Ghost's Build Log [Complete]

[Ghost]

The continued build log is here: Ghost's Build Log: Part 2

 

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Welcome to the thread I have set-up for my new build.

Right now the PC has no name. I have a few in mind but it is bound to change so I’ll leave it “name-less” for now. :)

 

I have set-up an imgur album showing everything as it progresses so if you just want to look at pictures go there. (They are all captioned.)

 

ALBUM

 

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To summarize this build very briefly, I am going to be re-using old part to "Frankenstein" a PC together for the first part of it. This will be my temporary PC. One I get that sorted and looking good I'm going to start working on my new PC. Both logs will be posted here so I recommend reading both of them.

 

The initial posts may be a bit TL;DR compared to other build logs but whats that point of a build log if I just throw pictures at you. I want to share the journey with you, not the results

 

The first post covers a lot more about what I am doing and what the whole project going to look like. If you're interested in the build log follow the topic. If you don't like the build log a bit of constructive criticism is always nice. Even something like "Your posts are too long!" is something I can improve on.

 

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Posts:

 

Date - Topic - Link - Word Count

 

01/August/13 - #0 Build Background - Clickly - 744 words

08/August/13 - #1 Pictures and Planning - Clicky - 925 words

13/August/13 - #2.1 Midplate Almost done - Clickly - 387 words

31/August/13 - #2.2 Midplate finished - Clickly - 479 words

01/September/13 - #3 The Side Panel - Clickly - 602 words

04/September/13 - #4 LEDs - Clickly - 222 words

08/September/13 - #5 Final Parts - Clickly - 463 words

16/September/13 - #6 Sleeving - Clickly - 159 words

 

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Most Recent Picture:

 

 

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Part List:

• Asus Crosshair IV Forumla
• AMD Phenom II x6 1100T
• Asus HD7790 DCII
• H100i
• CM 690II Advanced
• CM GX750 (Bronze Rated PSU)
• Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD
• Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM

 

 

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Thanks for reading and hope you sub!

[joelthezombie15]

Subbed. cant wait. Probably going to be some crazy watercooling build.Like super crazy to :p

[Andi]

woho

[calebp123]

Finally! Now we get to see the legendary ghost build his pc!  :D

[delet my acc pls]

Im pretty sure the water cooling will be ridicoulusly awesome

[Nicktrance]

I'm guessing this is your first WC rig? :lol:. 

[Blade of Grass]

What's your current rig?

[Ghost]

What's your current rig?

Its really messy and has been put together in a massive hurry but here's an old updates album:

 

http://imgur.com/a/LYfW5

[MJOLNITR VIPER]

Its really messy and has been put together in a massive hurry but here's an old updates album:

 

http://imgur.com/a/LYfW5

Very very nice. Only question I have is why the cathodes and not LED's?

[alpenwasser]

Its really messy and has been put together in a massive hurry but here's an old updates album:

 

http://imgur.com/a/LYfW5

Haha, that long tube run from the bottom rad to the rear rad totally makes me feel

like it's 2002 again. :)

[Ghost]

Very very nice. Only question I have is why the cathodes and not LED's?

I used LEDs in the build prior to that. I wanted a more of a constant glow rather than sharp pinpricks of light coming from LEDs.

 

Now that I have used CCLs I will be going back to LEDs, they are easier to work with and you don't need an inverter. I will be using a light diffuser to make the light, well; more diffused which gives me the best of both worlds.

[Rale]

your new build going to be in that switch? its a good case ;)

[MJOLNITR VIPER]

I used LEDs in the build prior to that. I wanted a more of a constant glow rather than sharp pinpricks of light coming from LEDs.

 

Now that I have used CCLs I will be going back to LEDs, they are easier to work with and you don't need an inverter. I will be using a light diffuser to make the light, well; more diffused which gives me the best of both worlds.

I think that would make it look even better as they arent as bulky and ugly to look at.  I think the LED's with a diffuser that is hidden in the corners would be so much cleaner than the cathodes hanging around. 

[Ghost]

Your new build going to be in that switch?

I'm going to do a few "tool-less" tweaks to it but yes.

[Ghost]

#0 - Build Background

 

I did say it was going to take quite some time before anything happens. ;) Hopefully I can give you some background on the build here and answer some questions.

 

Right now I have an old AMD based system. I have always built my systems by upgrading over time. Right now I have a 1100T in my rig and before that I had an Phenom II x2 chip with a cheap motherboard. In fact; that was the first system I built alone. Prior to that I had a bunch of other rigs, but I had help with those because of age. For me; upgrading over time is more cost effective, especially if you don't have the patience to save up £1000 and then spend it all in one go. I don't think I would ever be able to click confirm on a £1000 order of components.

