Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 8,968
- Location
- UK
Following on from this thread, about my long lost Borg, well I scraped together the $$$ to fill it with 1337 hardware, and ended up with, well, having got a decent picture of it finished due to various shonky 3rd rate hardware failing on me! But the sides will be back on soon for an all important 'final' shot!
Insides include, 650W Corsair PSU, Asus P5Q-E, E8400 @4ghz, 4Gig Geil, HIS 4850, some fans, hardrives, cathodes, neatness!
Was an absolute pig to build, the hardships coming from todays supersized HSF combos! I spent a long time looking for low heigh or horizontal style Coolers, before deciding on the Zaward Sqaure to do the job for me, granted it's not the best cooler, and a bit of a compromise from my original plans of a Tuniq or similar, but a Tuniq would protude 20-30 mm outside the case
The Zaward is pretty cool in that you can mount the fan under the HS too, A LOT of time was spent reading reviews here deciding if it would actually fit as the mobo I wanted has a pretty large NB/Mopsfet cooling setup on it, good news is it does fit
but bad news is it needed modding to do so, which at first I didn't realise! the HS bracket was actually resting on the capacitors thart surround the socket as opposed to the chip itself! So needed a Dremel and metal file to make it fit, even now it sits close to the caps round the socket but it's not going anywhere now it's bolted in safely! The fan also just clears the top of the ram too, I had to opt for ram void of any funky sized coolers to make it fit also, all due to this archaic ****** case! But I love it and wanted to use it! 
Also big tasty GFX coolers are out to due to them overhanging the side of ther GFX card too much, the door closes within 1cm of the GFX card edge, so heres hoping in the future this spec doesn't change! It means my plans for a full cover waterblock are now scuppered too! Again the pipes would be outside of the case.
Bleh, lots of writing but wanted to explain the mods! The baybus was made by a guy who used to post here ages ago (sadly no longer) and I had it cusotm built, using a LianLi faceplate and matching knobs, it controls al lthe fans/cathodes and features rotary switches going through voltages I can't even remember anymore, the 120MM intake has 6 positions, each position has its own LED colour too, going through red/white/blue LEDs -nifty!
Both 92MM exhausts are my own doing, as stock there are 2x 80MM exhausts on the PSU side, I however changed those to a single 92MM exhaust (quieter fan) and blocked the other one, the PSU exhaust the rest of that side, and on the CPU side where theres is provisionally no hole I squeezed in a 92MM exhaust, this either required hacking the actual ATX backplate (it's that tight a fight) or mounting it externally, I chose the later for now, and duct tape seals the gaps just fine!
Inside are 2 Red Cathodes, kinda more pink but red enough, and I sprayed the insides of the case matt white to encahnce their glowyness, it works well and looks clean inside!
Today a new AC Ryan UV/LED fan arrived for the CPU so I swapped that over, took a while to rewire it to not only retain the 3pin speed sensing but also to then wire it through to the baybus, bit of chopping wires and reusing old 3pin connectors,
the now ex CPU fan i moved to the front position where there is already room for a 120MM In my case however I've chopped out all the offending metal, and had the previous 120 intake mounted behind a 'dead' stripped out fan for more of a windtunnel effect, with this new fan I chopped out the innards of the current fan (kinda half dead anyway) to incrase this tunnel hoping it will focus airflow over the GFX/Mobo and quiten it too
Erm, the top window is yet void of anything in it, am tryin to source some perspex as we type, but originally cut the hole thinking I might use it as a window or a blowhole, so the hole is 120mm square -a handy size to fit a cheap CDR case in if needs be and I can't fiond some perspex before next weeks LAN
No pics of the side window yet, that kind of echoes the roof window, so kinda cool looking!
...more later....
Insides include, 650W Corsair PSU, Asus P5Q-E, E8400 @4ghz, 4Gig Geil, HIS 4850, some fans, hardrives, cathodes, neatness!
Was an absolute pig to build, the hardships coming from todays supersized HSF combos! I spent a long time looking for low heigh or horizontal style Coolers, before deciding on the Zaward Sqaure to do the job for me, granted it's not the best cooler, and a bit of a compromise from my original plans of a Tuniq or similar, but a Tuniq would protude 20-30 mm outside the case
The Zaward is pretty cool in that you can mount the fan under the HS too, A LOT of time was spent reading reviews here deciding if it would actually fit as the mobo I wanted has a pretty large NB/Mopsfet cooling setup on it, good news is it does fit
but bad news is it needed modding to do so, which at first I didn't realise! the HS bracket was actually resting on the capacitors thart surround the socket as opposed to the chip itself! So needed a Dremel and metal file to make it fit, even now it sits close to the caps round the socket but it's not going anywhere now it's bolted in safely! The fan also just clears the top of the ram too, I had to opt for ram void of any funky sized coolers to make it fit also, all due to this archaic ****** case! But I love it and wanted to use it! Also big tasty GFX coolers are out to due to them overhanging the side of ther GFX card too much, the door closes within 1cm of the GFX card edge, so heres hoping in the future this spec doesn't change! It means my plans for a full cover waterblock are now scuppered too! Again the pipes would be outside of the case.
Bleh, lots of writing but wanted to explain the mods! The baybus was made by a guy who used to post here ages ago (sadly no longer) and I had it cusotm built, using a LianLi faceplate and matching knobs, it controls al lthe fans/cathodes and features rotary switches going through voltages I can't even remember anymore, the 120MM intake has 6 positions, each position has its own LED colour too, going through red/white/blue LEDs -nifty!
Both 92MM exhausts are my own doing, as stock there are 2x 80MM exhausts on the PSU side, I however changed those to a single 92MM exhaust (quieter fan) and blocked the other one, the PSU exhaust the rest of that side, and on the CPU side where theres is provisionally no hole I squeezed in a 92MM exhaust, this either required hacking the actual ATX backplate (it's that tight a fight) or mounting it externally, I chose the later for now, and duct tape seals the gaps just fine!
Inside are 2 Red Cathodes, kinda more pink but red enough, and I sprayed the insides of the case matt white to encahnce their glowyness, it works well and looks clean inside!
Today a new AC Ryan UV/LED fan arrived for the CPU so I swapped that over, took a while to rewire it to not only retain the 3pin speed sensing but also to then wire it through to the baybus, bit of chopping wires and reusing old 3pin connectors,
the now ex CPU fan i moved to the front position where there is already room for a 120MM In my case however I've chopped out all the offending metal, and had the previous 120 intake mounted behind a 'dead' stripped out fan for more of a windtunnel effect, with this new fan I chopped out the innards of the current fan (kinda half dead anyway) to incrase this tunnel hoping it will focus airflow over the GFX/Mobo and quiten it too
Erm, the top window is yet void of anything in it, am tryin to source some perspex as we type, but originally cut the hole thinking I might use it as a window or a blowhole, so the hole is 120mm square -a handy size to fit a cheap CDR case in if needs be and I can't fiond some perspex before next weeks LAN
No pics of the side window yet, that kind of echoes the roof window, so kinda cool looking!
...more later....
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i dont understand why those cases cost so much, but then again the goes for cases that float around the £200 margin
