[BUILD LOG] - Wonko's Gaming Rig

[wonko]

A lot has happened in the last couple of months in my personal life which has really killed this project, so I'm just now picking it up again. I've sleeved the two mobo power cables... the 24-pin was a GIANT pain in the butt because of how Seasonic splits it into two connectors on the PSU - an 18-pin and a 10-pin.

I redid the 8-pin mobo cable about 20 times, lol. That was my first one and it took me forever to get it looking really good. I'm going to redo the 24-pin mobo connector because I've found a better way to splice the cables that need it.

Since my last post, I've added a 128GB Samsung Pro 840 and my OS is on that now and I'm using the 256GB as fast storage for games and some of my business software.

I've also added two more Western Digital drives and have those as hot-swappable RAID5. I've got about 3GB total storage there and I'm using that for bulk storage and backups (which then get mirrored to an external RAID1 USB3.0 device).

Oh yeah... I added another EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC for SLI. Can't forget that!

I'm not posting pictures until I do the following:

- Redo the 24-pin mobo power cable
- Make the custom power cables for the two 780's
- Replace the SATA data cables with cables of the appropriate length and color
- Make the custom SATA power cables for the hard drives

I should be done with all of that this weekend, believe it or not.

Anyway, thanks for asking!!!

 

[Shadow300]

Sounds awesome! Looking forward to seeing it all put together!

 

[wonko]

Almost ready for WC...

I decided to hold off on posting any updates or pics until I pretty much got everything ready to move on to watercooling.

My main goal was to get all of the wiring things done and the radiators in place before I worried about the pump, tubing, connections and reservoir. To me, it made sense I should have everything tucked away and in its place before I made that next step.

Of course, it took 10x longer than expected to do this, lol. I mean, it's easy to say, but a LOT of work; especially when doing things one has never done before.

I wanted to make everything fit as neatly as possible, so every cable in this case is custom-made with the exception of the SATA data cables and some of the fan cables.

As it turns out sleeving cables is a pain in the ***. Go figure.

I'll post details of how to sleeve cables in a different thread. Here are the pics of my 'puter:

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Assembled:

I thought that was a cool shot because of the reflection on the window.

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Interior:

You'll notice there are some wires for the CPU fan which I haven't touched. I figured there was point since I was going to watercool the CPU anyway.

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GPU and Mainboard Power:

The biggest challenge here was tracing the wires for the 24-pin ATX power connector on the mainboard. Normally, it wouldn't be that big of a deal except that SeaSonic splits that cable into two connectors on the PSU - an 18-pin and a 10-pin. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "18 + 10 doesn't equal 24. WTH?" NO KIDDING! What's really amazing is there are a couple of pins which aren't even used. So, they have a couple of pins where two wires are running from the 24-pin connector and each wire goes to a different pin on the 10 and 18 connectors. Finding a good way to splice these together in a way that works and looks good is fairly difficult.

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PSU Cables:

I didn't want the neon green sleeving down at the bottom of the chassis by the power supply. I wanted to keep that color around the mainboard and have the cables down by the PSU be stealthier. So, the lower parts of the cable are black and the upper parts are green.

I used dark green wires for the custom cabling. I figured it wouldn't bleed through the black or neon green sleeving and it really doesn't. In these pictures, you can see it come through because of the flash and the high resolution of the camera.

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SATA Devices:

Making the SATA power cables was a pain in the butt. What I ended up doing was making them without any sleeving. Then, I removed the connectors, sleeved the cables without the connectors and then put the connectors back on. Since I could see where the wire insulation had been cut by the connectors, I sleeved each wire so there was heatshrink tubing over each of the cuts and then I pressed the connectors back into their original cuts. There was probably a better way of doing it, but I couldn't think of one.

Here you can really see the green of the wire bleed through. Again, it's not visible to the naked eye.

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SATA RAID:

I didn't know what to do with the SATA data cables for the hot-swap backplane. They weren't quite long enough to go around the back of the chassis. When I used a longer cable and fed it through the back, the angle created on the mainboard connections weren't good for straight or right-angle plugs. So, this was the best solution I could come up with. It doesn't look bad, and it will be hidden by the reservoir anyway.

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Top Radiator and Fans:

I went ahead and installed the top radiator (Hardware Labs Black Ice SR1 360) and fans (Noiseblocker NB-BlackSilentFan XL2 120mm) so I could get the sleeving for the fans done. Plus, I figured it wouldn't hurt to already get it in place.

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The Dreaded Shot of the Back of the Chassis:

I simply don't know how to do this better. It's not at all how I imagined it, but I can't make it look like I imagined it to look. The ridges and seams of the chassis make it nearly impossible to keep cables straight and clean looking. If it's not the ridges or seams, it's the near impossible task of trying to get a wad of 24 wires (or whatever) to bend at a given angle. Anyway, this was the best I could do. I'm not at all happy with it, but I'm not going to spend any more time on it.

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Front:

Here's what's in each bay from top to bottom:

- Lamptron FC5v2 30W 4 Channel Fan Controller
- LG BH16NS40 16x 3D Blu-ray Optical Drive
- Blank
- Syba 5.25" Dual Bay SATA HDD Rack
- Rosewill 74-in-1 USB 3.0 Card Reader mounted in a Silverstone Aluminum 3.5 to 5.25 Front Panel

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Anyway, that's the end result. The only thing that's missing is the rear radiator. I purchased a radiator grill which doesn't actually fit the radiator (I thought 140mm was um... 140mm everywhere?). I'm not going to mount it until I can protect the outside fins.

Let me know what you think!!!

 

[Shadow300]

Looking good! Was waiting for an update haha. Nice sleeving job too!

 

[wonko]

Yeah... it's been quite a while, lol. Talk about trial and error; this was a real learning experience!

 

[Shadow300]

That's good that it's been a learning experience for you though. I'm about to start a project for someone so maybe I'll post a build log if they will allow me.

 

[wonko]

Check out my guide to custom cables. It's where I share some of my learning experience. LOL

 

[Shadow300]

I must say, I very much enjoyed that post haha