Modding: Tips, Guides and Tutorials

[davido_labido]

Well, this is following on from a post i made quite some time ago in all honesty.

The powers to be wont let us have an area for modding, guides tutorials or anything like that, so i thought id make this post.

if anyone has a guide, a mod, a tutorial or anything like that, post it here, i will link it like the ones below and then it will be nice and easy to navigate

Guides:


Akasa Proslim Sata Cable Cutting and Sleeving Guide

How to take apart a sata power cable

How to wire a LED strip using molex or fan headers

RGB LED Case Mod Tutorial

How to change the LED colours in fans

How to add LEDs to a fan

How to change a fan in a power supply

How to take apart EVGA SLI bridges

How to assemble a Parvum ITX

Cable Sewing Guide

Hardline Bending Guide

How to hide motherboard LEDs

Sleeving with davido_labido youtube tutorial videos

 

[davido_labido]

well, ive been asked a couple of times for this, most recenetly i saw someone ask for a guide today, so thought id make a quick one!

Be gentle with me, im not a professional photographer, and i dont write guides for a living either, but if i miss anything, or you need clarification on anything just ask.

What you will need:

a craft knife or a VERY fine screwdriver if you dont have a knife available.

i have one of these, only a couple of quid and work like a charm.



a pair of SHARP scissors ( i use singer ones, i find them to make really nice cuts)

and of course an akasa proslim sata cable!.



Grab the cable out of the bag; you can see why they are called pro slims!

the only bit you need to worry about, is this bit.... the end.



Either end will work, it doesnt matter which one you want to work on.


Turn the cable onto its side like so.....



as you can see, there is a small join in the connector here... (ive pulled this one apart a little so you can see it easier)



put the craft knife into this little join, and GENTLY pry it apart. its only a little bit that comes out, and you will need to do both sides.

Once you have done both sides, you will have something like this,



once you get it to this stage, DONT just pull back on the cable. you will break the teath that puncture the cable and it will ruin it.

what you need to do is lift it towards the metal clip on the sata connector, so your going straight up.

once its off, it will look like this:



Turn it over (i turn both the clip and the cable over so that i know which way around the cable goes back in after i cut it)



You can see where the connnector punctures the cable, its a pretty clever idea!!

Pull the clip off the end of the cable. make sure you either mark which side needs to go back into the clip, or make sure you dont turn the cable around at all when you cut it, you need to make sure it goes back into the clip the same way it comes out.




Just cut the cable using a pair of scissors, wire cutters seem to crush the cables more, which is why i opt for scissors.



push the cable back into the connector clip



and then push it all back onto the connector. you might need some pliers to do this last bit, MAKE SURE THAT THE CONNECTOR AND THE CLIP ARE FLUSH!!!!

Then once you have finished, it will look something like this:



one thing to note, if your sleeving these cables, you dont need sata sleeve, normal "small" (4mm) sleeve will stretch over it after you take off the connector end. it looks a lot better imo. Unfortunately 550 paracord doesn't fit over them though =(

these cables can be found on ocuk Here

 

[Aneskimo]

Nice work dave they should make this a sticky thread atleast especially if we can add tutorials to it!

 

[colinmcr]

+1 For a sticky,

I remember this was discussed but I guess it fell on deaf ears, which is a shame considering the amount of money we funnel into OcUK coffers and encourage/tempt people to upgrade with great looking builds.

Great tip on the sata cable btw

So if we have a guide then maybe we post it in General Hardware then link it to you Dave?

 

[davido_labido]

yeah, il find something else to do a guide on tomorrow. i had this saved from a while back so was easy to dig out.


if amyone has any guides tips or tricks etcc, just post it here and i will edit the first post.

if you want to know anything, post up too!! maybe someone is in the know and would be able to help!!

 

[colinmcr]

I'd like to see a good one on lighting, soldering LED strips, controls and wiring switches etc. I know I did my own LED strips but I had a lot of reading on the internet first.

