Rooster; the work log.

[Vinas]

I've got two of those 38mm fans but they're so friggin loud, are you planning on having them on the fan controller?

Yes. Fan controller very necessary!!! I think people will eventually go crazy w/o a controller. TBH it is very quiet with good airflow at half speed. All of my fans are connected to a port on my fan controller... it's kinda cool.

Nice build log Vina.

I'm thinking about putting my E8400 out to pasture and stepping up to a Core I5 750 with an EVGA P55 FTW board. How you liking your I5 so far? You have any regrets not going for the Core I7 socket 1366s?

Hi Miller. I'm glad you asked because I went from an e8400 @ 4.2GHz to this!

If HT is important to you I'd go with the 860 or d0 920. For me, I mostly game and sometimes encode video files. The "sometimes encodes" part is why I bought a quad. I noticed that several people disable HT for supposedly better overclocks. So IMHO if you are going to OC, you may as well put that extra money into a better video card. Or the other school of thought could be the opposite. Buy a cheaper vid and put that saved cash into a better CPU.

Clock for clock with HT enabled the 860 usually out performs the 750. So if that is worth $80 then go for it! To me it wasn't and so far this CPU has been a gem. Really either way you should be a happy camper!

[millertime359]

Yes. Fan controller very necessary!!! I think people will eventually go crazy w/o a controller. TBH it is very quiet with good airflow at half speed. All of my fans are connected to a port on my fan controller... it's kinda cool.


Hi Miller. I'm glad you asked because I went from an e8400 @ 4.2GHz to this!

If HT is important to you I'd go with the 860 or d0 920. For me, I mostly game and sometimes encode video files. The "sometimes encodes" part is why I bought a quad. I noticed that several people disable HT for supposedly better overclocks. So IMHO if you are going to OC, you may as well put that extra money into a better video card. Or the other school of thought could be the opposite. Buy a cheaper vid and put that saved cash into a better CPU.

Clock for clock with HT enabled the 860 usually out performs the 750. So if that is worth $80 then go for it! To me it wasn't and so far this CPU has been a gem. Really either way you should be a happy camper!

I was thinking the same thing. I mostly game myself and it seems HT doesn't help with that at all. I also heard the same about HT getting in the way of clocks. Seeing it seems most guys just shut it off anyways, why spend the extra $80 for it. I won't be getting mine for a few weeks I think, but glad to hear you are happy with it. Makes it seem i am heading in the right direction here.

[Vinas]

Well guys, the system is about complete. I just need to finish up the face plate for the LCD. The paint on the front peeled off a little because I had tape holding the LCD face plate on while the glue set. I had to custom cut holes for the LCD (the 3.5 tray was about 1/4" small)... Anyway another layer of paint is needed to tidy the front up.

Other than that it came out pretty good. Sure it's cramped but the wiring and plumbing is all very clean. The system is making just about 18K in vantage. I think that's pretty good for a single card system.

To get that score I'm running the i5 CPU @ 4233MHz and the 5870 @ 930/1310. Not a killer OC, but it's what I decided was good for daily use.

*pics to follow later*

[Vinas]

So it's nearing the end of my photo log. Basically you'll see some of the insides, some of the wiring, and the finished product right now!~

It's really difficult to get good shots of the inside... The camera doesn't even fit in the case, just to give you an idea.

Believe me when I say my shoddy camera does not do this rig justice. The reds are red (not orange like the camera makes it look) and the white LEDS are pure white, not blue.

PCIe, ATX, cpu12v, sata, case switch leds, sata cable, all sleeved










My white LED creation for the reservoir lighting



The hole I had to cut on the back side of the front panel... My 3.5 LCD wouldn't fit because of the rectangular ALU posts sticking out on each side... So I had to grind them down! By this time I'm starting to get a little annoyed at the non standard slots in the case!



Moving on to a few inside shots...

















And finally a completed photo at long last!!! Thanks to my friend NewPants for giving me an internal USB cable for my LCD so I could complete the build!



























That's all I have!

Cheers and thanks for viewing my first major work log! I hope it was exciting to see what can be done with such a small case... Also, check out what it can do in Vantage. Pretty big performance outa this cube!



Ps: I may update the log once my PPC 1200 turbocool comes back from RMA. If I can find a sunny day I'll take her outside and get some proper photos!!!

[W34513]

Very nice! congrats on the first i5 build!

[omaryunus]

congrats on an AWESOME build!

[millertime359]

It came out nice dude. I'll be follow in your footsteps here soon. Plan to see a build log within the next few weeks

[Vinas]

Thanks guys. Even though my camera skills are crap! There might me a possibility for a second 5870 if I'm lucky.... and of course some better pics! :-)

[Vinas]

Well, I was in a fender bender this weekend (lady on cell ran into me at a stop light) so I don't know that I'll have spare cash for another 5870. It's not like it's really needed though TBH.

So here's a 3dmark 06 run. I'm very happy with the performance of this little box all things considered. It's small, water cooled, quad pumped, and can game like nobodies business!

[shazza]

This really came out well, Vinas. I am totally amazed that you got all that stuff in the little case. My jaw dropped when I saw your fan selections and then you put a 5870 in there - amazing! Nice job!!!

[Vinas]

Thanks Shazz and everyone else for following the build.

So I promised an update once I got the PSU situation under control. It looks like it will be another month or so before I get my TurboCool 1200 back from RMA, so I stopped in at a local PC store and picked up this 850w Corsair... I needed another PSU for my file server anyway. At $150 I think this was a pretty good deal.

