Midnight in the Garden of Jade and Jet

I thought I was done with modding. Apparently I was wrong.

This all started with the EK block debacle, and the subsequent trashing of my loop by a faulty CPU block. I did a full system teardown, and it wasn't pretty. My PSU was limping along, my board's cooling made poor contact and my case was completely built around the cooling-as in when I took it out it fell apart. Needless to say I realized I had made some mistakes.

So, a few e-mails and a personal visit or two later, I decided I had to build myself a new PC, if for no other reason LOTRO is calling me back. But with a new baby, who comes with his own set of health issues, and my own poor health, what to do?

Instead of throw money at it, throw ingenuity at it and see what sticks.

However, there is a bit of money tossing. Not as much as it seems, due to favors, old parts and pulls from other systems. Think of it as cleaning out your closet.

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It's a big box. Big enough to fit my fat cat in.

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There's a guy on Ebay selling these for $200 USD off retail price. I posted a link in the Latest Purchases thread, if he still has them I'll gladly give whoever needs it the link as well.

I'm glad it's cheap, it's pretty much the ultimate 1156 motherboard.

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Gratuitous box shots. I get to do this, it's my log.

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Yes that says Lucid Hydra. It's the only way to get three functional PCI-E on 1156. NF200 isn NOT functional for what I need it for.

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At least it looks like a good board. However, I'm so not done with it...

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Comes with a ton of stuff, including a nice sound card and an external overclocking device, ala EVGA's EVbot.

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The GTX465 from Whaler's Heading. If you want to know what I'm doing for VGA for that, ASUS sent me a nice 550Ti that will do the job perfectly. This was already suited up for water, so I went ahead and saved myself some money.

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Now with backplate...

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The RAID card from my failed project Batman: Midnight's Only Begotten. Card still functions perfectly. Needs a BBU, though. I think I'll get one for my birthday. Card is an Intel SRCSAS18E, supports 8 SATA/SAS with 256MB cache and RAID 0/1/5/10/50. It'll be running a few Fujitsu MAY2036RC drives and this...

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De-sinked Velociraptor 300GB. Newegg has them for refurb all the time. A friend of mine provided this and the case (yet to be disclosed) as payment for assembling his dual Opty system in his new DD Tower 26. Should get a pic or two of that. It's pretty nice.

As to any modding progress, yeah. but another update. Give me a few minutes.

(If any of this seems dull or repetitive, I post on multiple forums, and different audiences want different things. My apologies up front.)

First off, much thanks to Bitspower!

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I'll be the first in the US (and probably one of the first people overall) with a full complement of these:

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You'll see soon enough what they're for (besides being fittings) but just look at them-BP has outdone themselves!

Also, a bit of real modding work...

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Recycling scrap poplar from a previous mod...

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It's taking FOREVER to carve this, as it's not simple lines but bas-relief. Now with profiling and everything, as I've gotten better from when I did Mithril. Pencil lines are still everywhere-this isn't something you freehand.

As to whys? Another post. It's bedtime here.

The carving is looking good, I do a little (very little) bit of silver engraving so I know how much work it is to get these things right, the amount of concentration, and control necessary is insane. And wood is even harder to work with than silver, so my hat off, you've gotten off to a great start.

Kayin: are those new bronze age fittings?

Yup. Waiting on them to arrive.

Damn those fittings are sexy. The wood looks very nice, I love when people use it in builds.

Lobster...?

Crayfish, actually.

It's been a few. I'm not entirely displeased with that.

I didn't post until I had some results. So, results!

Case made it up from Birmingham today. Well, most of it did.

For this project, there is a complex interplay of systems going on, and they are roughly divided into two setups. This is Jet. Jade is forthcoming.

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There's board, sound and RAID mounted. RAID is hooked up to four drives currently through SAS-8484 to SAS 8482x4 cable. Array is currently comprised of 3 Fujitsu 36.4GB 15k drives and one Velociraptor in 300GB trim for storage. VGA is awaiting single slot bracket.

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Boxing in the PSU area...

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...to hide the cables.

PSU is a Silverstone Zeus 850w. Sleeving is nylon twine, in a whip knot (not coachwhipping, but a whip knot, to fix a fraying line) and coated in a mix of black dye and beeswax. Like the handle of my old jian]. THis was purposely chosen to reflect the austerity of design that marked much of the design-and to counterbalance much of the ornamentation planned. Feng shui, if you will.

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Ornamentation like this. It's almost finished. Finishing materials are epoxy lacquer and gold leaf. This will all be buried beneath Polycrylic and rubbed out. No snickering in the back.

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Remember I said most of the case made it? My friend knocked off the front right (facing the case) foot and left the doors at his house. Yay. I'm now looking for new feet.

Also, for those that haven't figured it out, case is a Define XL. Modded, of course.

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A detail of the whipping at the base of the cables. Coating is heavier here to resist handling.

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Mocking up to begin enclosing the bay area...

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Here you can see the DMM leads off the board. My Fluke 117 will get a workout with this.

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My Koolance dual DDC single bayres, just cause I have it.

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And here we stand today. Back to laying out again.

Time to feed my kid. He's staring at my pizza.

All right, m0ar progress.

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Temporary RAM installed (4x1GB Crucial Ballistix, formerly from Powerthirst, my wife now has 16GB of Ripjaws.)

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My most opulent modding partner...

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Terrorizing the little deaf rabbity cat...

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Who's investigating my friend's dual Opty Tower 26...

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Another shot of that, I think...

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My Kryos, disassembled...

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The mounting ears, flame-blued with my MAPP torch...

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My BP Bronze Age fittings arrived! Excellent stuff from Bitspower!

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The rest of the bag...

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And my Kryos, blackened with selenium dioxide, flame blued mounting, and Bronze Age fittings. I rather like it.

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A few more shots of the block.

And now, meet the core of Jade.

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Jade is an Illuminato Genesis. In addition to the core here, I have:

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A shield hosting an LED, a temp sensor for the Illuminato area and a serial LCD...

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Detail of the sensor and LED-they're part of the seeedstudio Grove kit.

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And an RGB controller for the case lighting. It's actually not all of Jade, either.

Jade is currenly missing its expander board, its USB host shield and its interface, my G1. See, Google did something neat, in allowing their Android phones interface with Arduino. Turns it into an awesome touchscreen+controller, and this will let me adjust my RGBs on the fly, as well as monitor temps and play music from the interface in the front of the PC.

Jade is having a conniption on my desktop, so I'm off. Also, need to Cyanogen mod my phone. Well, ex-phone. I haven't carried a phone in 18 months now. It needed a good use.

Ouch. How i'd wish for bronze age fittings to be available back then when i shopped for LC parts :(. That finish type looks simply astonishing.