 

[Gregster]

Nice work David

 

[DJ_Bucho]

Very nice work. Do you use the Akasa Proslim Aata Cables simply because they're the only cables you've found that come apart like that? I was wondering if there are any other cables that use a similar design?

 

[davido_labido]

Very nice work. Do you use the Akasa Proslim Aata Cables simply because they're the only cables you've found that come apart like that? I was wondering if there are any other cables that use a similar design?

yeh, its the main reason i use these cables, that and the smaller sleeve fits on them, so theres no need to buy sata sleeve as well as standard sleeve, so it saves a few quid too.

i haven't found any other leads that come apart so easily.

I'd like to see a good one on lighting, soldering LED strips, controls and wiring switches etc. I know I did my own LED strips but I had a lot of reading on the internet first.

im sure i know just the guy to do that!!! il emai him now and see if he will take some time out to show us! i would like some more info on that myself and i know he helps eople out a lot

 

[DJ_Bucho]

yeh, its the main reason i use these cables, that and the smaller sleeve fits on them, so theres no need to buy sata sleeve as well as standard sleeve, so it saves a few quid too.
i haven't found any other leads that come apart so easily.

Ah that's a shame as Blue doesn't go at all with my build colours. I'd really like some red ones. I've got a load of spare cables, so might have a search through those and see if there's any that come apart

 

[davido_labido]

Ah that's a shame as Blue doesn't go at all with my build colours. I'd really like some red ones. I've got a load of spare cables, so might have a search through those and see if there's any that come apart

if you want red, id get the black ones that they do and sleeve them mate its the beauty of these, you can have them any colour you want

 

[DJ_Bucho]

if you want red, id get the black ones that they do and sleeve them mate its the beauty of these, you can have them any colour you want

Ah nice one, didn't think about that. I was more thinking about being able to make the perfect length cables with no extra length you've got to tuck away and hide from view.

 

[Mark This Day]

Nice tutorial mate

 

[cypto]

Very nice tutorial David, didn't realise this was possible with sata cables due to all the internal wires.

Shame about the paracord though, love the look of paracorded cables.

------------

Another good tip for cables is the sata power cables that come on a strip. You can pry off the little cap that sits on-top of the cable. Inside are teeth that cut into the cable to create the connection.

Remove the caps and the plug it's self and you can shorten the length of the power cable and the distance between the sata power plugs. To attach them to the new position simply press the cable into the teeth.

Type of cable you are looking for.

View inside with the cap removed.

 

[davido_labido]

Very nice tutorial David, didn't realise this was possible with sata cables due to all the internal wires.

Shame about the paracord though, love the look of paracorded cables.

------------

Don't have that parts lying around to take photo/make a tutorial.

But another good tip for cables is the sata power cables that come on a strip. You can pry off the little cap that sits on-top of the cable. Inside are teeth that cut into the cable to create the connection.

Remove the caps and the plug it's self and you can shorten the length of the power cable and the distance between the sata power plugs. To attach them to the new position simply press the cable into the teeth.

Your most certainly correct, i will take some photos later of these teath and show how to do them if i get chance i think i have some sata power leads to sleeve anyway

 

[Tealc]

A bit long this one.. LED strip wiring

This tutorial covers wiring up any old LED strip to your computer's power supply in a number of ways, but also to an independent power supply for use outside your case or on the back of your monitor or something else.

First of all if you can't be bothered with all this faffing about with bits of wire, connectors and the potential to damage your power supply or PC then you should really be looking at OcUKs extensive range of LED strips, which come with modular connectors that can be connected together to create full case lighting.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=1428&subid=1430&rows=0

Anything you decide to do with LED strips from this guide is your responsibility. I accept no responsibility for anything you do so don't even think of blaming me for something you've done wrong. None of the voltages inside a PC case (PSU excluded) can actually hurt you.

