After much consideration of computer cases and what not, I have finally settled on the following:
Electronic Hardware
Abit AW-9D MAX
NV 8800GTX
Xeon 3060
GEiL 2GB 1066 5/5/5/15
Silverstone 850W
Cooling Equipment
Apogee 1U (for GFX)
DD z-Chip
Aquatube Special Edition (silver)
DDC-2 @ DDCT-01
Modded/Upgraded Vapo LS (silver)
Thermochill PA 120.2
Case
Lian Li PC-65 Plus (silver)
These things I already have except for the PC-65 and the PA 120.2, which hopefully someone can sell me :D
The Aquatube Special Edition is from a store in the UK and is appropriate for the 1/2" ID-based system.
The reason I'm essentially moving to a new case is because the Cube doesn't easily hold what I want it to hold. There's no place to put a radiator, except outside the case. Also, it's quite fragile, and is not a good idea for a college appartment.
Goals:
Clean and neat look; nothing externally mounted
Portable
Moderate to low noise level (though the SS might put it at the moderate range)
Excellent OCs
Considerations:
No internal optical drives (see next item)
Tight fit with the PA 120.2 mounted in the top two 5.25" slots along with the AquaTube mounted in the bottom two 5.25" slots.
Difficult to expand; SLI would be exceptionally difficult, since a 120.2 would barely suffice.
Giannis86
05-19-2008, 11:54 PM
first of all good luck with your new build;)
as about your considerations, how about modding the HDD racks (some cutting etc) to fit the optical drive at the bottom? (you could mod it to open from the side panel or cut the front bottom air intake to fit it there)
first of all good luck with your new build;)
as about your considerations, how about modding the HDD racks (some cutting etc) to fit the optical drive at the bottom? (you could mod it to open from the side panel or cut the front bottom air intake to fit it there)
Thanks! That's a really sweet idea--I never thought of that.
http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/6006/pc65bjp8.png
That actually doesn't look like a 65 plus to me; those look like x2 80mm fans near the front, so I'm guessing it's the non-plus version. Anyway, I'm told that a single 8800gtx will fit, but an sli configuration won't fit without a mod on the HDD rack. That's okay, since I'm not planning on having SLI.
So I guess I would have to remove the HDD tray, or cut a slot for the optical drive. I hope there's enough space, since the HDDs will probably have to be placed on the lower rack... the middle rack might be needed for tubing clearance if I install the AquaTube in the lower two 5.25" slots.
Preliminarily examining the newly arrived PC-65, I can already tell this is going to be quite exciting, but will also require some modifications...
Since I won't be able to post pictures until later, here is a delineation of what's going on. It's the standard Lian Li PC-65 case, which I got from eBay. It came with two DVD-type drives, one of which is RW. It doesn't matter, since I removed them both from the upper two slots.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=190224401198
http://i22.ebayimg.com/08/i/000/f2/9c/d6f2_1.JPG
http://i13.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/f2/9c/d72d_1.JPG
http://i1.ebayimg.com/04/i/000/f2/9c/d76a_1.JPG
The page and photos above show the exact item I won on eBay.
:up: The rumors are true. Lian Li's are definitely incredible cases.
The next step was to determine the fitting of the very high-end Silverstone PSU in conjunction with the PA 120.2. MVC of OC Forums has empirically demonstrated this (http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=4816579&postcount=6). However, the Silverstone PSU is atypically large: according to his post, he had but a bit of space left. It would be very incredible to fit things together in my case. ;)
Incredibly however, it did fit ... sort of -- after a lot of jamming and pushing the PSU wires aside, that is. The PSU wires are too "bulky"; simply folding them downward didn't work. Instead, I had to bend them to the side, and sort of push the PA 120.2 off-center, toward the windowed-side of the case. This of course, might look slightly after-thought-ish, but it might be the only way short of simply installing the PA 120.2 elsewhere, which I don't want to do: there simply is no other appropriate place. I don't want to install it outside; the front doesn't have enough room. Below, there will be a phase change unit. Unfortunately, while it does fit, it doesn't fit the way I want it to. Almost an inch of the PA 120.2 sticks out the front. It isn't very much: it's little enough to be covered up by the bay cover plates, but it makes me wonder how I'm going to cut my holes. If anyone has suggestions for this, please do comment.
EDIT -- One solution I came up with was to use some standoff screws where the PSU mounts to the case. The PC-65 features a removable PSU panel which is held in place with four screws. If I use the same sort of screw used to mount motherboards to trays, I could buy myself an extra 1/4" with each strand-off screw. Of course, this means that the PSU will stick out the back... However, I would see the top more often then I would see the back of the case, so I think this might be a reasonable solution.
The top panel unfortunately contains a silly 80mm fan. It's also a square-cut sort of grill, as you can see from the photo: meaning that to cut the vent area for the PA 120.2, I'll have to cut a rectangle out instead of a pair of 120 mm holes. While I don't have a Dremel, I do have access to the Cornell MechE manufacturing lab.
Next, I recalled that mating the phase change unit (custom Vapochill) to the Lian Li will require drilling and cutting. Four holes will need to be made for bolts that I don't have (and never had), and one large hold will need to be cut so that the evaporator can pass through (or rather a sort of a D-shaped channel so that the evaporator "tube" can pass through... simply remove the side panel slap the tube in...).
Finally, I wanted to see what the Aquatube would look like in the system. Since the Aquabay hasn't come in yet, I simply held the Aquatube and the mated Laing DDC pump to the place where it should be -- the lower two 5" bays. I noticed that the barbs basically touch the bottom of the 5" bay "holder". I'll need to cut away the bottom so that tubes can be connected to the Aquatube and the pump.
Additionally, since the 3 1/2" drive bays are right beneath the 5" bays, it is unlikely that any of them will be of any use where they are. If I am lucky, the Tygon tube will bend enough to allow just a single HDD to be mounted there. If I'm not so lucky, they'll have to be mounted below. That's not that bad, since I only have one or two HDDs anyway.