Rig Pimperization Complete.

[Electrofreak]

Well, I went and pimped out my rig a bit, and felt obligated to do a little update on it. I've posted pics of my comp before(http://psforums.station.sony.com/ps/board/message?board.id=pstechsupport&message.id=5748&vie w=by_date_ascending&page=2 to see the old pictures, they are about 1/2 way down the page,) but to be honest the cable setup was really messy and I wanted to make it look a little better (and solve some of my airflow problems). So, I went and bought a ThermalTake UFO #2 92mm CPU fan, a ThermalTake PIPE101 heatsink, a cable sleeving kit and some nice new molex connecters. After spending a weekend wrestling with it, this is how it has turned out:



Outside view. It may still look a little cluttered, but that is simply because I forced the IDE cables to press up against the window a bit for better airflow, and it looks a bit more showy when the lights are off.



I love how it looks without the lights on. I really need to top this all off with a blacklight some time, I've got a lot of UV reactive stuff in there. Also, the CPU fan LEDs are downright blinding if you look into them with the lights off. They also flash in all sorts of patterns and I have thusly dubbed it "The Seizure Fan of DOOM".


This is what it looks like with the side window off. Again, still looks a bit cluttered in spots but I can't really do much more to it because I have 12 various fans (CPU, GPU, and PSU fans included) in my case, 11 of which are controllable via 5 fan speed controllers on the front and back of my case. Then there are several inverters for the IDE cable lights, 3 temperature diodes, cables for front firewire, sound and USB etc, so all things considered, I think I did alright.


Up top you see my CPU fan and heatsink, keepin this baby running cool. I've gotten a pretty fair OC out of it, running the CPU at 217 FSB, 1:1 with my HyperX PC3500 DDR. Below the CPU, the blue light you see is the GPU fan of my 9800 PRO. Below that lies the dual PCI card fan I use to keep the sucker running cool.


Lastly, it warms this computer geek's heart to see temps like these. First is CPU temp, second is GPU temp.

Specs (basically just my sig modified ):

Shuttle AN50R Motherboard with nVidia nForce 3 150 chipset
AMD 64 3200 1MB Cache OCed to 2170MHz (10x217) 1302 FSB cooled by a ThermalTake PIPE101 heatsink and 90mm UFO fan.
1GB Kingston HyperX PC3500 DDR @ 217mhz (CL2-3-3-8)
Hercules 3D Prophet Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB sporting all copper heatsinks and cooled by a blue-LED PC slot dual fan.
ASPIRE X-Superalien Blue Aluminum Server Case with 500W Power Supply
Dual boot running Windows 98 on a 7200 RPM Seagate 80GB ATA133
Windows XP Home on a 7200 RPM Seagate 80GB SATA
And what REALLY matters... 40+ FPS with maxed graphics in a ZERG.

Next up on the list of improvements will be a dual WD Raptor setup (TSR-JoelS told me how awesome his were) followed probably by an x800 PRO VIVO (which I will flash to an XT, again TSR-JoelS's suggestion) and then I'll probably drop an Audigy 2 ZS into this sucker. Looks like I'm gonna have to start saving!

[MattxMosh]

I dont like the colors or the fans grill, but regardless, VERY VERY NICE.

Makes me want to stop being a lazy bitch and carve out my window.

12 fans is far too many though, too many wires cluttering too, you shoukld route them behind the motherboard/tray. Love the IDE cables, I have the same ones kicking around.

[Corrosion]

nice!

[Electrofreak]

Blue is my favorite color And yeah, I was thinkin about going around behind the motherboard, but meh, this works alright.

12 fans = 2 PSU fans (controlled by a knob on back of the PSU) + 1 92mm CPU fan (controlled via a knob in a PCI slot on the back) + 2 PCI card fans (controlled via a slider in a PCI slot on the back) + 6 Case fans (2 fans controlled via left knob on front of case, 4 fans controlled via right knob on front of case), + 1 GPU fan (no controller).

Yeah the entire thing took me a while, I was a little lazy on the sleeving in spots, so if I get bored I might add a bit more, I still have a bunch left. It was all sorta fun in a frustrating-as-hell sorta way.

[Rbstr]

nice job Electro, i just got my payceck; $370 its time to order my 6800gt wo0t

[Electrofreak]

Sweet! My comp may be pretty but a 6800 will tromp it in benchmarks

[Octavian]

Damn that looks good. How'd you do the symbols?

[Daleon]

Very nice. Your looks very close to mine. Same case style, similar cable hell, fans, etc. Went with blue led fans and blue cold cathodes also.

[Sentrosi]

Couldn't you have put the hard drives so that the connectors are all located behind the window? Or is there not enough room for that? IMO it would tighten up the case, and add airflow that you want to.

[Electrofreak]

Yeah sentrosi I tried that at first but the space behind the hard drive cage is too tight due to cables I have coming down from my front USB, temp panel, sound, firewire, fan control knobs, power to the front fans etc. Its a big bundle of cables back there and I couldn't get the IDEs to fit back there very well. Plus, this setup makes a bit easier for me to swap drives in and out, which I do occasionally. I plan on getting a dual WD Raptor setup sometime, and so I might be able to get away with doing that because I'll really only need to route 1 IDE cable back there, as I'll be able to ditch one of my ATAs.

As for the logos, they are simply window clings that the Devs gave us as PSUMA, and Hamma handed out. He oringinally only gave one to us each but I stole a few extra I actually ended up taking 9 of them, one of each empire for myself and my 2 younger brothers.
Boy did he give me the evil eye when he saw me making off with a stack of those clings!

[HunterKiller]

very nice.

[Sentrosi]

Here's a thought; why not use the old flat ribbon cables and fold them so that you could fit the cables behind there? Instead of having them hang down, you could (possibly) just make it so the cable goes directly into the drive.

[Electrofreak]

eh, well i bought those nice flashy new round IDEs. They cost me a pretty penny and look cool, so I'm probably going to stick with this for now. Thanks for the suggestions though, I'll probably run an IDE back there after I get a dual WD Raptor setup (and thus will only need 1 ATA). The only problem I'd had previously was getting 2 of them to fit back there.

[Baneblade]

Pimp my Dell.

I'm not a huge fan of distractions while power comping, but that looks pretty sweet.

[Electrofreak]

The flickering CPU fan lights would be annoying if I didn't have the window side of my case facing a wall. Kind of funny, I add all these lights and stuff to it and the window faces a wall ahh well, I'm still happy with it.