Project Ice Queen - Inspired by Scrapyard Wars

[Corwin111]

 

Before

 

After

 

Watching Scrapyard Wars, I have always found myself thinking - "Gee, I should try this".

 

This will not be my personal rig, I just decided to find some used parts online, put them into a new case, prettify it and... well I haven't quite figured out the "and' yet.

 

So here goes.

 

So far I have gotten a pretty banged up, but not too shabby used PC at a very nice price. i5-2500k, ASUS P8P67 LE mobo, 16 GB of 1333 A-Data memory, 2TB WD Caviar Black 7200RPM HDD, A 500W Fortron Saga II 80+ PSU and a pretty ballin' looking old-school Zalman CNSP9900 All-Copper CPU cooler with a blue LED fan. These are the parts that I intend to use. It also comes with a banged up case that I can not invision using for anything, as well as a GTX 460 and a CD-RW, which I will probably keep for something else or sell off. Otherwise, the machine has been tested extensively and works without a hitch.

 

In place of the GTX 460 I found a guy selling what he claims is a "brand new" MSI GTX 970 Gaming pretty cheaply. I will test it and see if everything is ok. If it is, into the Ice Queen it goes. If not - I'll find some other good GPU offer.

 

I intend to buy a small amount of new things. A NZXT S340 case (White), a 120GB Intel 530 Series SSD for OS and a couple of games at a time, as well as four blue after-market memory heatsinks, not because they will do much heatsinking, but because these bare A-Data modules that I have will be sticking out like a sore thumb in this beauty otherwise. I may end up painting the latter white, we'll see.

 

So here's the preliminary plan:

 

Put this

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

And this

 

Spoiler

 

Into this

 

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Then I will paint the red parts of the GPU shroud white, add all white sleeved PSU cable extensions and run a blue LED strip along the edges of the case.

 

 

Well, that's it for now. I will post updates as I go along.

 

 

Update: Day 1 - Waste management and LEDs ^^

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So far so good. Now put on your gas masks!

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That's it for today. The GPU comes in tomorrow. Painting, sleeving and cable management to follow...

 

 

Update: Day 2 - Sleeving and painting

 

 

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At this point the house is a mess:

 

And my dawgs are tired! ^^

 

 

But the 970 came in today and it even works fine!  So on we go with painting and sleeving.

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So far so good. Unfortunately, my pesky real job interupted the process yet again. I will pick this up tomorrow and likely finish the build. After that, a load of testing.

 

Update: Day 3 - assembly

 

She's alive. Alive and working. I have yet to do any extensive load testing but everything seems to be operational at the moment.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bangflop]

That seems like a really cool idea and if you can make it look cool I'm sure we would love to see pictures of the final product... but for the love all that is holy, dust your current computer before doing this

[Corwin111]

1 minute ago, Bangflop said:

That seems like a really cool idea and if you can make it look cool I'm sure we would love to see pictures of the final product... but for the love all that is holy, dust your current computer before doing this

To be clear, this is not my old machine. I just bought it off some wedding agency, who had no clue what they were selling and had not opened it ever. On the bright side, they were selling it way cheaper than they could have. It is currently in this sorry state but not for long.  

[Bangflop]

1 minute ago, Corwin111 said:

To be clear, this is not my old machine. I just bought it off some wedding agency, who had no clue what they were selling and had not opened it ever. On the bright side, they were selling it way cheaper than they could have. It is currently in this sorry state but not for long.  

lol fair enough. It would just be a shame to have such a beautiful computer ruined by two inches of dust is all. But still, I would love to see pictures of the finished product.

[abyss03]

Looking forward to this, would be nice to see what other people can do when they don't have Linus' influence in prices (Even though he protests he doesn't use it). Hope you can make something good looking out of it.

[Moonzy]

nice build

 

here's a video you should really watch just to get some extra juice out of that i5

 

[Corwin111]

OP Updated with pictures from today's cleaning and Christmas decoration.

 

Barring any hiccups, tomorrow I will paint the GPU shroud, make the sleeved PSU cables and put the whole thing together. 

 

Update: Day 1 - Waste management and LEDs ^^

 

 

 

 

So far so good. Now put on your gas masks!

 

 

 

 

 

[Napper198]

26 minutes ago, Corwin111 said:

OP Updated with pictures from today's cleaning and Christmas decoration.

 

Barring any hiccups, tomorrow I will paint the GPU shroud, make the sleeved PSU cables and put the whole thing together. 

 

Update: Day 1 - Waste management and LEDs ^^

So far so good. Now put on your gas masks!

This looks pretty nice already. May I ask you how much you spend until now?

[Corwin111]

1 minute ago, Napper198 said:

This looks pretty nice already. May I ask you how much you spend until now?

It will all come to about 600-620 Euros tomorrow when I pay for the 970. No further spending is planned. Knock on wood.  

[Corwin111]

Update: Day 2 - Sleeving and painting

 

 

At this point the house is a mess:

 

And my dawgs are tired! ^^

 

 

But the 970 came in today and it even works fine!  So on we go with painting and sleeving.

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

So far so good. Unfortunately, my pesky real job interupted the process yet again. I will pick this up tomorrow and likely finish the build. After that, a load of testing.

[abyss03]

7 hours ago, Corwin111 said:

So far so good. Unfortunately, my pesky real job interupted the process yet again. I will pick this up tomorrow and likely finish the build. After that, a load of testing.

God damn real jobs, ruining all the fun!

[Corwin111]

Update: Day 3 - assembly

 

She's alive. Alive and working. I have yet to do any extensive load testing but everything seems to be operational at the moment.

 

[abyss03]

Have you got any more modifications to make to it now or is it just software stuff?

[Corwin111]

1 minute ago, abyss03 said:

Have you got any more modifications to make to it now or is it just software stuff?

Well, there's a lot more I could have done. I could have painted the inside of the GPU shroud, because now it looks a bit odd when the LEDs are not on.

 

But it's too late now. MSI have decided to be very obnoxious with their shroud and even though it looks easy to remove, you need to take off the entire heat sink, voiding the warranty in the process, in order to remove the stupid MSI logo LED so the red part of the shroud can be painted. And I don't want to expose the die any more than I absolutely have to. So it will stay as it is. I should have thought of it earlier.

 

I could have also painted the entire PSU cover part of the case white, but it's too late now. 

 

I think I'll leave it as it is. All that remains is running a few benchmarks and stress tests to gouge temps and performance and I guess I'm done. I will share the results when I get around to it.