Ultimate all-round PC and desk setup

[Alikhanizadeh]

I didn't like how bright the LEDs in the Corsair Dominator Platinum DIMMs were and there is no option to dim them. I found that if you remove the aluminium bar on the top you can access the side of the LED that emits the light. I cut some adhesive 65% tinted sheet it to tiny squares and laid them on top of the LED.



Like so.



Worked well, much more subtle light. DIMMS dimmed...

I also didn't like how bright some of the system LEDs were so they got the same treatment. You can barely tell the film is there. 


 

[Alikhanizadeh]

There are many more tweaks still to do (and many more already done that I haven't mentioned) and lots of custom wiring still to be done, but here it is after the first proper build up.


 

You can see how far the modified front panel stands off, I think this is about as far as you can go before it starts to look shoddy. 




 

Lots of messy wiring but that will be sorted soon enough. 





A few things are still temporary in these photos but you can see how it's coming together. 

[JohnJojoz]

Truly amazing work, you sir are a god amongst men! I seriously need to step my game up!!

[Cameron Goodwin]

You know your shit gooooood.

[Alikhanizadeh]

Time for wiring. Here is most of what I'll be using. 
Mostly from MDPX in Germany and Pexon PCs in the UK. I had to source quite a few specific uncommon parts from eBay and some obscure online retailers. 



I've never done custom wiring in a PC before so I've also bought the MDPC CTX3 crimp tool and pin tools as well as some decent wire strippers.



My order from MDPC-x came with a little drawing on the back of my invoice courtesy of Nils (the CEO) and my MOLEX pin tool was also a "Custom edition" with my name on it. How cool is that! I've ordered a lot of stuff in my life and there are occasionally some nice touches thrown in but I've never seen anything like this. Amazing. 

First, a few before shots.
The previous post has photos of the motherboard side, here is the other side as it stands.

The basement spaghetti.



ATX 24 pin (this was before dimming the LEDs) 

 

Double PCIe 6+2pin 



I started with the wiring for the graphics card. Didn't take too many photos of this first job (got too engrossed in the process). There will be more photos of other cables with a description of the process later.
Here it is in the works.



Here is the PSU end part way though crimping terminals and melting sleeving. You can see that the individual wires are far from the same length, I explain why further down. 



Many, many hours and a few spliced wires later, here is the finished product. 





Here is where it fits from above...



...and from below.



Next up, the big 24 pin cable for the motherboard.

[Alikhanizadeh]

On 1/22/2019 at 6:20 PM, Cameron Goodwin said:

You know your shit gooooood.

 

On 1/22/2019 at 5:43 PM, JohnJojoz said:

Truly amazing work, you sir are a god amongst men! I seriously need to step my game up!!

Forgot to say thanks! Much appreciated.

[Alikhanizadeh]

Okay, the 24 pin. I'll go through the steps this time. Here is the rough process;
First, I cut the required number wires and sleeving to length (leaving them about 1/3 longer than what I expect to use).



Then I strip all of the wires at one end, prepare the terminals and crimp one terminal on one end of each wire.
Next I slide the sleeving on. On the end of the wire I just crimped I then melt the sleeving on to the wire and terminal. I did this using a pencil blow torch and heatshrink, the heatshrink helps to evenly melt the sleeving without burning it, it also compresses it on to the wire and creates a nice round tidy melt. The heatshrink does burn but it's sacrificial and I tear it off before everything cools. 
The positioning of the sleeving is critical, a few mm too far down toward the terminal and it will be impossible to insert in to the connector, a few mm too far back and the melted sleeve will be visible and might not grip the wire properly. 



I then stretch the sleeving tight and melt the other (non crimped) end of wire and sleeving together making a "blank" end. This is just to keep the sleeving tight for the next stage. 



I can now insert the crimped ends of the wires in to the component side connector and thread on a few cable combs.
I then plug this one ended cable in to the component it will be used with and route it through the case, putting in curves and bends where needed until I reach the location of the socket on the PSU. 
At this point I have lots of excess wire on the PSU end, I cut all of the wires at the point they would need to terminate in to the PSU connector. Because this is done in situ each wire is exactly the right length when taking in to account the bends. If I made the cable flat on the bench with each wire being the same length it would kink and buckle when curved.



Next I remove the cable from the case, cut back a few mm of sleeving and repeat most of the strip/crimp/melt process for the other end. 



