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[oliverw92]

Update #14 - 24/05/2010



Got a new toy - Canon EFS 60mm f2.8 Macro!



I remade all the hard drive trays - I wasn't happy with the original design and I also realised there would be masses of vibration.



To solve the vibration issues all the holes have rubber grommets in them (this also elevates the hard drives meaning they don't actually rest on the acrylic at all and the screws that go into them don't touch the acrylic either). I have also lined the edges of the base of the plates with neoprene. This creates a tight friction fit between the rails and the tray.



I'm hoping this should be enough!



Here is a 2.5" drive mounted on one of the trays.



The drive doesn't actually make direct contact with the acrylic.



And with a full size drive on.



Quick test fit - these are all just test drives so i can check dimensions etc.







Bought an SSD second hand a few weeks back. It died unfortunately so i sent it off for an RMA, got a brand new one back!



It's a Corsair Extreme 64GB (Indilinx Controller)



Tightening it onto a drive tray









Got some laser cutting by a friend. This is a plate i have had done to tidy up cable management and also mount the res on.



The use of these holes will all become clear!



Still got to cut out some holes in the mobo tray - the new Dremel I got back from repair was dead on arrival!

[oliverw92]

Pretty tight fit with the hard drive bays!



And with the res installed.



Should be getting some white tops for the res at some point.



Here is the plate behind the motherboard tray.



Hmmm why am I installing the CD drive...



Oh yeah that's why! This is my custom faceplate that stealths an FC5 and a CD Drive.





This tab is the button for the CD drive - inspiration taken from MurderMod.



Here is the blank installed over the CD drive.



And to fill the gap for the fan controller, Lamptron have joined the project! They are sending me V2 of their FC5 fan controller, which fixes the viewing angle issues of the first version.

[Disturbedguy]

looking good mate!

[Recoil]

looking great - keep us all updated!

[oliverw92]

Thankyou

Update #15 - 06/06/2010



Decided to take some overall pics of the case to give you a general idea of what stage the PC is at. I have also now finished up the motherboard tray except for one more hole, and I realised today one of my cuts is SO not straight.



My new lens makes the TJ07 look soooo sweet



























That's all folks!

[oliverw92]

Update #15 - 06/06/2010



Time to fix this mistake! This happened when my dremel broke ages ago - the carbide bit grabbed when it died and dragged itself along the top.



Yeah, not pretty!



Bring on the JB Weld.









At the time of posting this is still has about another 13 hours of curing until I can sand it back down.



Here is a picture from one of the first updates in the log - the custom hard drive bay. I am not happy with that grill on it - too blocky and clumsy.



So i dremelled it off and polished all the edges up!







Cheeky revision break before installing it.



And a quick check on the JB Weld - it is now touch dry.



I think this looks much better than before - doesn't break it up too much. I think it will look great with 4 identical Samsung F3's in there and an SSD in the top one.







Now there really won't be any work until the weekend - exam mode!

[Disturbedguy]

Still look good mate.

Good luck with the exams also.

[oliverw92]

Update #17 - 18/06/2010

Ok so some of y'all have been hollerin' to see the results of ma JB Weldin'! Go on then







Success me thinks

Then i stopped for dinner.










Some interesting news, there is a new motherboard on the way to take the place of the MSI Eclipse Plus which unfortunately died MSI are sending me their new Big Bang XPower motherboard. It should be here in about 2 weeks. Thanks to John who worked hard to source me one of these!

[razer121]

oh u lucky git...i wouldnt mind that motherboard!! btw nice one on the jb weld, looks much better! keep the updates rolling in!

[oliverw92]

Some of you might like to know i have released a blog/website, www.oliwali.co.uk. You can sub to the RSS feed there and i can keep y'all up to date on my progress! I am moving next week, the first blog post contains all the details. I also post my random musings on there, such as engraving donuts and how to make unexplainable images explainable

[oliverw92]

Update #18 - 20/07/2010

Well now, it has been rather a while since a proper update. I haven't been slacking, I have had quite a few things on! First things that came up were my A levels. 1 month of pretty bad times. Things went pretty well though, I found out my coursework mark for Design Tech a while back, 92%. That is an A*! Only exam that went badly was maths mechanics module 3. Shouldn't be too much of a problem though.

