[Build Log] White Lotus

[Feronix]

Heya everyone

 

I've had an account on here for well over a year now but never really visited much. Figured it was time to upload my current personal build log on here and help out a little where I can.

 

The colour scheme is black and white, with little green accents.

 

Specs:

Intel Xeon 1230 v3

Gigabyte Z87n-WiFi

GPU to be purchased

8GB Vengeance RAM White 1.35v 1600MHz (to be upgraded to 2x8GB 2400MHz)

256 GB Crucial M500

2x 1Tb Caviar Blue

Bitfenix Phenom ITX White

Corsair RM650

Corsair H60 2013 Edition

230mm Bitfenix Spectre Pro and 120mm PWM version.

 

OS: The system will run Windows 8.1 Pro on the SSD, with one 1TB drive as storage, and OS X 1.9.4 Mavericks + storage on the other 1Tb drive.

(This is working right now).

 

 

 

First things first, I needed to fix the front intake issue cause just the little round holes on the side of the Phenom are not going to cut it. I decided to take out a small portion near the bottom of the front panel.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

Didn't need the SSD cage on the right side panel either so that had to go:

 

 

Also removed the front audio and LED indicator cables completely as I use an external audio interface anyway and it just created cable clutter in such a small enclosure.

I gave the cable lacing a try. It was a nightmare :lol:

Didn't help that I was using sewing thread, but I guess it turned out nicely for a first attempt. Also an awesome way to add some subtle green accents.

Out of the entire bag of cables to the left, I need a whopping 3 of them. One PCI-E cable for the GTX 760, one 4 pin EPS cable for the CPU power and one of the Molex cables to use my Molex>Sata and Molex>3x3pin 5v adaptors.

Hope I can find a white 24 pin somewhere soon

After countless of hours and profanity (both literally) I got this:

(don't worry about the one on the far left, it's the backside).

Doesn't happen often that your GPU box is twice as big as the motherboard one

Modded the SSD and got all the drives in

And with the mech HDDs

Sata cables in

Fans pop out of their casing really easily:

In case you've never seen a Dutch newspaper

Plasti-dip and some cheaper matte black spray paint -the latter is actually easier to work with but non-removable.

First layer

While I was waiting for the paint to dry before I could continue the build (not having a CPU cooler really makes it pointless to install your CPU/motherboard/RAM) I installed the PSU.

PSU cover plate installed

All the cables that I'm going to need. Bro do u even fit?

The answer; Barely

The fans look good

Barely fits too... Man, this is a tight build

Seriously though, why does Bitfenix not make these?

Excuse the yellow-light ish photos please, I kept working on the build until midnight. Labour paid off though, I am now posting this from the rig!

That motherboard is insanely tiny

Really liking the white bracket for the H60. It stands out massively from the rest of the CPU socket area but still blends in nicely with the rest of the build.

Especially when you toss in some sexy white RAM

As you can see in the image above, I had to mount the H60 with the tubing to the side, cause apparently it doesn't fit with the tubing at the top or bottom (bottom would've made it really difficult to install the block anyway).

Got that GPU in. *NOTE* The GPU fan had an annoying rumble noise to it so I RMA'd it and I'm now looking for an alternative. I cannot use the rig until then cause the CPU does not have an iGPU.

Will mod that one later. Will make it black & white, possibly paint the PCI bracket black while I'm at it (why do manufacturers not do this?) and then I'll make my own custom backplate with some white acrylic.

And she boots!

Windows installed as well. Got to love SSDs

Got the dual boot working. Just need to rename some partitions and remove a few out of the bootloader now.

More updates hopefully soon!

http://youtu.be/-cxnTX9vgA8

[iBeast_M0de]

Nice build its a small form factor isn't it? 

Even though its a small Pc I dont think you will have any problems running all the new games at decent details with some stable FPS

[Freaky_spider]

get a 970/80?

[ERSCreeper]

Awesome, a fellow Hackintosher

[ERSCreeper]

get a 970/80?

Not supported by OS X yet

[BloodWithIce]

Nice nice, 780 wouldn't be a bad alternative since it is supported for macs

[Mr.Foxxy]

Awesome build man!

[Feronix]

Nice build its a small form factor isn't it? 

Even though its a small Pc I dont think you will have any problems running all the new games at decent details with some stable FPS

Yeah, it is an ITX system, though for an ITX case the Bitfenix ones tend to be a little big. I like them though

With the GTX 760 in it was enough for all my gaming needs cause honestly I don't play games much anyway and when I do it's older ones (CoD4, GTA IV, Mafia II).

