Phantom: Antique Noctua

[Kiwiandapple]

Ok, here a few more pictures. Because I had paint anyway, I always wanted to paint my lamp. Was like, well why not in noctua style. So lamp coloring included. Ow yes, clearly that white edge has to be painted again. Will do this some other time haha! ^^ 

 

Here some more off the beige with the final layers off paint on them. No idea why they are in diffrent sizes. I did recrop them all to 1000 size. Oh well! ^^

 

I will make a table for the case, because it can't be placed on my very small desk. In the noctua colors (if I have enough paint for that, else I can use the failed brown paint that was on it first)

Will have a little update Monday. Tomorrow I will celebrate my birthday! ^^ 

[Akolyte]

Nice build man! 

[Kiwiandapple]

Oki, small little update. I painted the mesh PCI brackets aswell and put them into the rig. 

 

 

Will aswell have another little update tomorrow. Not to much about building tho! ^^

[ALXAndy]

That Montana paint you're using is amazing. I used it for Nfenix.

[Charger]

That lamp looks really good.

 

i expect that the computer will as well

[Kiwiandapple]

Nice build man! 

 

Thanks! 

 

That Montana paint you're using is amazing. I used it for Nfenix.

 

Yes, this paint is awesome. I am very happy with it. Sadly the brown is almost gone haha. But I don't have to paint to much anymore, but I had a little idea that I wanted to do. But I need enough paint for this. Will see later. 

The first paint job was a little depressing. So this montana was very nice. 

 

That lamp looks really good.

 

i expect that the computer will as well

 

Haha, yes I am pretty happy with the lamp aswell. Just need to fix that white on the bottom part. But that's for a later date. First have to finish the PC. 

[Kiwiandapple]

Oke, as for the "little update" I am able to get myself a new motherboard and ram. I am soooo sad that they don't sell the Z77 sabertooth anymore. I am looking for a 2nd hand. 

But I can get the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 if I can not find the sabertooth. Got myself a sabertooth, and yes you guys can all guess what's going to happen with that board! Hopefully it will be at my place around next week. 

Together with some Crucial Ballistix tactical RAM. 

 

 

I assume that I can get those 2 in about a week or 2 ~ 
Will have a little update again either tomorrow or the day after. 

[Kiwiandapple]

Little update: 

Decided to paint the Noctua NH-D14 top plates in the beige color. 

 

 

I tried to tape it in as good as I could, but I sadly missed a spot somewhere. But in the end, once the cooler is in the PC. I don't think it will draw to much attention. But you can see it on the pictures! Oh well. 

 

 

On the 1st picture here you can see the paint that hit a few layers under the top plate.

The last picture was taken without the flash off the camera, but with the flash light off my phone. For the real color irl, it's a little bit in between those 2. But I would say closer to the pictures taken with flash. I need some proper lighting for when I go take glamour shots! Overall very happy with this. 

Next update will take some time now sadly. I have to wait for the motherboard/ram and cables. I aswell still need to get the LEDs replaced but not to sure when I can do this yet. Sadly my soldering iron died, so I have to buy a new one. 

[Kiwiandapple]

Oke, tomorrow I will have some awesome updates. Some parts arrived today. I aswell tested the motherboard RAM slots that are broken with validated RAM. Still not working, so I will RMA it. 

[Emkryan]

Sweet! Keep them coming!

[NIC ROBERTOOO]

Ahh, prosthetic leg beige

[Kiwiandapple]

Ok update time!

 

So I got a little lucky and was able to get myself a few upgrades. The Sapphire R9-280x Toxic and a Corsair RM850. Since I do plan to add another one soon.

Here is the unboxxing part: 

 

 

So I absolutely love this GPU. I am maybe a little sad I did not wait a little longer for the R9-290 Toxic. But 2x 280x is much more affordable for me. 
Anyway, I currently let it be like this. But I have plans to paint the yellow/gold into the lovely noctua colors. If I can disarm the cooler well enough. 
This will be done when I paint the thermal armor, because by that time the PC will be in no use for a few days. 

 

The Corsair RM850 is aswell very awesome. I absolutely love the cables. They are pretty awesome. Altough the flat cables are smart, they are a little tricky aswell to get them "flat". But I did not put any attention to cable management yet.. as you will see soon. I will redo all the cables when I get the costum made ones. Wich is having a slight problem. My old GTX 570 was using 1x 6pin & 1x 8pin PCI-E cables. This monster is using 2x 8pin PCI-E for power. So I have to order more 8pin male/female connectors. 

[Kiwiandapple]

And here is the PSU and GPU getting into the system. This isn't at all what the final will look like, but will give you some idea. The stock intel cpu cooler is because I have a defect motherboard. The 2 dimm slots near the CPU are broken. As soon as I put a RAM stick into those slots, the PC won't boot up. I had to buy classified ram to test it with the board, wich I recently did. So I did not wanted to go trough all the trouble with mounting the NH-D14. To take it back off a few weeks later. I allready contacted Asus that the certified ram sticks don't work either.. but did not get a reply back yet (christmas time!) 

