Say hello to El Jefecito!

I've been very busy during and after christmas and new year. I hoped to finish the case build and to be able to install the parts and fire the thing up. Obviously this never happened.

I was able to make a lot of progress with the frame. I drilled all the holes and tapped the threads. There is about 50 holes and doing them with accu-drill wasn't fast or easy... I also tapped most of them by hand because the drill broke one threading tool in there. I was lucku to get it out. I also made some decorations for the exterior, but that's going to be revealed when the case is ready.

Holes for the wheels.


Furthermore I cut the grills and the exterior plates.


I found out that I made a mistake with the end plates and they lack some 20mm in width. That's not visible in this pic and I later found out that it shouldn't be a big problem.


I tried to paint the frame, but it was +2C in the "lab", so I couldn't get any paint out of the spray can.



So now all that I had to do over there is done and what's left I have to do over here. I packed all the stuff so I can work whenever I have time and not have to drive 100kms to get something done. I have a nice place ready (a basement which has a pub upstairs \o/ ) and I try to work a little bit in there this week.

Of course I forgot to take the tubing and some minor parts for the water cooling with me, but I can get them later. The watercooling is not a priority right now.

Why, you might ask. Well, because I have this:


Yes! I've finally put the parts together and as soon as I finish this entry, I'll start setting it up.

Here are a couple pics of the "wolf in sheep's clothing". The building was very easy and the parts fit in the case very nicely, altough I had to change one SATA cable to make the GFX card fit in. The 90 degree plug got in the way, so I put a straight one instead. I also changed the stock thermal paste from the CPU cooler to Arctic Alumina.

I had a computer specialist to help me, so maybe that's why everything went so smooth.


Notice the cool PSU. I thought it would be modular but unfortunately it is not. I have a bunch of cables to take care of and I'd rather not.


See how close the GFX card comes to the HDD rack. Take no note of the cable mess.




Just one little finishing touch by our specialist and we're ready to bolt the covers on this one.


Now I'm going to run a few tests with the build before the "warranty" of the MoBo expires to make sure it works ok.