New build PICS! Cable management. Also, a wiring question

[KingGheedora]

UFO2 Optimax Case.
Blue Power and HDD activity LED's are pretty cool, and the metallic door buzzer style power and reset buttons are a nice touch. This case didn't come with drive bay covers, so I temporarily have paper taped to the front to achieve proper airflow when I have the side and top panes closed.

Case rear cabling 1 (left edge of photo is the top
Case rear cabling 2 (right edge of photo is the top
Case rear cabling wide view
The fans power cables daisy chain to each other, and created a huge tangled mess before. I used spiral wrap and zip ties to organize here. Also the motherboard 8pin power connector is perfectly positioned to be bundled with the fan power cables.

Front fan cabling
Used spiral wrap and zip ties here too. Zip tie mounting pad under the first fan helps keep the cables tucked away under the fans, and out of sight.


Bent left drive bay with drives installed
Bent right drive bay with no drives put in yet
Drives suspended on elastic rear view
Drives supsended on elastic top view
Suspended the drives on elastic, in the front 5.25" drive bays. Supposedly to reduce case noise, but I never installed them in this case the "normal" way, so I don't have a before and after comparison to prove results. All I can hear is the case fans, and drive seeks (clicking sound, which is pretty quiet with these drives anyways. I'll see how loud things are when I put in the four Raptors. The tension from the elastic is bending the drive bays inwards.

Spiral wrapping 5 SATA cables in progress
Spiral wrapping complete - side view
Spiral wrapping complete - top/rear view
SATA Cables and power cables connected
I was worried about all the SATA cables creating a mess, but the spiral wrap helped a lot with this. Looks pretty cool. The ends of the SATA power cables that lead to the power supply will be zip tied together for more organization once I have the RAID configured and know every thing's working properly.

Open case - top view

QUESTION:
I want to run the blue and white wires that connect to the Power & Reset buttons, and the front LED's along the walls of the case so they are as hidden from view as possible, but these wires are too short. See pic of wires here: Text. What kind of wires should I get to extend these? I want to know the gauge or whatever. Also, what's the best way to extend them? Just splice some extra length into them, and cover with electrical tape? Do I need to solder, or can I Just twist an inch of bare wire together on either end of the splice?


Todo list
This is a work in progress. I will update with progress and pics as I go. Some things I still need to do:

• Install RAID controller + Raptors for RAID 0 array
  Purchase & install 1 more Maxtor for onboard RAID 5 array
  Purchase & install Thermalright T120 Ultra Extreme CPU cooler
  Uninstall chipset heatpipe cooler, replace thermal tape w/ AS II, remount using screws & bolts instead of plastic fasteners to get proper contact between heatsink & chipset (IP35 Pro heatpipe cooler comes making very little contact with the chips)
  Find some kind of 5.25" spacer to prevent bending of right side drive bay caused by elastic
  Figure out what to use as permanent covers for front drive bays (get rid of that ugly paper =)
  Extend LED and Power/Reset button wires, and run along edges of case.

Comments & suggestions welcome!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Here's your advice on the wiring.

For power, reset and front-panel/front-bezel LEDs, I think you need a 24-gauge, 7-conductor wire.

You can verify this simply by looking for an electronics supply store in your city. Every mid-sized city or town has one: they supply parts and materials to various jobbers. Go to the elect. supply store with a sample of the wire you're going to mod. They'll have the stuff in spooled rolls for between $1 and $4, and you should buy a few different spools in different colors -- white or black for ground wires, red, green, etc. for the POS leads.

My brother is the retired telephone company techie, and I had to learn my soldering skills alone before I was able to move back to my home town where he lives. Here's what I do.

To extend a wire, snip the two leads on the original wire (clipping off any plugs, LEDs or pins) so that the wires are of equal length. VERY CAREFULLY strip off one-half inch of the colored insulator. I emphasize "carefully" because the conductor wires are very thin and can easily be damaged or broken -- although loss of one of them is not going to be crucial.

Prepare the length of new wire the same way. Then, with the fingers or some tweezers, spread the two sets of bare wires apart into a fan.

With the soldering gun, melt a drop or two of solder on the tip of the gun -- turning the gun off after it's hot enough to keep the solder liquid for several seconds. Tin the fanned conductor wires by lightly running them across the solder on the gun, and try to avoid leaving beads of solder on the wires.

