![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
IntrepidOne
n00b
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2004
- Messages
- 5
This is a photo of my machine as it was about to come home from work
I started off with a Antec SX-1040B-II case w/430 True Power with the optional windowed Side panel, which i then had the brainwave of painting the inside of the case white ,the drive cages blue and added some blue L.E.D fans and a couple of cold cathode tubes to it . It didn't turn out too bad but i had used automotive touch up paint to spay the inside of the case ( good Idea, bad implementation)
and so you can see the cathodes light up
and agian with the side off the case
Now i hate to say it but for a first attemp at a case , it isn't bad ( IT SUXORS)
i couldn't live with it when the paint started to chip off of the drive cages and the attachment point for the side panel. So it was back to the drawing board. I dissasembled the case down to the sheetmetal pieces, removed all of the rivets and sanded all of the paint off
decided to add a top window to the case in the process
i thought that i didn't want a repeat of last time with paint chiping off and so on and so forth , so i sent off the side top and bottom panel to a Body shop to be painted Base Coat clear coat Dark Titanium, and a friend who runs a fabrication shop offered to add the interior case parts to the next run of items he was gonna have powder coated, so i had him add them to the next batch of white items unfortunately i don't have photos of the parts after they came back , got sorta wrapped up in the moment of assembling the case and stuff.
I decided it would be a good time to try out water cooling, since i was working in a shop and we were promoting water cooling , seemed like i should be running a setup myself so i could better help our customers and i wanted to do a passive system so as not ot have that much noise. So i used a tranmission cooler off of a forklift for a radiator , here is a photo of the case assembled with the rad hanging off the side
and here is a shot of the innovatech tank-o-matic , you can really see the contrast between the tank with the blue UV dye in it and the white pwder coating
in this photo you can see the clear stripping i used for the top window, i originally had the regular black stripping on it but we had the clear laying around and i thought it may look better
and a picture of the front, you can really see the shine that the body shop got on the panels they did
and then the side with the window, what you can't really see in this photo is the blue acrylic piece that i had made that fits underneath the power supply with a hole for the fan, waht it does is seperates the top and the bottom of the case, and i also had a piece of mirrored acrylic cut and fit for the bottom of the case
i will add a few more pics later that show off some of the other mods that have been done to my system like the cd burner that has a radiation window cut into the top with 3 blue L.E.D in it and painted black. I painted the front of the vantec nexus black and then put the blue face plate on it as well as a vantec black fan bus with blue leds, the four L.E.D's in the front of the case were replaced with blue. i got rid of the blue cold cathodes tubes and replaced them with 3 dual cold cathode fan grills ( 2 in the rear, 1 in the front on the Antec fan shrouds)and i put in 2 UV cold cathode tubes to highlight the UV dye in the water, and i replaced all of the fans with the UV reactive blue fans from Vantec
I Upgraded as this machine was assembled i replaced the Asus A7N8X-DX-E /XP 2800+/ 3200LL Corsair Twin-X / Ati 9700 Pro/ 80 Gig Seagate Sata/ 80 Gig WD IDE with a Asus P4C800-E-DX /1 Gig Cosair PC4000 Pro/w led's My storage needs grew a bit so i filled the drive cages with 2 36 gig Raptors in a striped array for my main drive on the ICH5, i have a wd 160 Gig Sata drive and a 120 Gig Sata drive on the promise controller and another 160 Gig WD drive on the IDE and also upgraded the 9700 with a 9800XT , i also have a Ati TV tuner card in this machine
I am using an Eheim 1048 pump attached to a criticool card , with the innovatech P4 block and the innovatech Tank-o matic with the Tranny cooler for my cooling system while the system is overclocked conservatively @ 3.01 ghz or 250 FSB 1:1 it runs at approx 42c while gaming and about 33 idle, totally silent, i plan on adding in a cooler for the vid card at some time. i have had this system as high as 300 fsb just to pull of some amazing 3D Mark scores but it isn't totally stable, seems to get stable at around 292 Fsb.