Things you will need:-

1) Some sort of mating half for a PSU or motherboard connector. eg Molex, fan connector.
2) A soldering iron, and some flux cored solder
3) Heatshrink
4) Something to cut and strip with. A pair of wire cutters, knife or scissors will do.

If you don't have a soldering iron or heatshrink then you can twist wires together and cover them with insulation tape in a colour of your choice. It's not a permanent solution and may come undone at some stage but it's better than nothing.


So what is a LED strip anyway?

A LED strip is a string of small Light Emitting Diodes, usually surface mounted onto a long thin strip of flexible plastic material. The LEDs themselves are semi-conductors that produce coloured light when a current flows through them. LEDs are one way devices, meaning that if you wire it up wrong nothing happens as current can only flow in one direction. If you wire it back to front it won't blow your PSU or motherboard, it'll just not work, which is a good thing I suppose if you fear for your components.

Here are a few different types of LED strip.

RGB 60 per metre

RGB 30 per metre

Some waterproof flexible one

And the cheapest type. 15 SMD per 30cm and waterproof. The LEDs are tiny little things but do produce some decent light.

Here is one lighting up a plate drawer, the spread of light is quite uniform and fills a lot of the space.

Unlike the official LED strips from the likes of Bitfenix the cheaper strips will often come without connectors and just have two bared ends. The problem here is how on earth do we get this connected up to our PC to give it the light giving voltage and current any LED needs?

There are a number of ways you can do this.

Use a molex extender, splitter thing.

Use an old fan cable and connector...

..use whatever this thing is..

..or this..

..even the connector of a long since binned Tri-cool would do the job.

So basically we can hack and chop up a Molex or a fan connector. Everyone has either a Molex or a fan connector available, if not here's one..

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CB-012-AK&groupid=1929&catid=153&subcat=

First up I hacked a Molex to Molex fan adapter cable, like the first pictured above and the one linked to for sale.

First off we need to cut the fan connector off

Then, strip the wires and tin them if you are using a soldering iron. Put some heatshrink on the wires here if you have any. The red wire will be your +12v wire and the black will be the 0v, or ground, or -ve if you prefer.

Some LED strips will come with two same colour wires, or maybe one will have a stripe. The one with the stripe will probably be your 'Red', usually anyway. If you wish to test polarity wire up your bared ends to a 9v PP3 battery. The terminals are marked + and - so you can easily work out which wire needs to go to the Yellow or Red on your Molex and which needs to go the black.

Now basically join the red and black wires together using the soldering iron, or if you dont have one just twist the wires together.

So you end up with something like this

The good thing about this method is that if you have two strips you can easily shove another Molex into the free end of the first and daisy chain them.


Next up we have the fan connector. Here's one I cut off a Xilence 80mm fan which I never used.

Same drill, strip the wires and tin them.

Bung some heatshrink on. I usually forget to do this and have to resolder but that's just the fun of doing stuff.

Same drill as before. Join red to red and black to black. Remove the yellow wire as much as possible.

So eventually once you shrink down the heatshrink it looks a bit like this.

And connect it up..

 

[Tealc]

And another one of mine from yesteryear..

In this tutorial I will be modifying a Blue LED Xilence 120mm fan into a Orange LED Xilence 120mm fan.

I used:-

4x Orange Super Bright 5mm LEDs (worth about 40p)
Soldering iron and thin solder (nicked from work)
Some scrap wire (from a telephone extension cable)
A point thing on my penknife.
12v power source (nicked from work)

On this image you can see that the LEDs have one long leg (Anode +ve) and one shorter leg (Cathode -ve). You can also see that the Anode has a smaller metal element inside the LED body.

On my fan the LEDs sat inside a 5mm hole and simply required a bit of force on the rounded lens side of the LED and they just popped out. So I did this with all 4.

