Case Mods & Modular PSU's

[Jofaba]

I admit, I'm shooting for a Sticky with this. But please showcase your casemods here and discuss modular PSU's. I have a 580w Hiper and it's beautiful. Does anyone else here have a Hiper? I mean who's not from the UK. They're very popular there. Any Hiper owners here in the US? Anyone make their own case window? Any special wiring, light, water cooling or other mods? Post here! If you want a permanent home for your pic in this thread, please IM me. I'll host it on my site for free and for life. That means no dead links and no size restrictions or restrictions on how many pictures you can use. Enjoy this thread.

[Berrern]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

I've just bought a new PSU myself, and I was also very interested in the Hiper - it really looks awesome! In the end I went with a ThermalTake Silent PurePower 680W though, seeing as it's manufactured especially for SLI systems.



The mirror finish looks really good, and the PSU comes with sleeved, colour-coded wiring for optimal airflow and a tidy case. I'm really happy so far with this PSU.
Its only downside is the noise. The word "Silent" is included in the product name, but is a blatant lie. After playing for about 15 minutes, it seems like the PSU runs both its fans at maximum power, and the sound it produces is noticably louder than the 11 fans already running in the case! How are the noise levels from the Hiper?

As for my casemod, here's the pictures (click on them for a bigger version):

[Berrern]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

Having spent the day tidying my PC, here is the result (no night shots, can't turn off lights here at work now):

Notice that little red arrow? That's where the Clear CMOS switch is located - clever isn't it?

As for hiding cables, I used the spare room I could find in my case. I did have a hell of a time trying to fit the side door though, as can be seen here:

[Jofaba]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

I'm buying liquid cooling this week and made room for the resevoir, so I'll take pictures as soon as the unit is in. Might make another window on the same side as my first to showcase the resevoir.

[sackynut]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

I wish I had a Lan Party mobo =(

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

I'm buying liquid cooling this week and made room for the resevoir, so I'll take pictures as soon as the unit is in. Might make another window on the same side as my first to showcase the resevoir.

I'd advise against the use of a resivor.

Anywho, links in the sig to my old computer, new one is the same case and liquid cooling, only with a

DFI SLI-DR Expert
Opteron 148
and a diffrent video card (havn't decided what to get yet)

[Jofaba]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

Made room for a dual heater core (radiator). Pics in sig.

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

If I were you, I would get a new motherboard before you put watercooling in there. Via chipsets aren't known for their overclocking prowess.

[N2K]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

get the new Asus a8n32 with a system that nice looking, up the mobo too

[Hephaistion]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

As far as modular goes I did some studying on it before choosing the Sintek 600W SLI PSU

It is sitting pretty in my Antec P180

I especially like the heat dissapator vent with 80mm fan, it pulls hot air directly off my 2 XfX 6800GS OC's (Sweet SLI for under $400!)

Anyone else with a P180 out there? It is in my humble opinion the best case for the $$
$120 for a case with silicon dampened drive slots, isolated PSU bay, more HDD slots than you could ever use, 4 big 120mm case fans, washable intake filters, it is truly the Mercedes of cases. (yes those are 4 Kingston Hyper-X CL2 DDR400 512mb sticks on the Abit KN8 SLI mobo!)

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

As far as modular goes I did some studying on it before choosing the Sintek 600W SLI PSU

It is sitting pretty in my Antec P180

I especially like the heat dissapator vent with 80mm fan, it pulls hot air directly off my 2 XfX 6800GS OC's (Sweet SLI for under $400!)

Anyone else with a P180 out there? It is in my humble opinion the best case for the $$
$120 for a case with silicon dampened drive slots, isolated PSU bay, more HDD slots than you could ever use, 4 big 120mm case fans, washable intake filters, it is truly the Mercedes of cases.

I almost got a P-180, but I knew I would have to cut it up a bit, and I didn't want to start hacking on such an expensive case.

[Jofaba]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

I was surprised how much room I cleared up in the case. My hard drive fix is getting a little warm, so I'm going to space them further apart, push them a little further back in the case, add a 80mm fan and put an intake hole through my door. I think. Either that, or look at adding a HD cooler in my upcoming liquid cooling. I haven't researched yet whether adding that much heat (I believe a HD can operate at much higher temps, and do so) to the water will be worth it though. I might just let the drives run hot for a while, but going to research how much damage can occur from overheating tomorrow.

Been spending the day reading extremeoverclocking.com forums. Priceless information. I don't think that I'll purchase anything for another week or so. I plan to do this right the first time around.

As for the mobo, I'm not sure what to do. I've often wondered if it's the bottleneck in my system and the cause of most of my problems. I'd love to switch out, but the problem is that my system is AGP, and my videcard is new (and cost $400). I want to stay AGP for this sytem and go SLI on my next rig. Spec wise, except for the via chipset, this board seems to have the best of everything, and has been overclocking strangely well on stock cooling and voltage. I had 2.5ghz stable for half an hour, and 2.4 never crashed (that I remember or believe was OC related). Any suggestions for an AGP board, and more importantly, where to buy them?

One sad thing is that I have to touchup the inside of my case because of some things I removed. Again. I didn't rough up the metal so it scratches off very easily. I'm going to paint the next case with automtive paint possibly. I want the next pc to be VERY clean and attractive.
------------
Edit: 1) Feel free to use this thread to detail your work-in-progress (I certinally plan to, and it's fun to watch people as they work)
2) My computer's at all stock speed right now. Decided to cut down until water cooling. Interesting to find out that there has been no loss in peformance at all. I haven't run 3DMark05 yet but BF2, GTA SA, NFS MW, etc run exactly the same as before. Weird...
3)My sig is updated everytime I change something. Currently giving up on X-FI Xtreme Music, though going to hold off on returning it in case someone can point me towards a good AGP mobo replacement (maybe it'll play nice with the X-FI).

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

Whatever you do,do not buy a liquid HD cooler. They are one of the biggest wastes ever.

As for the MOBO, I'm not as up on my AGPboards as I once was but these are recommended:


*Msi K8N Neo 2 Platinum $105
*Some reports of being problematic when it gets to ocing

*Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 $105
*Low Vdimm

*Asrock 939Dual Sata2
*Supports both agp and pci-e
*low vcore

*Epox 9NDA3J/+ $96
*Cant work with 4 dimms
*Some boards seem to have some rebooting problems
*Price for +

I had a MSI K8N Neo2 and had good overclocking results and no problems out of it.

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

Jofaba ~ are you planning on a parallel loop or series loop?

[Jofaba]

Re: Case Mods & Modular PSU's

Don't know yet, still researching. It appears to be that once everything has settled (pump on for 10+ minutes running load) that the water reaches a steady temp throughout the loop. So series is probably fine, while splitting to the cpu and gpu will just cut my pressure to both locations by half, and then recombine them. Sure, the liquid might be cooler, but is it a better setup?

Probably cpu->gpu->heatercore->pump.

Lots of research to still do, but looking at the following:

Swiftech Storm 1/2" ID
Danger Den MAZE 4 Low Profile
Metallic Blue Dual 120mm Single Pass Heatercore (with 1 clear shroud)
Eheim 1250 AC Pump (Possibly with a pump relay)
All 1/2 inch tubing.

Also might get non-conductive liquid. I know it's super expensive ($20 for 32 ounces!), but I'm reading some leak horror stories, and haven't decided if I want to run the pump 24/7 yet. Also haven't picked out fans yet. Well, haven't picked ANYTHING yet. Basically just picking the best recommendations from these forums.