You can't imagine how long this has been coming! I originally wanted to do an orange box project waaaay back when we had a build off competition which I think was 2009 or 2010.
I've had a couple of epic fail projects, I made a black TJ07 which I sprayed inside very badly then punctured the 120.3 and got a huge spider living in it. I was never happy with that, too big, never anywhere near polished enough etc.
For about the last year I've had a PC A05 with thrown together stuff in there, mATX i3 etc, its been fine as a "just works" pc but certainly nothing special.
Probably 18 months ago, maybe more I started talking to a friend on another site about some case mods, I bought a PC7 which has always been my favourite case, big enough for an ATX mobo and watercooling, still compact and a bit of a challenge to build in. Perfect.
So the PC7 went directly to my friend, we talked a lot about the case cuts and powdercoating, I wanted lots of orange but not orange outside as I thought that would look daft in the fairly modern types of flats I like to live in.
So here we are, this is what the case looks like!
This was finished this probably... 6 months ago? Actually maybe more, I know I had it delivered to my old job in their old premises.. gosh!
Part of the reason it took so long was choosing the hardware, I'm a total freak about colour matching so a mobo with blue or green or whatever wasn't going to cut it. I knew I wanted some highish end hardware (i7, sandybridge etc, that sort of thing) and the only board I knew of at the time that would fit the colourscheme was the foxconn renaissance s1366 board so I found one on ebay, bought it and when it got delivered all the pins were bent. That went back and I was back to square one.
I was about to go with either all black s1155 like one of the gigabyte boards or maybe an asus sabretooth but they weren't quite right. I saw the Gigabyte X58a-oc but I draw the line at about £200 on motherboards, I'm not extreme clocker then I saw W3bbo was selling one so I grabbed it and it was game on! I even struggled over the RAM, I knew I wanted black, I would have preferred 12gb but the combinations were doing my head in, eventually I grabbed a good deal on 2 x 4gb and an extra single 4gb stick of vengeance. So here's the hardware (with an i7 920 D0, GTX480 and F120 120gb SSD)
And then all the trimmings, prebraided orange cables, orange tubing, xigmatec fans braided by me, DDC 18w pump, 2 x PA120.1, OCZ block
And a little idea I had, to light the motherboard up, I got an LED strip and attached behind the mobo. Ignore the tape, I hadn't seen fixings in the pack
its much tidier now. Check out the finished pics, you can see the glow from behind the mobo
So, after putting the mobo in, then out, then in then out etc etc this was the beginning.
I spent half of yesterday finally biting the bullet and putting this thing together, I have to be honest I don't really enjoy this much anymore, I find it quite stressful, the thought I'll be up until god knows when trying to figure out why it beeps and turns off or where the leak is coming from etc etc.
Anyway, half the time was sorting out this nest, check it out! this was after about 4 attempts and the back panel goes on fine now but I won't be taking it off for fun!
And now.. final pics! As it happened it didn't boot but that was only because the mobo didn't like the memory in the black slots so I switched them and it juped into life. Tiny leak on the bottom PA120.1 but that was just loose. All in all very successful!
Temps aren't great, 45 idle on very low fans but the cpu is after the GTX480 so I guess its not that bad, I ran intel burn test and that got it up to about 70 degrees with the fans on full.
I might add an extra fan to the bottom rad for push pull, that might drop it a wee bit but as long as its stable when I've got it up to 4ghz then I'll be happy.
Quite relieved its over although there's a little tidying up to do but nothing major. My favourite bit is the fact I actually put some thought into the pump location so now its held in place by the tubing and can't touch anything and vibrate against the case which was a major PITA on the last one.
So, what do you think? This is literally the only time I ever fancy a DSLR as I'd like some better pics. That's it!
I'm back! I never really went away to be honest but I thought considering some of my past works it was about time I had something special and I'm finally there
I've had a couple of epic fail projects, I made a black TJ07 which I sprayed inside very badly then punctured the 120.3 and got a huge spider living in it. I was never happy with that, too big, never anywhere near polished enough etc.
For about the last year I've had a PC A05 with thrown together stuff in there, mATX i3 etc, its been fine as a "just works" pc but certainly nothing special.
Probably 18 months ago, maybe more I started talking to a friend on another site about some case mods, I bought a PC7 which has always been my favourite case, big enough for an ATX mobo and watercooling, still compact and a bit of a challenge to build in. Perfect.
So the PC7 went directly to my friend, we talked a lot about the case cuts and powdercoating, I wanted lots of orange but not orange outside as I thought that would look daft in the fairly modern types of flats I like to live in.
So here we are, this is what the case looks like!
This was finished this probably... 6 months ago? Actually maybe more, I know I had it delivered to my old job in their old premises.. gosh!
Part of the reason it took so long was choosing the hardware, I'm a total freak about colour matching so a mobo with blue or green or whatever wasn't going to cut it. I knew I wanted some highish end hardware (i7, sandybridge etc, that sort of thing) and the only board I knew of at the time that would fit the colourscheme was the foxconn renaissance s1366 board so I found one on ebay, bought it and when it got delivered all the pins were bent. That went back and I was back to square one.
I was about to go with either all black s1155 like one of the gigabyte boards or maybe an asus sabretooth but they weren't quite right. I saw the Gigabyte X58a-oc but I draw the line at about £200 on motherboards, I'm not extreme clocker then I saw W3bbo was selling one so I grabbed it and it was game on! I even struggled over the RAM, I knew I wanted black, I would have preferred 12gb but the combinations were doing my head in, eventually I grabbed a good deal on 2 x 4gb and an extra single 4gb stick of vengeance. So here's the hardware (with an i7 920 D0, GTX480 and F120 120gb SSD)
And then all the trimmings, prebraided orange cables, orange tubing, xigmatec fans braided by me, DDC 18w pump, 2 x PA120.1, OCZ block
And a little idea I had, to light the motherboard up, I got an LED strip and attached behind the mobo. Ignore the tape, I hadn't seen fixings in the pack
its much tidier now. Check out the finished pics, you can see the glow from behind the mobo
So, after putting the mobo in, then out, then in then out etc etc this was the beginning.
I spent half of yesterday finally biting the bullet and putting this thing together, I have to be honest I don't really enjoy this much anymore, I find it quite stressful, the thought I'll be up until god knows when trying to figure out why it beeps and turns off or where the leak is coming from etc etc.
Anyway, half the time was sorting out this nest, check it out! this was after about 4 attempts and the back panel goes on fine now but I won't be taking it off for fun!
And now.. final pics! As it happened it didn't boot but that was only because the mobo didn't like the memory in the black slots so I switched them and it juped into life. Tiny leak on the bottom PA120.1 but that was just loose. All in all very successful!
Temps aren't great, 45 idle on very low fans but the cpu is after the GTX480 so I guess its not that bad, I ran intel burn test and that got it up to about 70 degrees with the fans on full.
I might add an extra fan to the bottom rad for push pull, that might drop it a wee bit but as long as its stable when I've got it up to 4ghz then I'll be happy.
Quite relieved its over although there's a little tidying up to do but nothing major. My favourite bit is the fact I actually put some thought into the pump location so now its held in place by the tubing and can't touch anything and vibrate against the case which was a major PITA on the last one.
So, what do you think? This is literally the only time I ever fancy a DSLR as I'd like some better pics. That's it!
I'm back! I never really went away to be honest but I thought considering some of my past works it was about time I had something special and I'm finally there