 

 

get a 970/80?

But outside my budget to be perfectly honest. I also don't really need one as said above

 

 

Awesome, a fellow Hackintosher

Oh, I'll make sure you check your thread out later today. If you have one...?

 

 

Nice nice, 780 wouldn't be a bad alternative since it is supported for macs

I'd love to get one but as said above I don't need it and it's a bit expensive. Might get a used 770 somewhere but that's the max I'll go.

 

 

Awesome build man!

Thank you!

[ERSCreeper]

Oh, I'll make sure you check your thread out later today. If you have one...?

I did make a build log but it got lost when they moved the forum over to the new platform, I should do a new one when my new GPU arrives and when I have finished modding my new case. You can see the W.I.P in my Sig.

[iBeast_M0de]

Yeah, it is an ITX system, though for an ITX case the Bitfenix ones tend to be a little big. I like them though

With the GTX 760 in it was enough for all my gaming needs cause honestly I don't play games much anyway and when I do it's older ones (CoD4, GTA IV, Mafia II).

 

 

But outside my budget to be perfectly honest. I also don't really need one as said above

 

 

Oh, I'll make sure you check your thread out later today. If you have one...?

 

 

I'd love to get one but as said above I don't need it and it's a bit expensive. Might get a used 770 somewhere but that's the max I'll go.

 

 

Thank you!

A 770 is in my opinion not worth upgrading to from a 760 if you just play around with some of the sliders of MSI Afterburn you can get pretty close to the preformance of a stock GTX 770

[Feronix]

I did make a build log but it got lost when they moved the forum over to the new platform, I should do a new one when my new GPU arrives and when I have finished modding my new case. You can see the W.I.P in my Sig.

 

I'll have a look

 

A 770 is in my opinion not worth upgrading to from a 760 if you just play around with some of the sliders of MSI Afterburn you can get pretty close to the preformance of a stock GTX 770

I'm not upgrading though. I purchased a GTX 760 for this build and it was good enough for me, but the fan was faulty so I sent it back. I didn't want to take the risk to buy another GPU from Gainward and all the other reference models were 40 euros more so I just asked for my money back and I'm not looking for anything 760/670/680/770 cause it's good enough for me and not too expensive.

[Feronix]

I would very much like to welcome Corsair as a sponsor to this build, having provided me with 2x8 GB of Vengeance Pro at 1866Mhz. Thank you so much!

I've got some nice plans for this RAM, but enjoy the product porn for now. Those dimms looks absolutely amazing in the flesh!

This RAM looks so good that it's almost a shame to modify it... almost, but not quite!

The clips come off pretty easily. They're on firm enough not to fall off by accident, but if you pull them a little they snap off pretty quickly. Intentional or not - this is some modder friendly stuff.

My go-to weapon of choice for computer hardware (and mainly this project).

It's sometimes a bit difficult to work with, giving this 'frost' look the first few layers. Now, I happen to want this for this build, but make sure you give it enough time between layers to set down and become a little more smooth.

First layer:

Now I'm letting that dry, time to measure the sticker sizes!

Modifying the stickers in PhotoShop

Document settings:

(Always 300 resolution for printing jobs)

Product shot with the rest of the dimm removed:

Used the Magic Wand tool (uncheck 'Contagious', set Tolerance to 50) to select the yellow logo and then ctrl+J to copy it to a new layer. Then give the new layer the desired colour overlay, and also a 1 pixel stroke with 50% opacity.

Then set the saturation way back on the base layer (or change the hue if you simply want to change the colour, I decided to make the background black & white).

Pump out the contrast completely to get rid of the grey areas and turn them into either black or white (you can add multiple of these overlays to strengthen the effect). Also adding in some brightness.

Lastly, I chose to set the exposure back a little. This did mean the white turned ever so slightly grey, but made the honeycomb pattern a lot more distinct.

PSD Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/3kntv56no00zg96/Vengeance+Pro+Sticker.psd

Applying stickers

I printed out the stickers (well, as soon as I finally got that POS printer working ).

Figured I'd use the paper cutter, but the blade had gone completely blunt so I had to cut them out by hand. Some lines aren't 100% straight, but you can't tell unless you're very close. I'll still fix this at a later point though, as it annoys me knowing it's not perfect.

The stock stickers came off surprisingly easily with some peeling. They went off in one go, it's a very satisfying feeling

It also needs to be said that these things still look drop-dead gorgeous all stripped down. Perfect for stealth builds.