Now mind you guys i know this isn't the best machine out there you also have to remember that this machine has been assembled and running for appoximately 10 months or so now.
the only problems i have had with it are all with the tank-o-matic, seems to not like the dye or the additives in teh water cause it keeps craking and leaking, i have replaced the tank once already and it seems as if it is going again, but other than that it has been a great box and from teh looks of things my daughter is going to be the proud owner of it here come friday when my opteron parts show up and i can start on another project, try to get up to the 64 bit times
Hope that you guys like it
I started off with a Antec SX-1040B-II case w/430 True Power with the optional windowed Side panel, which i then had the brainwave of painting the inside of the case white ,the drive cages blue and added some blue L.E.D fans and a couple of cold cathode tubes to it . It didn't turn out too bad but i had used automotive touch up paint to spay the inside of the case ( good Idea, bad implementation)
and so you can see the cathodes light up
and agian with the side off the case
Now i hate to say it but for a first attemp at a case , it isn't bad ( IT SUXORS)
i couldn't live with it when the paint started to chip off of the drive cages and the attachment point for the side panel. So it was back to the drawing board. I dissasembled the case down to the sheetmetal pieces, removed all of the rivets and sanded all of the paint off
decided to add a top window to the case in the process
i thought that i didn't want a repeat of last time with paint chiping off and so on and so forth , so i sent off the side top and bottom panel to a Body shop to be painted Base Coat clear coat Dark Titanium, and a friend who runs a fabrication shop offered to add the interior case parts to the next run of items he was gonna have powder coated, so i had him add them to the next batch of white items unfortunately i don't have photos of the parts after they came back , got sorta wrapped up in the moment of assembling the case and stuff.
I decided it would be a good time to try out water cooling, since i was working in a shop and we were promoting water cooling , seemed like i should be running a setup myself so i could better help our customers and i wanted to do a passive system so as not ot have that much noise. So i used a tranmission cooler off of a forklift for a radiator , here is a photo of the case assembled with the rad hanging off the side
and here is a shot of the innovatech tank-o-matic , you can really see the contrast between the tank with the blue UV dye in it and the white pwder coating
in this photo you can see the clear stripping i used for the top window, i originally had the regular black stripping on it but we had the clear laying around and i thought it may look better
and a picture of the front, you can really see the shine that the body shop got on the panels they did
and then the side with the window, what you can't really see in this photo is the blue acrylic piece that i had made that fits underneath the power supply with a hole for the fan, waht it does is seperates the top and the bottom of the case, and i also had a piece of mirrored acrylic cut and fit for the bottom of the case
i will add a few more pics later that show off some of the other mods that have been done to my system like the cd burner that has a radiation window cut into the top with 3 blue L.E.D in it and painted black. I painted the front of the vantec nexus black and then put the blue face plate on it as well as a vantec black fan bus with blue leds, the four L.E.D's in the front of the case were replaced with blue. i got rid of the blue cold cathodes tubes and replaced them with 3 dual cold cathode fan grills ( 2 in the rear, 1 in the front on the Antec fan shrouds)and i put in 2 UV cold cathode tubes to highlight the UV dye in the water, and i replaced all of the fans with the UV reactive blue fans from Vantec
I Upgraded as this machine was assembled i replaced the Asus A7N8X-DX-E /XP 2800+/ 3200LL Corsair Twin-X / Ati 9700 Pro/ 80 Gig Seagate Sata/ 80 Gig WD IDE with a Asus P4C800-E-DX /1 Gig Cosair PC4000 Pro/w led's My storage needs grew a bit so i filled the drive cages with 2 36 gig Raptors in a striped array for my main drive on the ICH5, i have a wd 160 Gig Sata drive and a 120 Gig Sata drive on the promise controller and another 160 Gig WD drive on the IDE and also upgraded the 9700 with a 9800XT , i also have a Ati TV tuner card in this machine
I am using an Eheim 1048 pump attached to a criticool card , with the innovatech P4 block and the innovatech Tank-o matic with the Tranny cooler for my cooling system while the system is overclocked conservatively @ 3.01 ghz or 250 FSB 1:1 it runs at approx 42c while gaming and about 33 idle, totally silent, i plan on adding in a cooler for the vid card at some time. i have had this system as high as 300 fsb just to pull of some amazing 3D Mark scores but it isn't totally stable, seems to get stable at around 292 Fsb.
Now mind you guys i know this isn't the best machine out there you also have to remember that this machine has been assembled and running for appoximately 10 months or so now.
the only problems i have had with it are all with the tank-o-matic, seems to not like the dye or the additives in teh water cause it keeps craking and leaking, i have replaced the tank once already and it seems as if it is going again, but other than that it has been a great box and from teh looks of things my daughter is going to be the proud owner of it here come friday when my opteron parts show up and i can start on another project, try to get up to the 64 bit times
Hope that you guys like it