Carefully push the two sets of fanned conductor wires together as if you were planning to braid them -- it doesn't matter if this is perfect, but try and get all the wires crossing in an alternating pattern. Grasp the resulting, crossed ends of the spread-apart wires and close the fans, then wrap resulting ends in a spiral pattern -- hopefully so that the ends of the wires don't overlap the insulators on either side.

Get your soldering gun and grab a length of solder wire. This part is a bit tedious: as the solder-gun heats up, touch the end of the solder to one side of the wire and the solder-gun to the opposite side -- so that the exposed wire is between the tip of the soldering gun and the tip of the solder wire. The solder should then melt and bleed into the crevices of the braided conductors.

For an insulator to cover the solder-joint, I've used clear silicon-adhesive-sealant, but it is tedious to coat the bare solder-joint with a thin layer evenly and the stuff starts drying and becoming viscous very quickly. Even so, that's one good alternative. But you'll need to hang the wires somewhere and keep them separated while the goo dries out.

I've since discovered something better. Oh-- I forgot to give my opinion of electrical tape: IT SUCKS. There's something that is far better.

Auto parts stores sell rolls of inch-wide self-adhesive hose-bandage -- made of very elastic, self-adhesive black rubber -- a perfect insulator. The company that makes the stuff is named "InterTape." You only need a piece of it that's an inch long and half an inch wide. Once you've got it wrapped around the solder-joint once and adhering to itself, continue wrapping but pull the stuff and stretch it. This promotes adhesion and also gives you more tape to insure complete coverage. You can begin wrapping it diagonally and then reverse direction with sufficient overlap on the original colored insulation.

"Electrical tape" is vinyl and the adhesive is poor, so it comes unwrapped -- therefore, the two methods I've outlined above are far superior.

I can't tell you whether just wrapping some wires together and covering them with electrical tape is "sufficient," but when it comes to electrical connections, I like permanent, well-insulated and reliable connections. So I take this time and effort to assure it. The more times you do this sort of thing, the better you get at it and it becomes easier and faster. For me, I wouldn't think of doing it some other way.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: KingGheedora
QUESTION:
I want to run the blue and white wires that connect to the Power & Reset buttons, and the front LED's along the walls of the case so they are as hidden from view as possible, but these wires are too short. See pic of wires here: Text.

Heh!

I haven't gotten around to doing that myself... See the pic of wires here.

I just fished them between the mobo and the mobo tray. Guess I'll go with black wiring...

 

[ShockwaveVT]

Why are your drive cages bent? did they come like that or was it a mod you did to better fit the HDDs ?

 

[KingGheedora]

They aren't permanently bent. It's the tension from all the elastic cords that's bending them out of shape. If I take the cords off the shape goes back to normal. You can't see it in the pics here, but the cage on the left isn't bent right now beecause I have a dvd drive installed in the top bay.

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: KingGheedora
QUESTION:
I want to run the blue and white wires that connect to the Power & Reset buttons, and the front LED's along the walls of the case so they are as hidden from view as possible, but these wires are too short. See pic of wires here: Text.

Heh!

I haven't gotten around to doing that myself... See the pic of wires here.

I just fished them between the mobo and the mobo tray. Guess I'll go with black wiring...

Mines not so bad, does not bother me. Plus mine is sleeved so it gos with the theme.

http://s203.photobucket.com/al...w&current=P8090019.jpg

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: tylerdustin2008
Mines not so bad, does not bother me. Plus mine is sleeved so it gos with the theme.

http://s203.photobucket.com/al...w&current=P8090019.jpg

Nice snakes!

I likey!!!

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Thanks, I need new ram though. The heat spreaders are way to thin on this ram and the OCZ just cant cool them. I am thinking about some dominator's.

 

[VinDSL]

I was looking at your snappy again...

Man, I love black PCB!

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Yes it is very nice. Needs a bit more work.

 

[Old Hippie]

Man, Both of you guys do great work! :beer: :thumbsup:

 

[RallyMaster]

That case made me laugh.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: RallyMaster
That case made me laugh.

Glad to oblige!

Let's see a snappy of your machine...

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: RallyMaster
That case made me laugh.

Glad to oblige!

Let's see a snappy of your machine...

Yea get us a pic.

 

[aigomorla]

bah.... you neat freaks.

