Zombie Mods - The I9 Steambox

[Karumu]

Because of the cooling and electronics. The Aurora isn't a huge case it's just pretty deep.

i guess, "size isnt everything" i just like the looks of a mobo with 6 PCI-E full length slots  :wub:

[ALXAndy]

i guess, "size isnt everything" i just like the looks of a mobo with 6 PCI-E full length slots  :wub:

 

Yeah me too. I do have a soft spot for huge big rigs. The problem with my other build (the dark carnival) is that it is literally huge and induces hernias every time you pick it up. It's also noisy due to the hardware in it and thus not so good for just sitting at to browse and so on. That's why I'm doing this build as I want something smaller that's possibly portable if it needs to be and as quiet as a mouse. It will also use about half the power of my main rig too which will be nice.

 

I'm afraid to say that there probably won't be any updates today. The PSU is with Hermes (gob spit) and hasn't even left their depot yet and the CPU was in Baltimore Maryland three days back so I figured the pause in updates was because it was being flown directly from MD to the UK. Then this morning I got this as an update...

 

 

So Hermes are dragging their feet, the yanks are dragging their feet... *sigh*. 

 

Not that it matters too much as I have injured my left hand when braiding. So I will give that a few days to heal now and probably resume modding on Monday. A friend of mine sent me out some cables to make up some extra PCIE wires so if they arrive today I may do those. The blue braiding also wasn't even posted until yesterday so I am completely at the mercy of external things now. I think it's time to take a deep breath and have a rest any way. If I over do my mind with this I will start making mistakes.

[Karumu]

 

Yeah me too. I do have a soft spot for huge big rigs. The problem with my other build (the dark carnival) is that it is literally huge and induces hernias every time you pick it up. It's also noisy due to the hardware in it and thus not so good for just sitting at to browse and so on. That's why I'm doing this build as I want something smaller that's possibly portable if it needs to be and as quiet as a mouse. It will also use about half the power of my main rig too which will be nice.

 

I'm afraid to say that there probably won't be any updates today. The PSU is with Hermes (gob spit) and hasn't even left their depot yet and the CPU was in Baltimore Maryland three days back so I figured the pause in updates was because it was being flown directly from MD to the UK. Then this morning I got this as an update...

 

<snip>

 

So Hermes are dragging their feet, the yanks are dragging their feet... *sigh*. 

 

Not that it matters too much as I have injured my left hand when braiding. So I will give that a few days to heal now and probably resume modding on Monday. A friend of mine sent me out some cables to make up some extra PCIE wires so if they arrive today I may do those. The blue braiding also wasn't even posted until yesterday so I am completely at the mercy of external things now. I think it's time to take a deep breath and have a rest any way. If I over do my mind with this I will start making mistakes.

yeah, my new-ish build is going in a 750D which i'm getting at the end of this month, have most of the parts already apart from new psu, cpu cooler, GPU, lighting etc etc. i can only buy 2 parts a month sadly so it's a veeery slow process

 

(off topic)

when i ordered my new graphics tablet and speaker, i got a really rude guy from hermes! he came to my house while i was at work so he left the "sorry i missed you" card and the hermes delivery people are "self employed" so i called him and asked what time they deliver til because i didnt get back from work til half 6 and he was like "i dont just deliver in (where i live) i have to go other places so you'll have to wait" i was like woah it's not like i asked you to come half way across the planet today i want it tomorrow or this week sometime but eventually he came round on the weekend. 

[ALXAndy]

I think I've had Hermes here before and it was OK. But mostly Hermes and Yodel just suck balls.

 

Nice to hear you're building a 'big rig'. I'm a bit of a graphics whore so unless I packed in a Titan or something similar I would never be happy. I run a 7990 in TDC and I love it and my lady's rig carries two 670s so I do like the punch

 

The GTX 480 Lightning is still a very capable card. I know full well it'll power BF3 but not sure about BF4. I will have to test it all out For the most part though I want this little rig for Photoshop, Sketchup and Steam OS. It should be uber quiet. I mean shit man, TDC actually blows cold air all over my hands when I'm on it which is not very nice haha. It's OK once it warms up in gaming though.

 

I too have to build this one (and the last one actually) as it comes. I can't afford to buy everything all at once. They say good things come to those who wait....

