Project Red Alert - IMG heavy

BigDom · 31 Jan 2006 at 20:40

With the inspiration of similar recent project I've decided to turn this old case I had lying around...

Into an overclocked Red monster of doom. Naturally on a budget although the budget's a bit higher than other recent examples of about £400 it's still fun and hopefully you guys will enjoy it too

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Mobo and PSU fitted, Mobo is the Abit AN8 Fatality although won't be using the Nguru module as it's the wrong colour and not practical to respray.

CPU, 3500+ Venice cored with a Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler. Since buying it I understand this cooler might struggle beyond 2.5ghz - we'll see. As you can see it's got help from 2 80mm fans plus the 2 fans on the mobo ( covered by the black shroud ). I'll also be adding a blowhole and 80mm fan just as soon as I can work out where.

BigDom · 31 Jan 2006 at 20:41

Once I'd done that it was time to paint the panels - here they are in primer awaiting the gloss coats. Using normal car aerosol spray paints, in this case a metalic peugeut red. Chose red as black is too normal

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and finally the case all together in red lovelyness. This is a bit of a trial fit as the side panel hasn't been laquered yet but gives a good idea of the final look.

Final spec will hopefulyl be :-

1gb Gskill ZX
SLI'd 6600's cooled by Zalman's.
Athlon 64 3500+ Venice cooled by Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro

HDD is an old 10gig which wil in the future be replaced by something else.

CD-Rom is an old one I had lying around, not even sure if it works.

Everythign will be clocked as high as I can stabely manage

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brocksta · 31 Jan 2006 at 22:31

nice job mate, great colour!

m3csl2004 · 31 Jan 2006 at 23:10

deffo want some serious cathodes and fans in there, get it lookin mean, than you want......water cooling with red uv additive :cool:

Ultra_Extreme · 31 Jan 2006 at 23:11

looks cool, if i were you once you have lacuered it mask up some of those lower swooshy bits on the front and do them black also make a template for the buttons and do them black too, that would look ace.

(BoG) Napalm · 31 Jan 2006 at 23:14

Shame about the paint you got on the washing machine(?) in the background

Otherwise looks sexy.

BigDom · 31 Jan 2006 at 23:16

m3csl2004 said:
deffo want some serious cathodes and fans in there, get it lookin mean, than you want......water cooling with red uv additive

Hehe Oooo now you mention it that could be a fun future addition. Especially with that red mobo

BigDom · 31 Jan 2006 at 23:18

(BoG) Napalm said:
Shame about the paint you got on the washing machine(?) in the background

Otherwise looks sexy.

hehe fortunatly turps got it off the machine and the wood is going in a weeks time

BigDom · 1 Feb 2006 at 00:06

Ooo thinking about it... shame I don't know someone who can do custom lazer cuts... Lazer cut window in the side with 'Red Alert' accross it.

nikebee · 1 Feb 2006 at 00:38

none of the images are working here mate

nothing at all in firefox, and red X's in IE

Raikiri · 1 Feb 2006 at 00:48

Looks good, you shouldnt have a problem with the arctic freezer past 2.5ghz. I run my 3200+ @ 2.5ghz but with fairly high voltage (1.55v) and it is 40c load. Should be fine upto 1.6v and ~2.8ghz

BigDom · 1 Feb 2006 at 00:57

nikebee said:
none of the images are working here mate

nothing at all in firefox, and red X's in IE

Strange working fine for me on Opera and obviously for other posters. Definatly still on the FTP host too.

nikebee · 1 Feb 2006 at 01:16

hmm

seem to be working fine now :confused:

Beansprout · 1 Feb 2006 at 01:20

Not Found
The requested URL /Dscf0081.jpg was not found on this server.

Perhaps a typo somewhere?

If not, uploader in sig

BigDom · 1 Feb 2006 at 02:03

Appears my mates host is playing up - changed host

kbc · 1 Feb 2006 at 02:12

Exciting stuff, the color's pretty shocking. :eek:

Cut a few windows into the side panel and it'll look perfect.

Good luck with it. I have high expectations for this project.

Ricochet J · 1 Feb 2006 at 17:49

Brilliant. Looking forward to updates. I'd clean the dust out of the mobo whilst your at it!

Eliot · 1 Feb 2006 at 18:38

i think you should have a window with dark paint moving out to the bright red so its like dark around the window and light outsdie, am i babbling?

BigDom · 1 Feb 2006 at 23:25

Thanks for the support

I remembered an unusued Tagan 430W modular I had so that's been swapped for the Antec. Neater insides now

- but tighter behind the CD-Rom

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Just waiting for the 6600's to arrive then I can start work on the next stage

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Plan on benchmarking with a single 6600 and default clocked 3500+. Then working on the CPU. Then SLI, then overclocking the graphics.

Not got any expectations out of the 6600 ( although they are being sold as overclocked ) - don't really know anything about them at all so any tips on that front would be appreciated. I just know they are SLIable and have run in SLI mode.

BigDom · 6 Feb 2006 at 23:02

Update time

The twin 6600's havn't arrived yet but I recently took advantage of the cheap X1800XT's so I've setup Red Alert with my old X800GTO2. Managed to get the layout pretty neat and tidy.

So the spec is currently :-

Venice 3500 cooled buy the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro
X800GTO2 cooled buy a Arctic Cooling ATI 4 (X800 Series) VGA Silencer
G.Skill 1GB DDR ZX PC3200 (2x512MB) CAS2 Dual Channel Kit

After Installing Win2K and the various tools needed to test her I setup to work overclocking her.

Currently at the time of writing she is running prime95 with the following :-

230FSB at a voltage of 1.45 - 2.530 Ghz
Memory I've slackend off to (assuming I changed the right values) CL 2.5-4-4-8 and upped the volts 1 notch to 2.65.
Graphics running at 494/594 for now.

Benchmarks will be when I'm happy she's stable

As said earlier I am aiming for 2.6Ghz so 236fsb