Didn't get that reflective look the stock ones have. I did think about printing them on glossy photo paper but 1) We were out of that, 2) This is a lot better with dust :lol:

I keep taking pictures before I clean things... bad habit.

Finished product

[Feronix]

Update

Decided to mod my GPU! Only made the plans on a random boredom streak yesterday, so for me to now announce the card is already up and running I'm very proud. The guys in the Whatsapp group seemed to like the end result. Let me know if you want to see it too

The videocard is an EVGA GTX 760 2GB SC. Great card so far, plays all the games that I want it to and it only cost me €160. Best card I ever bought for that money, although a tiny bit bland looking!

Also, it's not very silent in idle, so I'll probably perform a vbios mod sometime.

I'll start with Disassembling the card.

There she is in the system, not bad looking tbh. But also not great (same goes for the photo quality, sorry about that).

Having taken her out of the system. The Bitfenix ITX cases are great, but their mounting for the GPU is a bit fiddly. Especially to get it back in...

After around 2 minutes of pulling I finally got the GPU power cables out. Then I tilted the phone just a bit too much, so enjoy an upside-down PCB photo

That's going to take a small screwdriver set. Luckily I have one of those!

The cooler is kept in place by five screws along the edge of the card. Don't forget to remove the fan cable before you pull it off.

Quite a beefy heatsink for a reference 760. Not bad, EVGA. Because they were originally very short cards, the extended PCB on the right looks a bit bare.

The shroud and fan come off in one go:

From the back:

There are an additional 4 screws to remove the fan from the shroud. The two on the far left, and then two along the bottom of the shroud.

There we go, looking a bit dusty. Good moment for some quick cleaning!

And the empty shroud from the back:

And the front:

The back of the card looks fairly standard. DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI and a full-size Displayport out. Silver bracket though as always, ew

To remove the bracket you have to unscrew the stand-off like pins on both sides of both DVI ports. Luckily I had this handy tool for motherboard standoffs which worked perfectly.

The bracket just pretty much falls off after unscrewing it.

I wanted to make a pun about 'The GTX 760s naked ass', which would probably generate a lot of thread views :lol:

All taped up nicely! This took me 25 minutes so you guys better appreciate it

Ready for paint

The bracket too

Weapon of choice:

Plasti-dip doesn't work here as you'd pull it off with the masking tape. Also, this paint makes for a much more smooth surface. These cans cost €6 each and they've always been brilliant for me.

High-gloss white and matte black, here we go!

Who wants to see the end result?

First out of three coats of white of the shroud:

Bracket only took one coating on either sides, looks awesome in matte-black. Manufacturers should do this is standard imo.

I couldn't be bothered taking pictures after every layer let us fast-forward to the end-results!

Beautiful matte-black PCI bracket came out nicely! Blowdried it for half an hour to make sure the paint was heat-resistant - which it is.

Installed back onto the card!

It makes the card look so much more high-end then it really is

Right then, the white coating on the shroud looks nice, very smooth. Well done, me.

No residue around the fan cut-out, so I can be sure it won't be touching anything.

Hmmm, some paint creeped in under the tape because there's a 'ditch' on the middle. I CAN FIX THAT

But let's remove the rest of the tape first

Used some turpentine to remove the paint that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Man, this stuff is absolutely amazing.

That looks so much better!

Time to assemble the card back now! Fan screwed back into the shroud, using the same 4 aforementioned screws.

And now for the moment supreme! Installing the cooler back onto the card. Preeeetty proud of how it worked out!

And after fitting her back into the system, which was a bitch with the Bitfenix mounting, but hey, at least plugging the power connectors in was a LOT easier than taking them out

Hope you enjoyed that guys, stay tuned for more stuff!

[nicon]

Not supported by OS X yet

Yea it is. Example: http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-desktop-guides/144237-msi-z77a-gd55-gtx-980-4gb-yosemite-fully-working.html 

[Feronix]

Yea it is. Example: http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-desktop-guides/144237-msi-z77a-gd55-gtx-980-4gb-yosemite-fully-working.html 

 

That was posted many months ago though, before we had confirmation.

Either way I wouldn't have had the money for a different card and honestly the 760 does pretty much everything I want it to

[nicon]

That was posted many months ago though, before we had confirmation.

Either way I wouldn't have had the money for a different card and honestly the 760 does pretty much everything I want it to

True. The 760 is still a great card, as you said.