2 days after my last exam, we decided it would be an AWESOME idea to move house to the cottage we have had for a few years in Devon! This is where it got a bit complicated:

Friday - Last exam then out all night (and morning!) celebrating and trying to forget the last few boring weeks
Saturday - Try and pack up room with a terrible hangover (frequent rests were required!)
Sunday - Help pack up rest of the house (things like hi-fi that my mum can't do)
Monday - Removal guys came and loaded everything on the van. Then once that was done, my mum and my aunt drove of down to Devon to meet the van which was driving down the next day. Things weren't so simple for me, however. I had several music commitments - I was playing bass guitar at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships with my Jazz Band on the semi finals day, so i had to be around for that. THen the following week the same Jazz Band was taking part in the finals of the National Music For Youth competition. So i ended up in limbo for 2 weeks, staying with friends and moving from location to location. It was a laugh, but very tiring!

Just over a week ago i finally made it down to Devon to join my mum here:



Modding could not commence yet, however! I arrived to a bedroom stacked to the ceiling with boxes of stuff (mainly computer components hehe) so the next few days were spent making shelves and hanging my guitars on the wall:



Weekend just gone, my mum went up north to see the grandparents, so while she was gone i decided to do a nice little surprise for her and did up the room that was to be her art studio:



I made her the massive desk, the large bookshelf on the right wall, and the two CD/DVD shelves on the other wall you can see, all in two days! She is pleased with it though, so it was definitely worth it. I then spent the next day sorting out PC components and getting my backup rig running on my techbench so i could game a bit:





Finally, today, i made it back to modding and got POLARity out for some wonderful wizardy!



Here is the case as I left it last.



You may be able to see something new, however!



This is my new floor. It is no longer going to illuminated - I could not get it to work perfectly enough for my liking, therefore the EL panel had to go. Murdermod is also having some difficulties at the moment with sourcing their sLights, so that plan is on hold at the moment too.



I managed to get into school on the last day and get half an hour with the laser cutter, just enough time to run this off. It was definitely a worthy item to cut as my last ever run on that laser cutter - I am missing it already!



The stealthres arrived in one piece too!



Here i drilled 7mm holes in the feet of the acrylic floor, ready to be tapped and screwed onto the TJ07 midplate. You may have noticed that the acrylic had warped slightly - i have no idea why, it was fine when i packed it up in its box ready to go to Devon!



It was then time to put my fittings in the floor.





I then used a step bit to widen the hole up slowly.



I should explain what i am doing here quite clearly - it is a little hard to understand at first! I got the idea for using passthrough fittings in the unusual way i am about to show you from a great modder called Rickflint. He gave me permission to use it, so mad props to him! The photo above shows the base of a BP compression. Outside of the green o-ring there is a thin metal ring. The hole in the floor needs to be larger than this metal ring so that the fitting sits flush with the acrylic.



Here you can see what i am on about - the ring and the o-ring sit inside the hole. This stops there being any leaks, as you will soon see.



This is a BP passthrough fitting that I am going to invert and screw in the wrong way round to normal, from the bottom.



Here you can see what i mean - this is 'underneath' the acrylic, and the fitting has been screwed into the passthrough through the hole, rather than on top. However at the moment the assembly is floppy and wobbled around.



To solve this, simply tighten down the metal nut on the passthrough fitting against the acrylic.



And this is what it looks like from the side (i have since placed the green o-ring on the passthrough between the acrylic and the metal nut so that there is less change of the nut coming undone).



And from the top you get a lovely clean look with no passthrough showing! Thankyou rickflint for this genius idea!

[oliverw92]

If you don't use his clever idea, you end up with what is shown below - the top plate of the passthrough is on top of the acrylic rather than below. Unfortunately, with angled fittings it is not possible to use this trick because there is no metal rim on the base of the fitting to sit in the hole.



