bad planning on my part) to take a dremel to the case AFTER I painted it all but that's what is needed. I'm going to cut an air intake in the floor for the PSU and a cable routing hole or two into the motherboard tray. Then I'll have to make sure all the orange paint is well covered and touch up the black with the whole thing assembled. There are a couple of scratches at the moment from all of my fitting and refitting so a final once over won't hurt

Pretty happy with it so far - just got to do the molex line and check my 4870 to see which of the PCI cables need to be done and the PSU section will be finished

[diluzio91]

i dont blame you for the 24 pin... just grab a cheap extension and sleeve that

[billygoat333]

That is looking awesome.

[diluzio91]

which shrink did you use? i just ordered 200 feet of paracord and was wondering... lol

[slaveofconvention]

I'm using a 4.8mm glue lined 3:1 shrink. It has it's positives and negatives, to be honest. It doesn't seem to squeeze as hard as other non-glue lined 2:1 shrink I've used in the past, but at the same time, the glue means it doesn't really have to tighten up as much to get a grip. I'm personally very happy with it and will use the same stuff next time I need to buy some. I have no idea when that'll be, because in true hoarder fashion, I bought 10 metres of it this time which will last a good while lol

[diluzio91]

any chance of a link?