Here's an extracted LED

The wiring of my fan, like my other LED fan consists of 4 spokes of wiring coming out of the hub of the fan. Each spoke is supplied by a single resistor stepping down from the 12v source at the centre. The resistors in my fan are 510 ohm which is fine for any colour LED.

I could also see which wire was +ve because Xilence had thoughtfully marked it on all spokes for me. I also coloured in the +ve wire with a red marker just to make it easier for me to identify.

So now to trimming off the existing LEDs. Just snip them off and discard, keep as appropriate. I made a bit of a mistake and trimmed all LEDs back, forgetting that the wires would be too short. In hindsight I would probably just stick the full size LED in the hole and solder the wires to it directly, trimming down afterwards.

Next step is to bare a few mm of wire from the +ve and -ve wires (no pic)

So now onto soldering. Preparation is pretty important. It's a good idea here to pre-tin the bare wire and LED leg.

Heat the bare wire/LED leg a little with the iron and allow some solder to melt onto the subject. This cleans and removes impurities from the surface and allows a much stronger and electrically sound joint to be produced.

Soldering the LED to the wire.
Holding the LED with something introduce the tinned wire to the leg of the LED and introduce some heat with the iron, and feed a little solder into the joint as it warms up. Remove heat and hold until the solder solidifies. Plenty of tutorials in soldering available on youtube if you are unsure.

And soldering the other leg.

Do the same for all four and you should be good to test. Wire up the fan to a 12v source, such as a power brick like mine or any 9v to 12v power brick.

Pop the LEDs into the fan.

And revel in it's glory.

Night shots:

Additional notes.

There are different ways that manufacturers make their LED fans.

Here is an image of the hub of one of my other LED fans (A Coolermaster red LED fan)

This one uses traditional stripey resistors, in this case 470 ohm so will be a shade brighter than my 510 one on same LEDs. The higher the resistance the less the power that gets to the LED.

If your fan uses significantly lower resistance than 400 ohms when switching from blue/white to red/orange then you may need to install an additional resistor to bump it up a little.

 

[Tealc]

And another..

In this tutorial I will be adding 16 Orange LEDs to a Xilence Red Wing 120mm case fan.

So the fan in question, all basic and boring.

I used several tools, bits and bobs. Some were required, some just to tidy things up.

16x Super Bright Orange 3mm LEDs.
4x 100 ohm resistor 1/4w
Soldering Iron and thin solder.
Scrap wire Thin.
Insulation tape - Black
Hot glue/glue gun (Cheapo off the bay)
12v Power Source
Molex connector and a bit of wire (off an Antec Tri-Cool)
Switch
Drill, 3mm drill bit.
Post-it Yellow
Cable Ties
Heatshrink Black

A few pics of my equipment.

Deciding which Resistor and shape of array.

I always wanted to use Orange LEDs and built my design around this. An Orange LED has a typical voltage of 1.8-2.2v and a current draw of 20mA to 30mA (Max).
I can safely string up to 5 in a line as the max voltage would only be 11v, which is fine in a 12v application. I could possibly do 6 but they might be underbright, only getting a max of 2v each.

Using V = I R transposed to R = V/I because we know Volts and Current and wish to determine resistance.

Our voltage is 12v-(2.2 x 4) because of the 4 LEDs in series. This gives is a required voltage drop of 3.2v.

We know the current is 20-30mA, so I picked 25mA.

Now the formula R=
Gives me R = 128 ohm

I dropped it down to 100, because I had some available and I fancied them just a little bit brighter.

Measuring up and deciding where to put the holes.

My fan is 119mm in diameter and therefore has a circumference of 374mm
I wish to place 16 LEDs so worked out that the pitch between LEDs is 23.375



I drew equally spaced crossed on a post-it so that my holes would be more or less perfect. I made a small hole at the crosses and used a felt tip marker to make a mark on the fan. A hole punch would also work.

