My quiet Cosmos - Phase 2

To say that this is taking a long time is a bit of an understatement. 1 month and a day so far. Thankfully I finish work in a couple of days so will be able to get on a bit quicker.

@dom

Sorry about the long loading times. Partly a result of being a cheap skate and using free file hosting but also the images are quite large in size. Have resized them from 12mb to about 800kb but it still takes a while.
Can only recomend tabbed browsing,open the pages and then come back to them in 5 mins.

And it will be worth checking back as it is starting to come together. Have finished the power connecters for the drive bays and spraying the molex's so as to blend in a bit better.
No photo's at the moment as I am only catching a few mins on someone elses computer.
Currently deep into a(nother) tangle of wires while I sort out the lighting and switches.

With luck I should be reassembling the case and fitting the tubes tomorrow.
Cheers for sticking with it and your comments.

Cheers Coldstorm, hopefully shan't be too long now before it's posted in the mod gallery.

Finaly finished wiring up the 4 lighting circuits last night. Routing the cables too the switches and inverters/leds without having them seen was time consuming to say the least but even if I say so myself it's going to look sweet.
Had planned to do the tubing today but forgot that i'm meant to be at a friends christening and reunion so that idea has gone out the window.
Have also run out of heatshrink so am debating whether to wait another couple of days for some more or just use electrical tape. Not the prefered solution but it's going to be sleeved and shan't be seen so we just have to see. So far i've got through 2.5m of 3mm shrink - crazy amounts
Look forward to getting the next lot of photo's up for you all, I think you'll like how it's progressed.

Onwards and upwards

Have finally finished the work i was doing so am now able to hopefully crack on a bit quicker.

So whilst haven't managed to do a great deal lately it hasn't come to a complete standstill.
So first up.

I wasn't particually happy with the ocz molex power cable as the connectors were in the wrong position for tidy cable management. Of course, this wouldn't do so had to do something a bit different.

First up, back to the circular table saw and a bit of nifty cutting to make a holder for the molex.



which have been fixed in place with some power putty..
Then had to wire and solder it up..



May not seem like a lot of work but seemed to take ages.

with the facing plate attached and mounted roughly in its final position



As you can see have made up my own power leads to the drive bay devices. Note the 12 & 5v wires have also been heatshrinked in order not to detract the eye with the yellow and red wires.


Next up, I am starting to get a bit concerned that this is going to far with reference to my next purchase for this build. It's going to be the best dressed computer this side of the river.



This build is not taking over my life, honest

The tights are actually for the dust filter that ive made for the intake fan of the 2nd PSU.
You can also see the 80mm hard drive fan that has been fitted with cable extended to reach the fan controller without having to use the fan connector cables.




With that done I then set out on the lighting. Origonally I had only planned to use two lighting circuits hence the switch plate as seen earlier in the log. Things changed and I now have 4 new switches on the top plate with all the ascossiated wires. Again a fairly time consuming task cutting everything to length, soldering and hiding all the cables.



Also ended up taking the cathode tube connectors off and spray painting them black, along with the other molex connecting blocks so as not to glow under the uv light and detract from the feel of the rig
Best thing about this was connecting the leads to a spare psu and feeling the satifaction and relief when everything worked as intended


With the lighting sorted then moved onto the the hard drive power supply. Again the origonal leads were far too long and made for some fairly unsightly cable management, forcing the excess cable behind other wires or into avaliable spaces.

No More.
Another session with the wire cutters, soldering iron and gas torch and here is the result



the wire ties are only tempory until the other gfx power leads are made and fitted.
the molex at the top tight connects with the molex power strip mounted to the second hard drive exhaust fan.

And so this is where I am upto at the moment, starting to make the second gfx card power cables, which need to be in place before mounting the pump and signature panel to hide the wiring.



I also made a bit of a blunder and ordered the wrong size sli w/c connector, triple slot instead of dual. In my defence the description didn't make it clear and this is my first water cooled build so i'll know better for next time.
Hopefully the replacement will be here tomorrow along with some more heatshrink so I don't skimp and use too much electical tape instead.

OK, back to it. Hope you like it.

