Project: Nutman

[AmEv]

Bill Owen == Awesome.
Nutman == Raw talent.

[Nutman]

Thanks, I'm honoured.

[xr4man]

i had decided to not sleeve or put uv leds in my latest project, but after seeing the freshness of the black and green sleeving here, it makes me want to do it anyway. this just looks too good.

[Nutman]

Well, I also do think that UV lights can easily go over the top, which is why I try to balance them out using blue light - I guess it's a matter of not putting too much of a good thing into this case, as that would ruin it - too much of any good thing can ruin it, really.

But, for my forthcoming scratch build I don't plan to include UV light. Not at this point, any way.

But glad to have have inspired you - stuff like that is also partly the reason why I am into casemodding.

[xr4man]

so my question for you is, how did you decide which wires were getting the green uv sleeving? or is it just random wires on each cable?

[Nutman]

Well, it became slightly random, but the general idea was that it should be the 2nd wire from the right - in the top row, if more than one row was present (like with the PCI-E, 8-Pin EPS and ATX, for instance). This is still true for the 8-Pin EPS and PCI-E cables, but for the ATX I chose to let the actual green wire (ATX Break) be the one that got sleeved green.

[xr4man]

coolio. i was thinking i'd sleeve all my red wires with red and do all the rest black.

[Nutman]

Ok, I know it's been quite a while since my last update and I do know that this update was supposed to be the last one.

But, but, but....

SO much has happened to the project that I have to split the final update in two parts. This is the first part...

The fix the problems with the Aquaero I had to move the ATX break from the ATX cable to the power button in the case.

First, I grabbed the ATX break wire that I had soldered onto the ATX cable and then connected to the Aquaero (it's the wire with the green sleeving):

Then, I cut open the green sleeving to be able to access the place where I soldered the wires back when I extended the ATX break wire to run all the way up to the Aquaero:

And then I stripped the equivalent wires on the power button:

Having un-soldered the ATX break wires (I split the wires running from the PSU to the Aquaero and back again into the ATX plug on the motherboard), I re-soldered the ATX break wires in the ATX cable coming from the PSU (without the ATX break wire being complete, there's no way you can turn on the PC) and put heat shrink over the soldered parts to isolate the current:

The re-soldered ATX break wire was tucked nicely away:

Then I soldered the ATX break wires coming from the Aquaero onto the wires on the power button, enabling the Aquaero to send a shutdown signal to the motherboard in case of a malfunction:

Finally, everything was isolated nicely with heat shrink:

And now it worked fine - the Aquaero was able to shut down the PC in case of a malfunction. I have NO clue why it didn't really work with the ATX break wire coming directly from the PSU...

While I was at it, with all the wires and heat shrink, I put heat shrink on all of the 80 mm. fans - as you might recall, I had already done this on all the 120mm. fans, but not the 80mm.:

Also did the other end of the fan cables:

I installed all fans again (yes, the case is pretty dusty):

And, here we have some old photos - because I have noticed that I during the last couple of updates have been mixing both old and new pictures, but I guess the most important thing is to show you what I have done and not necessarily in what order I did it.

So, going back a couple of updates you might have noticed the red sticker missing from the PSU fan, while it's still there in this picture:

Muoahahahaha!

Theeeeeere you go:

As I mentioned in the last update, I had bought a black PSU back plate to substitute the old one, so I installed that one.

Before:

After:

Muy, muy mucho better....

The right side panel has some sound dampening foam sitting on the inside - and frankly, after 3 years of modding the case this foam had lost much of what might have made it look good back in the day, so I wanted to cover it with the remaining piece of carbon fibre foil:

Later on, I have had to glue it on, because the foil doesn't stick too well to the sound dampening foam...

Did you notice the plastic caps sitting on some of the bolts on the right side panel? I have already mentioned them in a previous update...

I bought those from MDPC and had already used some of them here and there in the case and now I was going to use the rest:

I think they make quite a big difference...

Suddenly, I felt like having a nice cup of tea:

Heh, naaaa - seriously: I am boiling water to heat up the tubes prior to attaching them onto the fittings. Once the tubes cool down they sit really tight on the fittings avoiding the needs for strips, clamps or what else that might ruin the clean look...

I filled both loops:

Actually, I think that my plan using black tubes for the long tubes had paid off quite well. It certainly obscures the many tubes running back and forth - it's much less confusing to look at when lit up by UV light:

And then I cleaned up the cables behind the front panel:

If you didn't already spot it, I can tell you that Bitfenix had given me a couple of paracord-sleeved SATA cables from their "Alchemy series" that I was going to do a review on - having done the review, I was allowed to keep the cables.

Read and watch the review here.

Those are REALLY nice cables as you can see here:

Then, I put the cables into the case.

Before:

After:

Ok, once again I have to say that I'm sorry for having to post such a huge update, but I have a hard time finding the time to produce more frequent updates - as I have mentioned earlier the project IS completed and the computer is being used for e.g. video editing and some gaming now and then. I also spend some time setting up my own case modding site: (Hotmods.net), while I am also doing reviews of case modding stuff - and then there's my next project...

As you might be able to tell, I am working on quite a lot of case modding stuff. Let me just say that I'm hardly bored! But the next update WILL be the last for this project. Start looking forward to some nice photos and hopefully a good video, too.

Talk to you later!

[SXRguyinMA]

that looks sick! love it!!

[Twigsoffury]

Ever get the chance to look at your tower while wearing UVA/UVB+ glasses?