[Karumu]

I think I've had Hermes here before and it was OK. But mostly Hermes and Yodel just suck balls.

 

Nice to hear you're building a 'big rig'. I'm a bit of a graphics whore so unless I packed in a Titan or something similar I would never be happy. I run a 7990 in TDC and I love it and my lady's rig carries two 670s so I do like the punch

 

The GTX 480 Lightning is still a very capable card. I know full well it'll power BF3 but not sure about BF4. I will have to test it all out For the most part though I want this little rig for Photoshop, Sketchup and Steam OS. It should be uber quiet. I mean shit man, TDC actually blows cold air all over my hands when I'm on it which is not very nice haha. It's OK once it warms up in gaming though.

 

I too have to build this one (and the last one actually) as it comes. I can't afford to buy everything all at once. They say good things come to those who wait....

in my new rig i'm gonna crossfire these badboys http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/AMD+Radeon/Radeon+R9+290/Asus+Radeon+R9+290+DirectCU+II+OC+4096MB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=59456 but this wont be done til after july im only 17 so minimum wage sucks balls, even full time. especially with sonisphere coming up thats another £200+ gone out of my build money pool :<

 

sidenote: me and my friend get 10% discount from aria, as we spend so much money there, but i've found a local shop that beats their prices so is all good

[ALXAndy]

in my new rig i'm gonna crossfire these badboys http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/AMD+Radeon/Radeon+R9+290/Asus+Radeon+R9+290+DirectCU+II+OC+4096MB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=59456 but this wont be done til after july im only 17 so minimum wage sucks balls, even full time. especially with sonisphere coming up thats another £200+ gone out of my build money pool :<

 

sidenote: me and my friend get 10% discount from aria, as we spend so much money there, but i've found a local shop that beats their prices so is all good

 

I can't remember the last time I ran a single GPU. It was probably my XFX 7970 that had so many driver problems I swapped it with a guy for two EVGA GTX 480s (brand new and unused). Over the years.. 8600GT SLI. 3870X2 X2. GTX 295 x 2. (note quadfire and quad SLI pretty much don't work). HD 5770 CFX (long before the frame pacing drivers and it sucked) GTX 480 SLI. GTX 670 SLI. Radeon HD 7990.

 

For the kinds of settings I like to use I've never found a single GPU that was capable of putting out enough frames to keep the game smooth. What I will say is that Crossfire X has only been worth having since PCPER did their digging and exposed AMD. Every other Crossfire set up I used sucked monkey balls..

 

Keep working and keep saving man. I used to be on a scheme where I got paid £29 a week and worked my balls off. YTS, or the youth training scheme. Minimum wage didn't even exist.

[Karumu]

I can't remember the last time I ran a single GPU. It was probably my XFX 7970 that had so many driver problems I swapped it with a guy for two EVGA GTX 480s (brand new and unused). Over the years.. 8600GT SLI. 3870X2 X2. GTX 295 x 2. (note quadfire and quad SLI pretty much don't work). HD 5770 CFX (long before the frame pacing drivers and it sucked) GTX 480 SLI. GTX 670 SLI. Radeon HD 7990.

 

For the kinds of settings I like to use I've never found a single GPU that was capable of putting out enough frames to keep the game smooth. What I will say is that Crossfire X has only been worth having since PCPER did their digging and exposed AMD. Every other Crossfire set up I used sucked monkey balls..

 

Keep working and keep saving man. I used to be on a scheme where I got paid £29 a week and worked my balls off. YTS, or the youth training scheme. Minimum wage didn't even exist.

i see i have a single 7850 ATM it's decent and plays anything i want to, while streaming too, im getting a really annoying thing though, with windows 8.1 im playing games and it does this wierd 10-20 frame stutter which pauses the audio too do you think this is a driver issue or is it just windows 8 being shit? 

 

i'm getting £580 a month doing 36.25 hours a week but £55 of that goes on travel and another £26 on my phone bill and £100 to my mum for rent and stuff so i usually spend like £230 on parts which pretty much obliterates my pay instantly

[ALXAndy]

i see i have a single 7850 ATM it's decent and plays anything i want to, while streaming too, im getting a really annoying thing though, with windows 8.1 im playing games and it does this wierd 10-20 frame stutter which pauses the audio too do you think this is a driver issue or is it just windows 8 being shit? 