Hi All.

Finally got around to another job i've been hanging back from - Wiring up the power supplies to the gfx cards..

One of the hardest things about this job has been getting the pins out of the plastic sockets. Trying to maintain pressure on the pin removal tool whilst pulling on the wire and pin and at the same time hold the plastic socket steady is tricky. Doing all that and not getting the pin tool to shoot across the room is a trick built up over time.
Anyway. Needed two complete new leads from psu 2 to gfx 2 and needed to shorten the existing pci-e leads.

I had initially started to do this using old wire from a dead wiring loom and electrical tape to wrap the solder joins. After cocking up the length and making the first lead too short I decided to wait till the heatshrink arrived and do it properlly. I also took another trip to my local computer repair shop and for a small donation got another dead psu with long wires on the loom with lots more molex/atx pins.

So first job was to sleeve the power wires like so..



This bit was quite time consuming.

... and some time later the first two leads are ready



Then it was onto the next two. A bit trickier as I didn't want to have to remove the psu.
Again, more laborious wire cutting, stripping, soldering and sleeving.





And after the fourth lead this is what I am left with - although this isn't final fix obviously.



And the aftermath



All I I am happy enough with how it's looking.
With the gfx leads sorted and the two slot card connector arrived I could now start to sort out the tubing of the loop.
Alas can't finish this just yet as I am waiting for another couple of parts to arrive. Hopefully a worthwhile wait as it will make working on the system in future so much easier, plus I really am not sure whether i'll end up using the purple coolant as under uv it glows a bit too orange

Anyway. this is where it is upto at the moment.


- actually not quite true as I have since trimmed the metal slots so the dvi connectors do not foul the case.
Have also been cutting perspex again and have started spraying some test pieces with different arrangements of black and white.
The plan is to shine the uv light through the edge of the perspex and then to either etch, score or leave blank a design onto the perspex so that when the light shines it illuminates and highlights the design.
Don't know if this will work as I hope. Shall find out later.

Thats it for now. Hopefully parts arrive tomorrow so i can continue once more

Cheers

Cheers coldstorm

Alas not quick connects, just 1/2" compression fittings, although the drain set-up will be quick connect fittings

At last, some major movement forwards on the build. Bits have arrived and I have been getting busy.
But before they arrived I decided to colour co-ordinate my peripherals, so first up my revamped mouse.



Bloody job that turned out to be. Unfortunately when I was taking the top off of the plastic primer the cap caught the spray nozzle and sheared the nozzle off from the can.
Undaunted I carried on and shortly afterwoods had a horrible paint reaction that resulted with major cracking and crazing.
All in all there are 16 different coats of paint and laquer on the shell of the mouse as a result of several more paint reactions. Still, the end result looks a rather nice shiny metallic purple.

I was trying to fit the water pipe from the fill port but using 1/2" tubing just wasn't working as the tube was fouling the rad mount and side panel release.
Solution, downsize the fill pipe and get some right angle fittings. Whilst ordering noticed that the shop had a 2 line lcd display for £14 so I decided to take a chance and go for it.
Unfortunately the cable supplied was made to plug into a parallel port on the back of the motherboard using the screw in type parallel fitting - like the old printer connectors.
Unfortunately my motherboard only has a parallel connector of the bare pin type.
Not to be detered an old floppy cable comes to the rescue.



A while later



My only concerns are whether the pins have breached the adjoining wires and have created a short between the wires.
Also, I am not 100% sure the wires are wired up in the same order on the MB as on the display. Shall have to check that out on the internet before I connect the display up properly.

As I am not mounting the display in the drive bays this required a bit more modding with the dremmel.



Have since completed cutting and bending the metal frame of the display, sleeved the ribbon cable and exteneded the power lead to nearly a meter long

Next up was the pretty mammoth task of cable management. You have no idea how long it took to do this, suffice to say you'd need more than one hand to count the hours.



Then onto cutting and fitting the tubing, plus rebuilding the case
Fitting the two graphics cards with the solid sli connector was a bit of a struggle but have managed it. Am about to fill the loop for the first time so I just hope that nothing leaks as it's going to be a MAJOR pain in the arse if there is a leak.



