(In Win 901) Asteria II: Rearmoured

lol I knew before you even started your cables paracord was going to be a pain, which is why I asked about your stretching and slipping experience ;)

The black is the 425 paracord I mentioned; it's 3mm thick when the cord is inside, but shrinks to a smidge over 2 when fully stretched over my 1.1mm OD wire. The original wire I was using was 1.3mm OD but I had a few issues getting decent crimps on my Dupont connectors (a bit too wide to fit the housing). The blue is actually 275 paracord at 2.4mm wide because i knew I was reducing the OD of the wire. Fortunately it too drops to 2.1mm when fully stretched so both completed wire colours end up being the same OD.

Don't hate on my printing, however much I love my Ender 3 Pro it's stopped being dimensionally accurate when printing tiny things, so it took a chunk of trial and error to get my combs and caps correct :p Other than this recent glitch though, my printer has been top banana since the day I got it, so I've avoided a lot of the kit printer headaches.
 
Yes I would. When dialled in nicely I've seen it beat the snot out of the big boys like the Prusa for 1/3 the money.

A lot of people don't see the point in the Pro over the standard, but personally I like having an actual branded PSU on it (Mean Well) and the larger Y carriage and magnetic build plate have been great. There are some mods you must make as part of your initial build, but once they're in you can keep the rest of the printer stock and it's a gem. There are also a couple of things to watch out for, mainly warped print beds, but such is the nature of kit printers.

The Ender 5 though is regarded as superior in every aspect so if it's in your budget than I'd probably go with that one. But for under £200 (including some new bed springs and handful of other bits of hardware) you really can't beat the Ender 3 Pro.
 
I might take this off-thread if you're ok with me asking daft questions. I feel the need to be able to print buttons for a control pad with Ninjaflex filament for I have been led astray :D
 
Thought I'd quickly mention an experiment I'm working on.

One of the biggest complaints made of the In Win 901 when it first launched was "form over function", and one of the biggest "lolwhut" design choices is the fully enclosed rear, blocking off access to the motherboard I/O area. In a standard build it'd be bad enough having to pop the rear plate off every time you wanted access to the USB ports or whatever, but it's be impossible for me as I'm mounting a 120mm radiator inside the rear cavity between motherboard I/O and case rear. So there's always been a plan in my mind to reroute the front panel USB 3 ports to the back, tucked up underneath the 360mm radiator at the bottom of the case or some such.

But those USB 3 cables are massive, chunky and disgusting even before you try to bend them for half-decent cable management. So how about we try our own? Time for some potato pics...

milli-grid.jpg


That's 9 wires of 19 (or 18, but I'll get to that in a bit) for 1 USB 3 port. That is a Molex Milli-grid 51110 connector; 2mm pitch with 10x2 circuits. Now, it turns out I misread the specs and bought the wrong ones. These are 51110-2050 which don't have locking ramps or a polarisation key. At the very least you'd want 51110-2052 which has the polarisation key. 51110-2051 has the locking ramps as well, but since the 20-pin header on the motherboard isn't actually a Molex Milli-grid I don't know if the locking ramps will match up correct. I may replace them, but for now I'm using the pin 1 triangle to indicate the empty pin location and wire up from there.

The wires are a little bitten, but not as bad as the picture suggests, because I had to bodge crimp these since Milli-grid connectors are so small.

dupont_milli-grid.jpg


Top is a standard Dupont connector for front panel and the like, bottom is a Milli-grid. As you can see the barrel of the Milli-grid is so much shorter than the computer crimps we're used to it actually rests inside the jaws of the crimp tool, so if you try to treat them like Dupont of ATX crimps you actually crush the barrel. I ended up crimping the cable strain relief on its own and then using needle-nose pliers to grip and flatten the strands crimp. Worked out OK actually, but is a major fiddle and it does dig some minor marks into the wire insulation. Looks like I'll have to sleeve these after all.


For the other end, I landed a couple of these fun little USB 3 PCBs off fleabay.
pcb_soldering.jpg


Quick bit of through-hole soldering and we have a USB 3 port! The pinout on the PCB isn't 1:1 with the motherboard header pinout so there's an annoying cross-over and twist with VBUS, D+ and D- ending up at the other end of the connector, but it'll be hidden :p

And I'm happy to say that it works...kinda. A variety of USB flash drives all connect and work perfectly, but I am limited to USB 2 speeds because of 1 little question mark: pin 10.

