Summer of upgrades, the story of the Red Glow

Thaldor · August 30, 2016

This won't be anything amazing, except that how much things can change when you pay around 275€ to move your rig to a new case with minor upgrades.

Starting point (* = unchanged to the new):

CPU: AMD FX-8350*

RAM: 2x4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600Mhz CL9

MB: AsRock 990FX Professional*

GPU: Palit GeForce GTX 770 JetStream 2GB*

PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty Series 750W*

CPU cooler: Scythe Katana4*

Soundcard: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeAudio

Case: Nexus Caterpillar (still in the markets as Nexus (Version 1) Silent PC System)

HDDs: 2x 500GB and 1TB*

DVD and Blu-Ray drives*

(Next image may cause extreme vomiting and incurable brain damage)

Spoiler

So, everything that may happen is only positive...

Upgrades:

Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 3

RAM: 2x 4GB Kingstone HyperX Savage DDR3 1600Mhz CL9 (added)

Soundcard: Creative SoundBlaster Z

Lights: 2x CableMod Widebeam 60cm red LED-strip (other with foam adhesive and another with magnets)

Misc: screws, washers, nuts, Molex->SATA adapter, SATA Y-cable, 10A 12V switch and some wire

Spoiler

I'm quite ok with the change. Not the best but not the worst. I was really on the edge of buying something like Define R5 for the case, but I don't really like the full frontal door and I really wanted 3 5.25" bays for my DVD and Blu-Ray drives and USB3.0 panel (which I recessed enough to fit WLAN- and Logitech Unifying dongles inside the door). I also wanted to try to get as much airflow as possible, because the VRMs on my MB were having a bad time with their temperatures (the very reason why I changed my FX-6200 to this FX-8350 from my friend, because he had bought some AsRock 990FX Extreme MB which acctually couldn't deliver enough juice for the CPU and VRMs overheated). So more airflow and while it looks retarded, I really like that Katana4 blows the heat right out of the case from the roof where I have 2 Nexus 120mm fans to try to help with it.

While the change helped with temperatures a lot, I didn't really like the way Nanoxia had made the case by leaving out some kind of cover or even filter from the cases roof, so few M4 screws, nuts and washers and I had a neat adjustable roof cover.

Spoiler

Only thing left to do now is to finish soldering and making lightswitch to the rear of the case so I can turn off those really bright LED-strips. And no, I'm not going to put another ~70€ for something like NZXT HUE+, because all I want to do is to be able to turn the lights on/off and I can do it by attaching a switch into a Molex->SATA adapter and connecting the lights to it (and this costed me about 7€ with the SATA Y-cable). The next step is to change the dustfilters to something much better than those flimsy plastic once, I already have an idea to change them to #500 stainless steel mesh but I need to figure out how I'm going to attach them. For the hardware side next thing could be getting some 1x120mm AIO cooler for the CPU, because that Katana4 isn't that good as a cooler, and start to save money for GTX 1070.

r3d3mpt10n · August 30, 2016

Looking good! I like what you did with the top of the case. Inventive :p. When I first read "IDE" I cringed a little haha. My colour scheme is retarded in my amd build but I really don't want to change 11fans :'(

Thaldor · August 30, 2016

Ah, I really shouldn't write in hurry, not IDE, Molex, but either way old technology. I really like the black-red color scheme, but as I don't have the money to go and grab whatever I want whenever I want I need to make exceptions, like the older pair of RAM has blue heatsinks, the old Nexus fans on the top of the case are white, the GPU has blue leds and the PSU cables are the normal colormess. But I'm amazed how much those red led-stripes hide the other colors, well some of it can be blamed on the camera (Canon PS SX200 IS), but extremely bright light and you can hide almost anything (I acctually can luminate my working room only with the red light coming from the front air vents).

I'm really proud of the top airvent covers because what I have seen many cases have different kind of covers for the top vents, but not many have adjustable Also I can almost promise those screws and nuts won't be the first things to be broken if something was to happen because I keep my rig on floor, why I also looked for full steel case.

Thaldor · September 21, 2016

Progress!

Did the switch for the LED strips. Nothing special, just cutted the 12V line of molex to SATA adapter, attached wires to it and the switch, anyone can do that and with heat shrink it looks really professional work. What is something special is that the case had just perfect serial-port place in the rear for the switch:

Spoiler

Also tip for those who still use some 5€ soldering iron, throw that shit away and get something real. Mine ~10 years old iron broke and I bought Dremel VersaTip to replace it and god, I love it. I have really always hated that soldering irons have those thick and clumsy wires that are always too short or in the way, so I was really happy that there is options for that.

Also a tip for those that want to attach some stickers to the case, get some small magnets and glue them behind the sticker. This way I have used my quite trademark in my own rig for years and it wil lserve me well into the long future:

Spoiler

The real big improvement to the Red Glow was also made. The old Katana4 was removed and replaced by Noctua NH-D15. I was kind of worried how tight fit it would be and, even though I know it's their trademark and that's the reason why people will always know they are the Noctua, I don't really like the looks of Noctua fans, but once again CableMods led strips save the day and make the Noctua color palet look acctually really good:

Spoiler

If it fits, it sits, and it fits near perfect (maybe the fan above the RAM is kinda a little touching the side panel, but that's not a problem). And the image doesn't lie a lot, that led strip on the roof around the roof fans really bleaches all the colors off from the power cables and almost everything else. The cable management is really pain in the ass with this case, there's so little room behind the mobo (50mm) and that cover ends just where you can see the led strip is coming out. All those cables for my DVD and Blu-Ray drives are acctually running behind the mobo and almost all of the slack of any cable is tucked in to the bottom of the case behind the mobo and HDDs.

Next in the line is overclocking the hell out of the FX-8350, because now I can do it. With Katana4 I have used it at 4.4Ghz and even then it starts to throttle if it's taken to the max while rendering or just benchmarking, but now with those clocks, it runs at the ambient temperature (mobo says amb 44C and the socket temp is 44C, room temperature 23C and cores running at 25C) when idle and with AIDA64 burn test it gets max. 55C.

Also I need to order more SS mesh. Primary tests show that it's a lot more effective than using the original plastic ones that came with the case. I changed half of the frontal dustfilter to SS mesh and it collected quite a lot more dust than the plastic one. It doesn't affect the airflow as much as I thought it would since being a lot denser than the original plastic one, but it's probably a lot more expensive (~5£ per A4 sheet of #500 SS mesh from The Mesh Company in Britain, they also usually give one extra sheet per sheet ordered). So, that's also a project.