[IMG]http://i959.photobucket.com/albums/ae72/Tealc_wii/Sums.jpg

Drilling

I am using 3mm LEDs so chose a 3mm drill. I purposefully offset the angle of the drill by about 15-20 degrees for added effect.

Here's the holes all nicely drilled. I needed to clean up some burrs on the internal side of the fan with my fingernail. Biters, use a knife blade or something

Take note that the holes are not in the dead centre but positioned slightly towards the front face of the fan. The reason for this is that the fan blades do not extend all the way to the back of the fan and using this off centre method gets the LEDs closer to the centre of the fan hub.

Install some LEDs just to see how they fit. Nice.

So now we are ready to start loading in LEDs and soldering up.

I kept the same convention, always placing the LED in with Anode to the left and Cathode to the right. The first LED needed a bend or two on the Anode to receive the positive wire and cut on the Cathode because the leg was too long. The second LED needed both legs cut.

I bent the legs directly out of the housing so at not to encroach upon the surround of the fan too much. Added the next two LEDs, forming the Cathode of the fourth on to receive the future ground wire.

It was particularly happy as the rigidity of the legs allowed me to ensure that the LEDs pointed where I wanted and it also made it much easier to solder them in place.

So easy to solder, just applying some heat to the joint and pushing some solder into the joint. The tight fit of the LEDs in the holes held them in place beautifully.

Then adding the resistor the Anode on LED one.

LED branch removed from fan.

Testing one string of 4 LEDs. Hooking up to my 12v power source and spinning the fan manually.

Adding a bit of hot glue to hold them in place. Some LEDs needed holding away from the fan while the glue cooled. I found the 3mm LEDs just a tad long through this particular frame.

Repeat the same process so that you have 4 individual strings of 4 LEDs on each side of the fan.

Wiring up the common Positive and Ground wires.

We must provide 12v goodness to all resistors so that each string of LEDs can receive the proper amount of voltage.

I used the thinnest insulated wire I could find, some telephone installation wire that I had kicking about. I removed the black and red from the insulation.

Wiring a red wire from the unattached side of the resistor to the one on the next side in a clockwise rotation. I started this at the wire inlet for the fan's standard wiring so that it can be bundled up in the same place. Then repeating the process with a black wire, starting on the negative side to the left of the standard wiring and moving counter clockwise from final cathode to final cathode

Do not join the red back up with itself, only 3 sides needed to be spanned.

Then adding a couple of wires for external power. I run out of thicker red wire so used blue wire. I hot glued the wires onto the fan here as the solder joints aren't particularly strong. A cable tie gathers things.

Wiring in a switch

I can't imagine ever wanting to turn this off but I thought I'd wire in the capability anyway.

Here's my switch. It's a '1 off 2' type switch so one side will be unused. I may use a different switch later. The 12v source is wired to the centre pin, the LED array to the top/bottom post as desired.

Wiring up to a Molex for Power

I could have patched the wires directly into the existing fan wiring after the switch but I like to have separation with things like this, it also allows me to route the cables to a different location if needed.

Donor Molex, a chopped power Molex for an Antec Tri-cool which now runs off my fan controller using a 3 pin fan header.

Soldering the wires to the Molex, with heatshrink on the wires before I join them.

So we are all done.

Looks awesome I think.

The profile of the wiring on top of the fan could short out against a case.

So added some tape to insulate the wiring from my case.

And finally some other pictures.

I'm extremely happy with the way this turned out and feel it is so much better than my first attempt at this type of mod, whether this is due to the increased number of LEDs (16 vs 12) or learned techniques or just that the Red Wing reflects Orange better than a Antec TC Black does. http://i959.photobucket.com/albums/ae72/Tealc_wii/OrangeLEDBlackfan.jpg

 

[Tealc]

And finally, for now.. A PSU fan mod.

First thing first.

