8800GTX in a Super Lanboy - Xpost from OC forums

[Goshawk]

Greetings Guys,


This has been a long time coming, I decided to break down and get some new drill bits and just freaking do it.

I went out and got an 8800GTX due to my 6800GS getting sold locally here, i didn't want to toss either of my Super Lanboys because of a stupid 1" of 8800GTX pwnage not letting me get the thing in the case.

Took me about 5 hours from teardown to power on.




It was pretty clean in there before i guess, the biggest problem was the 4 hard drives that form my 2 RAID 0 arrays. Notice the Jaton MX440 twin head PCI video card in there Yeah, i wasn't gaming for like... a week.



Some after market sinkage, loaned the stockers to a friend so he could RMA his board... still a work in progress, i know my northbridge isn't going to win any pretty points... but it works





Grill cutting for airflow .. The super lanboy cuts like BUTTER :P Entire drive cage is out there is SOOOOOO much room in this case without it.





After about an hour of measuring and dry fitting, it looked like the seagate raid array i had going would fit at the bottom of the case ( TIGHT fit ) and the WD raid 0 array would fit up top in the 2 5 1/4 bays that i wasn't using. Notice how close they are to the end of my Audigy ...The seagates are on short brass standoffs, and are mounted using some freshly drilled holes in the bottom of the case.



Better look at the bottom, i wish i could have used some of the holes from the recently extracted drive case, but none of them lined up.





Zero room to work with cables. i had to use the reverse upsidedown sata cables and a double sata to single molex adaptor in order to properly connect the drives and not break anything. At least the standoffs the hard drives are sitting on provided a space to stuff cables





Started wiring everything back up. Out of everything i had done up to this point, this took the longest and took the most out of me.



OMG... almost done! 8800GTX is in, and starting to look pretty :P





( cont. )

[Goshawk]

Continued from post #1:

DONE... finally. I took a nap for a few hours after this and came back to it. I'm still not 100% happy with the wiring up top... there is still a big knot there... but less pronounced now.



Picture of the Ninja lit up with the lights on




Lights off! my apologies for the blurry last pic, it was the best i could do with the crappy cam i've got.



Here is a pic of what i removed from the case. I might use this and the other drive cage thats in the other super lanboy for a really nutty picoBTX NAS enclosure. both cages look pretty good and they look like they would lend themselves pretty well to that

Some questions were raised over at OCF on whether/not it was safe to have the HDDs just bolted to the bottom of the case on standoffs... after reading all the posts i decided that it was best to have them insulated... pics:






Thanks for the look


~ Gos

[jas420221]

Looks clean, nice job!

[Soker]

What is this zalman on nb? He must have cooler on stock? or passive works but you wanted for the "quiet" the spire cooler?

[mukmaster]

Dude that look realy clean. make sure to shock mount the hard drives .
BTW I cant tell if they are but it looks like there bolted into the case.

Nice work gos

[Goshawk]

bump! updated as promised.

What is this zalman on nb? He must have cooler on stock? or passive works but you wanted for the "quiet" the spire cooler?

The little Zalman flower thing worried me for passive chipset cooling, so i ghetto strapped a spire 40mm fan to it until i can get something better. She seems to do pretty well

Further plans on the case include a custom front facia thing, probably out of some aluminum stock from Lowes, and a glass black paint job on the inside and out. I may also change out the plastic side windows with regular acrylic and do a slight tint on them. Case lighting will also be changed to red once the paint job happens.


~ Gos

[Okda]

very nice idea for ur hdd

[cursivearmy1]

dood how do you get your ninja to lite up like that ?
is that a cathode in there?

[Goshawk]

dood how do you get your ninja to lite up like that ?
is that a cathode in there?

Yup It was a test to see if the 4" CCFL would dit, haven't gotten around to taking it out.

I was thinking that a string of bright LEDs would be less of a fire hazzard though.


~ Gos

[cirthix]

lol, ccfl in the heatsink. looks pretty cool imo.


the nice thing about this mod is that you can mount the HDD cage back with a few nuts and bolts when you get a shorter vid card

[lowfat]

Do you find the case flimsy without the drive cage? When i had the SLB and removed the cage, it wobbled pretty badly.

[Sentential]

Do you find the case flimsy without the drive cage? When i had the SLB and removed the cage, it wobbled pretty badly.

I always thought the case was flimsy from the start. Its partially why when I decided to go back to air cooling I went with the non-super lanboy which feels far sturdier.

[G.Foyle]

Why would munting the drives that way be hazardous? I can't see a reason for not doing it that way.

[Goshawk]

Why would munting the drives that way be hazardous? I can't see a reason for not doing it that way.

Moving it around i guess would cause a problem if the case isn't handled carefully.

Honestly, they are there tomporariliy now until i can work out a decent looking front bezel idea, i'll be mounting a 2nd front fan to actively cool hard disks further up the inside front and get them off the bottom.


~ Gos

[Nosfer@tu]

Moving it around i guess would cause a problem if the case isn't handled carefully.

Honestly, they are there tomporariliy now until i can work out a decent looking front bezel idea, i'll be mounting a 2nd front fan to actively cool hard disks further up the inside front and get them off the bottom.
~ Gos

My first thougth to, But why should they suffer more shock in the bottom than when they where placed the original place ?

Was it not posible just to remove the middel part of the HDD rack and then mount the 8800 GTX ?

[Goshawk]

My first thougth to, But why should they suffer more shock in the bottom than when they where placed the original place ?

Was it not posible just to remove the middel part of the HDD rack and then mount the 8800 GTX ?

It would have been easier that way, but it looks alot cleaner completely removing it. Plus, i can sell the case later by just popping the old rack back in and riveting


~ Gos

[Stuey]

The photos are all gone?

[tricknasty]

aww yea photos arent working for me either, would be nice to see

[.Logic]

Photo are not working for me either... I really want to see this

[NickS]

No pix here

[whoodiestyle]

yeah pics are dead try imageshack or something like photobucket

[mukmaster]

I think he was hosting from his own website.

[DualCore]

i can't see a pic here i want to see , this gtx fit in this little case !