A minor setback

I just got a call from the company I've ordered the parts from. They said that there were couple of items out of stock and they won't get them anymore. I got things settled with them pretty ok, but there is one big issue. The ASUS GFX-cards have delivery problems. Even their supplier does not have those cards. Seems like the problem is at the ASUS factory and it will take estimated 2 weeks more to get them cards to my retailer.

The good point in this is that the card i'll be getting might be some 2nd generation über sample that will OC like crazy and would not generate excess heat at all.

HA! I wish!

Some visitor statistics

I never thought this project would attract a lot of people and now, as I think the project is in the half-way point I'll share some of the visitor stats with you. To be honest the total amount of visitors is a bit less than I thought it would be. Nevertheless 58 different visitors is pretty good, considering how many people know about this.

The stats at the time this is published:

Visits	Amount	Percentage
1 time	53	75,71 %
2 times	4	5,71 %
3 times	4	5,71 %
4 times	3	4,29 %
5 times	2	2,86 %
6 times	2	2,86 %
9-14 times	2	2,86 %

Thank you all for visiting. I hope you've enjoyed your stay. Stay tuned, because there's still a lot more to come and now the real work is about to start. Putting together the actual computer, installing the water cooling and finishing the case; that's a lot to do and I hope the project would be ready before new year.

One more thing. Please, please comment on the posts. I've had 5 comments all together so far and I think you people have something more to say about what I'm doing. There's no such thing as bad feedback. I promise I'll answer to every comment.

A little progress with the frame

I had about 2 hours to make some progress with the case. You should never work in a hurry and I'll show you later what happened. But first something else.

I placed the HDD rack in the frame and tested the bracket fit. Fits very nice.


Then I bought the wheels for the case from a hardware store. Wheel diameter is 75mm and the overall height is 90mm. That handle on the right side wheel is brake, so the case won't wander around if I don't want to. The wheels with brakes also turn 360 degrees, so if I ever need to move the case, it should be quite easy.


Fitting the wheel. I need to make 3mm thick fitting plates for the wheels and drill holes for the bolts. That's something I'm going to do probably next time.


Here's my new radiator on top of the fan mount. The mount and the distance between the fans is a little bit bigger that my radiator is. Seems like I have to build some kind of box to guide the air and hold the rad. On the other hand I can also fit the three 140mm fans I ordered to the box too.


Here's the stainless steel mesh I told about. I think it was part of some kind of washing machine. There's plenty of mesh to work with. I'm going to make the exhaust and intake grills out of that. All I need to do is cut it and polish. See, there's two handles too. They were a nice bonus. I'm going to put them on too. This may have been the best and most useful buy I've made in my scrap yard hunting trips.


OK, here's the thing I messed up in the hurry. That thingy is supposed to hold the PSU and the MoBo mounting plate. I didn't have time to grind the welds, but I may have to redo that all over again. The MoBo plate holding frame is twisted. I don't think you can see it from this pic, but I welded the top and bottom bars tilted. Their distance is OK, but the center ends are 5mm(!) lower than the outer side ends. I can't understand how that could've happened. Maybe I just looked the measure tape wrong in the hurry. It could be fixed but then I'd need to take the PSU plate off also and that seems like too much work since the MoBo plate is going to cover the whole frame anyway.


Here's the opti-drive mount. Welding a thin part to a thicker part is not very easy and I might need to fix that bit after I've grinded the excess off. I also put another bracket on the mount to stiffen it. Before that it was very wobbly and prone to resonate in use. That should be fixed now.


Here's how the drive, PSU and MoBo line up. That looks good to me. The PSU has it's own exhaust in the back of the case, so no more hot air than I already have should come into the case. I thought of having an air duct inside the case to have all the exhausts in the same place, but I chose this easy solution. Just a hole on the back where the juice comes in and the hot air goes out. Simple and effective.

Parts ordered

Now it's all or nothing. I've ordered the parts and there's still some stuff for the case to be done. That shouldn't be a big problem, because that delivery time might be as long as 3 weeks if they don't have all the stuff in stock and they have to order it from somewhere else. That means I should be firing it up in the beginning of november.

Here's the list of parts I ordered. I'll post the complete list of stuff I got for this project in the conlusion post later.

LG DVD+- RW DL LightScribe 20x
Nexus Prolong
3x 140mm fans
2x Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F1
2x Lazer white LED
A-data 4GT DDR3 1333MHz+
ASUS EAH4870X2/HTDI/2 HD4870X2, 2GB
Intel CORE 2 DUO E8500
EK-waterblocks EK-FC4870 X2 CF acetal for GFX card
APOGEE GTZ CPU block
PC Power&Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Red, Crossfire edition) PSU
Windows Vista home premium 64-bit, UK, OEM
Total cost 1538e (incl. S&H)

On top of that I got stainless steel mesh from scrap yard (@20e) and I also bought wheels for the case.

Let's see what I can do for the case this weekend.