 

As said above. I did not spend ANY time yet to do proper cable management. I just plugged it all in and went with it. I will do proper cable management once I get my extensions. 

 

[JokuTyyppi]

Well that is a new approach to noctua colours Well done! Are you going to paint that gpu also? (sorry if you had already told it but it is 2am here so i was too tired to read everything)

[Kiwiandapple]

So I had contact with Asus about those dead RAM dimms, they told me to contact my supplier who said. Check the cpu socket. It's useally a bend cpu pin. Wich indeed is this case. He as well added that this is something that says goodbye to warrenty. So, that's a little bummer. I mailed Asus with a sad face to see if they can do anything for me. But I am very doubtful of that. 

 

Well that is a new approach to noctua colours Well done! Are you going to paint that gpu also? (sorry if you had already told it but it is 2am here so i was too tired to read everything)

 

Thanks. And yes, I will dismantle the GPU and paint it once I get the new paint. Not to sure how much I will paint it yet, for sure all the yellow/orange will get a new color. My current paint is not exactly the noctua colors. The beige get's pretty close tho, the brown - not exactly. But I could get the exact same colors that Noctua uses from a car shop where my sister works. So will get these in a few days. 

 

I allready dismantled the thermal armor wich is laying next to me right now. I dont expect to get a new board. I will do my best to keep the "Z77 Sabertooth" text in it's silver color, but this will very likely take me a lot of time. 

[Kiwiandapple]

Oke, 

 

Sorry for no updates for a long time. I simply could not do much, as I am waiting for parts to arrive.

* I can tell that I saw my sleeved cables and it looks amazing. Sadly I will not post pictures yet, you all have to wait a little longer. But I can't wait till I have them over here. Sadly there was a bad connector with the set, so I have to order a few new ones. 

* My sister is taking her time with my paint! I payed a year ago and gosh, still don't have it! Once I get that I will be able to paint my thermal armor that is currently laying around here. 

* I ordered a soldering iron and leds today and hope to get these in a few days. Then I will start to solder the leds. The only stupidity currently is that, I have no fans connected to my fan controler. So none of them are lighting up. But I will see if I can mod the 3 pin connectors so I can just put the PWM 4pins on them! 

 

I as well am a little bit derp here. But I decided to get an 780. I could get the 780Ti but it's not really worth the money for what you get compared to the 780. And when I get the 2nd card, a 780 will be cheaper. The "upgrade" from 280x to 780 isn't that much, but... I like nvidia more and they got SLI better under control. This dicision is partly done because of me liking shadowplay a whole lot and nvidia in general. I used nvidia for 10 years and never had problems. I did run into some slight problems with AMD right now, .. nothing to much to say that it's super bad. But just.. meh? I was thinking of either the Asus DC2, EVGA ACX and I was considering the MSI lightning, but you can't change those leds and that would really bugger me a whole lot. 

 

So because I want to paint the GPU, I send some emails to those companies to ask about warrenty loss if you paint those cards. This was the reply that I got from EVGA. 
His English is not top notch, but you should understand what he tries to say here. 

 

"Hello Joey, Thanks for the laud and also a happy and good new year to you! If you color the top you will not completly void the warranty. In this case you will probably, when you handle RMA, have to a pay a fee for the top. If the replacement will be the same model we will probably just install the top on the replacement without fee. Regards,"

 

So in the worst case I just have to pay a fee for the ACX cooler. Wich I would gladly pay if need be. They would even put my colored cooler on the new card if the card itself is broken. How awesome is that? Yeah exactly. 

 

I will buy a backplate and paint that in the other color. Either brown or the beige. Not sure yet wich color I will use. The plan is to have 2 mirrors with the cards, so 1 brown and 1 beige backplate.

Of course I will get the EVGA pro SLI bridge whenever I can order my 2nd card.

So, I suppose I can say, expect an update in around a week. But can't be to sure on that. 

[Kiwiandapple]

Oké small update for now, I will post another one later this weekend. A few parts arrived. The 780 and the soldering iron set. 
I know the 280x is a great card, but.. I just had a few to many errors and crashed, wich I just never had with my 570. So I went for it. 
I as well decided to get the Classified just because.. I could. 

 

I ordered 3 sets of 10 LEDs (they are very cheap!) So just in case I am not happy with the first LEDs I can use another.. and if I don't like those either.. Well then I have a 3rd option! ^^

 

Had to use the best knife I had laying around to open this bad boy. 

Will place this somewhere with the Noctua stickers I should get soon. Don't think it will be on the outside. Likely on the backplate. 

Very hard soft foam with this card. It actually took me a lot off wiggling to get the card out of this lol! 

The BEAST! God this card is huge. Did not have a banana for scale

Will paint this guy once I do get my paint.. Don't have an exact date yet, but I sadly don't think it will be any time soon. I hope to get it next weekend. But well, will have to wait and see. 

[Kiukaz]

very nice, love the card !

