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

[alpenwasser]

Really nice.

Thank you! :)

PSU Sleeving - Continued

So I went out and got myself a new lighter today. As an outdoorsy type I would have loved

something like a Wenger Clava, but I didn't have time (or rather: was unwilling) to wait that long.

This one was 20 bucks and works quite well so far. It has a nice focused blue flame.

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SATA Power Cables

While the 90 degree SATA power connectors allow for extremely neat wire routing, they are

not really well suited for sleeving. I am not yet 100 % happy with the result, but it's better

than before (or let's say: I like it better than before). I can always redo it later if I get some

clever idea about how to improve it and make it truly perfect.

To give you an idea of how I went about this problem:

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And the current state of affairs on the HDD tower's back side:

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Pump Power Delivery

Obviously the pump can't run without some voltage goodness. :)

This is not the final cable routing, but it shows the rough idea.

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Fan Power Delivery

Remember those clipped wires I mentioned yesterday and how I left some cable to solder

on to in case I ever needed them again? Good thing I did that. Originally I was going to run

the fans off the same cable as the pump, but then I realized that I would have to do double

wires inside the crimp connectors, which I really don't like. They're almost impossible

to crimp unless you have very thin wires (I don't), and they're an absolute nightmare to

sleeve.

So I've decided to to a dedicated fan cable. This is where I soldered the new wires onto

the remains of the old ones:

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Overview:

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And this is how I plan to connect the fans (at least at the moment :lol: ):

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That's it for today, thanks for stopping by. :)

[concinnity]

He said he was going to be using the Onboard GPU

Friends don't let friends use onboard video.

[concinnity]

What exactly is this server going to be used for? I'm way curious.

[alpenwasser]

Friends don't let friends use onboard video.

 

Best friends don't let best friends spend money on a dedicated GPU if there's no

need for it. :lol:

 

What exactly is this server going to be used for? I'm way curious.

Overall, this PC will have three primary purposes:

• Serve as a data server for mine and my dad's personal and work data (as well

  as anyone else in our household who wishes to have some space on it) so we can

  access it from outside via VPN without having to constantly sync our laptops and

  our desktop machines (my father is self-employed). It's not our backup solution

  though, we have separate disks for that.

• Serve media data (movies, TV shows, music) to our household.
• Do computing for BOINC when it has nothing else do to.

So as you can see there's really no need for a dedicated GPU, it would just get in the

way of the radiator. ;)

EDIT:

Before anyone starts going off about cloud storage: For one thing I have serious

trust issues and security concerns and would therefore never entrust my data to a

cloud company, and buying several TB of cloud storage space would cost a ridiculous

amount of money anyway.

[simonyunhe]

This is something need lots of work, great looking.

[alpenwasser]

simonyunhe, on 22 May 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

This is something need lots of work, great looking.

Lots of work indeed. Thank you! :)

[Demos]

This build is defying all conventions. I love it! Well done!

Also, that sleeving for the SATA power looks glorious. Are you going to sleeve the SATA date cables?

[alpenwasser]

This build is defying all conventions. I love it! Well done!

Also, that sleeving for the SATA power looks glorious. Are you going to sleeve the SATA date cables?

Thanks! :)

I'm not sure yet about the data cables. I would really love to, but if I do them I

would want to do them with paracord as well and not a different kind of sleeving. At

the moment I'm not really sure how I would be able to do it with paracord, so maybe

I'll just leave them be (I have some black round ones, they wouldn't be an eye sore

at least).

[Pithan]

Great work on the sleeving.

 

I'm so pumped up to see what it is gonna look like when finished!

Keep up the awesomeness!  ;)

[alpenwasser]

Great work on the sleeving.

 

I'm so pumped up to see what it is gonna look like when finished!

Keep up the awesomeness!  ;)

Thank you! :)

Making a Custom Fan Controller

As some of you may know, the SP120's are not exactly all that quiet on 12 V. Now,

I could just use the old 5 V or 7 V wire switcheroo mod, but that would not give

me very good control over the fan speed. Since I don't yet know what the temps

are going to be like, and since I will need this machine to be as quiet as possible,

I have decided to make a custom fan controller.

The idea of this is not so much to constantly change the fan speeds, but to be able

to adjust the fan speed to the optimal level and then leave it at that, possibly

changing it if it gets very hot in summer. But other than that, I won't be tinkering

around with fan speeds all the time on this, it's more of a set-and-forget thing.

The Phobya Fan Splitter PCB

First things first: I need some connectors. So I desoldered this Phobya fan splitter.

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The New PCB

Then I soldered those connectors onto a new PCB, along with a variable resistor.

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Cutting it down to Size

Obviously it couldn't stay like that.

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And another angle:

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The Backside

I gotta say: This was one tricky bastard. I'm talking about tweezers and taking more

than an hour to solder these few wires. To be honest I would have required an additional

pair of hands, doing it like this wasn't really an optimal solution. Since my soldering

iron can't be adjusted I ended up melting off some of the insultation on the wires (they

heat up extremely quickly since they're so short and tiny).

