DFI X48-T3RS in a Lian Li A17

[SquidgyB]

Hehe, yeah, it's very well placed for the IFX-10.

Well, literally 2 minutes of lapping on the finest grit paper and:

[Clunk]

That's come out nice and shiney

Get it fitted then

[SquidgyB]

I have, I'll get a pic or two tonight.

I was expecting the memory to be delivered today, but it doesn't look like it will be

The UPS tracking said it left the US from LA late Thursday night, so I was hoping for it to arrive, looks like it might be tomorrow or later now. I'm itching to get this machine up and running now!

[SquidgyB]

Sorry, I didn't have time to post anything the other night. I was busy last night though!

My memory still hasn't turned up, so I decided to get on with the cooling duct I had planned. It went better than I thought it would to be honest, in the end, with the help of lots of Akasa Pax sound proofing foam I managed to make it completely screwless. The fans, baffle, fitting it in the PC, it's all held in by rubber foam. It's much sturdier than I thought it would be!

First, the cut out cowl, with two 120mm fans fitted:







Now with some padding so it rests on the side of the bays (held in quite firmly by the side panel of the case):








A view of the inside of the duct:



You can see how close the PCI-e power connectors are to the fans in this shot:



I've tried to keep the airflow as unobstructed as possible, while laying down plenty of padding on any surface that comes in contact with another, so as to avoid any noise.

There's no real point installing it at the moment though... The stock cooler exhausts out of the back already, and I'm not going to pull off the stock cooler until after I've decided whether or not I'm going to step up to a 9800 GTX+ (cheap upgrade, but whether it's actually worth upgrading remains to be seen), and that's only if EVGA decide to release 9800GTX+ on step up. They haven't got the GTX260 on step up, so the 9800GTX+ is not a definite.

You can see the TRUE120 in the pics as well. I didn't like the wire clips for the fans (my fans are closed mountings, so fitting the clips is a nightmare), so I've used cable ties, though getting them between the heatpipes under the cooler was bloody frustrating.

[Kelainefes]

You should file away the corners, the plastic the fans are made of is not too hard usually.

[SquidgyB]

Aye, I had that idea, what you don't see from the pics is that the power connector is an inch or more into the fan, so filing the corner would just let the cables get in the way of the actual fan. It's not too bad the way it is, it all fits and works, so I'm quite happy with the way it turned out

[SquidgyB]

Well, after waiting and waiting (a week is a long time when you're expecting a delivery!), the memory still hasn't turned up. There is light at the end of the tunnel though:

- Out of Foreign Customs, June 27, 2008, 8:50 am, GREAT BRITAIN
- Into Foreign Customs, June 24, 2008, 10:53 am, GREAT BRITAIN
- Arrived Abroad, June 24, 2008, 10:45 am, GREAT BRITAIN
- International Dispatch, June 19, 2008, 11:06 pm, LOS ANGELES
- Electronic Shipping Info Received, June 18, 2008

So I should get it on Monday, and I can start testing properly.

There's another mod I want to try and get done this weekend to keep me occupied until the memory arrives A little explanation is needed though:

The Kama Panel is a lovely little device, with 6 fan control channels, 2 x USB, 1 x Firewire, Audio In/Out/Line in, eSata, and multiple card readers. I want to have all the ports available, even if I never use them all at once, the little part of my head that told me to avoid the cracks in the pavement when I was 14 tells me they must be connected and ready to go!



However, the method of connecting the USB/Firewire devices isn't the best. On the back of the Kama Panel, we have standard USB headers. Two go directly to the USB ports, one goes to the card slots, and there's also a header for the Firewire port. The probelm is with the cables Scythe have supplied:



You're meant to route the cables through the PC, and out of the back of the case, to plug into the USB ports at the back. I don't like this one bit, so it's got to go!

Now, I'd like to plug them directly into the motherboard USB/Firewire headers, but there's an issue (isn't there always? ). I have already used two of the three headers (4 USB ports) for the ports on top of the case:



My plan is to hide a 4 port USB hub (shown next to the USB cables) just behind the Kama Panel, and plug or solder the cables from the back of the panel into the hub, then remove the USB connector on the hub and replace it with a header block, then plug that header into the motherboard*. I've got plenty of random USB headers, and a rather handy toolkit to remove the pins from all kinds of headers/connectors:

Chilled PC - Watercooling made easy, Over 400 products in stock

The eSata port on the panel, as well as the sata port on the top of the case are already connected. One of the firewire ports will sadly have to be routed through the back of the case, as there is only one header on the motherboard. The audio connectors will be routed to separate soundcards (I like having two running because I usually use the onboard sound for ventrillo/teamspeak/msn, and the proper card for gaming/music/films) Leaving only the USB/card readers to be sorted out.

More on this tomorrow... it's getting late!

edit: *Had a bit of a thought about this as I read over the post. I might connect the four USB ports at the top of the case to the hub, then to the motherboard, rather than connecting the three required from the back of the panel to the hub. We'll see once I have a look at it in the light of day tomorrow.

I'm shattered. Good night to anyone who's still up at this time!

[SquidgyB]

I'm getting the feeling this should be a blog and not a system build thread!

I had my hopes raised and subsequently dashed on the rocks of despair...

According to the tracking website they attempted to deliver thee memory at 7:57 this morning. B@ll@cks did they. I'm having it delivered to my work address, which happens to be the HQ of a multinational pharmaceutical company, with 24/7/365 security and mailroom. I reckon the parcelforce guy saw that it was being delivered to a business address and decided that he could shave 10 minutes off his day if he just said that it couldn't be delivered, and head home early.

I wouldn't have minded so much, but I could easily have picked it up today. I called security and went over (it's only 5 minutes away) because they did have a package delivered, but alas, it wasn't mine

Parcelforce will be getting a rather angry phonecall from me on Monday!

e: apologies to any parcelforce employee who reads this... it was the only conclusion I could come to given the information I had. Honest.

[SquidgyB]

Well, I've sorted the USB ports on the top of the case

Here's the USB hub with the sockets removed, with the help of a soldering iron and a pair of pliers:



And then the same unit with the cables soldered in in the top of the case:



The whole hub has been wrapped in insulating tape and it tucked away in the recess above the 5 1/4 inc bays.

I had a go earlier at tidying up the fan cables, making sure all the cables leading to the fan controller are nicely routed, as well as trying to connect more than one fan to a some of the channels of the fan controller... It didn't like this much. It looks as if it can't supply enough ampage, because no matter how I connect them (I made my own Y-splitters to begin with, and tried to put the fans in serial after that didn't work) some of the fans wouldn't start or spin so slowly as to be pointless, so I gave up on the idea and just put each fan on it's own channel

I would've liked to have had the two bay fans as one unit, the two CPU fans as one, as well as the cooling duct fans as a single unit. Now, each fan has it's own control, while the cooling duct is just connected by a molex, and whatever I use for the memory cooler will have to come from the motherboard or the PSU.

[SquidgyB]

Turns out the reason the memory wasn't delivered isn't to do with a lazy driver at all, that's just they way it looked from the description on the tracking site...

Customs got hold of it, and decided I owe them £52 in VAT. Which, to be honest, is fair enough. I didn't pay VAT when it was purchased, so I'll bite the bullet and pay up. Thank god that the parcelforce depot is open till 7pm tonight, I finish at 4pm, and that the Oxford depot (where it's being held) is only about 30 minutes drive away.

Happy days!