You can see from the PCB that each port has 9 pins, but a motherboard header has an additional 19th pin and I don't know what to do with it. The pinout and spec says pin 10 is an "ID pin" used to identify that a USB 3 cable has been inserted, and therefore enable Super-speed mode, but I just don't know exactly how to wire it up. Some say it's another ground pin, but do I hook that into GND on one of the ports? Both? Some claim Asus boards don't even utilise it, but their front panel USB 3 does enable Super-speed mode. I'm not too bothered if I can't get Super-speed mode working because these aren't shielded cables, but it would be nice to at least try.

So, if anybody knows how the internal 19-pin cables are hooked up to get ID pin 10 working then let me know! Before I take apart the stock 901 cable since I'm not using it anyway :p

Fun times with potato pictures, hopefully catch you soon with more updates.
 
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First thing that comes to mind is, why would there be one ID pin for 2 sockets? So I suspect that pin shouldn't impact the speed. The extra 4 pins per USB socket should define super speed.

But that's just speculation :P
 
Changed your name back, I see ;) luck picked back up again?

I agree with your speculation, you'd think that having the 4 extra pins connected would signal the controller than a USB 3 device was connected, and therefore enable Super-speed. If you put in a USB 2 device then those 4 pins aren't in use. But according to the USBTreeView utility, I don't get the "S" logo next to the USB devices when I plug them in, and 2 flash drives are USB 3. So no idea right now.

Like I said in the post though, I'm not too fussed about actually getting the fast data rates, I'm more than happy to just have 2 ports on the back of the case without a grotesque block of plastic hanging off the motherboard to do it. If I can't work out the Super-speed thing, I may just save myself the soldering and cable job and actually wire it up for USB 2. 10 wires is better than 18, right? :p
 
What you want to have - but not to pay for - to do those extra tiny crimps is an "ENGINEER PA-09" crimp. I can't link to it but you'll pick it up on the first search result. They let you crimp each pair of wings individually rather than together. It was the only way I got the 2mm pitch crimps for the Aquaero extension and they've come in useful for bigger ones more recently too. Fiddly, pricey but they do a nice job.
 
£40 on the rainforest? And they did your 2mm Aquaero OK? I've got some JST VH crimps to do and likely another USB 3 for Ortux: Asteria 3 (coming soon™), so it might be worth the investment.

Alternatively can I borrow yours if I pay postage :P
 
@Smffy has done his research on fiddly crimps too.

Deffo wouldn't be bothered about USB 3 on every port, so long as I had access to it somewhere, if needed. Have you tried plugging a normal case header in, just to make sure it works?

LePhuronn said:
Changed your name back, I see ;) luck picked back up again?
Click to expand...
I think everyone else's luck just dive bombed to meet mine in late March! :D
 
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If you lived nearby you'd be very welcome to borrow them. This is (hopefully) a better picture (click for larger) of the tool, crimps and shell I was using. If I remember correctly the pins and shell were USB3 parts I ordered from the US because they were the only thing I could find in the right pitch at the time.
For being sure whether it is USB3 speeds, have you got a good USB3 stick or drive that you could just run a data transfer test and if it's faster then the max speed of USB2, you should be ok?

 
That's not a Molex Milli-grid connector (the barrel on the crimps is different) but I've found recently that a lot of the 2mm pitch connectors are very similar and all do the job.

I've watched a couple of demo videos and reviews for the PA-09 and I'm sold. £40 isn't stupid money and it's worth every penny if I can get my crimps done properly, especially as I have JST VH pins to do as well. Hitting up the rainforest as soon as my voucher codes land (the perks of playing too many stupid games on my phone through reward sites).

As for the USB 3 speed issue, I'm going to double-check everything with a stock 19-pin cable to see what's what and run some speed tests on my USB 3 flash drives. If Super-speed is a go then it's working out what the deal is with my custom job. I may yet dismantle the 901's stock cable just to see how it's wired up and what's done, if anything, with Pin 10.
 
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OK, it looks like I'm not going to get Super-speed on my wee experiment. I grabbed the Intel USB 3 and USB group cable assembly spec documents and nothing in either actually talks about this mythical pin 10. Intel refer to it as "over current protection" but all pin out diagrams and data talk about the big-ass plug (19 pins) or the interface ports (9 pins), but nothing about how the two link together.

