The evil but famous uncle Ianho suckered me into spicing up my year-old rig for the upcoming modding competition on the 2th at you-know-where. As a first timer but avid fan of you modding gods here at LYN, I thought why not give you guys a little something to laugh at.

WARNING: Very little dremelling and custom cuts will go into this as I know next to nothing about modding. I'll just try some ideas and see where this takes us.

For starters, here's my Thermaltake Shark:


The nekkid internal:


With some hardware and basic wire management:


As I take everything apart, I found that dirt and grime had collected on the casing. And so went out to get some cleaning agents:


This post has been edited by ZipD: Mar 19 2007, 01:43 AM

Initially, I soaked the case with WD40 to remove fingerprints and stuff, then with cotton and Brasso for polish. After 3 days of polishing (and sore fingers), here're the results...

The base of the case:


The other side:


A close-up of the internal:


The back of the case:


Not exacly mirror-shined but it's enough to make me happy

Moving on, I tried a little sleeving. If you had looked at the sleeving guide thread, you would've noticed I got into abit of trouble trying this. I initially bought a couple of Vantec/Vizo sleeving packs which has a few sizes of sleeves including heatshrinks. Here's a pic of the different sizes it has:


On the rightmost, you can see a heatshrink that was used and damaged in the process due to over-flaming (if there's such a word). What happened was I tried using a hairdryer to shrink it which didn't do anything. So I thought maybe direct flame was a good idea. And so I brought out a candle and started burning the heatshrink:


Great, just great. With other common sleeving problems happening (frayed sleeves, forgetting to tape the wire tips, wrong sized sleeves, etc) and about a dozen tries, I was about to give up. Then with uncle's advice (and Madman's encouragement), went out to get appropriately sized sleeves and heatshrinks:




These help a lot as well (called Molex Removal Kit):

Since I'm sleeving the whole PSU, I thought why not add some UV:


And not forgetting the tape the little b**t**d tips:


Some toastin' with a cheapo lighter:


And yay, a giant leap for a noob:


Done about 2 of the wires so far:


Hopefully I can get this done *within* the year

Some of the stuff I'll need to put back in after sleeving is done:


And the other stuff I bought earlier:




That's all for now... comments are most welcomed.

I did try using a hairdryer initially but found that it wasn't hot/fast enough, so I resorted to a lighter. Anyway, the lighter is the wind-proof type and I'm only putting it close to the heatshrinks instead of directly.

It took me awhile to decide which dragon to go for out of so many in the McFarlane's series. This particular one looked small enough to fit inside the case and it has a green pattern which matches with the overall theme I'm thinking about. However, a quick test-fit showed that it's right wing may interfere with the graphics card.

Hmm, a shark sounds like a great idea (never thought of that myself) but I used a dragon as it's part of my nick

I didn't want to ask Ian to help with the sleeving as I wanted to do it myself and learn the hard way but I did consider it at one point in time when I felt too frustrated to move on. However, Ian has his own things to do for King Kong so I try not to bother his too much.

Before I continue, let's see the mess I got myself in...

The workplace:


The accessories:


Ok, now for the updates...

I didn't do a more detailed log for the sleeving so I though I'd rectify that with this. Here, I'm doing the last of the PSU wires, an 8pin cable. Firstly, I used the Molex Removal Tool that's 2-pronged to remove the tips:


I had to poke hard (heh) into the molex so that the tool penetrated deep enough to extract it. Out comes all the pins:


Here it is with the pins taped-up and ready for sleeving:


With the sleeve in place, in goes the heatshrink:


This is the heatshrink I used, a close-up. I used this particular size for most of the cables:

With the heatshrink shrunk:


I had some trouble with this. I didn't realise that the pins had 'legs' which dictate the direction they must be in to fit inside the molex. I actually had to redo the heatshrink by cutting it out and adjusting the pins into the proper position as much as I can BEFORE heating the heatshrink. Here's a close-up of the 'legs' I mentioned:


Once that was done, the original (I couldn't find a UV 8-pin molex in the entire city) was fitted back in:


Frickin' finally:

Meanwhile, the Dragon awaits patiently...




