This morning I got to work on some of the simpler parts, such as the pedestal. The pics are not very comprehensive, as holding power tools and a camera are usually a recipe for disaster--but I did take a few. Never-you-mind the blood, it cleans up nicely with a mop...
Here is my workbench, where I use a wide variety of high-tech tools, such as my Dremel 300, my Dremel XPR, and my Rotozip. I know, I might as well be NASA.
This is why I use scrap acrylic on the edges...so when the Dremel digs in it doesn't ruin the part I am cutting:
I use one of those stone tips to smooth out the corner and make it look neat:
I cut circles the same way anyone else does with a Dremel, as you can see from this picture:
After I made the cuts, I go back and do the last 1/16" with the sand belt to make it a bit more even and smooth. I still will need to do hand sanding to get a perfect edge though:
When the edge is sanded enough, first with 400 grit and then 1000, I use a propane torch to polish it up. Sorry about the angle, but holding the torch and camera while not burning my edge was a bit too tricky for me:
Then the doorbell rang, and it was Santa:
I thought the packaging for the OCZ Summit drives was fairly well done:
The drives weren't bad looking either, but I expected a brushed aluminum casing for some reason. The backside is, but it is covered in a giant sticker. The black material has a rough finish to it--all in all, a nice looking drive:
Corsair's packaging for all their PSUs:
This particular model boasted in the description "extra-long cables." I have to say, these are extra long:
I set the rig up to test everything out thoroughly before spending hours neatly installing it. Here is a picture of the Windows 7 installation after I updated the SSD's firmware and upgraded the mobo BIOS:
The Comcast guy decided he would knock out my street's internets before I could finish downloading the latest GeForce release, so I decided to test out Win7's stock drivers just for kicks (3dmark Vantage):
The score was a bit disappointing, at least if I had the latest drivers. I am impressed with how well Windows 7 runs out-of-the-box:
I spent the next few mins doing some minor tweaks for the SSDs. I'd like to dig in a little bit deeper when I have the time. TRIM is enabled, but I'm not sure if the drives are actually taking advantage of it...and OCZ's TRIM program, wiper, does not support raided drives. I'm still a n00b at how this stuff works exactly, but give me time.
boot:
500k@100% read--yah, I know this isn't an everyday scenario:
4k random read--more realistic:
After I saw how far I had to go to get the speeds I wanted, I decide to curse a little bit, then give up and move onto something fun:
Ahhhh...that's more like it...
Meh, so it's all setup and it doesn't crash--nothing fancy yet. I'll have it run some numbers tonight and see what happens. I'm going to be busy all weekend, but I plan on utilizing Monday to finish all the acrylic cutting, drilling, sanding, and polishing. I'll try and take some pictures--it will be easy to take lots of them during the assembly, which should happen Tuesday!
Oh, and if whoever can identify the piece of hardware my monitor is sitting on I will award them One. Million. Points.
That's it for now. Thanks for lookin'.
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