What do you think of this case? (project)

[Pob255]

it's so nice to be off my old laptop and back on my pc, even though my Edge10 17" tft died.
I've had to dig out my good old 19" Belinea CRT which although it's a humungus beast of a monitor, is still a great work horse with exellent picture quality.
As I write this, it's strange to see this old beast bending my desk once again, going to take a little while to get used to the screen curve and being a good 6" closer to my face.

The case is doing well, I'm useing the same tempory powerswitch that I used last time (fits nicely in one on the holes I cut for the USB) and I've run a USB extension cable out of one of the back ports and gaffer taped it to the Belinea, I actually like this setup haveing the usb right infront of me instead of haveing to reach down to the case.
I might see if I can fit it to the desk somehow went I get my edge10 RMA'd (no real space in a 17" TFT for a USB.


EDIT: something I forgot to post before.
I did encounter a couple of problems with the wireing when rebuilding the pc.
The floppy disk cable is not long enough to reach.
Because of the sideways faceing Harddrives I cannot use a rounded IDE cable like I did for the DVDrw as it would block the side pannel. (Thoes Round cables are no ware near as flexable as ribbon cables.) The ribbon cable while long enough to reach is still a little short to fold neatly (little know fact it is quite safe to fold an IDE ribbon cable through 45 degres) a bit annoying as I've become quite adept at folding ribbon cables to run them around the sides of cases to keep them out of the air flow.
The front lighting has worked quite well, although not how I originally envisioned it, only down side here is that the sharkoon light tubes and Xcilo LED fan are not the same shade of blue.

[Pob255]

Photo's

Case lights on/off (also turned down the front Xcilo fan, which also dims it )


One rather messy desk space

EDIT: Yes the keyboard shelf is far too low, I can barely get my legs under it.
This was my Girl friends pc desk thing, but she stole my desk setup as she needs the space more. I realy need to raise the whole thing by about 4 inches

[Pob255]

Well last thrusday I poped around my parents house on route to work (as it's just round the corner) and asked my father to extend the wires on the power, reset, power led, hd led and the two USB connectors.
I've not got around to installing the usb yet but the other bits have worked a treat no more wires sticking out of the case for a power button.

Oh and I found the details on my old case
It was an Antler Supercase SK-352 BL

Cost £20 or so from MircoDirect and came with a very rubbish PSU which I took out and through in the bin.
Pritty much an el cheapo case basic and functional but only wide enough to fit 92mm fans.
It does look quite nice from the out side.

[xrob]

lol that looks so hard to use that desk, guess it forces you to have good posture or you'll be getting a stiff neck. nice curved CRT, at least get a flat CRT lol! nice mod btw.

[Pob255]

Nah it's hiddious for posture as I cannot get my legs under it so my body is often twisted through 45 degrees

The CRT is only there temp untill the RMA on my ftf goes through. Although it's a very nice 19" Belinea which I got in 1999 Still going strong

[Andaho]

I think your next project should be building a custom desk; no leg room and keyboard and mouse at below knee level?

I have a decent desk at the moment, but I'm looking at building a new simple one - with B&Q wall mounted shelfing. You can get 2m brackets to put up the wall, a large 65cm shelf to use as the table top, and then put as many shelves as you need above and below it

I've never understood why people like to have their PC lit up like a christmas tree! - I can only guess it's something to do with being afraid of the dark, but want to stop using the plug-in night light, so instead have their PC light up the room at night?

[-N!CK-]

nice one man, i think that case is asking for a wee bit of water cooling lol

[Pob255]

i think that case is asking for a wee bit of water cooling lol

LOL it's not that BIG

And I had a custom desk set up before, two freestanding draw units ikea and a great big slab of 1" thick wood veneer chipboard (the sort of stuff used for kitchen work surfaces)
However my girlfriend pinched it so she can use a drawing board as well as her pc and there's not enough space for two of them.

[-N!CK-]

And I had a custom desk set up before, two freestanding draw units ikea and a great big slab of 1" thick wood veneer chipboard (the sort of stuff used for kitchen work surfaces)
However my girlfriend pinched it so she can use a drawing board as well as her pc and there's not enough space for two of them.

don't be a doormat my friend, ye need to show some power....hahaha

[Pob255]

Mini Update.

