Project Zeal

[Lauen]

I wouldn't say the Essence sounds anywhere close to a laptop soundcard. It depends on your audio gear and music source. I plan to get higher end high impedance headphones that will benefit from the amp.

It might not sound the same, but are you sure that the Essence sounds better? The biggest problem with most soundcards is that you really need high impedance headphones to make it "worth" because of the high output impedance which ruin sound on lower impedance headphones, and even then there are much better options, like using line out from your onboard, into an o2 amp. the o2 amp is one of the best amps for under like 400$ or so, comes with a gain switch so you can set gain for different headphones. and also, integrated ROG sound should run 250 ohm headphones no problem, and if you're going in to 600 ohm headphones, you can usually get stuff that sounds the same with less resistance and probably less money spendt. The world of headphones really is moving towards low-impedance headphones. 

 

for Audio gear, external solutions are better anyway, less interference from other things inside the computer, most are driverless too (ASUS Xonar drivers suck), they have lower output impedance, and more stuff you can probably read about in the Audio FAQ. When it comes to headphones, many newer ones are low impedance, and still sound great. an example is my Shure SRH440's, they are 44 ohm, sound great on both my phone and my laptop. my M50's sound great on phone and laptop too, D2X doesn't sound that different. 

 

as for source: 320 kbps MP3 is sufficient unless you're doing like.. music production or something. but FLAC and high quality WAV doesn't do much better, especially considering the ridiculous amount of space it takes up. 

 

 

Anyway, nice build! 

[Father Fuzzy]

Great job on the Usb 3 cable

 

those are unruly nasty bastards :blink:

[nkucz]

omg, I'm in love! Beautiful build! 

[asusfan]

 

Finally got two SATA shrinks to not snap on me! Look how tight it already is on the USB3.0 Connector! I think the heatshrink was shrinking while I was taking the pic, haha.

USB3.0 Female side complete.

 

Header complete.

 

Might work on EPS & PCIE cables tomorrow.

Wow very neat work, loving it.

[Zeal]

Forgot to take my SD card out of my card reader last night, so I only have phone pics today. I'll retake the pics tomorrow!

Sneak peak: might upload the rest later in a couple hours.

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Quite unsatisfied with the phone pics, so I've only uploaded a few.

[Zeal]

Small update on sleeving:

EPS 8 Pin with real pics this time

Routing

Molex for sound card:

Need to search around for an aftermarket r9 290 that will fit my case before I begin sleeving PCIE cables. Some companies have the connector facing up, while others have it faced down.

[Zeal]

Mini update.

 

Well, I think I'll be settling down with an msi r9 290 Gaming when it gets released here in Canada. I really wanted the Asus one, but the size of the cooler probably wouldn't fit in my case. While I wait for the card to come in stock, I decided to test boot my new rig, to see if everything works as it was supposed to....

 

So I plugged in my old 5870 and attached some temporary PCIE cables. Pressed the power button and....it booted up! Huzzah!

 

Only one problem. The rig posted, but I got a CPU_Fan not detected message. So I thought to myself, I've read a couple AIOs that had that problem, and all you had to do was disable the monitor in BIOS. So I did, and it booted up into windows. Checked the CPU Temps and it was at 80C at stock!! I quickly shut it off and sat down. Many thoughts were rushing through my mind. One of them was: Is the pump DOA? I didn't even test to see if the pump worked before I started taking it appart! Another thought that came shortly after was, did I mess up the order on the fan cable? The cables were pre-melted together in the order of White, Red, Black. I searched up a pic of my AIO cooler on Google, and luckily I was able to see a tiny amount of colour, bleeding through the black sleeve. The order was Black, Red, White. Oops

 

So I quickly removed the sleeving and heatshrink and separated the wires to orient them properly. It booted up properly with ~20C temps :lol:

 

Moral of the story: Always double check your work. I should have taken a pic or recorded the proper colour configuration before I snipped the wire The fully aluminum/copper block was literally cooling the CPU passively with only 2 fans installed on the rad blowing air. I didn't bother attaching the other fans!

 

Shortly after, I did some quick and dirty OCing. Ended up with 4.4GHz stable and my RAM clocked to 2133MHz CL10! Quite a nice improvement from the stock 3.5GHz CPU and 1866MHz CL9 RAM. I will be fine tuning the OC later on when I finish the build.

 

CPU-Z validation link:

http://valid.canardpc.com/s3l8k4

 

[taylorpro]

Looks good man! I too will be doing a little matx gaming/daily build in the silverstone ps07 with the maximus vi gene, and a 4770k. I'll be using the asus dcu2 780. Tuned in!

[cl_l-CaKe]

looking good so far, waiting for more

[Advent]

Wondering why you purchased a soundcard when that motherboard has excellent onboard audio. Unless you are going to be using some ridiculously high impedance headphones. Even then you would have better luck with an external DAC/Amp combo.

Anyhow nice build.

[OddlyShapedTree]

Dat sleeving doe...

[NerdNinja]

Followed! Can't wait for the end result!!!!

[Zeal]

Another update on some sleeving~

Lots of pictures!

 

Sleeving PSU Power cable:

 

Snipped the two ends off my PSU's power cord, and placed some white SATA sleeve on it. Black cable is pretty hard to cover with white...

 

Remove insulation and wind the copper wires together:

 

If you're using a custom socket like me, split the wire down the middle and roll it into a "Y" shape before screwing in the contact points so the teeth can grip onto the wire better:

 

Decided to put a second sleeve on top of the original to (hopefully) mask the gaps. The difference is pretty big, wouldn't you say?

 

After some time, PSU power cable was completed: The connectors are actually transparent red. Too bad you can't really see it though

 

Shining some light through the plastic :3

 

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Yesterday's work:

 

Made 1x 6ft Mini USB cable and 1x 6ft Micro USB cable to match the rig. I'm using 28AWG wire for the Mini because keyboards don't need extra power draw, and 24AWG wire for Micro USB to allow for faster charging of smartphones.

 

Close up shots to compare the tightness of the weave.

 

All 3 cables together

[Shrubpig]

Nice sleeving

[Homicidium]

The sleeving job is outstanding! This whole build looks amazing!

[fuse]

Amazing. I love the custom caseyou're making as well.