Project: Black Phenoix

B

Ben83red

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 20, 2005
Messages
78
Hi, I've been wanting to do this project for quite a while now, and since its winter break (college guy) I decided to have a crack at it. At first this was just a clean case project (neat wires, sleved etc) Now it has become a full blown case mod. Starting with a power mod. In which all you do is hook up the power supply to the molex connector beside the psu and its completely routed for you.

This all started when i accidently discharged a live 120 volt ac wire from my psu (former psu) on to my case. It fried my psu but I think the rest of the components are fine as the psu was grounded to the outlet (Anyones opinion here, are the rest of the components fine or do I need a new computer....?) :confused:

Here is the unlucky bastard.
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My work area (dining table)
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My computer in pieces (on visual inspection nothing looks blown... then again it doesnt have to be.)
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The stripped case
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Now my idea if you read above is so you just have to connect your power supply to the molex connector two inches away from the supply (or there abouts) and the cords will already be run (So no actual modding of the psu itself) to hidden little spots where you can plug in and get power. Which brings me to these pics: currently just testing with old connectors the spacing needed.

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I had it so that one branch broke off into two (one branch from the PSU went into the connector, which then had a Y split and ended up at two (for the front bay drives, I have 4 total connectors up there, just for expandability later on) up front (you can see it in the above pics.

Well to do that I had to cut wire to length and soldier them together :

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and tape

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And finsihed wiring for the front bay drives, now moving on to the harddrives...
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Currently I have the wires layed for the molex connectors, however I have to buy them... Its 4 in the morning so Ill finish this up when I'm actually concious. But I would really like the question answered up top (with the little frowny purple face on it. As it has been worrying me for awhile).
 
Sorry... it's a great idea and all but I can't stop focusing in on the mispelled title...

it should be Black Phoenix! Arrggg :eek:
 
Haha sorry I didnt notice (I wrote it at 4 in the morning..)

FROM NOW ON THE PROJECT WILL BE CALLED: Black Phoenix, I cant edit the title..
Actually it's 12 3.5 inch bays, its a Lian Li case V-2000B (if I remember correctly.)


However anyone have a answer to my question in my first post?
 
Yeah I figured that one. I had run a series of tests on my PSU and determined that it had kicked the bucket. Hopeuflly thats the only thing in the case that did. Otherwise ... I don't want to know what happens.

Anyways update.

I used my dremel to cut a hole in the motherboard plate to route the small 4 pin mobo and 4 pin molex cables through. (I have a asus a8n sli delux which requires a molex connector on the motherboard for dual vid cards (I dont have one but atleast have the hole availiable.

I wish I had grommet material... Electrical tape FTW...
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All wires have been run. Waiting on molex connectors, pins, and psu. (should be here friday)
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Im running 4 hdds two using molex two using sata power, I cant find sata power connectors online so I've just said screw it to hiding thoes power lines.

Until then Ive been working on cleaning my side panels (installed sound insulating mats on the sides (dont do squat) and removing them is a PAIN. They dont come off cleanly, I had to use a fillet knife and slowly slice it off, I began peeling it off while slicing at the edge of the foam. Currently I have half of one down, through a method of using a knife to scrape off the adheseive, then WD40 and orange off to remove the residue with a HELL of alot of elbow grease. The reason Im removing them is because Im going to cut a design in the side panel, not a window perse but more of a picture, (eg Phoenix), will be cut into it, and plexi put in the cut out spots.
 
Great project! I've thought of building a similar system for a long time now (a case with permanently routed power cables installed). Good luck with it!
 
huh good idea.

Idk if you could call this as a update, but Im starting to draw a design on paper for a cutout Im going to do on the side panel of my case. As a 23 by 21 inch black aluminum panel is just screaming to have some sort of badass design in it. Currently IM going with a phoenix, something like this: (not my art) Phoenix

My art can be found here: Linky

Im currently doing a pencil line drawing of it, simlifying the overall design into something more managable for me, my dremel, and my files. I also have the idea of cutting out detial peices out of the scrap from the cutting, and cutting out corsponding spaces in the plexi and sliding them into the holes in the plexi. (Sorry I dont have a pic as my digital camera ran out of batts and havnt had a chance to buy new ones) I'll get a pic up asap. (for now think of the 'blackout' style of case windows on frozen cpu and ud be very close)

Also can someone tell me what rail harddrives that use molex connectors use?
 
Sorry for double posting but the question above (do harddrives use the 12 or 5 volt rails? is a question i need answering) as well as adding this little tidbit of information. Well my parts arrive tommrow, and I've been overhauling the basement so I can work down there and not take up the whole of the dining table (having a place to eat helps immensely (sp?)) And Ive been working on the carving im going to put on my case, so far Ive come up with this

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What you guys all think? Opinions would be much appriciated.
Ill get some pics of the basement up too.

Well here is the basement took a bit of cleaning, but its almost ready to begin work,

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to the right is a wall and the left is a small space with the water softner.

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THATS not a fire hazard..... of course not.
 
They run on 5V(red wire) The 3.3V (the orange wire) on satas is used for hot swapping, if ur mobo supports it.

Nice Idea, I am also a nutcase for clean wiring... ;)

Mohonri said:
Hard drives use both the 12V and 5V lines. Generally, the 12V is for powering stuff and the 5V is used for signalling.
Click to expand...