This post has been edited by ZipD: Mar 20 2007, 02:51 AM

Updates...

Finally got a little time for this. Installed the good ol' Thermalright XP90 in place of the stock HSF with a UFO over it:


Replaced the chipset's stock HSF which is, really, a piece of plastic. Earlier Asus A8N mobos used this poor excuse for a HSF (I had the mobo RMA'd because the fan decided to die on me). Even the 2nd batch of A8Ns had the same thing except rotated slightly. Later version saw the heatpipe technology used which was much, much better. The outer layer of the chipset would bubble-up and peel once the HSF was removed. Here's the VC-RE I used as replacement. Hopefully the mobo still works


Next, I went to a car accessory shop to get this made. It's actually black acrylic that's used for car number plates. It'll be the 'divider' plate for the top section of the case:


Side view of the plate:


View from the front:


Angled:


With the PSU installed:


The purpose? I thought of having CCFL on the top section while the lower, main section is UV. Hopefully, the CCFL won't leak too much to the lower sections.

This post has been edited by ZipD: Mar 22 2007, 12:12 PM

Oops... thanks for the heads-up. Corrected it to Thermalright.

Oh and another thing, those of you who're thinking of using the VC-RE for the same mobo, note that the retention bracket (metal piece that's placed across the HSF to hold it down) interferes with the fan plug on the mobo. However you could still use the 3pin-to-molex adapter that comes with it to plug the power into a spare molex.

This post has been edited by ZipD: Mar 22 2007, 12:15 PM

^hehe

Anyways don't really have updates as I got stuck. Not enough sleeves to finish sleeving the fans, SATA Y-cables and CCFL/UV wires... only 2 more days, OMG!!

It was sleeved last nite I couldn't stand seeing an unsleeved cable in plain sight.

Hehe, dragon is still in the box. Don't wanna spoil him here. Come to LANparty see him live!

The dragon died early this morning. Booting up has no post... there goes 4 weeks of work. Will continue the worklog when I find out what's wrong.

Thanks for the kind words. I found out that the VC-RE chipset HSF was the cause. As I couldn't fit its fan plug onto the mobo, I ghetto sliced off a little of its corner to fit it in. Without realising that the wiring inside the plug was exposed and shorting the metal bracket of the VC-RE itself.

By using a separate extension fan plug, I managed to get the rig to boot again .

Now I can resume the mod without the rush job I did for the LANparty.

Not really an update, as I'm still working out how to manage the tons of wires in the rig, but this is what I got today to feed the Dragon:







Now, I'll go enjoy this and forget modding for a week

Since it's a long holiday, I've finally got around to do something on the Dragon's Lair. Some wire management and some lights.

Here's the Lair unlighted:


The other side of the case where I hid the cacings:


Close-up of the bottom left corner where the HDD drive bays are. Most of the cables went here:


The front view of the HDD bays. See the chunk of the messy cables. I had to work with 3 pairs of CCFLs, 1 LED strip, 2 case fans. What a nightmare:


Close-up of the PSU side. You can see a little of the Dragon:


The mobo area. It looks abit cleaner now:


The case in full view with lights:


The Dragon! This part is light with blue CCFL and kept isolated with the black aryclic so that the light doesn't leak down to the bottom main area of the case which is UV:

This is still an on-going project. I haven't sorted out the UV yet. The UV tubes are there, but not much UV stuff installed yet except the UFO. So I'll be working on that next.

@katunx, the black sleeves I got from vCool's shop.

This post has been edited by ZipD: May 3 2007, 11:24 AM

Thanks for the bump but I've put this on an indefinite hold. Coz I got really mad about handling all the wire mgmt with so many fans and ccfls. Just so the 2 forumers who look at this know