I then drilled the second and last hole in the floor.



This is what it looks like installed in the case with the res attached. Very nice!



The one on the left is the 'traditional' way of using passthrough fittings (used here for the 90 degree fitting on top) and the one on the right is rickflint's pirate method!



Here the fittings i am most likely going to use underneath the floor. The one of the left goes down to the pump from the res whilst the other goes to the outlet of the quad rad.



Upside-down.



This is a 16mm white dot illuminated momentary vandal switch i am going to use as a power button. I dislike the stock TJ07 front switch assembly - it is a large green PCB mounted on posts with LEDs and switches on it - not perfect!



Here is all the rubbish used for the stock PCB.



First i had to widen the hole with my step bit (the whole was ever so slightly too small)



The switch fits and is slightly set back into the aluminium due to the bevel on the hole. Looks much better than stock and is also much nicer to 'push' than the stock one.



During this time i also finished working on the base of the case (counter-sinking holes and cleaning up etc)



Filled in the holes on the front with JB weld. I'll leave this to dry for about 14 hours then sand it back down so it is smooth.



Now some pictures showing some tubing ideas.












I hope this update has made up for the past few weeks of nothing. I'll be back soon!

Things to look forward too:

-Wednesday/Thurs: PSU connectors arrive so i can start sleeving
-Friday/monday: MSI Big Bang Xpower arrives!
-Friday/monday: Something very very special and unique should arrive from MDPC!

[oliverw92]

Update #18 - 23/07/2010



I spy with my little eye...


a table!

Ehm i mean a box with MSI on it.



More table! Oh wait, Big Bang Xpower!



Inside the packaging are two boxes - one with the board in and one with accessories.



I can't fault them for the sheer amount of accesories you get!

- X-Fi Quantum Wave Sound card
- MSI OC Dashboard (overclocking display)
- 2x Xfire bridges, 2x SLI bridges
- Plethora of SATA data/power cables
- A load of USB and eSata backplanes
- Several massive manuals



Here is the sound card Not sure whether to leave it or powdercoat it white.



One of the best bits about this board is the black nickel 1366 socket!



Yes, you counted 6 pci-e x16 slots.



Glad to see they made the SB heatsink bigger - on the pre-release design they had a much smaller one.







Another pretty cool feature - EZ DIMMS. There are only clips on one side of the DIMM slots, making it easier and quicker to put them in.





This is the OC Genie button - will have to see how this performs. Most reviews have said it is very good.











Doctor Doctor...



As I was playing with the motherboard, DHL turned up with something from China. I wasn't expecting this for quite a while!



V1 had viewing issues with the LCD screen, V2 has these fixed.

[oliverw92]

They also sent me a load of switches for lighting control.



Hellz yeah! Not bad CAD on my behalf, drawing it perfect without having the thing in front of me!









Since when was that in there!


















A massive thanks need to go out to John at MSI and Rob and Lamptron - both of them have been amazing

[Disturbedguy]

This is really looking awesome!
Cant wait to see it finished!

[oliverw92]

Thanks!

Update #20 - 28/07/2010



Lots of stuff arrived.



Needed this paint to do the pumps (why, you will find out later on) and a metal piece that can't be powdercoated (it has a magnet glued to it).



Also got this gun to make my life easier!



Ultra-strong velcro in white



£25 of machine screws and a couple of new taps (my old ones are a bit shoddy)



All the screws went in my 3 little compartment boxes that needed topping up.



I also finally found the perfect SATA cables - 70cm black right-angle round sata cables.



DVD drive came back from RMA



Oooo whats this box... looks like it is from Germany



Anyone guessed what it is yet? Lets see...



Crimping tool. Nice, but not murderMod!



Nope, it isn't really murderMod.



These may be fine crimps from Nils, but they aint murderMod!



These black rivets and extra-large 3:1 heatshrink are also very nice, but they aren't murderMod either!



Oh, that's murderMod!