Max Aluminium Monument

[MaratM]

I was browsing build logs here and found one very unique Build. It is a solid piece of steel bent in very cool shape. So I decided to build one.

On top of that my good old sony vaio laptop is slowly dying (sony sold vaio brand around 4 years ago, and mine is a first gen i5) and an upgrade is much needed. My job is slightly changed from what it was 10 years ago and does not require a lot of traveling around the country, so there is not much need for a laptop.

After a few hours in autocad and sketchup both 3d model and 2d production model was done. Few more double checking of dimensions and it was ready to laser cut and bend.

So I’ve emailed it to a metalworking firm after 2 days of discussions we agreed on final design and price. All is left is to wait till it is done and shipped.

it will made out of 4mm aluminium with some precise bending and tig welding.

As for parts I tried to go as budget as possible to get good performance:

i5 9400f (will be delidded)

Asus Gtx760 will be upgraded later to evga gtx 1660ti

500gb m.2 ssd (sata)

corsair sfx 600 (yes it is an overkill, but i take it from my htpc build)

16gb corsair vengeance rgb 3200 (stealing it from mixed and match 32 gb “kit” in my main home pc)

as for motherboard i go for asus z170i pro gaming (can get it for around $70 and all i need is to flash bios on it in order to use coffee lake)

for cooling i have not decided yet if i find a good deal I will buy something like be quiet top flow cooler, but I also have coolermaster gemini 

 

 

[Enter Plasma]

Nice! Will be following

I don't see any cable cutouts, do you have any plans for those?

 

I'm still surprised at how popular that mod you're inspired by became. Just to show that simple and elegant will always win

 

 

[MaratM]

13 hours ago, Enter Plasma said:

Nice! Will be following

I don't see any cable cutouts, do you have any plans for those?

 

I'm still surprised at how popular that mod you're inspired by became. Just to show that simple and elegant will always win

 

 

The motherboard will be lifted from the motherboard tray by around 20 mm, all the cables will go under motherboard and to the psu, It will not have any 2.5” hdd or ssd only m.2. Thus the only cables it will have will be 24 pin, 8 pin eps, 8 pin vga, power switch and front audio and an internal usb3. I might use some cable ties just to fix the cables under the mobo. Aluminium is easy enough to drill and tap.

[MaratM]

A little update:

the case is made and been shipped to me

all the components are ordered some parts of the case have arrived a couple days ago

a bag full of standoffs and a 12mm led antivandal power switch

[MaratM]

6 minutes ago, James Evens said:

@MaratM Which colour is the switch?

Looks like you have not gone the RGB power switch way.

Blue, led works 3-12volts and will be connected to power led on the mobo. it a non RGB build, it is an office pc

[MaratM]

Here is a little update

all hardware arrived

9400f works on z170i pro gaming without any problems so far

a small chocolate bar is needed to get 3mm2 of aluminium foil)

moded i5 9400f

It’s alive!!!

Still waiting for the “case”

[MaratM]

The CASE has arrived

Looks like I'm the lacky one got all the measurments right the first time.

Picked up from logistis company

Just put all the hardware to check if it fits

20mm motherboard standoffs fit like a glove, need to drill some holes and do some m3 threads.

Also will go to tig welder to get all the corners rounded.

By the way Intel stock cooler is a temperary solution. got a CM Geminy M5 but thinking of getting a Scythe Big Shuriken V3 with Noctua NF-A12x25 

[xreaperx22]

On 5/31/2019 at 4:01 PM, MaratM said:

I was browsing build logs here and found one very unique Build. It is a solid piece of steel bent in very cool shape. So I decided to build one.

On top of that my good old sony vaio laptop is slowly dying (sony sold vaio brand around 4 years ago, and mine is a first gen i5) and an upgrade is much needed. My job is slightly changed from what it was 10 years ago and does not require a lot of traveling around the country, so there is not much need for a laptop.

After a few hours in autocad and sketchup both 3d model and 2d production model was done. Few more double checking of dimensions and it was ready to laser cut and bend.

So I’ve emailed it to a metalworking firm after 2 days of discussions we agreed on final design and price. All is left is to wait till it is done and shipped.

it will made out of 4mm aluminium with some precise bending and tig welding.

