ZEUS (Fractal R4 | Blue/Black | Internal UT60 Rad) - by alpenwasser [COMPLETE]

[flibberdipper]

Nope, why?

I thought you meant to put in red. Whoops. I'm beginning to think that all you ever do is build awesome stuff.

[alpenwasser]

I thought you meant to put in red. Whoops.

The RE4's were actually transferred from a previous build. When I bought them in 2011

the Red drives were not yet out, the only 24/7 drives available were server drives.

While the RE4's are totally awesome, I would probably have bought Reds if they'd already

been on the market though since the RE4's are very expensive and I don't really need their

performance. At least I bought them right before the floods in Thailand, prices went up about

150% for the RE4's after that where I live.

 

But yes, three of the drives are actually Reds since they were bought newly this year for this

build.

 

I'm beginning to think that all you ever do is build awesome stuff.

Haha, thank you, I do my best!

[900d]

nice build.

[flibberdipper]

The RE4's were actually transferred from a previous build. When I bought them in 2011

the Red drives were not yet out, the only 24/7 drives available were server drives.

While the RE4's are totally awesome, I would probably have bought Reds if they'd already

been on the market though since the RE4's are very expensive and I don't really need their

performance. At least I bought them right before the floods in Thailand, prices went up about

150% for the RE4's after that where I live.

 

But yes, three of the drives are actually Reds since they were bought newly this year for this

build.

 

Haha, thank you, I do my best!

First of all, now I'm going to try and find some of the RE4's. Second, no problem. I may not be 15 yet (only 7 more days!!!) but I try to be as mature as possible on here. And my new sig rig (Kind of My Rig one) was built for just over $450 USD. Which isn't that bad.

[alpenwasser]

nice build.

 

Thank you!

 

First of all, now I'm going to try and find some of the RE4's.

You mean you want to buy some? I'm not sure about that, price/performance isn't really

that great unless you need a hardened high-performing server drive (and keep in mind that

there are newer alternatives: the RE series without the 4 in it, and the slightly less

expensive Se series).

Having said that, they are great drives, and I certainly won't tell you how to spend your

money. I myself have most definitely bought many things that people would probably not

have recommended me to buy. *cough* Titan *cough*

Second, no problem. I may not be 15 yet (only 7 more days!!!) but I try to be as mature as possible on here. And my new sig rig (Kind of My Rig one) was built for just over $450 USD. Which isn't that bad.

The correlation between maturity and age is overestimated by many (it does exist, of course),

and the fact that you're striving to be mature is a huge step in the right direction IMO. There

are people three times your age which are far less mature from what I've seen personally.

And we all have to start somewhere, don't we?

[flibberdipper]

 

Thank you!

 

You mean you want to buy some? I'm not sure about that, price/performance isn't really

that great unless you need a hardened high-performing server drive (and keep in mind that

there are newer alternatives: the RE series without the 4 in it, and the slightly less

expensive Se series).

Having said that, they are great drives, and I certainly won't tell you how to spend your

money. I myself have most definitely bought many things that people would probably not

have recommended me to buy. *cough* Titan *cough*

The correlation between maturity and age is overestimated by many (it does exist, of course),

and the fact that you're striving to be mature is a huge step in the right direction IMO. There

are people three times your age which are far less mature from what I've seen personally.

And we all have to start somewhere, don't we?

I actually really began on a really low end Pentium 2 (I think it was like 233MHz), 32MB of RAM, 2 4GB IDE hard drives (ATA-33) and some crappy 2MB video card. And Windows 98. It took FOREVER to boot, but luckily it died so I got my even older rig (in my sig. I'm simply too lazy to copy it.) which had XP. Then one of the chips on the hard drive touched a piece of metal, so I ended up with a smoky basement, and an HP Pavilion 8490 (BEST desktop computer I have EVER used http://goo.gl/rIRV32)that I took the RAM up to 768MB (even though it didn't "support" it) and I still used the sound card up until I got my SoundBlaster Live 5.1 Digital a month ago, and them my mom scrapped that becuase it was sitting on my floor and thought I didn't use it anymore, which brings me to my P4 rig (in my sig. Still too lazy.)

 

I may or may not ramble a lot...

 

EDIT: Forgot about my ASUS Eee PC 1005HA netbook, which has been happily serving me for the past 2 or so years, no matter what I put it through.

 

And thanks for calling mature. I feel so accomplished.