The final process is to make all of the splits and splices for the wires that need to bifurcate. 
To do this I remove some sleeving and insulation from the parent wire, strip some insulation from the end of the child wire and crimp them together using the rear half of a round Molex terminal (remembering to slip heatshink over the wire before crimping). I shamelessly stole the crimping trick from Australian wiring maestro Singularity Computing.  



The splices are then soldered. Belt and braces. 



The splices are finished with heat shrink and glue. Cable combs are fitted and then all of the terminals are inserted in to the connectors. 
I picked up this method from a number of sources but it is mostly based from this Hans Pedler Sahl video. Cheers Hans. 

[Alikhanizadeh]

Here is the finished 24 pin.


 

You can see how having each wire the correct length allows the cable to follow a fairly complex curve. 

[rarifiedbovine]

Truly fantastic work--sleeving and all the rest.

[Alikhanizadeh]

The last( and longest) of the big cables is for the 8 + 4 pin EPS motherboard socket. 



Voila.
Something I forgot to mention in my previous post is that all of the cable combs in this build are aluminium, not plastic. I tried a few plastic ones but kept breaking them, especially on the 24 pin. These are "Eiskamm" combs by Alphacool. I'd definitely recommend them, the only thing to be aware of is that they will scratch your case/components if you're a bit ham fisted when fitting your cables, they're much harder than the plastic combs. 



I triple check the pin-outs on each cable by eye and use this PSU tester for a final check of the voltages before fitting. 



Tight near the top radiator but it's all good.



 

[Alikhanizadeh]

A few things I've done between cables.
Swapped the rear 140mm fan to another BeQuiet Silent Wings 3, they're great fans for free air, and it matches the fan on the bottom of the case. I also swapped the front two 140mm fans to the new EK Vardars. The idea being that they're better for static pressure and have a wider range of RPM (both slower for sound and faster for shifting heat) than the stock Phanteks fans. Not sure I like the sound of the Vardars though so I think they're going to get changed when Noctua eventually release their new newfangled A-series in 140mm. 
I've started blocking off any openings that would allow heated air from within the case to pass back into the ambient intake air causing circular air movement. I'm using satin black 3M 1080 automotive wrap film. I've double sided it all so there is no exposed adhesive to collect dust. It's pretty easy to work with, I've used in a quite a few areas of the case to block airflow and to cover up a few holes and parts of the case that were a bit of an eyesore. 



During testing my 1TB 850 EVO SSD crapped out. No idea why (ESD maybe?) but it's well and truly bricked. Luckily, nearly everything was backed up but that left me needing a new primary drive. 
I decided to get a 960 PRO NVMe M.2 drive. This drive gives me space and reliability coupled with the speed of an SSD RAID (with out the drawbacks of a RAID).



I was already struggling for space on my old 1TB so it had to be the 2TB. Since write endurance and speed generally increase with size when it comes to SSDs, this is the fastest version of the worlds fastest consumer drive at the time I bought it, plus it's the highest rated out of the range for endurance. The 2TB is eye poppingly expensive but I've learnt time and time again in the past to buy a bit more storage than you need, otherwise you very quickly end up with a myriad of mediocre, medium sized drives. 



There are two M.2 slots on the Asus X299 Deluxe board, one requires an extra bracket and sticks up off the board, one is under the PCH heat sink. I went for the latter. 



I removed the Asus provided thermal pad and fitted it with a much larger piece of Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8. Never goes above 50c even under synthetic loads despite sharing the heatsink with the PCH. 

[_Hustler_One_]

20 minutes ago, Alikhanizadeh said:

blocking off any openings that would allow heated air from within the case to pass back into the ambient intake air causing circular air movement.

I might try this! looks like a good idea to enhance the intake air flow..

[Alikhanizadeh]

1 hour ago, _Hustler_One_ said:

I might try this! looks like a good idea to enhance the intake air flow..

Seems to work. I lost my notes with all of the temperatures I recorded over the build so I can't say what the difference was but it did make a difference. 
The front and top panel on this case are pretty restrictive, even after the tweaks, which I think exacerbates the problem. All three intake fans are totally sealed off now so they can only pull in ambient air. 