And thanks Mohonri for correcting me, I have been using 2.5" (laptop Hdds ) for my last few builds and they are the ones that use 5V
 
Hard drives use both the 12V and 5V lines. Generally, the 12V is for powering stuff and the 5V is used for signalling.
 
Son of a.... well great now I have to rewire my harddrives... (reason follows below)
I have these arming switches:
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which are on the front of my computer. Currently I have two hooked up, one to each of my IDE drives. (i run 2 ide and 2 sata drives) anyhow, the switches are currently hooked up to my 5volt rail on the connector. And on the switches are blue leds which run on 12 volts. So now I have to switch them from the 5 volt to the 12 volt rail (which isnt too hard to do less you wire tie everything (like i did). I'll switch it when I rip it apart again (which will undoubtedly be very soon)


Anyhow, the power supply I had gotten which was the Hiper series (from frozen cpu) was actually one of the best psu's I could have gotten for this mod. As the way the wiring turned out the connectors only had one molex come off of each. And it doesn't have a SATA rail just a adapter for it, so I can actually wire both switches one into the IDE rail and one in the SATA rail (like i wanted to do before).

Well back to my point, the work continues.

I had to remove sound dampening which I had put on the side panels to lessen the sound (didnt work) so I tried removing them which gets me to here:
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and after four hours of scrubbing, scraping, wd 40, and orange off i get

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yay!
One more to go... shit.

Heres the parts I got from the fed ex guy today :)
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So I set to work crimping the pins onto my custom wires
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and I do that with the rest (forgetting to take pictures all the way)

And two hours later I end up with this (there are two things wrong with this picture if you can figure it out ill give you a cookie)
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granted its not the cleanest yet....

and backside
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Ill work on the wiring a bit more later as I have a lan party to go to tomorrow and those usually require some sort of computing device, (sorry a pocket calculator doesn't cut it :p )
 
Ben83red said:
FROM NOW ON THE PROJECT WILL BE CALLED: Black Phoenix, I cant edit the title..
Click to expand...

I still like "Black Phenoix" (like it would be french... phenuoh or something... :p )
It adds some rather "unique" feature to your project. :D
 
lol, I might consider it though I do like to have correct spelling most of the time.

Anyhoo you guys know what I said about I'll rip it apart later and fix the led thing. Well I did.

I figured I had to rewire the 5 volt line back to the molex connectors, and rewire the 12 from the psu up to the switch and back to the split (feeding the IDE drives) and just a splice with the SATA power.

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And because the connectors i got SUCKED (came with the switches)
I resorted to soldiering.
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And since the LEDs needed a place to ground to I just crimped them into one of the ground wires on the molex connector
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I also had bought some channel aluminum for the computer wiring needs, and finally implemented it. I really like the look and if I can find other places to do it Ill use it again.

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Wiring management from afar
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Damn these suckers are bright. They light up half my room!

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Bbq said:
Two hard drives are upside down
3 ide cables.
Click to expand...


... Ok theres 3 things wrong with it. And no its not 3 IDE cables. (that horizontal one is a floppy)

DarkStar02 said:
what case is that?! its beautiful. :eek:
Click to expand...

Its the Lian Li 2000V case (I think thats the series number). Twas an expensive case 250 for the case alone.
 
Solarfall said:
sir i so hate you. ;) you have a greate working area i'm really jelous.
Click to expand...



Lol thanks that took ALOT of cleaning to get it into that condition.

Well currently I'm at a impass im stuck right now I have my case masked off:
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and ready to draw and carve, but now I'm wondering whether I should carve it or not, because I really like the picture and don't want to carve (I'll loose ALOT of detail if i do, but I would really like to have a window)

What do you guys think?
 
well... You could etch it onto plexiglass and make a regular cutout window with the etching...
 
Ditto on the etching. If you can't etch, find someone who can and pay to have it done. It shouldn't be that expensive. If you want to learn, I'm sure there are some posts here that can steer you in the right direction.

Please tell me your not going to leave your wiring taped to the back of the mobo tray! At least bunch it together and use some zipties. I have seen lots of builds here in the forums, and the ones that use tape always look half done (cheesy is a term that comes to mind).

Other than the tape, your build turned out excellent! Great job!
 
The thing though is that the sata cables are hard to bend and only will bend in one direction (easily that is) that and I cant find a location to anchor the zip ties to. But Ill see what I can do.

My build isn't done yet. I got the plexi glass. 24" by 48" was the only size they had (was a pretty penny too 35 bucks for it. I'm planning on cutting a 18" by 18" square out of it for the window (or possibly other dimensions as well. The stuff is very thick about twice the thickness of the side panel. Which I actually need because I will be mounting cold cathode lights on the top and bottom of the plexi to light up the carving (I settled on engraving it like you guys said.) But I can't print out anything thats 18" by 18"... I guess I could split it up into two pieces.... make that 4 pieces-ish and tape the paper together.

I saw some stuff on frozen cpu which was a two way mirror finish plexi and thought about getting that but it was too expensive, and not large enough.

And now for some quality time with my dremel and the plexi... (though after abotu 10 minutes of work my dremel starts to smoke.................. is that bad?
 
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