I just happened to notice something this morning that I overlooked while doing my wire management yesterday- I forgot to plug the extra molex connector into the motherboard! So now after I get home from work today (no holiday for me, sadly) I'll have to re-do some wiring.
Oddly enough though, the pc starts and runs fine without it connected, I didn't get any sort of error message. I was even gaming on it last night. The only way I noticed is that I looked in there this morning to check on my NB fan (I got a warning that it was running slowly, I think but hope not that it is indeed banging up against my cpu heatsink.) Sigh.
Eh, I wouldn't worry about it, because those things are to give extra power to the PCI-E slots, since i have a 7900GT it has a six pin going to the GPU, so i leave it unplugged.
Yeah, I figured as much, but I plugged it in anyways. I figured I may as well not skimp on supplying power.
However, the real problem cropped up today while I was running benchmarks to get some stock numbers before I started overclocking. Long story short, my nice new 7900gtx is a defective, artifacting piece of crap. It can't complete a pass of 3dmark 06 without either bluescreening or locking up. Needless to say, my projects are basically on hold while I get this card RMA'ed.
Figures, I saw that a few people were having problems with the 7900 series, but I decided to go for it anyways...I got "lucky" it seems. Now after doing a lot of troubleshooting and research today, it seems like these sorts of problems are much more commonplace (or are at least being talked about more as more people upgrade) than when I did my initial research a few weeks ago. Frustrating.
Its Rustoleum Neon Green, over a coat of Rustoleum white primer for plastic. Its pretty translucent so the white primer is a must, as well as several coats of the green.
Its Rustoleum Neon Green, over a coat of Rustoleum white primer for plastic. Its pretty translucent so the white primer is a must, as well as several coats of the green.
The busted video card bummed me out quite a bit and made me not want to work on the remaining case mods for a while, but I should be finishing them up pretty soon.
Mini-update: the faulty card is in the hands of ZZF and my RMA is "processing," so lets hope they ship me out a new one soon. As far as the video card goes (I mentioned this elsewhere but not in this thread,) I am planning on selling the replacement in its nice unopened retail package on Ebay, then I will buy a x1900xtx instead. I am also planning on swapping to a crossfire motherboard so I will still have dual-card capability. I'm strongly leaning towards an Abit AT8 32X; it will be nice to have another Abit board. My K8N Diamond Plus is going to be used in another build (my sister wants me to build her a pc soon.) I didn't even use the darn thing for more than a day and I am already thinking about replacing it
As far as the case mods go, unless something direly important comes up I am planning on doing some paint work tomorrow, as well as some more foam lining inside the case.
I did a little bit today, not as much as I wanted too but I've been feeling a bit sick. I masked off and primered the doors, they are sitting out in my garage overnight. I'll probably get a coat of black on them before I go to work tomorrow. I also foamed the inside of the rear panel of the case, most of which is not viewable of course but the part that is now makes a nice dark backdrop.
I also found the font that I think I want to use for my stencils, here's what it looks like:
"Unit X-1" will go on one door, and "Cyborgmind" will go on the other, painted in neon green.
Finally some updates. I spent the evening making the stencils for my case doors. Here they are in progress:
And later, in my garage with their first coat of paint:
The replacement for my 7900gtx should be arriving on Wednesday. I've done some research and I think I'll be sticking with my plan of getting a x1900xt and a AT8 32X- unless for some reason my replacement 7900gtx is not in a retail box, then I'll have to think on it a bit more.
Here's the front doors with the completed stenciling. As I expected, the edges were a little rough (some overspray along the letters,) but I was able to fix the trouble spots with a black sharpie. I think it turned out pretty good, all things considered. I used the same Rustoleum Neon Green that I used for the top plastic part for the lettering.
These projects should finally be getting back on track in a few days. My replacment 7900GTX has been sold on Ebay and is on its way to its new owner, so now I'm ready to get my new parts. Cyborgmind should have a shiny new HIS x1900xt and an Abit AT8 32X in it by next week. Then I can FINALLY move on to overclocking it and building the HTPC and file server. Stay tuned!
The new crossfire mobo is in! It doesn't match everything as well as my old SLI board, but after my 7900GTX fiasco, I'm eager to use ATI:
It was a lot easier to mount my Mine cooler on this motherboard, as the northbridge heatsink was low-profile instead of ginormous
I've been waiting for the HIS x1900xt with the IceQ3 cooler to come back into stock at the Egg (it just came back today.) I'm going to be ordering one tonight, hopefully I'll have it in a few days and then FINALLY the building process for Cyborgmind will be done.
I got my HIS x1900xt with the IceQ3 cooler today...so far its great. Wonderful design, and the best of all- it completes 3DMark '06! (grr Nvidia and your faulty 7900's.) I'm also liking my Abit AT8 32X so far...it just feels more "comfortable" than the MSI K8N Diamond Plus I was using at first (what can I say, I guess I just like Abit.) The installation seemed to go smoother as well- I was surprised to see that there weren't extra drivers for the ATI chipset, unlike both Intel and Nvidia (especially Nvidia, the chipset drivers reeked of bloat to me.)
I'm still finishing up my data transfer and software installs, so I haven't gamed on the new PC yet, but so far, so good. I'm going to let it burn in with dual primes overnight to make sure everything is peachy at stock speeds, then tomorrow I'll start overclocking. I'm also going to be moving on to my other two projects as well. They're mostly just going to be builds though, Cyborgmind was my primary mod project.
Anyways, on to the pics. Some of them are admittedly kinda "eh" quality, I really need a new digicam.
First, the obligatory UV shots in a dark room. Here's a picture of the top blowhole:
From there, we go to the front of the case:
And then the side. It's sitting on the floor for now, I'm going to get a table or cabinet for it to sit on next to my desk soon, hopefully this weekend:
Now the lights come back on. Here's the same side shot, without flash:
And with flash:
Lastly, a couple of close ups. No flash:
And with flash. You can see the extra foam pieces I placed while waiting for my video card to arrive. Its more for aesthetic purposes, then any sort of sound dampening (although I suppose it could absorb some sound...maybe):
I'll start building my new HTPC "Fei" tomorrow, and hopefully my new file server "Regis Mark V" as well. I was hoping to get going on them tonight, but I think its already getting too late. Bah. Looks like I need to officialy update my sig as well
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nice work keep it up!