[Razbit]

The name of the project tells it all: this gotta be the greatest god of all the Define mods I've seen. There really ain't nobody winning your incredible skill set !

Keep it up mate!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[alpenwasser]

The name of the project tells it all: this gotta be the greatest god of all the Define mods I've seen. There really ain't nobody winning your incredible skill set !

Keep it up mate!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Oh there are a few other R4 mods which are quite awesome as well methinks. *hinthint* :lol:

But yeah, I'm pretty happy with this, the concept definitely is rather unique, and I'm quite

satisfied with the execution.

Thanks!

[Razbit]

Oh stop it, you..

Ive been thinking about a black/green color scheme to some project, some day. Like gigabyte sniper(..?) perhaps.

The blue looks nice tho!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[alpenwasser]

Oh stop it, you..

Ive been thinking about a black/green color scheme to some project, some day. Like gigabyte sniper(..?) perhaps.

The blue looks nice tho!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

I think my next build (if I can get the money together, and that's a big if) just might

be something with green as well, but more due to the fact that it would be a proper

server build with a proper server M/B (so, a green PCB).

And yes, the blue is absolutely beautiful, especially in person. It's a bit of a shame that

the newer gen higher-end MSI boards no longer have it, but are instead yellow or red

in their accents. They're still awesome boards, but I just really love their shade of blue

(much more than any blue I've seen on M/B's from other manufacturers, e.g. Asus).

[Lystfiskern]

Z77/X79 still a fully viable option tho  

[alpenwasser]

Z77/X79 still a fully viable option tho  

You're completely right of course. It's not like it really matters in my case anyway; if I

build something new in the foreseeable future it will be server parts as mentioned.

[JokuTyyppi]

Oh god! I am not sure if i have commented on this already but this is just too awesome! Those colours.. Ahh That psu mount looks soooooo good even if it is a weird place to put it And that quality of this...is just...something... !!

 

WELL DONE!

[alpenwasser]

Oh god! I am not sure if i have commented on this already but this is just too awesome! Those colours.. Ahh That psu mount looks soooooo good even if it is a weird place to put it And that quality of this...is just...something... !!

 

WELL DONE!

 

Thank you very much for the kind words, they are highly  appreciated.

And yes, overall I must say I'm pretty happy with this build and how it's

turned out. There are  things I could have done better, but for my first

proper moding project I'm satisfied.

[Modderstech]

Wow....... Speechless, really nice job. I like that you had an idea and rolled with it so far away from conventional and it turned out perfect.

[alpenwasser]

Wow....... Speechless, really nice job. I like that you had an idea and rolled with it so far away from conventional and it turned out perfect.

Thanks!

Yeah it is a bit of an unusual one; took me a while to come up

with it, but once I had the idea it was an obvious fit for what

the rig needed to do.

EDIT:

Also: 50k views, huzaah!

[tristan1035]

I'm not sure if you've dismantled this due to APOLLO, but you could possibly put in a single slot 750TI if you wanted to. 

[alpenwasser]

I'm not sure if you've dismantled this due to APOLLO, but you could possibly put in a single slot 750TI if you wanted to.

It's still intact, but it's not our primary server anymore. It now serves

primarily as a backup server and our media PC. I've moved most of

the HDDs from ZEUS into APOLLO, but have kept some in ZEUS for

backing up the most crucial data from APOLLO onto ZEUS.

[asimrc]

Starting the New Back Panel

The Case

I'm sure all of you have seen an R4 before, so I won't be posting pics of it in its stock form.

Here it is after removal of the back panel.

The Back Panel

The old back panel out of its natural habitat.

Rivets

A few rivets had to be sacrificed for the greater good

Paint Jobs

Ah yes, the happy coincidence of this build

The new back panel will be made from the Caselabs SMH10's bottom plate. I have replaced

the stock bottom plate in my SMH10 for HELIOS with a meshed version, so this one is no

longer needed. It has the perfect width for this and is high enough (the unneeded height will

be cut off, naturally).

Besides the good dimensional fit, the Caselabs bottom panel also has a very nice powdercoat

job that matches the R4's very nicely. Not that this will ever be seen (placed in a sideboard),

but it's still nice to have this matching.

Dimensions

As mentioned above, perfect width.

Tape

Low adhesion tape. Sadly it is not available here in a wider version, but this will do nicely.

Edges

Starting the tape job at the edges.

Corners

And the corners.

First Tape Layer

The first tape layer completed. Over this will come a second layer since this one alone does

not provide very good protection against mechanical damage during drilling work.

