white nøise

After a couple days away, tonight I pulled out the motherboard tray and mounted the mobo and the graphics card. To be honest up until a couple days ago I wasn’t even sure the tray could easily come out, then I noticed that five thumbscrews is all it takes to yank it from the case. Currently I’m planning on using the lower PCI express slot for the video card. This should allow the southbridge to keep cooler. You can also see the Creative audio card that came with the motherboard.

The IO panel fits in with the appearance really well – even if it is on the back and will be covered with plugs.

Installed the CPU cooler last night. You can see how it’s a tight fit and that my cooler options were limited.

Just a quick update on the last couple days of building. A few peeps have been wanting photos along every step to vicariously live the geek thrill ride. So photos, you shall have…

At this point the fans and PSU have been installed. Pay no mind to the wires, they haven’t been dealt with yet. All the fans are from Enermax and rated around 18dBA.

I used mesh fan grills on the front which also work somewhat as filters, and basic wire grills on the back. For the first time I’m trying to dampen any noise between the fan and the case. I used the included rubber mounts for the rear fans, but to keep the front sleeker I used a combination of pan head screws and rubber washers (inside and out).

The new CPU came yesterday so I started prepping it. The black fins on the heatsink are sick, but the fan includes two bright green LEDs. That wouldn’t fly with this whole red and black scheme, so I had to get in there and disable them. I thought about subbing in red LEDs, but finding the right type (size, voltage, and current) was a little more bite than I wanted to chew. I’ve also added a shot of the mobo with the mounting hardware added (plus another look at the RAM and northbridge coolers).

Last week the case for the build arrived. I went with a pretty unique cube design. For a while I considered fab’ing my own case out of acrylic, but I really wanted an Aluminum frame with acrylic panels. Knowing that decent metal work is a little beyond my facilities, I went with a semi-custom case from Mountains Mods. They are a small shop in Oregon who makes Aluminum cases that are both well designed and well made. You can start with their stock designs and add custom powder coat paint and choose specifics like rivets and thumbscrews, or they can even take your custom designs and make aluminum panels and laser etch acrylic.

My case is a pretty standard “Twice7″ model except with three 120mm fan holes up front – that’s in addition to the single 120mm and two 80mm fans in back. It’s basically split into two cooling zones, the motherboard/expansion card area on the left and the PSU and drives on the right. It measures 14″ in each dimension and weighs about 10 pounds empty, a bunch lighter than other cases. I went with a glossy, deep coat of red paint which will tie in fantastically with the other components. More build pics coming soon.