For xmass I got a core2duo e6600, MSI P35 Neo2-FR, thermalright Ultima90, Pioneer SATA DVDrw (due to p35's only haveing 1 IDE port) and a couple of copper heat spreaders for my ram.

Unfortunatly the USB port on the back stick up slightly higher than on my old ASRock motherboard, so I'm going to have to take the drimmel to my server case again to make it fit.
So for the time being I've had to stick every thing back in my old El-Cheapo case
Ther's not room for a 120mm fan on the ultima so I've stuck my nice Zalman 92mm with the speed reducer extension on it.

Here are a couple of quick and none to great pic's I took.

El-Cheapo looks ok from the outside.


Then you see the inside


All the little LEDs make it look like a xmass tree inside my pc.

EDIT: things of note.
this case only takes a rear 92mm fan max and as I'd pinched it for the ultima, I raided a old (and still working ) Qtec PSU for an 80mm fan, it's the lovely pink one and actually not a bad fan.

Currently the loudest thing in my case is the gigabyte vpower graphics card cooler as I'm just running it off a molex as the cable is too short to reach any of the motherboard headers.

[piranha]

Maybe consider getting some cables ties?

[Pob255]

Nah no point it's only tempory untill I can get the time to cut a small chunk out of my server case again.

ok the air flow isn't great but an 800mm out and the 120mm psu fan seem to be handeling things ok for now.

EDIT: I've got some cable ties but I generally find common bag ties far eaiser and quicker to use, esp when you need to remove/reposition one.

[Pob255]

Update

Yep I'm still tinkering with the case and please excuse the bad photos, still useing the old shonky camera. (I'll see if I can borrow my girlfriends new one and get some better shots)

I finally got around to getting a coolermaster 92mm PWM fan to fit on the Ultima90, so I can let the motherboard control the speed and don't have to fiddle around with it by hand. (I looked at fitting a 120mm to it but it's too tall for this case )
As I have a week off work I took the time to do a couple of paint touch ups where it had chipped and to take the trusty drimmel to the back of the case to make the new motherboard fit.

One other thing I did was order a new 120mm blue led fan to replace the buzzy front fan (which has now gone onto the side, much better ) the one I got was an Akasa as they were on "today only" at scan and I spotted some 40mm LED chipset fans also on sale so I picked up 3 of thoes as well.

Two of the 40mmx10mm fans I tightly bag-tied together, threaded rubber bands through the ends and fitted a fan splitter to (so they both run of one motherboard fan header)

Hey presto one memory cooler, I did have a pic of this fitted but the photo was so bad I deleted it.
Very easy to fit, basically the rubberbands are fed under the end catches of the memory slots.

Next I fitted the 40mmx20mm fan onto the north bridge and a old unused 50mmx10mm fan from a pentium 2 cooler onto the mofet heatsink.
It was very easy to do, fed bag ties through the fins of the coolers under the upper heat pipes and through the fans.
A couple of twists of the bag ties and they are very sceure.


Removeing the rear case fan so I could cut away the bit blocking the higher USB ports on the MSI Neo2-FR was a bit of a pain as I'd glue-gunned it in place. however a bit of kitchen roll and a hot iron sorted it out.
Now this case is only 190mm wide so it's not actually as deep as many current cases designed for 120mm rear case fans. This was a major problem asjust cutting out the section blocking the usb port was not enough as I couldn't get the fan back in.
I sorted it out but cutting away yet another section and mounting the fan so it sticks out of the back slightly (about 10mm)
As the section I cut away was mesh which I left in so I couldn't accedently stick my fingers in the fan if I have to reach around the back of the case I also fitted a 120mm fan grill to it and glue-gunned the sucker back in again. (partly as it worked so well last time but mainly to reinforce the back of the case which now has a large gap in the middle.)

Then I just had to put everything back in and reroute all the wireing

Also must point out that I've now replaced one of my IDE drives for a SATA one.

(again I did have a few more pic includeing one of it all lite up and glowy but so bad quality I've not bothered to upload them )

[mycarsavw]

Jonny Five is Alive!

[amjedm]

... Zalman fan controller...

But I do like these 2400rpm basic sharkoons, at minimum on the zalman they are slient, at 50% the freezer 7 pro is louder at full and they shiif a good amount of air even at minimum.

Please could you advise which Zalman controller you're using?

What voltage would you say is minimum is? I'm after some quiet fans.

Thanks.