All finished!

Well, there's one or two finishing touches to be done - I have to fit a filter over the intake fan for the radiator, and I need to tidy up the wiring, and clearcoat the case - but it's pretty much complete. The looks won't change much now, though I probably will paint the drive faceplates.



I planned this case to be quiet, efficient and compact. It's pretty quiet - I've dropped the voltage on my two 120mm fans down from 12V to some unknown voltage, and they're pretty quiet now - just a slight woosh of air.

It's definitely efficient. CPU temps are measured by a probe placed directly next to the cpu core, between the cpu ceramic and the waterblock, and ambient temps are measured by a probe at the mouth of the radiator. CPU temp never goes above 11C above ambient, even under full load (that's about 35C, my ambient's about 24 most the time).

Just for the record, 'full load' is running SETI, winamp, IE, icq and FlaskMPEG all at once, with Flask priority set to 'highest'. Seeing as some people use SETI alone, I reckon that ought to be as close to 100% cpu load as you can get.

My cpu radiates 79W at 1533MHz, 1.75V, according to radiate. With a delta of 11C, that gives a C/W of 0.14. Not bad


There'll be a full write-up of the project on my site, and I'll probably submit it to oc.com as well, if it's small enough. I think I might break it up into separate articles on things like blowhole cutting, case painting, IDE cable rounding etc... but that won't be for a while, I'm pretty busy at the moment. Right now I'm just enjoying being at 1533MHz!

very well done Rob, very nice, what can I say that I can not express with exceptional jellousy

Sweet case!!

very very nice. running your 120's at some unknow voltage! LMAO what did you do????

Did you open up your optical drive so you could see your CDs spinning with that top window? Nice mods, tho...

Cool Rob, i like that little window in the bottom corner, very clean. I'd have mine done too but the paint from the spray can dripped all over the one side so i have to sand that back down. Pain in the rear. Still cant believe you hand sanded yours. Good work though, looks cool.

VERY NICE
Looks like all the hard work paid off. I'll be looking foward to your
write-up.

Good job! Sweet llooking case.

Aww shucks guys, you're making me blush

The 'unknown voltage' is because I have one rheostat (20 Ohm I think) in parallel with my two fans. I don't know the resistance of each fan, so I'm not sure what voltage they're both running at - all I know is with the rheostat set to max resistance, they only just start (jerk a bit, then start spinning) - I've got it set a tiny bit less than that, so they start easily. So I'm probably runningclose to the minimum voltage through them.

That 'window' at the bottom corner is actually the exhaust from the rad. I may or may not mount a 120mm fan grill on it, but I'm sure as hell not gonna put perspex over it - lol!

I've left it running SETI overnight at 1600MHz, 1.85V, and it's still on when I came back this morning - it's run 3DMark a few times as well so it looks pretty stable. Max temp I've seen is 36.6C, and that was with an ambient of 24.1C. That's a 12.5C delta at 91.1W, giving a C/W of 0.137, compared to 0.139 that I got at 1533. So it looks as though 0.14 is a pretty good approximation for the C/W.

I'm lovin' it lovin' it lovin' it, lovin' it like that!