PROJECT LOG Extreme sleeper, inside and out!

[Bill Dimwit]

Ok finally pull the trigger and joined after about 10 years of lurking.

So here I am with a insane project, we all seen sleepers, wether its a vega with a small block or a new pc in a old ibm case. But there is one thing we never seen. At least not with sleeper PCs. A modem pc that could pass as being old even with the side panels off. Yes you read that right. It will even look old in the inside.
Now I know what your thinking, how? Well that answer will have to wait.

Ok on to the case mods and what not.
The case started life out as a Mitsubishi server. It had quad xeons (long gone) 6 hdds and all the server bits.

I modified the case off and on over the years but now the reall stuff starts.
So far I cut out the fan grills and added a few fan spots. But thats it.

Sadly I jumped the gun and started to remove the back of the case with out taking pictures. But do to a misshap. (dropped a shear blade on my leg) It was bad enough that my socks were wet within seconds... now I have a lovely hole in my leg and can hardly walk. But it will get better, I hope. Lucky for once my screwed up nervous system came in handy. I hardly felt a thing. Yeah tap me on the arm and Im in pain, but when a pice of my leg is missing I feal nothing.

Ok how do I fit this in a atx the case?
View attachment 197494
With a drill and power saw silly billy.

Yes thats a 15 slot i/o panle. Bet you never seen one of those? Bet your now thinking what the heck kind of motherboard gose in a case with 15 pci slots? Well we will find out soon. Ill be ordering the motherboard soon and once revived you will see it and the mods needed to make it fit the case.

Oh, and lets not forget the case ill be starting with.
View attachment 197495
Its a little dinged up, but we can get that fixed.

Yes thats a Mitsubishi logo on the cd drive. When I got the system it had all Mitsubishi parts in it. Ram, cd drive floppy drive, power supply and so on. If it weren't for the system being shot I would have restored it.
The monitor however works grate! I sold a ips that cost my 2.5k new and kept the Mitsubishi crt it had. Thats how nice it is. Supports 2560x2048@60 or 1600x1200@85 or 1024x768@140 and the color is amazing. The lack of desk space however sucks.


Ok into the plains.

Clean up old shabby mods I done to the case.
Mod the case to fit the 15slot i\o panel.
Mod the case to fit a 14 slot back plain.
Mod the case to fit a full length cpu board.
Mod the case for better cooling
Tutch up the paint.
Rewire the front panle leds and buttons.


And the parts list. (Subject to changes)
I7-6700te or 7700t with socket 7/370 style passive heatsink.
16gb ddr4 ram
r9 370, but Im looking for a more retro looking card. Any ideas? I want to pkay kingdom come.
6 raptor hdds in raid 10, but may buy scsi drives to compete the look.
Old sound blaster, with game port. And ill use it.
Lots of old pci I/O cards.
H110 lga 1151 cpu card. No need to sli/cf or overclocking.
15slot backplane.


Ill try to start back up in the mods tomorrow, but I cant guarantee much. I cant stand for long let alone walk very well since my accident. It will be baby steps. I can however post the mods that have all ready been done to the case.

 

[Blaylock]

I'll Sub. I've built a sleeper or two in my day, both on the road and off.

 

[Blaylock]

My suggestion to make the GPU look like a time period piece would be to pick up a modern blower style GPU and print some graphics similar to this on it. The down side is the location of the print is somewhat hidden in a case.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

I thought about that. That is one reason why I was thinking of the 370.

Depending on the motherboard I use, the video card may be at the top of the case and the sticker would be more seen.

But I'm wanting to keep the system looking more erly 2000s late 90s on the inside.


Anyway here are the sabby mods I already done to the case. View attachment 197511
As you can see (I hope) I have cut the fan geills out of the case to increase air flow and decrease sound.
Not the best work. Be ill get it cleand up.
Oddly the lower spot with the cut iut for the 92mm fan did not fit any sape or size fan I could find. Cut cut the center of the gill out to fit a 92mm fan. Look right at home.

Looking closeer at the added 92mm fan we can see my crappy work with wiss snips.
Will definitely have to clean it up.
View attachment 197512


I dont even know where to begin with the hdd cage. Almost embarrassed to post about it.
Well its fan gill was raised up. It protruded from the case and thare was realy no other way to remove it. It would have looked equally as dumb if I only cut the part around the fan. But the cuts even look crappy.
Ill clean it up too.
View attachment 197513

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Ok guys, bought the motherboard and cpu card today. 433$ in total, ouch, and its a h110 cpu board.
But for the project and what I want it will be well worth it.


Here is a stock photo of the cpu card, nowadays they call them a SBC as everything you need for the system to run is on a card. Back in the day they only had the cpu and chipset on them.
http://advdownload.advantech.com/pr...ct - Photo(B)/PCE-5029_3D_B20151124135842.jpg


And here is a picture of the motherboard.
https://ecauk.com/files/2013/10/Advantech-PCE-5B13-08A1E.jpg
Nice thing about sutch a setup is in 15-20 years I can still put a modern cpu board in it. No taking apart the hole system and replacing everything. Heck you can even still get modem cpu cards for isa/pci boards.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Got a cpu heat sink. Its a passive ARCTIC Alpine 11, should look old school enough. Hopefully I will not have to cut it up for it to fit the SBC. I also got a pci-e to M.2 card.
I also come by a gtx970 from MSI that looks rather retro I may get one. But it has 3.5/4 user ratting
I was sifting around all my old parts and found some old school after market ram heat sinks, they look like they're from 2002-2004ish I'll certainly use them.
I also found some old I/O cards that I'll use too. Still looking for ram, cpu and psu.


