Orange Crush

[ALXAndy]

Right, back with another one.

So for this one it's not about spending money. I want to build a very small LAN rig I can take on holiday with me and hook up for our LAN night. As such it doesn't need to be terribly powerful either.

All of the work here will be on the case, not the internals. I will probably change the cables to orange and white, we will see.

Many years ago (like, 10) I built my first ITX rig. For nothing more than the fact I was bored. It was a silly idea, as I had all of my cash tied up in the big PC, but I did it any way. Well this PC ended up going to my aunt sans the Titan Black which I sold to Sam (Jinq). Since then she has daily driven it.

It looked like this when I gave it to her.

And this inside.

Only with a Quadro in there the same as a GTX 480. I am now getting it back.

The board in there is one of these.

So I shamelessly stole @Arboreal 's idea and called it Orange Crush. The RAM in there is faulty and has to be underclocked, and besides it is only 4gb dual channel. So two 2gb sticks. Not good enough. Thankfully my mate sent me some 1866 DDR3 down last year (Vengeance) and it is 16gb, more than good enough. The CPU in it is also poo, a Pentium anniversary edition. So that is coming out, and.

It will also get a 980Ti I got from Tree also, with a 1080Ti cooler on (FE). Again, more than enough.

The case has already been quite extensively modded.

I know I know, I cut the fan wire hole in the wrong side. It has a plastic cover on I made, so I will paint that. Talking of paint. That will be 99% of the work here. I am going to go mental, with a full blown custom paint finish that will require lots of stages.

I am going to remove the Mayhem fan grille on the side that did not go to original plan, and put that on the fans at the bottom. This will stop me getting smashed in the fingers by fan blades when I move the rig around, something I remember being really annoying. That will leave a gaping hole in the side, and so.

The 240 Radguard is what I have in mind. It is lovely polished silver anno. So to match that I got a handle. I went with 9" (that is what she said) in brushed stainless.

The look I am going for? think 1950s cooler. Paint scheme is in my head, but I CBA drawing it so you will just have to bear with me.

 

[ALXAndy]

A professional rendering of how I want to do the paint. This took hours, so don't take the pee.

Good thing I paint better than I draw huh.

 

[ALXAndy]

Right minor moves.

The CPU came today with the postie. The brushed handle landed at mums and the paint has shipped.

Eyeing up some chrome legs atm.

 

[Jay85]

Excellent idea, i had this thought but then i don't go to lan parties enough to warrant another build. Nice colour option though!

 

[ALXAndy]

Thanks dude.

I’ll only use it once a year but it’s so small it won’t matter. Just chuck it in the cupboard for the rest lol.

Paint arrived about 30 mins ago and the machine is being brought over thurs. so I should be able to crack on come Friday.

I’m also thinking of removing the entire front IO, making a CNC cover plate out of white and just using a vandal switch.

I do remember it being a pain to get the Titan Black in there and the 980ti with a 1080ti cooler on will be the same size.

 

[Wing-Man]

i do like the UMX's they look very premium.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK so the victim arrived earlier.

Took it apart, added Xeon, sprinkled in the RAM I got from Cenedd and..

Wicked. RAM was only 8gb G. No idea what happened there.. Maybe there used to be four sticks but I lost two? IDK, can only use two any way, but 8gb is double what it used to have and more than enough.

Handle is nice. Nice and chunky.

Then I found out why I had given it to her. It was because I was so annoyed with it. It is a PIG to work on, so it will only go back together one more time. The USB 3 socket is fudged (bent pins) and one of the DIMM levers is broken. But hey, it works.

Still, it made my mind up on getting rid of the entire IO and making a custom plate, so there is that.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK so I have now taken it all apart.

The orange plexi was what was under the silver dinoc. Sheesh, what a coincidence. Nothing needed on that then. The main shell is here.

All scrubbed clean.

Am not going to refit the Yate fans that were in the floor, as technology has moved on and thinner fans are now available.

 

[ALXAndy]

Right. This is literally it.

I have white extensions to mod already. The cooler on it is awful. Has these terrible plastic push pins and does not fit properly. For the sake of that much I will fit a new cooler.

 

[Wing-Man]

the P12 fan is so loud, you should have crabbed a noctua

 

[ALXAndy]

the P12 fan is so loud, you should have crabbed a noctua

Doesn't matter dude. TBH if you think they are loud you should have heard the Yate fans it had in it....

I will use it so infrequently it could sound like a jet tbh. For most of the year it will just be an ornament.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK so a couple of mods done. The first was to remove the IO PCB and cut it down, leaving only the power button and power/HDD LEDs.