Right, thats where I am upto at the moment and I now have to give the laptop back to my friend. Hopefully the next post will once again be on my own computer - as long as the trimmed graphic card still works

What can I say.....

Bugger should cover it.
Alternatively .... it didn't work.

Looks pretty but that is no consolation.

When I turn it on it posts ok and I can get into the bios. It then shows the loading bar for windows and then .... nothing. The screen goes blank where the user name box comes up to sign in.

Not sure where to go from here.
Have tried swapping the power leads over - no change.
have tried a power lead from each psu to each gfx card - no luck.
have tried running both cards from the 700w psu - nada.

Have an awfull feeling that i'm going to have to drain the system, reconfigure the water fittings and try each card seperately - major hassle.

When Ifirst turn pc on it shows that it recognises the gfx card - the one that I trimmed the pcb (recognises the bios ##05 - the new card is ##15)
plus and correct me if I am wrong but if the card wasn't working wouldn't it be the case that I couldn't even see the bios screen.?

Also when the screen goes blank the HDD light is still twinkling merrily away showing that it is doing something, I just acn't see what.

Any ideas people.

cos at the moment I have 5 weeks work and effort and a very expensive but pretty pile of stuff doing nothing in my living room.

Hope someone can help.

Cheers

ps, you gotta laugh.

Things are looking up.
I am writing this post on my computer using Knoppix. So while that in a way isn't marvelous news at least it shows that the graphics card works.
Big relief I can tell you.
Looks like a reinstall of windows coming up.

and of course I also need to put the wiring back together after I pulled the loom to pieces to fiddle with the power lead arrangement

Ho Hum

Well what a journey it has been.
Thankfully it is all working once again after a reinstall of windows.
Am still in the long laborious process of reinstalling everything and setting things up the way I like it but what sweet relief that it works.

Just a teaser pic for the moment until I get the pics taken, sorted and resized.
I hope that you like it.



Have also been busy with the spray can once again and I am now tpying on my shiny pearlescent purple Saitek Eclipse keyboard. You've gotta love this modding lark.

and without wanting to sound a sour puss the photo's really don't do this build justice - or perhaps it is just my ability as a photographer.
Anyways, more computer porn to look at tomorrow.



& @steelkane

used knoppix 5.1.
Have never used linux before now and have to say I am quite impressed. It was a great relief to see it load and work I can tell you. Definately a disk that i'll be keeping on hand in the future.

Well here it is at last.
Completed....apart from finishing the reinstall and benchmarking and overclocking

I apologise for the quality of the pictures. Try as I might I just can't get them to do justice, especially with the lighting effects. So rather than try yet again for better shots i've made a (rather poor - using my camera) short video which can be downloaded here (10mb) -might take a little while to d/l as it's only a free hosting service.

cosmosgloria.wmv

Anyways, here are the photo's



















Bottom of case lighting to give a nice white glow underneath the case



and with the internal white cathodes on, rigged to a sound controller



Just the main 10" UV's + the UV LED's in the pump housing and in the bottom of the res.





Although it doesn't show it too well the transparent uv blue nail varnish that I used on the perspex does give a nice sharp line which delineates the window nicely.









I have also yet to get the lcd display working but I am sure that that will be just a matter of time.
I may also have to swap some of the rad fan out for some more powerful ones as the temps are a little high - at idle coolant is 32*c with fans on full. I reckon that if I put the old psu fans in there then I should be able to drop that to closer to 25*c. Shall see what happens when I bench it and how high the core and gpu temps get.
Not 100% sure that I'll keep the picture behind the drive bay blanking plate. Possibly a bit too busy so may change it out for a rather nice galaxy photo that is a lot darker. The original hope was that the uv would shine through the edge of the perspex and highlight the stars more than it actually does. Oh well, Live and Learn.

So thankyou for your time and comments in following this log. They have been welcomed.
Let 'us know what you think of it, either here or in the case gallery.

I am sure that there is much more that I can and probably will say about the build but its one forty in the morning and I am knackered.

Thanks Again

Maju