 

i'm getting £580 a month doing 36.25 hours a week but £55 of that goes on travel and another £26 on my phone bill and £100 to my mum for rent and stuff so i usually spend like £230 on parts which pretty much obliterates my pay instantly

 

I've had no issues with either Windows 8 or 8.1. A 7850 though? haha ! I use 8xmsaa so Hitman, Crysis 3 et al.. Would bring it to its knees.

 

Either you've got driver issues (which I doubt) or you are just asking too much of it.

[Karumu]

I've had no issues with either Windows 8 or 8.1. A 7850 though? haha ! I use 8xmsaa so Hitman, Crysis 3 et al.. Would bring it to its knees.

 

Either you've got driver issues (which I doubt) or you are just asking too much of it.

shhhhh i bought it last year for like £110 so it's the most i could afford at the time, now i have a full time job it's a little easier. 

 

ever heard of a game called osu! ? yeah it does it on that. getting 1k+ fps then BAM .5 second stutter really disturbing, also does it in WoW, LoL, pretty much all my games, do you think i should just let my pc sit and download all windows update? it's retty much a fresh install on 8.1

 

also it played crysis 3 at medium with 2x msaa decent, but i pirated it so didnt have the optimization patches LOL gonna buy it when i get paid though

[Cryptonite]

i'm getting £580 a month doing 36.25 hours a week but £55 of that goes on travel and another £26 on my phone bill and £100 to my mum for rent and stuff so i usually spend like £230 on parts which pretty much obliterates my pay instantly

Dude, that's quite a big salary for a 17 year old. Especially since part prices are less there than they are here in South Africa, oh how I wish I lived in a 1st world country.

 

Also it seems to me like a driver issue if it does that on WoW and OSU. those games don't require much of anything. what version of catalyst do you have? I think it's still called catalyst (haven't had an AMD card for years since they cost more than Nvidia here)

[Karumu]

Dude, that's quite a big salary for a 17 year old. Especially since part prices are less there than they are here in South Africa, oh how I wish I lived in a 1st world country.

yeah, it's quite nice having a disposable income, i guess i'm just being impatient for my parts or jealous some people can just go out and buy all the parts they need ^^ thanks for giving me a reality check, lol

[ALXAndy]

yeah, it's quite nice having a disposable income, i guess i'm just being impatient for my parts or jealous some people can just go out and buy all the parts they need ^^ thanks for giving me a reality check, lol

 

Let's put it this way fella. If you got everything you wanted when you wanted it life would suck ass. I won't go into detail but I once had loads of money, a heavily modded track car and everything I thought I could have wanted. Now? my computers and my lady are all I have. Practically no disposable income and I get to buy £40 worth of parts and tools every month.

 

But I'm happy. And that's more important than anything.

[flibberdipper]

Just got back to looking at it some more, and I like where it's going...

[ALXAndy]

Just got back to looking at it some more, and I like where it's going...

 

Thanks man ! and also thanks for showing your support by liking my posts. I really appreciate that

 

Well the postman came. He brought me the two PCIE cables my friend sent. Now these were modular with an 8 pin one end and two 6+2 at the other. They're also red, so I want to use them on my PSU.

 

So here is what I ended up with. I still have to remove the +2 pins for braiding the wires but they also need extending and I am all out of heat shrink in 3mm so I can't do that yet.

 

 

Thankfully I now have a pretty decent technique, but just to show you guys the sort of damage you can do yourself with these wires check this out. This is my thumb, which has a nice deep slit cut in it.

 

 

And my finger, which got it twice.

 

 

There was blood everywhere and I had to wrap my fingers in tissue to stop them dripping. The cause though was how I was removing the wires. basically on the back side of the wire where it goes into the plug there is a U shaped piece of metal to stop it going all the way through. Now as I found out, this shit is proper sharp. Sharp enough to cut deep and slice like a knife.

 

Lesson learned, I now have a better method of getting them out

[Karumu]

 

Thanks man ! and also thanks for showing your support by liking my posts. I really appreciate that

 

Well the postman came. He brought me the two PCIE cables my friend sent. Now these were modular with an 8 pin one end and two 6+2 at the other. They're also red, so I want to use them on my PSU.

 

So here is what I ended up with. I still have to remove the +2 pins for braiding the wires but they also need extending and I am all out of heat shrink in 3mm so I can't do that yet.

