My rigs.

Andy7 said:
Obviously you have creative talent and know your stuff about computers, but to me they look really tacky. Sorry Bro, just my opinion.
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Probably a good thing they don't look like that to me huh.

But whatever, you're entitled to your opinion.

** As previously warned no discussion of software, hence deletion - DirtyJester **


Then I can get to modding the R9 290, because it looks totally out of place.
 
Hi guys and girls. So X8 is back on.

I'm a little overweight (15 stone 5'10) and I don't carry weight well. So, I've been planning and building a BMX because I hate mountain bikes so.



It's costing me a pretty penny, so the PC has been on the backburner because basically I am building it part by part.

I've also been side tracked by audio equipment and recently bought this.



And a set of these.



Valve and B&W, can't go wrong really. This was after a failed Sound bar that I bought (Boston Acoustics) so decided to DIY and do it properly.

Any way, apologies for digressing so.

Thanks for your comments. Things are now pressing onward, and, I had the most frightful piece of good fortune. I found my Soundblaster XFI Fatal1ty FPS (a meal in itself lol)



Any way, here I am removing a SATA power run and replacing it with a MOLEX one.



I then braided a floppy power connector for the IO. Now I wanted to make absolutely certain that this thing worked. I've had it 1.5 years and it never worked properly. Thankfully I only paid £30 and I am patient....



See, this way I could have unplugged the cable and left it be. But I set it up like so.



And then spent three days testing it and making sure the March 2014 driver actually fixed it. And it does ! pure happiness at this end :D

So it was time to make space for it in the rig.

A little surgery later ,and....



Open the bugger up and remove the front, then mark.



Cut and sand...



And Mr Skull has a new home...



So. What to do about the absolutely revolting cable that connects the IO to the sound card. First up, the older members will remember these.



40 pin IDE DMA 33. The 80 pin ATA and UATA do not work. So then I am going to split all of the 40 wires, before breaking down a covered 80 pin one and making something rather nice from it. So basically braid.



And large shrink.



And with a UATA cable with the rubber bits on I should be able to make it quite nice.

OK. So basically a few days ago I was having graphical issues. Not in Windows, but .... well you know. I was getting large artifacts and splitting graphics. I was worried the card may be borked so I put a genuine Windows 8.1 serial on it and installed Windows. Hardware is all fine, so for now gaming on that other thing isn't going to happen. Not an issue, I want to edit video.

So, given 8.1 being so seamless I decided to keep it on here. 8.1 resides on the 60gb SSD and there's a 160gb laptop drive in there for storing images and so on. I also converted the Firewire Porsche drive to USB2, and made some more cables. You'll note that there's a MOLEX external cable braided now. It's between the sound card and GPU.

Any way, so what could I do for more storage to put both of the OSes on? well the answer was two of these.



32gb Enterprise SSDs. New these things were $375 each. They will last forever, and, I can confidently put them in a RAID stripe without worrying about them taking a crap on me.

£30.

I also bought one of these.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CM-203-BX

As I really, really hate taking apart SATA connectors. It cost me £9 delivered, so I'm more than happy. All I need now are two fancy SATA cables, and given the drives are completely black and white I will not have to mod them at all, they can go in 'as is'.

More to come soon, I'm really pushing to get this thing done now :)

Peace out...
 
If you have one and it works why not take it with you?

Onboard sound is fine and usually built to spec but the amplification for headphones sucks. My headphones are mostly Beats and very easy to drive but the levels on my X79 BBXPII were so bad I bought an Asus for it.
 
Ucof said:
Orange plastic 5 spoke! :D
yum yum!
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Skyway dude. They're a composite and I tell you, they're virtually indestructible.

36 hole rims would last me about ten minutes. I don't plan on anything crazy, those days are happily behind me (walking into ER in the USA dripping claret all over the floor lmao)

Just wanna ride the beach paths. They run for about four miles all along the coast.. Lovely :D
 
spoffle said:
This, it's all the vinyl and vinyl logos that let them down. I think without the logos and a bit less vinyl they'd look a lot better
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If you don't like how it looks then that's fine :) It's all down to personal preference.

