Project: PITA

zootfloot

zootfloot

zootfloot

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Joined
24 Nov 2005
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Skelton in Cleveland
Project: PITA (Lian Li A05b new build)

Thought i would share my new build with you guys, its the first time i have modded a case so please be gentle.

First of all this isnt really a project, its just a series of mods performed on a Lian Li PC A05b case, the hardware going into it is the same as in my signature but the Arctic Freezer 7 has been replaced with a TRUE Black edition.

You will read as to why i have christened this little project PITA (Pain In The A$$) as you read through the log

Now for a bit of back story:

I fell in love with this little case after reading the [H] forum thread dedicated to this little chappie and decided there and then that i must have one, about a month later i was perusing the Auction site and came across one which was "In as new condition with a few marks and enlarged reset switch hole", i emailed the seller and asked for the photographs of the damaged areas, what came back was nothing to worry about.

We agreed a good price and i purchased the case, when i received it there was more damage than had been shown and the front panel was a completely different one.

Basically the front panel had a huge hole gouged out of it and there was scratches all round the hole, the side panel was scratched to bits etc etc (PITA), apart from that it was in excellent condition.

This all happened about 7 months ago now, and since then i have been on the prowl for little bits and pieces to add to the case and after accumulating it all i finally started the build on friday 3rd Oct.

Here is a list of all the parts i already had, managed to acquire or steal from work :-)

Lian Li PC A05b Aluminium Case
Lian Li G50 Side Panel (The vented one)
Lian Li G50 Side fan and assembly
Sound Damping Material
Xilence 3.5" Fan Controller
TRUE Black edition (Lapped)
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Intel E2200 (Lapped)


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3 x Xilence Redwing 120mm Fans
2 x Vandal Switches (Power-red ring, Reset & HDD activity-Red Dot)
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB
GeIL 4GB (4x1GB) PC2-6400C4
Coolermaster Real Power 520w Modular

Building Time:

First thing i did was to look at the front panel and see what i could do about the messed up hole and scratches around it, the only thing that i could easily do with my limited tools and skills was to make a cover of sorts, ideally this would have been made from Brushed Aluminum same as the case etc but i didnt have any and didnt want tuy a panel just to cut a couple of inches out of it.

Anyways the wife does some kind wierd hobby and she had some black acrylic lying around so i stole a piece of that and cut and shaped it so that it would cover all of the offending areas (I know its not ideal but until i find something else it will have to do)

I then cut out the material that the circuit board for the old switches would have attached to so that the vandal switches had decent clearance behind.

Next up was Cutting a hole in the bottom of the case so the PSU could draw cool air into itself, this was actually much simpler than i thought, i just got a CD, marked round it and cut using my trusty Dremel.

I then trimmed the hole with Rubber window trim with an adhesive bond already in it, this gave a decent finish, to this added the mesh guard from the rear of the A05B.

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Next up came fitting the TRUE Black to the Mobo along with a couple of Xilence Redwing 120mm's in Push pull Configuration attached to it, i didnt full appreciate how big and heavy the TRUE was until it was actually on the MOBO

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The TRUE seems to dwarf the poor MOBO.

After that was all fitted together i started work on my favourite part of the build....putting it all inside the case.

I must say, the A05b has proved to be a very easy case to work with, plenty of room inside despite its compact size, no cut fingers due to crappy finish, i also like the fact that everything seems to just feel right.

After fitting all the parts in and wiring up it was time for a test run which proved to be succesful, although my vandal switches were not lighting up at all (PITA) but the mechanical part (on/off) of the switches were working.

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I went back and checked my soldering and then checked the headers and everything seemed to be fine there, so i took everything out of the case and inspected the MOBO...DRY JOINTS on the headers! (PITA)

Nothing that a quick bit of soldering didnt fix and i tried for a test run again....IT LIVES.
 
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Now onto the more cosmetic side of things, Cable tidying.

Because i removed the HDD caddy from the from of the case i thought i would really struggle for hiding places for all the wiring, luckily enough i dont have a lot of components in this machine and also lucky is the fact that i managed to flat most of the cables coming from the PSU so that i could tuck them under the motherboard tray.