 

-snip-

 

Thankfully I now have a pretty decent technique, but just to show you guys the sort of damage you can do yourself with these wires check this out. This is my thumb, which has a nice deep slit cut in it.

 

-snip-

 

And my finger, which got it twice.

 

 

There was blood everywhere and I had to wrap my fingers in tissue to stop them dripping. The cause though was how I was removing the wires. basically on the back side of the wire where it goes into the plug there is a U shaped piece of metal to stop it going all the way through. Now as I found out, this shit is proper sharp. Sharp enough to cut deep and slice like a knife.

 

Lesson learned, I now have a better method of getting them out

shit looks brutal i might custom braid the cables on my psu when i get it, with a pattern such as BRRBRRBBBRRR for the 24 pin anyway idk

[ALXAndy]

shit looks brutal i might custom braid the cables on my psu when i get it, with a pattern such as BRRBRRBBBRRR for the 24 pin anyway idk

 

If I were you I would buy a cheap extension and practice on that. It's one of those things in life that is a hundred times harder than it looks. I've seen even the most hardened modders use braided extensions rather than do the job themselves.

[Karumu]

If I were you I would buy a cheap extension and practice on that. It's one of those things in life that is a hundred times harder than it looks. I've seen even the most hardened modders use braided extensions rather than do the job themselves.

i'll probably use stock til i can be bothered to sit down and learn, ill use one of my old power supplies as practise, i have like 4

[Homicidium]

ProTip - If you cut the fingers and want to have some sort of a natural plaster and stop the bleeding: Use a ChapStick and go over the wound, helped me many times!

[Hikaru12]

ProTip - If you cut the fingers and want to have some sort of a natural plaster and stop the bleeding: Use a ChapStick and go over the wound, helped me many times!

 

You can also use gorilla glue to seal up cuts that sting a bit (obviously when the blood has dried).

[acidydragon]

You can also use gorilla glue to seal up cuts that sting a bit (obviously when the blood has dried).

I use superglue, you just need to apply some pressure for a minute to get it to stop for just a second, then drip it in.

Stings for a second, then doesn't let anything in, or out

[ALXAndy]

 

 

Here is the case as it stands now.

 

 

As you can see there, a lot of the wiring and braiding is done. The postman arrived a short while ago, here is what came.

 

 

The ram coolers and some double sided tape. I ordered both what seems like forever ago, but hey they're here I set about fitting the ram coolers and finally got them on. It was a horribly fiddly job though so I got to use the heat gun I ordered about two months back for bending acrylic. So far it's not been used for that, but it did save my life when I stuck down the ram coolers skewed and had to remove them.

 

 

So here is the ram that Harlequin so kindly donated to the cause.

 

 

Looks a bit like arse, so let's change that....

 

 

/Duke Nukem ahhh, much better ! then I took the clasps and some red dinoc..

 

 

And.. Tadaaaa

 

 

So that was that done, and a much better look than two green ram sticks. Only cost me about £2 all in too ! Then the doorbell went and a big heavy parcel arrived

 

 

Hmm !

 

 

Well it's well packed. What's inside then?

 

 

Ooo nice ! let's have a look...

 

 

I likey blue LED fan too.

 

 

OK so I packed it away. It won't come out again until the CPU arrives, but, I now have all of the pieces (apart from the CPU of course) to be able to bench test the components. OK so now onto a small job. What was the double sided tape for? this.

 

 

I used to have a Sandy Bridge Xeon. I removed the sticker from the Alienware case and then cleaned off the gunk on the back with TIM remover. I want to recycle it, and, as much as I can. So I do this....

 

 

Then take the scissors and trim...

 

 

And that is now ready to be peeled and re-used

 

Til next time... (I'm still waiting for the bloody blue paracord to arrive FFS !! GRRR)

[ALXAndy]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hear thunder but there's no rain, this kind of thunder breaks walls and window panes.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-91xG7scrDs

 

It's ready

[Paolo Verwey]

Looks good, but do you have the card yet?

[ALXAndy]

Looks good, but do you have the card yet?

 

Was shipped from Asus HQ (Taiwan) yesterday

 

I actually stuck the entire logo that took over two hours to make on upside down. I then spent twenty minutes cursing and stressing removing it, before replacing it.

 

 

[LukaP]

oh god its beautiful im in love with this <3