Mines a mess behind the mobo, i tried to tidy it up but the water tubes and routing make it very difficult.

My rig will eat both of yours for breakfast tho. Probably costs more then tylers setup even with his phase.



@ tyler WTF u doing at 3.6ghz. Your on phase, you should be running near 4ghz or your seriously wasting power. My NAS could do 3.6ghz stable with acceptable temps loaded. And it was doing 3.75ghz for 1 month on WCG nonstop without a hickup.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
bah.... you neat freaks...

I see a new sig coming: "A CLEAN CASE IS A SIGN OF A SICK MIND"

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Originally posted by: aigomorla

@ tyler WTF u doing at 3.6ghz. Your on phase, you should be running near 4ghz or your seriously wasting power. My NAS could do 3.6ghz stable with acceptable temps loaded. And it was doing 3.75ghz for 1 month on WCG nonstop without a hickup.

Because my ram overheats at 1350mhz. I need some better ram with really good cooling.
Thinking about the water cooled OCZ ram.

 

[SolMiester]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
My NAS could do 3.6ghz stable with acceptable temps loaded. And it was doing 3.75ghz for 1 month on WCG nonstop without a hickup.

Just wondering why you would need to OC a Quad Core NAS?, or is that just strutting?

 

[PCTC2]

Originally posted by: SolMiester

Originally posted by: aigomorla
My NAS could do 3.6ghz stable with acceptable temps loaded. And it was doing 3.75ghz for 1 month on WCG nonstop without a hickup.

Just wondering why you would need to OC a Quad Core NAS?, or is that just strutting?

Aigo has so many quads, I don't think he knows what to do with them

My cases are a total mess. I haven't gotten around to dremelling my Antec 900 for cable management. That case is cramped.

But nice job. Elastics are a great idea. But what's with the stock cooler?

 

[drakore]

shouldn't the ram be fine with some active cooling?

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Originally posted by: drakore
shouldn't the ram be fine with some active cooling?

That's what I have, just not enough. Heat spreaders act like they are paper thin.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: SolMiester

Originally posted by: aigomorla
My NAS could do 3.6ghz stable with acceptable temps loaded. And it was doing 3.75ghz for 1 month on WCG nonstop without a hickup.

Just wondering why you would need to OC a Quad Core NAS?, or is that just strutting?

i should rephase that.

My WCG QuadCore Farm rig, which doubles as my NAS. Because we all know Xeons are intended for harsher enviorments, so there spec's are a bit better. Well this one is, she downvolts really really nicely at moderate overclock.

Originally posted by: tylerdustin2008
Because my ram overheats at 1350mhz. I need some better ram with really good cooling.
Thinking about the water cooled OCZ ram.

Your running tracers no? I dont see why you'd want to downgrade.

Also, tyler, lower mhz, tighter timings > higher mhz, looser timings.

This was confirmed a while back on XS, and here i believe. Losen up on the mhz with a divider, and try to tigthen your timings.


Lastly, those ram uses alu, you cant drop it on your gpu loop, because all good gpu blocks use copper. You'd need to dedicate itself on its own loop or add massive amounts of water wetter since you have no sacraficial metal in between.

In other words, its too much work for wanting higher speed on those ram. And tracers will die in about 4-5 months at constant usages if you leave that at 2.3V+ In fact thats way past any OEM vendor's spec on any ram. Default is usually 1.9V

Check XS for dead Ballastix threads. You'll find tons.

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Yea, Not going to matter. Selling the unit and the case, way to big and making to much heat. Going to convert a Mac G5 into my PC. Also selling it will allow me to upgrade to the 8900's when they come out. Thinking about a PA120.2 to fit inside the G5. That will just for the cpu though, video cards will be fine on air, I never OC a video card.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: tylerdustin2008
Yea, Not going to matter. Selling the unit and the case, way to big and making to much heat. Going to convert a Mac G5 into my PC. Also selling it will allow me to upgrade to the 8900's when they come out. Thinking about a PA120.2 to fit inside the G5. That will just for the cpu though, video cards will be fine on air, I never OC a video card.

your selling it after you just got it?

 

[tylerdustin2008]

Yea.

I have had it about a month or so now.... I love it, it has made my dream machine. But I have to have fans in my room on constantly, it makes allot of heat... or might just be me. And its "kinda" loud.

I'll be ok, if I want another one I will just buy one.

But I am keeping the quad.