[btg0002]

this is pretty awesome! you are the first person I have ever seen base their color scheme off the Notcua fans, and not paint the fans themselves to fit a different color scheme...originality is good!

[Kiwiandapple]

this is pretty awesome! you are the first person I have ever seen base their color scheme off the Notcua fans, and not paint the fans themselves to fit a different color scheme...originality is good!

 

Hah, well I honestly think the fans are awesome and I do not mind the colors. I do really like the colors as well. My room is split in 2 colors, top red and the bottom part dark brown, wich is sadly not really the noctua brown. But whatever. My roof is in the noctua beige color! So yeah! Can not wait till I get the beige paint so I can paint my motherboard and GPU(s). After that it's time to dremel out my door and some other parts of the case and the last part will be cable management. 

 

Will hopefully give another update soon with the LEDs. I am about to test the 3 that I bought to see wich one I like the best. Then it's time to install my EVGA card and after that I will solder the LEDs! Might do this tomorrow. ^^ 

[TheProfosist]

I like it your embracing the noctua even more than me. Im trying to go with the hints of noctua colors against black as I think it looks quite good. I also think with a black and noctua theme black wire fan grills just look secy and set it off.

BTW that MB and ram will look great with noctua stuff I used a gryphon Z87+armor and that same ram in a build for a friend. If you want to see some pics let me know I can probably dig them up.

[Kiwiandapple]

God I haven't soldered for a long time and the PCB is actually has a lot more parts then the one I saw in this guide. So I am gonna go practice a little bit on some stuff I have laying around. 

Will likely be able to upload the pictures later tonight. 

 

Edit: Oké, nope! Will give a picture of the Phantom PCB that I have... not an easy thing. I am currently not able to even desolder it, I am very afraid to fuck up the print plate. I have to order a few parts to help me do this soldering part. As my dad, who can solder very good pointed out, that I should get better material. (no idea why he did not point this out earlier, then I would've bought it with the soldering iron, oh well!) I did not really told him to well what my plan was, I just told him I was going to solder some other LEDs on my fan controller. 

Desoldering wire & a 3rd hand with a loupe. 

 

 

Here is the PCB im talking about. Sorry for horrible quality picture, but you can see what I mean I suppose. The red squares are the location of the LED soldering points. Wich I have to desolder. The double square one is maybe one I will skip, because it's super close to another component. The last image shows how bloody close it is sitting next to it. For comparison I show you the image that I found in the guide as well. 

Now that looks pretty clean, those points are all very easy accesable.. Look what I got. Thanks NZXT! 

 

I like it your embracing the noctua even more than me. Im trying to go with the hints of noctua colors against black as I think it looks quite good. I also think with a black and noctua theme black wire fan grills just look secy and set it off.

BTW that MB and ram will look great with noctua stuff I used a gryphon Z87+armor and that same ram in a build for a friend. If you want to see some pics let me know I can probably dig them up.

 

The gryphon will be the motherboard for my next build. Unless I am to late for that and the new boards are even more awesome. So yes I would love to see it. I don't think I will get black fan grills, but I can see them work nicely. I just really want to fully see the fans. 

[TheProfosist]

Here are two pics of the build that I already have uploaded.

What are you trying to solder BTW and what are you testing on a phantom PCB? The first shot shows a lot a through hole but the second shot shows all SMD and with that many pins your likely not going to be able to do that with a soldering iron.

[Kiwiandapple]

Here are two pics of the build that I already have uploaded.

-pictures-

What are you trying to solder BTW and what are you testing on a phantom PCB? The first shot shows a lot a through hole but the second shot shows all SMD and with that many pins your likely not going to be able to do that with a soldering iron.

 

Nice build, but it's mainly black so I understand why a black fan grill would work here. It was my idea first to go AIO as well, but decided against it. Why get a Noctua build and don't get a CPU cooler from them? 

 

I am trying to desolder the LEDs and place my own. I really don't want to see blue LEDs. I will very likely skip the 2nd LED from the right on my pictures and just don't get a fan attached to that one. The one on the far left is as well a little risky, but should be doable. The other 3 are fairly easy. 

It's risky yes, but well.. I don't go away from a little challenge. 

[TheProfosist]

Nice build, but it's mainly black so I understand why a black fan grill would work here. It was my idea first to go AIO as well, but decided against it. Why get a Noctua build and don't get a CPU cooler from them? 

 

I am trying to desolder the LEDs and place my own. I really don't want to see blue LEDs. I will very likely skip the 2nd LED from the right on my pictures and just don't get a fan attached to that one. The one on the far left is as well a little risky, but should be doable. The other 3 are fairly easy. 

It's risky yes, but well.. I don't go away from a little challenge.

Thats not the build I was taking about with the black fan grills that Anthrax 7.0 build log in my sig. Those pics are of the build that has the same ram your using. I just noticed with the side panel on that you cant see a single noctua fan even though every fan in there is noctua. I even got him a 40mm fan for the armor kit for christmas so he can truly say every fan in there is noctua.

I assume that they are through hole LEDs and that the actual leds are on the other side then?