Doing this mod will invalidate your warranty. PSUs can be dangerous and some of the components, especially those on the Primary side, can carry lethal charges. Only undertake this mod if you are really sure you know what you are doing and understand the consequences. I accept no liability or responsibility if you void your warranty or fry yourself when touching or worse still licking a primary capacitor.

There can be a few reasons why you'd want to swap the fan on a PSU:-

1) To fit a slower quieter more effective fan to reduce noise.
2) To replace a fan which has become noisy due to failing bearings.
3) Make it look nicer.
4) Just for fun.

My reasons are mostly in the first category but also in the fourth, yes I like this sort of thing.

Discharge the PSU. There are a couple of ways which are recommended to do this. Some involve leaving it switched off at the mains for 24 hours, another which involves using resistors to dump energy out of rectifiers and caps. I went for the unplug and hammer the case power on button a few times. I don't intend touching anything apart from the PSU case and fan and maybe a fan wire or two.

My Power Supply, the FSP Aurum 700W is a 80 Plus Gold unit that achieves 91% or thereabouts efficiency at the loads I put on it. The stock fan is a 2,400 rpm model which is wired to an rather aggressive fan controller. I've checked temperatures and the differences between case and rear PSU external temperatures never go more than 3 degrees at any load I can put on it. I'm thinking FSP have gone very aggressive with the fan assuming that Joe Public will want it to exhaust system heat as well as PSU generated heat. For me in an Antec P183 this is not as issue.

I should also add that the noise generated by the Aurum is not particularly high in any regard but is high compared with the rest of my system with no fan ever over 1,00 rpm and suspended hard drives inside an insulated Antec P183.

So I needed to decide which fan to replace with. In the end the choice was a now defunct Scythe S-Flex 1600rpm or the one I went for, the Enermax Magma. The Magma has a 85 degree C working temperature, 100,000 hour MTBF and is 1500rpm and pushes decent air. Perfect.

Your Power Supply may be different, have a different fan, run hotter or colder so your mileage may vary.

Remove the four PSU case screws to get at the inside. One of the screws may be covered with a Void sticker. Remove the sticker carefully, you may be able to reapply later.

The casing may need to be prised from the top if it's anything like mine as the sides are kind of tucked in.

The stock fan.

The power regulators -- basically this is what needs cooling (hence the big heatsink)

Unfortunately the FSP Aurum has it's fan wires soldered directly to the PCB and I can't just shove the 3 pin fan header connector in place of the stock fan.

So I need to cut the wires and stuff. Oh joy.

First thing first let's identify and understand the wiring.

A normal fan connector.

And a modded Magma connector.

So cut the wire and mark as appropriate.

Bare and tin the wires and then fit heatshrink. Solder together.

And shrink.

I wanted the sense wire (normally yellow) to run into my case and be plugged into a motherboard header so that I can monitor fan speed in the PSU. I used some Orange braid for this wire. Nothing complicated here, just basically soldered a yellow wire to the redundant Magma fan's sense wire, added the braid and heatshrink.

Fully wired up.

Fan needed to be fitted back into the PSU cover. Fan MUST have airflow pointing into the PSU. The fan will usually have arrows to help with this.

I used the rubber grommets that came with the Magma, inserting the smaller diameter through the case and into the fan grille and eventually fan, like so. I used a pointed nose plier. Fits together pretty nicely. Nice grommets from Enermax.

Then basically fit the cover back to the main part of the PSU, fit the screws and put the sticker back on.

The job is done.

A comparison on visuals.

Chuck the crappy 2,400rpm fan away.

And fit back into your case.

And now for my result. The difference between the 2,400 rpm mounted with screws and this 1,500 rpm mounted with grommets is staggering. At idle, where it's most important to me, the PSU is to all intents and purposes silent with the fan purring away slowly. The air coming out of the back is actually comparable to the airflow I felt before the change, which is odd but yet comforting that the components are still getting cooled.

Will update again when I have more data such as temperatures and under load sound signature.

 

[Tealc]

oops double post