This was done because the USB 3.0 header is dead (it's only one pin but I CBA trying to repair it) and I don't need front USB ports. I will CNC a plate to cover that on the front, and give it some identity. Need to file the board a bit and tidy it, but yeah that's that done. I then solved a mystery. See, when I took out the top slim fan it was deffo a 120. But I remember trying to put a fan in there before (like a different one, orange IIRC, Xigmatek rings a bell?) but it would not fit over the slot pins that have the threads in. Well the same happened here. Turns out the holes are different grr. So, I got out my drill bits and slowly drilled out the holes on the fan until they were large enough for it to go over regardless.

It now has a real fan in it. Not that piddly little thing in there before. I need to cut down some M3 bolts (got all that) and that will be that done. Next up was remove the Mayhem grille. This should have been mesh vented but the mesh I bought was trash and money was very tight back then. So it ended up with a piece of horrid tinted extruded plastic in there.

Paint has held up well tbh. It was Hammerite IIRC. Any way, I then got to see what a superb job I did here.

And then got into a panic. I could NOT find the Bitspower radgard. Turns out it was in the loft, oh super....

Any way, I will take that. Looks bleedin' lovely that does.

BTW going back to why I chopped down the IO board. Getting the GPU in it is a PIG. So the more space I can create for that? the better.

 

[Cenedd]

I'll be honest, I can't work out what happened with the RAM - too long ago. It was the guts of my main PC originally so I'd have thought it would have been 16 rather than 8GB...but it was a while back now. Did you not have the i7-2600k that went with it? A whole 200MHz faster than the E3 you bought!

Edit: Had a look and it might have been a gen previous meaning it was my server for a while. Maybe I'm just confused....age'll do that to you; as will man-flu!

 

[Wing-Man]

BTW going back to why I chopped down the IO board. Getting the GPU in it is a PIG. So the more space I can create for that? the better.

i had a Jonsbo V3 and thought the I/O was in the stupidest place ever, it reduced the GPU max length by 20mm, and when you looking at borderline ITX gpu's 20mm is a lot

 

[ALXAndy]

I'll be honest, I can't work out what happened with the RAM - too long ago. It was the guts of my main PC originally so I'd have thought it would have been 16 rather than 8GB...but it was a while back now. Did you not have the i7-2600k that went with it? A whole 200MHz faster than the E3 you bought!

Edit: Had a look and it might have been a gen previous meaning it was my server for a while. Maybe I'm just confused....age'll do that to you; as will man-flu!

Yup and nope. That is a 2600k, this is a Haswell socket. The 1230V3 is 4c 8t in Xeon terms, but yeah Haswell so the 2600k wouldn't work.

i had a Jonsbo V3 and thought the I/O was in the stupidest place ever, it reduced the GPU max length by 20mm, and when you looking at borderline ITX gpu's 20mm is a lot

The worst part is the outer lip. This bit...

It needed a cut out at either that end or the other side. So one of those will be meeting the saw. Might need to add some JB weld when putting it back, just depends where the screws go tbh. But I *am not* fighting it like I did getting the card that was in there out. No way. I don't have the patience I had in 2015...

Talking of patience. Another sod of a job done.


Sorta...

Bolts are too long but that shouldn't be too much of an issue. It's nice and straight, so there is that.

Problem of course is where you have to put it. Right on the curve, to avoid the fan.

Meaning that needs some clearancing and will be meeting the belt sander soon. Then of course the other end will need taking down to match. Thankfully it seems to be alu, so I can just take my time there.

 

[Cenedd]

Meaning that needs some clearancing and will be meeting the belt sander soon. Then of course the other end will need taking down to match. Thankfully it seems to be alu, so I can just take my time there.

That or 3D print a washer to take up that slack. You'd just need to know the radius of the curve which you can either do with radius gauges or find where it stops curving and take a line measurement down and across from there - make it into a quadrant and see how far the middle is from the edge....if that makes any sense.

 

[Cenedd]

 

[ALXAndy]

Go on then... 8.5 mm hole. 20mm round, I will measure the radius in a bit.

I was going to machine something....

 

[Cenedd]

If you also measure the height difference, I can make a similar (but flat) washer for the back so they end up the same height. Flat rule/object against the top surface projecting past the handle and then measure from the underside of that to the bottom of the handle like this:

If you don't want that, I can instead just bring the front one up to the same height as the top of the case so it'll sit flush.


Radius measurement:

 

[ALXAndy]

Let me try something first. I did have an idea, and it should work and look OK.... Just depends if I can get my scanner to scan wirelessly. Wish me luck, I am going to bleedin need it !