 

This is my first big investment and my rig is being split into two. One for my parents and one for me. Of course I am not going to spend much on my parents build. Its mostly going to be put together from old parts, but I'm still going to try and make it look nice. My parents rig will be in a CM 690 II Advanced Case which I have left over from a previous upgrade (it was my case before the Switch 810). I am simply going to be moving my current CPU (Phenom II x6 1100T) and motherboard (Asus Crosshair IV) to that case. It's going to have a temporary graphics card (inno3D 8500 GT, yup its old (2007)) which is yet another previous upgrade (8500 GT (used) > 5770 > 6970 (used) > 7950 > 7970) and I am going to temporarily be using the stock AMD heatsink. These are going to be temporary until my parents decide how much they want to add to the build).

 

It will also be getting my 1.5TB Seagate HDD and my 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD. I currently have a 3TB Seagate HDD, 300GB Velociraptor HDD, 240GB Corsair Neutron GTX and the other two drives in my PC (Yup, five drives). Hopefully you can understand why I split the drives how I did.

 

Last of all I will be putting in my current CM GX750 PSU (750W) into my rig. It's a horrible PSU but it will have to do the job (due to budget issues) and might be upgraded at some point. I won't be going into the mods I'm planning yet but expect quite a bit. It's going to be my "play ground" for what I have planned for my personal system. As I have no laptop or any other PC in the house it's going to be the system I use while I build my main rig so I will of course be building it first. Expect a lot of juggling of parts. For example; I only have two power supplies(GX750 & AX760i) and the one I plan to put in my parents rig will have to go in there straight away so the cables for it cannot be sleeved initially.

 

Going to my own rig I should start off my saying this upgrade has been planned since Christmas. In fact I have had all the components I need for it for about 5 months now but haven't had the time to build it (due to public exams). Hopefully that will explain some of my component choices as you would probably expect me to be going with Haswell, etc. Secondly I picked the components I liked for this build. Money was of course a factor but because I have been buying parts for a long time; £40 extra was something I would pay in order to get a component I preferred. This doesn't mean I didn't do my research before buying things, it simply means I may have spent marginally too much on some things. An example would the the choice of the Asus Maximus V for my build. I could have gone for an MSI MPower board but I prefer a black and red colour scheme. I could have gone even cheaper and gotten a Asrock board but I didn't want to cheap out and later regret my choices.

 

I'm going to cut this introduction here to not bore you to death. (And because I've had enough typing for today and I still need to proof read this). Expect more updates soon.

[Andi]

woho...finally..!

[calebp123]

Wow so now we finally get to hear about this epic build 

[Emperor_Piehead]

I would say look at the enthoo primo, but I'm guessing your the same ghost on TPU.

[Ghost]

I would say look at the enthoo primo, but I'm guessing your the same ghost on TPU.

I'm not really looking into investing on the case. I'm on a really tight budget and using spare parts. Looks like a nice case though.

 

And nope, not the same person. ;)

[Emperor_Piehead]

I'm not really looking into investing on the case. I'm on a really tight budget and using spare parts. Looks like a nice case though.

 

And nope, not the same person. ;)

Ok now I feel better about the case since the ghost on there said it looked terrible.

[KneesWeak]

like the name

 

[Ghost]

#1 - Pictures and Plans

 

To start off; I recommend looking at the album I started. In the future when more pictures get uploaded and you want to go to a specific update hit (CTRL + F) and find the update number, for example (#1). It will be the only time I use hashes in the album. All pictures from the build log will be put there as it looks cleaner to view all in one and sometimes I will embed small versions of the picture in case I need to point something out.

 

Now that's out of the way I wanted to talk about the first build I am going to do. There will be 3 main mods I will be doing to it; a mid plate, a window and LED lighting as well as a bit of sound proofing. I will also try to re-paint sections of the case if they look too bad. Hopefully the colours match closely enough and I won't have to repaint the whole thing if but it's something I'm willing to do. Maybe two shades of black will look nicer; I have no idea.

