parts came today!

earlier today i was checking out the scythe HDD box. really nice! only one problem, the rear cooling fins on the box were blocking me from using the pass-through sata power cables. i had to cut off part of the bottom fin (see pics) to make it work. no big deal!











later, after going out tonight with some friends i decided to but out the sleeving stuff and get to it...

ended up making the cables 100% from scratch. i bought a spool of black copper wire that seemed approximately the right size, nice and flexible too. there aren't very many options in the wiring department at the home depot here in manhattan.

i made pin diagrams based on the original cables before i started, and i also made a really ghetto device to check which wire is which (since they are all the same color now) using an old phone charger, some wire, electrical tape, and an LED.

i measured and cut the wire to the lengths i needed, added pins, sleeved everything up and finished it off with heatshrink. the first cables came out really good! they really look like they came that way and weren't homemade.

tonight i completed the two PCI-e 8-pin cables and the power cable for the single HDD and DVD burner. here are some work-pics.

mmm cheap beer






cutting the wire


pin diagram and ghetto-wire tester


one end complete


almost done


pci-e 8-pin cable number one complete!


side shot


cable number two complete!


close up


another angle


and another angle


back side (so far)


(notice the 1.8" HDD in the upper left corner...that will be my scratch drive. it's a 30gb drive in a usb 2.0 enclosure.)

routing




i still have to make the two PCI-e 6-pin cables, but i'm not sure if i have enough of the 1/8" sleeving. might have to order more...

oh while i was at it, i used up the last of my thermal-epoxy and added some old cooper (silver plated) ramsinks to the mofsets. two of them were covered by the heatsink mounting bracket, so i had to trim it a little bit.

(ignore the messy arctic silver...it will be cleaned up before the heatsink goes back on)


and also added a fanless heatsink to my SATA 2.0 RAID controller card (will be used in my new server setup...8 drivers in total, four mirrored RAID-1 arrays - 80gb (os), 750gb (server), 500gb (documents), 500gb (dvd-rip)