The red tape is just for support, that's already gone. To give it a bit of extra strength

and to compensate for the melted insulation I've encased the connections with epoxy glue.

I'll post a picture of that once it's all set and solid.

If I was to do this more often I would definitely get a proper soldering iron and make

myself some sort of contraption which could hold everything in place so that I could do

some properly precise work.

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It Lives!

Yeah, despite the not exactly stellar soldering job it works as planned. And there are

no loose connections or anything like that. I applied some force to the connectors while

it was running, no problem at all. So it might not look very nice, but it's solid,

especially once it has some additional strength from the glue (the 4 pin connector does

wiggle around quite a bit when I take out the plug, so that definitely needs additional

strengthening).

I certainly won't be doing it again just to get the soldering perfect since it's working

without flaw. :)

(click image for full res)

That's it for today, thanks for stopping by. :)

[concinnity]

 Before anyone starts going off about cloud storage: For one thing I have serious

trust issues and security concerns and would therefore never entrust my data to a

cloud company, and buying several TB of cloud storage space would cost a ridiculous

amount of money anyway.

 

Agreed.

[alpenwasser]

Agreed.

With Ron Swanson as your avatar I would suspect you do. :lol:

Seriously though, I'm really astonished how some people just give away their data,

makes me scratch my head a bit.

[Nicktrance]

How is the Veroboard still whole in the last picture :D? I think it could have been done more easily and with less soldering if you used a strip board and lined all the connectors up, although it might not have been this compact, still, very good job :).

[Jan.B]

damn awesome job, still have much to learn and seeing things like this realy makes me want to do moar stuff^^ looking forward for moar!

[ALXAndy]

/puts on his best Hannibal Lecter voice..

 

Alpenwasser dear boy, so we meet again ;)

[alpenwasser]

How is the Veroboard still whole in the last picture :D? I think it could have been done more easily and with less soldering if you used a strip board and lined all the connectors up, although it might not have been this compact, still, very good job :).

The PCB itself is actually very solid, so that wasn't a problem. But you might be right

about the alternative, I'm definitely not very experienced when it comes to tinkering

around with PCB's. In fact this was the first time I've ever done something like this.

Thanks though! :)

EDIT: *facepalm* I just realized what you meant, and of course the last picture

was taken out of sequence. Before I put the work into cutting it down to size I wanted

to make sure it actually worked of course. But I thought it would make for a better

narrative to have it as the final pic in the post. ;)

 

damn awesome job, still have much to learn and seeing things like this realy makes me want to do moar stuff^^ looking forward for moar!

 

Thank you! Don't worry, there's still lots to learn for me as well. ;)

 

/puts on his best Hannibal Lecter voice..

 

Alpenwasser dear boy, so we meet again ;)

*GASP* He's found me! :o :o :o

[Nicktrance]

The PCB itself is actually very solid, so that wasn't a problem. But you might be right

about the alternative, I'm definitely not very experienced when it comes to tinkering

around with PCB's. In fact this was the first time I've ever done something like this.

Thanks though! :)

 

 

I asked why it was whole in the last picture because it looks like it hadn't yet been cut to size. I know they're not fragile, especially since it's so small :P.

I'm not that experienced myself although I have experimented a bit with PCBs and Veroboards.

 

Edit: never mind :p

[Akula]

Looks good, keep up the good work :)

[alpenwasser]

Edit: never mind :P

Post editing can really take the flow out of a conversation. :lol:

 

Looks good, keep up the good work :)

Thank you, I shall do my utmost to do so! :)

[jrfox87]

Wow such a great build log so far! Can't wait to see the finished thing!

[alpenwasser]

Wow such a great build log so far! Can't wait to see the finished thing!

Neither can I! :lol:

Thank you!

[crudefallout]

Looks awesome. I love all of the customizations. I can't wait to see the rest of the process.

[cYRoN]

Looks great! That custom Fan-Controller made me drool all over my keyboard  ;)

Keep it up and ...

FINISH DAT ZEUS FAAAAAAAAAAST!  :P

 

Helios <3

[alpenwasser]

Looks awesome. I love all of the customizations. I can't wait to see the rest of the process.

Thank you! :)

Looks great! That custom Fan-Controller made me drool all over my keyboard  ;)

Keep it up and ...

FINISH DAT ZEUS FAAAAAAAAAAST!  :P

Helios <3

Hehe, thanks! :)

I'm working on it!

[alpenwasser]

Fan Controller - Finished

I've strengthened the fan controller with quite a substantial amount of epoxy glue. It might

not be the prettiest, but it won't be visible and it's pretty much bomb proof at this point.

(click image for full res)

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PSU - Finished (More or Less)

There's still some very minor finishing touches to be applied, but it's as good as done.

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24 Pin - Detail

There's a minor mistake in my lacing in the middle lacing section, but I'm not sure if I'm going

to redo the thing just for that. It depends on whether or not it will be visible in the final configuration

when everything is in the case. The lacing is not 100% straight at this point, that will be done

once everything is mounted, there's enough flex to do that.

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Fan Cable

This cable will connect to the fan controller, hence only the 12 V wire. Obviously I couldn't

use the same technique for this as for the 24 pin.

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