 

As you can see in the first picture this case has some history. A while back, when I was water cooling in the case for the first time I decided to do some mods with the help of pliers. Now these weren't planned and we just me being lazy. The first thing I did was get the pliers and rip a chunk of the case out to widen the back plate (with the motherboard still installed). I quite literally just took chunks out of the case. Grab and rip. When I was putting the case away for storage I never expected to build in it again so I just grabbed a grinder and evened out the hole. As you can see I wasn't exact. I'm not to worried about that right now because it won't be visible when the motherboard is installed. If anything its helpful because now the CPU cutout is in the right place. The first thing I did was sand down the hole but now I'm sure I wont cut myself I may leave it. I really don't want to cut more out in case the motherboard tray becomes too flimsy.

 

The second mod I did for the previous water cooling build was mount a radiator in the top above the metal frame of the case. In order for this to work I again grabbed some pliers and literally ripped chunks of metal out with them. (I reckon I would have called the old build log "Laziness" if I made one). This of course resulted in a mess. I have managed to bend and sand that hole down into something that looks somewhat symmetrical and that's what you can see in pictures now. Again, at least if I ever need to mount a radiator up there I can do it easily now. Maybe a H100i will go up there, depending on the state of the "funding" I mentioned in the last update.

 

Random fact to keep you interested: Before the Eraser was invented people used bread to remove pencil marks.

 

Now for more detail on the mods. The mid plate will be cut out of a 2mm aluminium. I don't have a set plan for mounting yet but may simply solder a thin band of metal (like a ledge) to the side of the case right under where the plate will go and then screw the plate to that. I want the plate to be removable. The plate will then have a hole cut in the middle and a piece of frosted acrylic will go in the hole. This will act as the main source of lighting in the case. I will put LEDs right under the midplate. The light should be sufficiently diffused for it to look like a single source of light.

 

For the rest of the lighting I will put a strip of white LEDs on the top edge of the case. These will be facing down and be on the side of the ledge closest to the side panel. These will provide illumination from the top. I may have to put a in-line resistor to weaken them so they match the brightness of the lighting at the bottom. I will also re-use the red LEDs from the previous build (,the ones you can see in the photos), to illuminate the underside of the motherboard. I want to end up with a soft glow from under the motherboard.

 

The side panel mod is simple enough. In the pictures I have already drawn the line for the window. I am not sure if I am going to make it wider at the back or not. To do the side panel mod I will cut the section out and then cut a piece of clear acrylic glass 1-2 cm larger than it on all sides. I will then cheat and use double sided tape to hold the acrylic in place. After I do that I will grab a drill and drill holes through the acrylic and side panel. I will then put "decorational" screws in its place.

 

Lastly I will be sound proofing the case with closed cell foam. I will mostly put it at the top, the side panel and the bottom so its not visible. Thanks for reading if you actually got this far. ;)

 

Feel free to give me any tips/recommendations on how to do things. It will probably come in handy.

[Loe]

*insert quote here*

And so it begins, I must say those are some pretty solid case mods you have done there with expert precision.

[Stephie_Girl]

This looks like so much fun!! I am totally gonna check back later
<3

Steph

[Ghost]

#2.1 Midplate Almost done.

 

I have finally finished cutting out the mid plate so it fits in my case. It took me quite long because it was my first time working with metal and using a Dremel. I learnt quite a lot in the process. (You can skip this next paragraph if you don't care about the method.)

 

To start off I made a template of the mid-plate using a cardboard box. I cut out all the necessary notches int he cardboard so it would fit. Then I started work on the aluminum. The piece of aluminum I used was 2mm thick, at first I tried to cut it using a cheap rotary cutter. It couldn't really handle the aluminum plate and started to overheat after about 10 cm of cutting. To be honest it was terrible. Luckily I also have a bigger grinder which cut through the aluminum in seconds. After a bit of filing to fix the mess I made of the first edge cutting with the small rotary cutter I started cutting out the notches. First I used the grinder and "grinded" into the metal. It was quite tricky to get this done precisely. A far easier and superior method was to simply file the notches out. It took about a minute per notch but made perfectly square holes that I didn't have to correct after. I should have done this from the start.

 

This took me about 3 days of laziness and work to do. To be honest now I know what to do I could probably repeat it in an hour but this is all about learning.

 

I have of course uploaded pics of the process. I have also decided on the mounting system for the mid plate. I will just get a piece of aluminum and screw it into the drive bays of the case. The mid plate will then rest on this small ledge. It fits very tightly so I don't expect it to move. Making this ledge will also allow me to decide if I am okay with the colour of the matt black spray paint I have or if I will have to paint the whole case.

 

I still need to add sound dampening, cut the hole for the frosted plexi glass, cut the frosted plexi glass and paint the mid plate.