So I ripped apart the 901's stock front panel cable knowing I won't be using it and had a look :D
pin10_arrow.jpg


Well won't you look at that. Pin 10 is not connected, but the ports attached to this cable enable Super-speed just fine. Note the "S" for Super-speed on the icon.
ss-enabled.png


Plug in my experiment however and we get "H" for Hi-speed (registers as a different hub on the USB 3 root too)
ss-disabled.png



So, the upshot is I'm falling foul of impedance limits because the USB 3 spec pretty much states Super-speed capability is a very finicky business. There's something on my DIY job that's causing the controller hub to fail its Super-speed self-test and therefore falling back to USB 2 speeds. Although my wires aren't shielded, they're 24 AWG across the board which is much bigger than the 28-30 AWG listed in the spec so I can't see the copper being the issue. The PCB, however, is a cheapo job so I'm thinking that's where signal quality is lost and kicking out the test.

To that end, I'll think about where to go from here. I could go down a direct solder route and hook up the wires directly to the ports (I do have, after all, an internal USB 3 cable already part-shredded ;) ) or I could cut my losses and just live with USB 2 speeds. And if I'm going down that route then I can save myself the grief of 8 wires and just use the 10 for USB 2.

Still, it's been a learning experience!
 
I suspect the first time you have to back something up or transfer something large to/from external storage, you'll be cursing a lack of USB3. My inclination would be that if you can possibly have it, do. One alternative that springs to mind if you can't get the internal header working would be to slap in a USB3 PCIE card. Not sure if that would put the external ports somewhere more helpful or not.
Otherwise, if you can get a cable into either the MB's port or the add-in card's port then you could run a cable to a powered USB3 hub. It'll need to be powered unless the cable is damn short and you're running anything that draws much power. For example if you run a 2.5” USB3 hard disk (the bus-powered variety, not the larger 3.5" bricks that have a PSU) then if you have an extension of a couple of metres you'll be on the border of whether it'll have enough power to run reliably. Depends on the make as to exactly how much they need.... but it's damn irritating if you're trying to use them for nightly backups. The USB3 hub in my monitor is useless for the same reason.
 
No space for a USB card in this ITX build ;)

There was always the intention of getting a powered USB 3 hub anyway simply because Asus skimped on the number of ports on the Impact VIII, and because of that this internal cable was always a "can I do it" experiment. It would be nice to see if I can get Super-speed working, but I'm not going to kill myself over it :p absolute worst case is use the two ports as USB 2 for my mouse and keyboard, freeing up USB 3 ports for things that need it.

PA-09 on its way too so I'm going to redo the crimps properly to see if that helps out.
 
Quick question for those following: I'm starting on the PSU cables very soon and not looking forward to the double-wire tomfoolery that's coming with Corsair's lovely 10+18 to 24 arrangement. Let me ask this:

Can we replace this:
double-wires_traditional.png


With this?
double-wires_proposed.png


The latter will be a lot easier to make and cleaner to sleeve and route, and I'm sure I've seen it done before somewhere. It's certainly done on some 6+2 GPU cables to get the extra ground wires in, but on my PSU (SF600 Platinum) the double wires are for 3.3V, 5V and a ground.

Is this doable, or am I going to have to get the soldering iron out for some annoying T-splice action?

Cheers.
 
LePhuronn said:
Quick question for those following: I'm starting on the PSU cables very soon and not looking forward to the double-wire tomfoolery that's coming with Corsair's lovely 10+18 to 24 arrangement. Let me ask this:

Can we replace this:
double-wires_traditional.png


With this?
double-wires_proposed.png


The latter will be a lot easier to make and cleaner to sleeve and route, and I'm sure I've seen it done before somewhere. It's certainly done on some 6+2 GPU cables to get the extra ground wires in, but on my PSU (SF600 Platinum) the double wires are for 3.3V, 5V and a ground.

Is this doable, or am I going to have to get the soldering iron out for some annoying T-splice action?

Cheers.
Click to expand...
If there's 2 wire sources and one destination, that implies there's enough current that one wire isn't enough. Your arrangement has only a single wire delivering current to the motherboard.

If you look at it another way - current from the right side source has to travel along a longer piece of wire than in stock arrangement.

I didn't think there was much 5V current these days but I guess USB is bringing it back up. Electrically it's probably OK but I'd check expected current draw.
 
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