I usually rate a build not on whether I like it or not, but the quality of the workmanship that's gone into it. IE - a case in a putrid brown for example. May not be a colour I like, but if the modder has painting skills then I'll be quick to point it out.

The logos could all be removed in minutes tbh. I don't even know if I will be able to get the software stable so who knows? I may end up removing them.

As I said before, I like it. Maybe because I'm the one putting all of the spade work in? :D who knows?
 
Give me ten minutes with a Dremel and I will change how you look at your computer forever - ALXAndy, Oct 2014.

OK. So I thought about making a back plate for my R9 290. It's an ugly sod at the best of times. Then I asked B-negs to paint it for me but he was too busy it seems.

So what can I do? well, I got two SSDs to mount and nowhere to put them. Let's doing something about it huh?



So OK, mark. This won't make any sense whatsoever, but keep reading. Now look back at the first pic, you'll notice I drew a line. Well..



OK, so I've clamped it into my workbench across that line. Closer..



OK. So now that it's clamped in across the line we take a heat gun and start heating. Now this is like spray painting, only you do it closer. Spray painting is anything up to 12". Here I am using 3-4" as my guide.



This gets hot. Very hot. Don't go any closer you will bubble the acrylic and wreck it. Now this takes a while, but don't force it as you will end up with camel bumps from it being uneven. What I do is gently press it until it falls of its own will.

And eventually....



OK. Whatever you do DO NOT ****ing touch it. That is a serious warning, it is seriously hot. Just keep gently pressing it evenly down, then take a look at the bend and make sure its even.



Right, now we need it out but it's still a bit hot. Take a cloth and wet it with cold water. Then...



Which cools it quicker. Eventually.



Right. Lots of measuring very carefully and cutting later and we have...




Then we mark up where the psu box ends, draw a line, cut and refit.



And bugger me ! we have a duct !

Now let's have some more fun with it. This red thing came with the case. I threw every single one of them away but one, here's why.



Because they carry the correct hole markings for SSDs. Oh yeah, talking of which.



PCIE power wires.



And..



:D

 
Well that's that horrible ribbon cable sorted.



I don't even want to go into it. Splitting 40 wires... Ugh, took about two hours :S

/Roy Castle/ Dedication is what you need....
 
Varsh said:
It may have taken 2 hours but it looks absolutely superb, much much better than the current monstrosity that still befits my case blocking up everything, I've just never had the guts to do it. I might do it at some point.
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Look around on certain websites for a DMA 33 40 pin IDE cable.

I found one for about £3 inc. They're identical aside from the fact they do not have the blocking pins.

For some reason the mic isn't working. I don't think I damaged the cable and I know I never broke any wires so it's a mystery. Doesn't matter, I'm getting a replacement in to try again and tbh this rig isn't for gaming any way so I can live without the mic.

The headphone output works and that was all I was after really. It seriously has the most powerful headphone output I own.
 
Smrtka said:
Well done sir, you are slowly putting apple to shame :D
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Slowly being the operative word :D

So here's what I did yesterday. The replacement ribbon came. Cost me about £3.



Note I removed the middle connector.Separate.



Test. Now at this point everything was working.



Here is the MOLEX output I wired the other day.



And tape up.



Then I braided it and guess what? mic doesn't work. Very, very strange :(

I don't care now though.

Oh yeah, third SSD came (replacement for a really scuffed up one) and...



Which kinda drove away the disappointment of the mic socket.

Today I hope to finish the duct up.
 
Varsh said:
It seems like the Mic is trying to tell you "I don't want to be braided you foo'". Odd that it's happening to only the Mic though, perhaps you're orienting the cable differently than before?
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No I tested it at every stage. TBH I can't get the mic working on the card socket either, so it may just be a driver issue as usual.

I tested it before doing anything, fine. Tested it again with the mid connector removed, fine. Tested it separated, fine. Then braided it, not fine lol. It may be the heat from the heat gun when I shrink? no idea.

I don't need a mic any way, not on this rig. The main duty I wanted was loud headphone output and that works lovely.
 
And so I began to make the end cap for the duct. Note how the duct end is angled? well this means that the fan in the end is aimed right into the blower, feeding it with the cool air sucked in by the front 120mm fan.