Second Tape Layer

The second layer serves as the main protection from mechanical damage.

Radiator - Corner Bolts

First I drilled the corner holes for bolting the radiator to the panel.

Mesh Pattern

Here it is: The masochist inside me has spoken :lol:

Instead of going the usual route of just dremelling (or jig-sawing) out the opening for the radiator,

I've decided to go a different path and "simply" make the relevant part of the new panel into

mesh by drilling lots and lots and lots and lots of wholes. :crazy:

I made a pattern which I printed onto sheets of paper and then taped onto the panel. This

served as a reference for drilling the wholes.

For those interested: Pattern Link (pdf)

For different spacings you can easily scale the pdf up or down.

Anyway, on to the work:

Overlay

Since the radiator is longer than a sheet of A4, I needed to compose the pattern from several

sheets of paper (well, two).

Red Zone

The red zone denotes where I should not drill :lol:

Drilling - Start

I soon realized that I would have to overlay the entire paper with a protective sheet of adhesive

tape. It just tore up too easily. Should have used adhesive paper.

Nooo! :cussing:

Right before the finishing line of phase 1, the drill bit broke! Aaargh!

Phase 1 Complete

After about four hours of drilling (ouch, my wrist ):

Phase 1 Complete - Naked

And without the tape. Clearly I have made some mistakes, but it's not screwed up too badly.

Since nobody will ever get to see this anyway once the rig is in service, it doesn't matter

that much if it's not perfect (although my pride would certainly have liked that :lol: ).

I have not yet counted the wholes. The bigger and smaller wholes are from where I had to

improvise due to the best suited drill bit breaking.

What's Next

• Making the entire mesh to the correct hole size and fixing mistakes where possible.
• Deburring those holes.
• Painting them black.
• Making the mounting rails for fixing the new panel to the actual case structure.

That's it for today, I have to go hold my wrist into some warm chamomile solution :lol:

You drilled the shiz out of that lol Edited May 13, 2014 by alpenwasser
spoiler tag

[MG2R]

You drilled the shiz out of that lol

Little request: please shorten the long quotes to keep the forums readable! Many thanks!

[alpenwasser]

You drilled the shiz out of that lol

 

Hehe, pretty much, yeah. 1173 holes it was IIRC.

 

Little request: please shorten the long quotes to keep the forums readable! Many thanks!

[purplepenguin202]

That is....

Orgasmic, for lack of a better word

[alpenwasser]

That is....

Orgasmic, for lack of a better word

Thanks a lot, much appreciated!

I am indeed rather happy with it.

[Pancake]

That's awesome, is the 8 hard drives on one cable not an issue? I am about to do the same thing for an R4 Server build with a CX500M

[alpenwasser]

That's awesome, is the 8 hard drives on one cable not an issue? I am about to do the same thing for an R4 Server build with a CX500M

Thanks for the kind words, they are much appreciated.

No, the drives on a single cable are not an issue. I have another

build with 12 drives on a single cable, works without trouble as

well.

If you have a modular power supply, it will usually connect to

the cables via a Mini-Fit Jr. connector, which can take up to 9 A

per connector (Molex site)

Assuming you draw power from teh 12 V and 5 V lines, that will

give you 108 W on the 12 V line and an additional 45 W on the

5 V line (assuming you onle service each line from a single pin,

which is probably the most common scenario for HDD power lines).

So going by that you have 153 W available on a single SATA power

cable (almost no drives utilize the 3.3 V line).

If you don't have a modular PSU, but the power cable is soldered

into the PSU, how much it can carry will naturally depend on the

solder joints. If you get a decent PSU I'd say it's not something

to worry about, you'd probably even be able to go higher than that.

The next question will obviously be how much power an HDD consumes.

At spin-up this can go quite high. In this test, it could be about

30 W, and although it's a bit dated, since HDD technology hasn't

really changed that much since then, I doubt the numbers for more

modern drives are much different (the lower end was about 17 W

is seems).

Another in-depth test of HDD power consumption can be found here.

It is also a bit dated, but should still be somewhat useful.

Anyway, as said I haven't encountered any issues with running 12

drives on one cable, and surely not with eight. During normal

system use, a modern HDD usually consumes less than 10 W, some

go as low as ~5 W. And with staggered spin-up, the peak power

draw during system start can be massively reduced.

I would definitely recommend getting a good quality PSU (that

doesn't necessarily mean huge power capabilities, but good

quality).