Project: Blue on Black

[RCG_Bex]

Thread needs more pr0n pics!

Lucky you with Silverstone - never replaced my cables - 24pin had a dodgey connection and eventually blew my PSU

Boooo at the lack of PC stores

~Bex

[Bolas]

Thread needs more pr0n pics!

Lucky you with Silverstone - never replaced my cables - 24pin had a dodgey connection and eventually blew my PSU

Boooo at the lack of PC stores

~Bex

Ok, by request... more pics!! (well, that and the camera battery finished charging)

I thought I could put the power supply in and start powering things up. So I pull off a white RoHS sticker that's just too glaring and put the power supply into the case.



Bonk!



Some kind of interference...



Doesn't quite fit. Hmm.. what to do?

Looks like I'll need to unscrew the power entry module a bit and then wiggle it to get it in.



Ok, that worked.



Now to screw it in... hmm.. what's this? One of the screw holes has a circuit board in it? FAIL.



Guess it's time to get my power supply pcba cutter out... or is that a bad idea? Maybe I will just stick an ice pick into the hole and bend the board out of the way. Or just screw into the board. Yeah, that'll work.



Oops, no gasket. Time to remove it and try again.



Hmm.. gasket doesn't quite fit, either. Lame.



More mod needed. Forget it, power supply with no gasket, for now.

Now to put in the motherboard.



Nice accessories.



Goofy heat pipe.



And the cutout is... bleah ugly color. Why not black instead of puke beige?



At least I get some more stickers!!



Oh yeah, ESD smock and ground strap.



Then on to the CPU.



Here it is.



Whoa, that's a crazy size stock heat sink.



Don't you think so?



What's this switch do? Ah fan speed!



Oh look, daddy, the fan cover comes off!!



Here, I'll install this for you. You can thank me later.



Not so fast, little one. First you need to remove the backing and apply thermal paste.



About now... my camera battery dies. So I don't have any pics of all the sleeving or of it not working and the error code 89 showing up. So skip forward a few days, and I show off the motherboard right before I ship it back to Gigabyte.



Yep, that big guy who has kicked off his socks and shoes is me.

Here's an artistic rendering of me.



And the contents of the package. What's left of it, anyways. Today's overcast sky seemed to make the colors pop. I guess I'll have to wait for gloomy weather to take pics of the final product.



Here's my chosen color scheme for the wiring.



Can you tell what's wrong with this cable?



Good thing Silverstone has awesome customer service and is sending me a replacement. Bless you guys!!



Here's the SATA power cable, before and after. Notice that I shortened it to what I actually need.



The four SATA data cables that came with the Corsair Obsidian 800D, sleeved.



And adding in two of the SATA data cables that came with the motherboard, also sleeved. The end connectors don't match, boo hiss.



Here's my sleeving of the 8-pin motherboard power cable.



Here's a shot of before, during, and after of the sleeving of the PCIe cable.



This shot shows the "learning curve" for sleeving. My first sleeving job was HORRIBLE!! I slowly got better at it, to the point where the next system I sleeve should actually be decent. Left to right is the order in which they were sleeved.



Go ahead and laugh, I know... the first cable is just so bad. I'll eventually re-do all the sleeving to get it right, I suspect. Just not today, not enough time or sleeve left.



Here's a shot of the last cable I sleeved. Still need to get the heat shrink further into the connector, but at least it's a bunch better than the first one I sleeved.





One final shot of the sleeving colors, showing frayed sleeving compared to properly melted sleeving and scorched sleeving. Basically, I'm doing pin one as light blue, pin two as dark blue, and the rest black, so that the colors seem to fade to black.



I got some bad news today. Provantage was supposed to ship my DisplayPort to DVI-D cable on April 12th, now they say it is scheduled to ship on April 26th instead. By then, my motherboard might be back, but I will be out of town from April 25th to the end of the month, so I won't get to see all three displays up and running at the same time until May. That's if I can even get the system working before I leave.

Due to time constraints, I won't get to do any liquid cooling stuff until May either, it looks like. I'm so anxious to get this put together and running, but it's better to take my time with it, I think.

I still need to sleeve the cables in the case. I've decided that I'm not going to sleeve the SATA power cable that comes with the case. It's already solid black and hidden by the case design, it has too narrow spacing between connectors, and it is molded solid on one end. I'm also not sure about what to do with the front panel audio cable, I'm tempted to cut off the second connector since I don't think I'll use it.

I'll do only one sleeve for each of the remaining case cables. Not much point in separating the triple conductor ribbon cable for the fans to sleeve them individually, that would just add bulk for little benefit. Straight black for those and only a single sleeve.

I'm still wondering if I should not water cool the graphics card due to having not enough radiators to cool everything. Probably better to add in a radiator somewhere. A single in the bottom looks like it would bump into power supply cables and have some tough radii (radiuses for you Alabama folks) to overcome.

I could do the double rad mod in the bottom of the case, but I'm a bit on the fence on that one. Might affect the structural integrity of the case a bit much. I sure wish Corsair had put that in as a standard option -- remove the bottom hard drive cage and have a radiator mount already set up and ready to go there.

I could also do some external radiators. Run some pipe out the two holes in the back of the case and cool things there. Not sure I want to do that unless I go with a second 5970 card. Pity that the 5970 4GB editions aren't out already, I could have just gotten one of those and left it air cooled.

I suppose as long as I'm not doing anything too intensive, the system won't have any problem with the heat. It's not like I'll be loading down the system with heavy loads 24/7 or anything. So maybe the existing cooling plan will work fine. Guess I'll see in a month.