Progress
Hey it's been a while. I was waiting for orders to arrive for a period of time. A couple have come in so I was able to make a bit of headway. Here goes. It's not quite a 1gb update like Callen's usual but there are quite a few photos. 56k sit tight.
First, I wanted to fix what I felt was an issue with the Aquaero.
The back. Mostly bare PCB in the middle.
Remove two screws and the heatsink for the Powerboost mod comes off.
Now I take two pieces I've made. The black piece is something I had laser cut then (nicely) re-anodized. The clear thing is a piece of rubber cut to the same shape + dimensions with a scalpel and leather punch (cut out of an IKEA desk protector lol).
I reattached the heatsink. Wait so what did I accomplish?
Ah ha! A backplate for the PCB to prevent warping.
Moving on. Here's another piece I had laser cut then re-anodized. I think you can guess where this is going.
I call this "The Headless Aquaero." The LCD controls (three buttons) which are absent on the LT are preserved. There's a rectangular cutout opposite the buttons for the pin array which connects to the LCD (relocated).
EDIT: Wrong! Aquaero LT has the buttons but no display (which makes the buttons quite useless).
Two more pieces, cut + drilled from aluminum angles, then polished and anodized.
Now I can mount this thing somewhere.
And this is where it goes.
The fan cables route nicely up (from under the rad) to the connectors. I have not yet sleeved the white pump cable so it's just loosely hanging out somewhere for now, it will be similarly hooked up later.
Moving on. Now to work on the LCD.
First, gotta solder on the 8x2 pin connector.
Here's the original LCD mounting plate I showed last time. But I alluded to a problem with it.
You see the LCD screen portion is not centered on the PCB, it is offset to one side by 1mm. I assumed it *was* centered when I worked out the CAD, so here you can see the mounting holes are centered on the plate, but the screen (silver color bezel thing) is not. It's off and that's a problem: Either center the screen and offset the holes, or center the holes and offset the screen. Ugh.
My solution: Two new plates. Leftmost one is the exterior plate. Center one is an internal alignment plate.
The "genius" here (lol yeah right, if you can call using a ruler "genius") is that the internal alignment plate is offset. See this side is 32mm.
The other side is 30mm
Pull out my bags of M3 button head screws...
The alignment plate attaches to the *front* side of the PCB (to not interfere with the pin connector on the back).
And the exterior plate goes on top, plus AC plexi window, which sits flush. Bonus: Stealthed screws. Two holes at the ends of each plate line up.
The assembly screws into the top of the case, same as before.
So compare this (original version)...
To this (new version). There's a gap there which I overlooked, which means I need some longer screws, which I need to order. Again. Sigh. But overall, very pleased with how things worked out.
I have more things to work on and assemble (like the front panel, which was polished and re-anodized beautifully), but right now I'm dead tired and going to bed.
And I'm patiently waiting for ASUS to give a release date for the Rampage III Extreme. It will be paired with a 980X, that much is already decided.
Hope you enjoyed it, thanks for looking!
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