It will need trimming and tidying once the glue has set but it fits very nicely.

More soon...
 
OK so the glue set which allowed me to clean the edges and fascia.



Please note, the entire thing is still covered in the protective film hence all the lines and dirt etc.

OK, so I masked it up and drew the line. I didn't want to do this before as it flexes etc I wanted it to be true.



I've now cut it off and pumped in a bead of glue from the back side to give it strength. I should be able to clean it all up tomorrow and possibly fit it.
 
Decided to push on a bit. Obviously it's still not finished. I have graphics to make and a fan controller knob to fit, plus I am not happy with the skull placement so I will be moving him.

It's night time here now so pics are obviously a bit ropey, but I think it speaks for itself rather well.





Now whilst the blue LED on the Firewire card kinda annoys me as it's out of place it does tend to set off the glitter on the vinyl very well.



So how is this £4 fan doing its job? well let's say (and I truly mean this honestly) that the 290 used to idle at 52c.





13c drop. Not to be sniffed at that. Plus it does look kinda amazing, if I do say so myself.
 
MSTRBKR said:
For me, there is too much stuff in that case. Why are there Apple stickers as well?
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Because it doesn't run Windows?

As for there being too much in there? well congratulations there, you're the very first person I have ever heard complain that a rig contains too much hardware.

Sadly though it needs it, being it's not a gaming PC but a workstation running An.Other operating system.

So I need the sound card, I need firewire, I need storage and multiple SSDs and I need it to be cool and quiet.

And to that ends I have succeeded perfectly well. Sure, it ain't gonna be for every one but then I didn't build it for you, mate. I built it for myself.
 
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MSTRBKR said:
It doesn't run windows? The screen shot of the disk benchmark looks like windows. Fair enough of its running Mac OS then. You said you built it for yourself, but you've put photos on a public forum. To that end, I don't see a problem with what I said. I didn't mean too much hardware; there is a lot of acrylic in there hiding away the components.
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Oh I see, the old public forum chestnut, I can say whatever I like because you posted it on the internet.

That's your call. Seeing as you've done that (seems the armchair brigade are strong on this one) then I'm now entitled to think what I think of you.

As I said before, looks are subjective. If you don't like it then that's fine, but why you feel the need to point it out is beyond me. If I see something I don't particularly like on the Internet I usually mumble to myself and leave it there. Glad to know you build custom rigs though and feel like you are in a position to criticise. Once you've shown me yours as it were I may consider taking your points onboard.

But why would I care?

Any way regarding the look. It's funny you see because NZXT made a case with a PSU shroud and it sold in bucketloads. Why? Because people want to hide it. I hid everything I felt like hiding and now I've hidden too much.

TBF? It's hard enough keeping those nearest and dearest to me happy so you'll have to excuse me for making what I wanted and not really caring what 'te folks on 'te internet think.

You show too much people complain. You hide it away people still complain.

/shrug. The world needs more happy pills.

Remember - just one man, a hobby,a dremel and a heat gun with no sponsors. I think you'd find your criticism more worthy elsewhere.
 
MasterOC said:
Nice build. Not sure about that double height PSU shroud myself or the apple stickers :p , however I can see why it's been done the way you've done it . I like the ssd mounts , might have mounted them all verticlly so could get all 3 on show on the side but good modding either way.
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They don't fit the other way sadly. They're a tiny bit too tall. The case is a lot smaller than people realise hence why the hardware is stuffed in. Remember, this case was £19. In total including all of the materials to make the case itself I've spent around £45.

The entire build cost me £450, that's for an 8 core 16 thread Xeon and a Radeon 290.

It's not a dual height PSU shroud, it's a PSU shroud and a GPU shroud. They're both separate entities.

39c idle on a 290. There is Apple branding but there's also Intel branding too. It's been called too plain, too fussy, etc. I think I've got the perfect balance. Any less branding and it would have looked like a doctor's surgery table :D

I mean I like clean, but there's clean and there's too clean.

I've never seen any one build a custom duct for a GPU either. Especially not one that holds the SSDs :)
 
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