[Alikhanizadeh]

The big cables are now done but I've still got more wiring to do. Some of what remained on the wiring to do list;
● Shorten and sleeve the wiring for the rear exhaust fan and floor intake fan
● Make and sleeve a loom/splitter for the front two 140mm radiator intake fans
● Make a fan hub and modify wiring for the top three 120mm radiator exhaust fans.
● Make a cable for the case power LED

● Sleeve the case power switch wire 

● Shorten and sleeve the coolant pump power and PWM wires, I'm also converting the power connector from Molex to SATA

● Make a SATA power distribution cable for the HDD, case power LED and coolant pump



I started with the pump. I cut down, sleeved terminated the PWM control wires. Here they are mid way through the process.



I did the same for the power wires. The connector here was originally Molex, since everything else in the system was SATA when I re-terminated the wires I wanted to use a SATA connector. It was then that I discovered how hard it is to find and buy male SATA connectors. Most are moulded on to the wire which is not much good to me. I eventually found some. They are push fit, there is still the finisher cap to go on in the photo below.



Next, I made a SATA power distribution cable



Here you can see where it fits in the bottom of the case. The connector with the two wires passing out the shot vertically is for the coolant pump. The unpopulated plug will be for the case power LED. Starting to look a bit more tidy.  



After this I did the fan wiring but I didn't photograph a lot of what I did so I can't show you. One thing I did photograph was the "loom" for the front two intake fans. It was actually quite frustrating to make, I sleeved 4 separate wires together in one sleeve and then soldered a split to 8 wires which go to the fans 



Next I made a new case power LED cable. The old one was way too short, the SATA end was moulded on to the wire and I couldn't remove the pins from the other end so I had no way to lengthen it other than bodging wires together.
I used another "push fit" male SATA connector of the same type used previously and managed to figure out what type of terminal Phanteks used for their power/led PCB (for reference it's JST PH series with a 2mm pitch). Once I got some JST PH terminals, connectors and a crimp tool I could make a new cable. Old on the top, new on the bottom.


 

The last cable to tidy was the SATA data cable to HDD. Rather than try and sleeve them I thought I'd go the most unobtrusive off the shelf cable, tried a few and went for this in the end. 



After this I spent quite a bit of time tidying up lose ends and finishing off the build, lot's of small jobs that I didn't photograph individually. 
I'll save the rest of the waffle for the final reveal. 

[Embroysia]

Wow, PC and desk goals... 

I really envy your craftsmanship; well done!

[Alikhanizadeh]

On 2/3/2019 at 3:43 PM, Embroysia said:

Wow, PC and desk goals... 

I really envy your craftsmanship; well done!

Thanks!

[Alikhanizadeh]

Finally, I can say it's finished. Brace yourself for the avalanche of photos...

[Alikhanizadeh]

Some detail shots of the interior.




 

Coolant is EK Cryofuel clear premix

 

You can see how tight the fit between the PSU, fan, HDD and radiator is in this shot. You can also see how the cables all part to allow airflow from the bottom fan. 






 

The colour of the sleeving is MDPC-X Shade-19

[Alikhanizadeh]

Here is the PC at home with the complete finished setup. 



I've added an Anker four port USB hub (left of monitor) and a three socket desktop mains power strip (left rear corner of desk). The USB hub is stuck down with velcro and the power strip is clamped solidly on to the desktop. These two things give me convenient connectivity and power that rise and fall with the desk. 



At the far left on the bookshelf you can see my audio interface/DAC that is hooked up to the speakers and PC.

 

I also sanded the edges of the desk to a better finish, rounded the edges and protected it all with Danish oil. 


 

Here the desk is in the standing position. There is a fair bit of weight on the desk now so It's nice knowing there are three good quality actuators under there. I'm 6"2' so I have the desk quite high, I imagine it'd be a bit wobbly if it just had the two legs.


 

From the back you can see the cable management. I used two Ikea Signum cable trays to hold everything under the desk. I put a power strip in each of the cable trays which meant I only had to have one power cable run to the floor. Despite this I still had to use a fair few extra long and a few custom cables to connect everything else up. Everything is tied up with velcro wraps and I tried to use all black cables to keep it looking tidy. I used a big zip up cable sleeve for the cables that run to the floor so nothing gets caught when the desk is moving.

[qwuzzy]

Damn, that desk was a really lucky find. Setup looks great!

[Cameron Goodwin]

Extremely nice and polished finished build! Something like Linus himself when he would do an all out crazy build!