Being a die hard PC Power and Cooling fanboi, it was a pretty difficult decision to go for the Cosair! I did it because my max stable OC was being limited by the 500w silencer, that and lets face it Rooster is too small for the 1200w beast to fit in there comfortably. So far I have been very impressed by the build quality of this PSU. Being a single rail with a continuous rating of 850 @ 50C, I feel that this was the best PSU for the buck. I placed this above the 1100w Corsair mainly because of size, and I feel this single rail unit is more capable w/ a single 70amp rail than the dual rail behemoth.

anyway, check it out -- a beauty (too bad it wasn't red instead of yellow tho) what's up with the felt bag??? Kinda neat in a very nerdy way.








Yes, that is a Yate Loon 140mm cooling fan. Like I said, Corsair impressed me... I have to admit the unit is not as heavy as a PPC, but the quality seems good still. Very worth the money IMHO.

[millertime359]

Hope to see it back up again.

[punkrockpolak]

Are you going to resleeve any of it so the heatshrink goes over the connectors like the last one?

[ohms]

awesome worklog and cute pitbull!! I like the radiator also, the red is hot. (no pun intended)

[Vinas]

Hope to see it back up again.

Thanks Miller, I finished installing and rewiring the PSU (what a job). Being the neat freak that I am it took me about 1.5 hours to get it all installed. You see since the case is so small I must remove the side window each time I want to get to the wires!

Are you going to resleeve any of it so the heatshrink goes over the connectors like the last one?

Since I ran the cables under the whole case, I used extenders and just sleeved those. So, luckily I didn't need to resleeve anything!

awesome worklog and cute pitbull!! I like the radiator also, the red is hot. (no pun intended)

hah! Thanks very much. The red/black theme is definitely the way to go these days! This yellow PSU doesn't look all that bad either. I thought about painting it red, but realized it looked pretty good as is. Sometime in the near future I will post the grand finale complete with more vantage scores!!!

[kgtiger]

Well done there mate, looks good.

[Anemic]

Sweet looking LANbox! Perfect for transport =)
But I have to tell you...Your helpers looks awfully lazy, I hope you don't pay em much ; )

[Vinas]

So with school and work I am so busy I haven't posted any more pictures. I just wanted to update a tiny bit just incase anyone saw my sig and was wondering what was up.

I met a guy, who knew a guy, that had a brother, that was selling a cherry picked i7 860 so I jumped on it. Okay, I lie, I found this on e-bay and could not resist the batch number. It is a good batch and heat was kind of an issue in this build. So enough justifying!!! (My old lady was not impressed either.) But the i5 is a superb chip. Mine was just pretty hot compared to a golden 860.

Got this chip for $217 I can run it at 4GHz @ 1.3vcore with about the same performance of my i5 (which was at 4.2).





PS: My PC Power and Cooling 1200w TurboCool came back a couple weeks ago. If I end up putting it back in, I'll get some pics and another update. Really though the corsair looks quite nice though, so it could be a while.

[\/icious]

wow very awsome. Ive been wanting to do something very similar. excellent job

[Onoff312]

Nice mate real nice super cool rig. One issue those slipstreams are no where near 110cfm i have them on my radiator and they suck some serious ass compared to yate;s.

[Vinas]

Ask and you shall receive!

(lame attempt at humor)

Thanks to you OnOff, I purchased and installed the deltas I had wanted for a while. :-) They are $30 a piece so a little expensive, but since this is my hobby I figured what the hell.

All of the lights are installed except for the case feet LEDs. The resister the manufacturer used started smoking within 30 seconds. So I ripped out the LEDs and am just using the clear feet. The black light sines thru them a bit so it is a pretty neat looking effect. I highly recommend staying away from the logisys clear case feet for serious risk of fire hazard. Also, the 'lazer led' is not very bright at all. The LED puck is though and looks pretty badass mounted under my res... (pics soon i hope)

Turns out that Intel x18 is a little faster than my x25m. (maybe skewed because the Os was on the x25) Since newegg had them for $50 off, and I had filled my 80g x25... So now I'm running these in raid 0. If anyone wants to see the HD Tune of each drive and the raid set let me know and I'll post them up.

So this weekend I added on some parts I had been waiting to do... And since I have a nasty cold I figured it's a good time to stay indoors and work on rooster. Here's a shot of this weekends fun. I think the build is complete (for) now!

[Vinas]

So it's been two months since the Rooster build was first started. Thanks to the support from all of you here I've learned a lot along the way about case modding. Without a great site like XS, with the most awesome build logs, this build would not have been possible! The community we have here is a very talented bunch. With out a doubt there are more skilled modders here than I, but without them Rooster would still be a pipe dream! Had I not seen the awesome builds here I would not think this kind of hobby even existed, and I would not have known where to begin on this build.

Would I have done things differently in this build? You betcha, but this was a fun and exciting two month build. I've learn a lot along the way (like how to take better photos, and powedercoating looks much better than spray paint!).

Well, I guess this is the end of the photo journey for this build. Those that followed the build know I promised a grand finale photo shoot! Well, here it is.

Thanks again to everyone that commented my build log and the rest of the modders out there. I will be updating the first post with the final pictures here.

Cheers!














The 'other' SSD, rad box, and wire cage.






More shots of the handle. I think of this as the red "mane' on the roosters head.




Here are my helpers for this shoot.








Time to get up close and personal.














Lets open it up.







The red color looks like candy. I want to eat it.















I forgot to take the red electrical tape off the res.













Okay the lights don't turn out so good with my cam.







The end.