As for parts I tried to go as budget as possible to get good performance:

i5 9400f (will be delidded)

Asus Gtx760 will be upgraded later to evga gtx 1660ti

500gb m.2 ssd (sata)

corsair sfx 600 (yes it is an overkill, but i take it from my htpc build)

16gb corsair vengeance rgb 3200 (stealing it from mixed and match 32 gb “kit” in my main home pc)

as for motherboard i go for asus z170i pro gaming (can get it for around $70 and all i need is to flash bios on it in order to use coffee lake)

for cooling i have not decided yet if i find a good deal I will buy something like be quiet top flow cooler, but I also have coolermaster gemini 

 

 

cool nice project! cant wait to see it finished! so you modded the cpu to work on that board? if so i would love to know how you did it,this may be something i will do for my Z270 board

[MaratM]

17 minutes ago, xreaperx22 said:

cool nice project! cant wait to see it finished! so you modded the cpu to work on that board? if so i would love to know how you did it,this may be something i will do for my Z270 board

It is easy to mod the cpu to work on z170: for asus board you have to isolate 2 pins with whatever is a good isolation (electrical tape works, however i used thermal resistant sticky tape) and short 2 pins in the socket used some double sided sticky tape and aluminium foil, however some use pencil to do it.

after that you need a modified bios which is modified by easy to use software called coffeetime. Flash you bios with programming tool (cost around $5us on aliexpress) and after installing cpu in the socket it should work.

I’m currently running 8700k at 5gHz in asus maximus 8 hero as a main home pc. Link in the build log in signature.

by the way not all z170/270 are created equal, have a look at the vrm on you board some cheap z170/270 boards vrm is just garbage for 8700k/9700k, there is still some issues with 9900k on some boards.

[xreaperx22]

1 minute ago, MaratM said:

It is easy to mod the cpu to work on z170: for asus board you have to isolate 2 pins with whatever is a good isolation (electrical tape works, however i used thermal resistant sticky tape) and short 2 pins in the socket used some double sided sticky tape and aluminium foil, however some use pencil to do it.

after that you need a modified bios which is modified by easy to use software called coffeetime. Flash you bios with programming tool (cost around $5us on aliexpress) and after installing cpu in the socket it should work.

I’m currently running 8700k at 5gHz in asus maximus 8 hero as a main home pc. Link in the build log in signature.

thats very cool! thanks for the info,i will be doing some research on this cuz well im on a z270 board but im sure its going to basically the same steps to mod,im hoping to get an 8700k or maybe even a 9900k to work on my Z270 asus maximus ix extreme board.

[MaratM]

7 minutes ago, xreaperx22 said:

thats very cool! thanks for the info,i will be doing some research on this cuz well im on a z270 board but im sure its going to basically the same steps to mod,im hoping to get an 8700k or maybe even a 9900k to work on my Z270 asus maximus ix extreme board.

I'll check with the "experts" on the coffee lake adoptation if there is any problems with you board. As far as I know 9900K works but withot HT. 9700k is a safier bet.

[xreaperx22]

2 minutes ago, MaratM said:

I'll check with the "experts" on the coffee lake adoptation if there is any problems with you board. As far as I know 9900K works but withot HT. 9700k is a safier bet.

ah yes 9700k would be cheaper also lol and ht not really needed for gaming anyways.

[MaratM]

3 hours ago, xreaperx22 said:

ah yes 9700k would be cheaper also lol and ht not really needed for gaming anyways.

Hope the intel drop prices soon (my 9400F is already arond $10US cheaper now than I bougth it)

[kenblu24]

Mind me asking what the price was on that custom sheet-metal job? I was going to make a case out of 3D printed plastic, since I can do that at home, but if the cost isn't insane, some metal parts would be nice.

[MaratM]

2 hours ago, kenblu24 said:

Mind me asking what the price was on that custom sheet-metal job? I was going to make a case out of 3D printed plastic, since I can do that at home, but if the cost isn't insane, some metal parts would be nice.

It was about $75us including 4mm aluminium sheet, laser cutting, bending, tig welding and shipment. The CAD file was my work. Need to do some spot welds around the corners and do a lot of sanding and polishing.

[xreaperx22]

4 hours ago, MaratM said:

It was about $75us including 4mm aluminium sheet, laser cutting, bending, tig welding and shipment. The CAD file was my work. Need to do some spot welds around the corners and do a lot of sanding and polishing.

thats cheaper than what it cost me to have a whole case made from black acrylic tho,and this was years ago price was around 300-350 and seems acrylic would be easier to cut lol maybe i should have looked into aluminum instead.

[MaratM]

28 minutes ago, xreaperx22 said:

thats cheaper than what it cost me to have a whole case made from black acrylic tho,and this was years ago price was around 300-350 and seems acrylic would be easier to cut lol maybe i should have looked into aluminum instead.