What i couldnt get behind the tray either went beside the PSU or tucked in beside the DVD drive and HDD.

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Now for the last part, the machine fully assembled and working, i am going stress test tonight and see what happens, i was always impressed by the results that my AF7 gave and i want to be more impressed by the TRUE...especially as both the CPU and Heatsink have been lapped.

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Probably what many of you are thinking is....it wasnt that much of a pain in the a$$, but to get to this point it has taken the best part of 7 months, what with the front panel being so messed up, needing a replacement side panel (loving the G50 one) and loads of other little things going wrong or waiting on things to become available i would certainly say its been a real PITA but a real labour of love too.

Any suggestions or comments feel free to leave a reply....thanks
 
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looks very nice! nice and clean innards too :)
isn't it a bit noisy with that front 120mm exhausting right into the restrictive front panel though?
 
is that front case fan giving your true enough air? Looks good though those fans make it looks like a beast of a air cooling system. What's the noise like with and without the noise dampening material?
 
Looks good... better if you posted full size pictures rather than small pic links, pain to keep clicking to load them...
 
Thanks for the replies fellas,

The sound damping material is the Acoustipack 3-layer stuff that i managed to steal from work, i have enough left over to trim inside the side panel and thats it, i havent stuck any of it down yet so it was more for effect than anything else at this time.

The IDE cable looks terrible i agree, but it looks a damned site better than the ribbon cable that would have been in there if i didnt see sense first, im hoping that Santa brings me a nice Blu-Ray sata drive, but i havent been a particularly good boy this year.

Temperature wise its looking good so far, my thermometer here is showing about 20 degrees, but this is fluctuating by 1-2 degrees during the course of the day (dependant on if the better half turns the heating on or not)...with the CPU at stock speeds and the graphics card slightly overclocked i am getting 20 degrees or there abouts on both cores when idle.

Something is bothering me about that, i didnt think it possible to get an air cooled rig down to the same ambient temp as the room, but speedfan, realtemp and coretemp are all confirming this result as can be seen below.

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Noise wise i am more than happy and so is the wife, before this build she constantly moaned how loud my old system was, this morning she commented on how she could barely hear it at all.

I also did a run with the front panel off for 2 hours, by having the front off temps lowered by about 1 degree but i do appreciate that all these temps are going to go up when i do the overclocking bit, so the noise will go up .

Just a heads up here....the xilence fan controller is doing virtually nothing at all, i think it looks good but damned its a useless piece of junk.
 
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Time for an update with regards to temps and stability.

Yesterday i overclocked the E2200 to 3Ghz(10x300) with a voltage of 1.344v, i was very surprised to see the system still idleing at about 20 degrees

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So i set about Prime testing using the small FFT's torture test, initially i wanted to see how much voltage the chip dropped so i did a quick check and was pleased to see that it only dropped down to 1.328v on load which i dont think is bad since the VID for this chip is 1.325v.

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Next i went for the full blown stability test, basically i let prime run overnight for about 8 hours, when i checked this morning it was still running very nicely and had only reached a max temperature of 45 degrees on both cores.

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Yes, i think i can safely say that i am a very happy man this morning :-)


Now i have a dilemma, this computer is on basically 24 hours a day, bearing that in mind do i leave the system at 3Ghz, or do i try for more?

I think i would be more comfortable keeping it at 3Ghz for long term use but i am also very tempted to push it as far as i can and give the system a proper work out....what do u think?
 
See what you can get out of it. Then bench the difference between what you can get at most (say 60c per core) and what it is now, if its a msll performance increase then don't bother. On the other hand get what yiucan out of it and keep it there, speedstep will keep it all cool anyway with no load.

- Pea0n
 
Just a quick update,

The E2200 doesnt look like it wants to go much above 3.1ghz i did manage to get it Prime stable at 3.4Ghz but it was at a voltage i wasnt comfortable with, so it looks like 3.0Ghz from now on for everyday use.

I am also looking at investing in one of the E8xxx chips....goddamned overclocking bug has got me good now!
 
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