Latest (5/2011)
– Persuaded my boss to buy me a refurb U3011 – sweet! Left is a 23″ 1080p, middle is U3011, right is 20″ portrait 1680×1050
– Moved to an AX1200 after it became apparent the 550W was starting to deteriorate
– CPU speed makes a big difference for my work so when I saw a good price on a 2nd hand unopened 990x I jumped on it (will be selling the 980x as soon as I have rep)
– When changing cpus a water leak made the faithful p6t not 100% reliable, so I picked up a rampage 3 extreme that lasted 2 weeks, then another one. Picked up a waterblock for it, found out that the motherboard had paper in between the south bridge and the heatsink!
– Got a great deal on 3 480’s with koolance full cover blocks
– Picked up 360 sized magnetic filters for the rads, but it looks like they’re too big to be mounted on a rad itslef, rather to go around them, so they may not work for me.
– Swapped out the 18gb for 12gb gskill trident 2000-8-9-8-24
Putting the loop together again:
I’m not a big fan of the anti-kink look, but I couldn’t quite get away without it. I chose the pearl color, but I might have been better off with just clear. Maybe with a few more 90/45 rotaries I could have got away without the anti kink tubing. Missing one sli coupler otherwise I could have leak tested it tonight. Oh well. I also ordered the wrong size clamps for my tubing, so I’m making do without for now.
>> Next Day
Worked on the window today, cut out the panel using a jigsaw, also my chimp challenge prize came in – not sure where I’ll use it though:
Test fitting to see how it looks:
Should have masked off the door, the jigsaw roughed it up a little. Now just waiting to see whether my epoxy is acrylic safe or not
Also added in led lighting strip, was worried it would be too bright or too dark, but I think this will be perfect with the smoked acrylic window:
So after epoxying the window to the door, I found out I hadn’t left quite enough space so now the door doesn’t completely close. I tried bending the frame of the case with some pliers, but it’s still not quite enough, tomorrow I’ll take a hammer to it. In the worst case I can cut off the part that’s in the way, however then the case will lose some structural rigidity on that side. Plus I’d have to take all the components out so they wouldn’t get covered in metal shavings which would be a major head ache at this point.
I also took out the rear exhaust fan, as I lost my side input fan on the door due to the window, I figured I should lose that rear on so as to balance the pressure more otherwise I’d have 2 exhaust 2 intake plus the PSU should be exhausting too. Now I’ll have 2 intake, 1 exhaust plus exhausting psu. However now I have a blank spot that is just taped up. So I’m going to try and make an ocn flame symbol to put back there.
Here’s the window – it’s making me think the white lights are too bright, I still wanted to see the motherboard led’s and the koolance blocks should light up too and I think this lighting strip might just drown them out:
Here’s a shot of the top of the door that isn’t flush with the case:
I realized that I could use the variable resistors (that went to the fan controller that I no longer had room for) as a dimmer for the led lighting that was a tad brighter than I wanted. Wired it up and it works, so that’s good, now I can blend it in with the motherboard lighting and the gpu lighting 🙂