It is done in Russia, Aluminium and steel prices are not effected by USA government, the acrylic prices are relatively more expensive because they are not using industrial grade machinery. I could have it made out of steel of any thickness if I wanted, but steel is harder to drill and tap thus I paid a bit extra to have it in aluminium. Also I was limited to 4mm thick aluminium, 5 or 6 would of been better but in this case all the material cost had to be on me (1,5x2,5m sheet) and that costs a fortune (estimate of $600) also it was a simple one to make and i was lucky to get my CAD correct the first time. No prototypes was needed.

[MaratM]

The rig is assembled and almost running.

cooler master cooler with noctua nf-a12x25 is installed

The “back” panel is installed

all components are installed

with one minor problem the corsair sf premium kit is too short!!!

in order to test boot the psu was removed and it is all up and running

The temps are great around 55c in stress test, noctua fan was running at maximum speed of under 1000 rpm and it is almost silent.

Have to disassemble it once again in order to get the power button installed and “front” io panel 2 usb ports and audio ports.

 

[MaratM]

I’ve ordered some sleeving, connectors and wires and going to make a fully custom cables for this rig. For now I used a 24-pin extension cable and had to tutn the PSU upside-down

The noctua fan is very impressive one keeps the cpu under 70c at the custom extra quiet settings in uefi and i can not hear it at all.

[mao91]

What a unique build. Absolutely love it!

[MaratM]

Finished "Front IO panel"

The antivandal power button is connected to HDD LED. I wanted to use it as a Power LED at first but it is a bit pointless, there is enough LED's on the mother board to indicate if the pc is switched on or off

[MaratM]

On top of that it is an "unusual" case with "wrong" CPU motherboard combo, I decided to install a very "wrong" hackintosh on it.

So I bought a scratch SSD (120gb WD Green) and borrowed RX 570 4GB

(was not really needed, GTX 760 is supported by Mojave) downloaded MacOS Mojave installer on a flash drive and the MacOS journey started.

3 times I tried without any success until I tried to put the thumb drive into "black" USB 2.0 port instead of the "blue" USB 3.0 port. and half an hour later I have a "working" Mojave installed on the PC 

It is installed and "working" without network card, no wifi, no sound but it is installed

After few hours of searching Hackintosh forums ethernet started to work, all USB ports working, but I have not tried to check their actual speed cause I do not have any fast flash drive.

Built in sound and bluetooth (borrowed an apple keyboard and mouse next day and it worked without any problems except dead batteries, I think I can live with wired-office keyboard and mouse for now) and airplay work as well. In order to get a wifi and airdrop I need a wifi card probably I will order it from ebay or aliexpress 

Airplay on Samsung Q9FN

Here is some Cinebench R15 and R20 results. My CPU is detected as a 3!!! core 6 thread CPU

Some final thoughts about Mojave and Hackintosh

It works, the dark theme is great and it takes time to get used to. Windows works as well and 500Gb ssd is on can be seen from mac OS and all my documents can be used. windows does not see macOS SSD and it does not bother me.

PS I received some cable sleeving material and want to make my own custom cables, but going on holiday for  month and will not do it now.

Also I can not chose a proper GPU, on one hand AMD is a way to go but the choice is a very limited one 3 ITX AMD cards are available:

Saphire 570 4GB ITX (costs around $100)

RX 580 4GB OEM HP (very rare card on the second hand market cost around $100 as well)

RX Fury Nano (cost around $150-200, it is the best performer out of the red team, except powercolor rx vega 56 nano, it is probably easier to find a working 3dfx voodoo 4)

on the Green side there is 1060 6GB (loads of ITX cards), 1660 (EVGA) 1660ti and even 2060, they all are more expensive but they deliver much better performance than any AMD cards listed above, but non of them is compatible with MacOS Mojave  

 

[MaratM]

Changed the CPU cooler from CoolerMaster geminii 5 to Scythe big shuriken 3. The temps on i5 9400f has not changed but the fan speed dropped by 200rpm.

it was an easy install and did not cause any problems

Also working on making custom cables

using mdpc-x sleaving black and carbon red, red accent will match the red on the mobo and gpu (found rx580 8gb in itx format it is a HP oem card)

[MaratM]

Finished custom 12v EPS cable, the easiest one out of all power cables.

 

Next one is 24 pin, that might take a while. Still can not decide on AMD GPU, still looking for vega 56 nano

[MaratM]

Just a little update

Almost finished 24 pin cable.