My leg is doing better so I'll start on the mods this weekend. I'll clean up the old mods tonight. Sorry for the delays.
On the chopping block. Clean up the old mods. Remove the last of the ATX back panel, fab a new back panel with the 15 slot PCI I/O panel, pant the new rear panel to match the case and touch up the paint on the case. Oh and take better photos.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Ok, I'm back at it.

I removed the last of the old ATX back panel.
There was a small lift on the motherboard try I had to remove. It will definitely need some cleaning up before painting.
View attachment 197665
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And here is how the case looks with the pci back plan panel.
View attachment 197667

I drilled 3 holes the the pci panle for mounting.
View attachment 197669


All the holes needed for the motherboard have been drilled.
View attachment 197668



As you can see I have alot of touching up to do on the cuts. But we're getting there.


Oh and the motherboard arrived.
View attachment 197670

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Houston we have a problem. The pci panle will not line flush with the case. Ill have to do some thinking about this one. If I put the pci panle flush with the case the motherboard will not fit.
View attachment 197674


Oh and this will give you an idea of what the back of the case will look like.
View attachment 197675

 

[Lochekey]

This is going to be interesting to see the end results.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Indeed. The case sould be mostly done by the end of next week. Painting may take some time as its a little cold here.
As for the parts, well that will have to wait. Not only is the cpu board on back order. Im also saving uo for a new car and don't want to dip into the car fund. The whole system should be done in a month I hope.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

OK, I got some parts for the system. I got a m.2 ssd. a seasonic SS-650HT 650W Power Supply and 2 sticks of 8GB DDR4 2133Mhz CL15.

I also have an idea for the gaps in the sheet metal. I'll use some angle iron to over it up.

EDIT: diped into the car fund (oops) and got a 6700t. I was going to wait and see if the SBC I got supported the 7700t, but for 100mhz its not worht the wait.

All I need to get now is the video card and some odd and ends. But that will have to wait. Not dipping into the car fund again.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

To hell with a new car. I just bought the last of the parts for the system. However the SBC CPU card is still on back order.
I got a msi gtx 970
Its not the old looking card I was going for, but everything that looked 2001-2003 ish was not powerful enough. But it dose look about 2008 ish.
That and the 970 is about the only high end card that is not over priced from the mining craze. I payed about $200 for it on eBay. Not too bad. But I wanted to pay $150 for the video card.


EDIT: I'm parting out my x48 system so the car budget will be replenished soon.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Ok, now im wishing I removed the entire tear panle and made a new one from scratch.

View attachment 197806

But you don't really ever see the rear of the case.
Anyway that image will give you an idea of what the rear will look like when done.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Ok,so I got good news and some bad.

Good news is that I received most of the parts today.

Bad new is, well bad.
First off: I'm lazy and still have to finish the case mods.
Second: I got scammed two fold on ebay. Once for a copy of windows 7 for the system (computerized sellers account) And second a m.2 ssd (sellers account was banned after buying it) and good ol nice ebay removed the listing and I cant file INR case for them.
And lastly: I lazy and forgot to check how much room I had for a cpu heat sink.
View attachment 197855
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View attachment 197853
I'll ether have to get a different heat sink or cut it up. I'll cut it up first and if that does not work out I'll get something different.

The idea with the passive heat sink was to use the 120mm intake along with the GPU fan to cool the 35w cpu. The 120mm intake would blow cold air on the heat sink and the gpu fan would suck it up. The heat sink was rated for cooling unto 45w so cutting a 1/4 to 1/2 of inch off the top sold not harm its ability to cool much.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

I got some updates. Will post photos tonight.
I fixed the problem with the PCI back plate not lining up with back of the case.

I'll take photos in a place with better lighting too. Wish I had a better camera. Sorry for the crummy photos.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Ok as we can see I fixed the gaps between the back of the case and the pci panel. Everything sets flush now.
However there are still a few gaps Ill have to fix. I also have 3 more fans to add to the rear panle.
View attachment 197915View attachment 197916View attachment 197917

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Its always amazing how things look so nice with doing metal work, then it looks like crap.
View attachment 197942
When I was drilling the fan holes for the rear panle the hole saw got stuck and bent the metal. Nothing a hammer and anvil cant fix . But at 5lb my forging hammer did just as mutch good as it did damage.
Nothing some sanding and filler cant fix.

I sill have alot of touching up to do on the pice anyway. Look at those wavy cuts. Ekk

 

[Bill Dimwit]

View attachment 198053

Still have to tuch up the edges for the fans a little

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Good news, the CPU board shipped out! I should get it Friday. I also made some head way on the case and will post what I did tonight.
All I have left to do is to drill holes for the angle iron ,bolt the angle iron in place, fill a few small gaps, galvanize the case and paint it.

Yes I'm going to re-galvanize the case. Cold galvanize, but galvanize none the less. Cold galvanizing is kind of like spaying chrome. It comes in a rattle can like spay paint dose. The can is 90+% zinc. Should make the case look alot better.

 

[Bill Dimwit]

Sorry for the lack up updates. Been swamped at work and home.

The galvanizing paint came out ok.
View attachment 198184

Here we can see where I had to cut up the heat sink. amazingly the 6700t maxes out at about 45c under load via furmark and prim95.
View attachment 198186
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Some photos on the wiring in progress. Sadly the HDD bay got in the way of the gtx970, good thing I have a hot swap adapter plates for the case. I can put 4 hdds in the system with out cutting up the hdd bay. But I think I'll just sell the old raptors and get a second M.2 drive. Anyone need 6 300gb raptors ?
View attachment 198189
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I'll try to get more photos tonight.