Pics of my LAN party rig

[Zap]

Alright, I've mentioned my LAN party rig a couple times and each time threatened to post pics so here are a couple...

front view
Case is sold as blue and looks blue in my picture, but strangely looks purple to the eye (I've asked others and everyone thinks it is purple). The vents on the sides normally allow you to see the bare aluminum of the chassis, but I put in some white air conditioner filter material in there. They're backlit by purple LEDs. I took off the metal handle. Yes, it was metal and thus didn't feel as flimsy as on the MicroFly/X-Qpack, but it only anchors to the front face. I won't trust my gaming rig to it.

left side view
Here's the bulk of the visible cabling. Blue box is the inverter for the cold cathodes. Sticker is peeling off the video card. :roll: PSU is the noisiest part of the system.

right side view
The Golden Orb II HSF that I got for free, which replaced a retail boxed HSF. It fits and it works. The Raptor X HDD is shown to great effect. Notice no cables coming off the HDD? Those are routed through the front of the case. There's a second HDD for data (Seagate 500GB). Four sticks of 1GB OCZ Reaper HPC RAM.

bottom view
Note the dual 12" purple cold cathodes. I used foam double-sided tape to attach them, and cork dots as "feet." Works well and have survived through a number of LAN parties.

Not as much overt modding as my old SFF gaming rig (which I still have) but the mods are more subtle (filter, LEDs, cold cathode feet, reversed HDDs).

Parts list:
Xeon E3110 (around 3.8GHz-ish at default Vcore)
Thermaltake Golden Orb II HSF
Asus P5K-VM motherboard
OCZ Reaper HPC DDR2-800 (4x1GB)
BFG 8800GTS G92
BFG 600W PSU (noisy mofo but puts out 39A +12v)
150GB WD Raptor X HDD
500GB Seagate 7200.10 HDD
Samsung DVDRW
Cooler Master 120mm purple LED fan
dual 12" purple cold cathodes
three purple "lazer" LED clusters
Apevia X-Qpack2 case in "blue"

 

[aigomorla]

zap wheres the mister fusion to power your usb rocket lancher!

ROFL....


Anyhow very nice build, ive been wanting to see some of your works. Whens the water coming in?

 

[Jax Omen]

That looks purple to me. I thought you said it looks blue in the picture!

 

[Rubycon]

Nice window for the Raptor-X.

Now all you need is a ROM to store the sound of a neon crackling and fizzing synchronized to a strobe (Cree/Rebel works good for compact use) to "slow down" the spindle while the sound is playing triggered every time you get fragged in a FPS. So it sounds like the PC is dying.

Of course it would be easier to make the window "smart" with LCD tech and then the sky is the limit. Say when time is up (for someone playing) and they refuse to stop a monster appears in the window running at them snorting fire. A few vibrators (think motors with half moon keys in the shaft - when activated it makes the table vibrate like crazy like 1000 cell phones in vibrate getting called at the same time!) to reinforce the effect that something is really wrong and the person will DIE if they don't get up NOW. Yeah that will make them learn to STOP! :evil:

Lan parties sound like they could be fun with special FX.

 

[gorobei]

I didn't realize we were both running the same video card. How's your temps. I did a test session of TF2 on my Mfly with the panels on and the heat was quite toasty. (One of the power cables snagged and stopped the exhaust fan.) Even when with the fan running normally, it was warmer than I prefer. The HX520 just doesn't spin up fast enough to draw the gpu heat away. My sticker just came loose too.

I'm somewhat jealous of your P5K-vm, you have clear access to the sata ports.
Also, I plugged in a sata cable during a test and when I pulled it out, the plastic bracket/plug socket came out with the cable. Luckily I didn't break the leads and got it back on. (will have to crazy glue it if i want to use it.)

 

[WoodButcher]

Yeah, purple..... Neat bit of work though, I like your idea for feet, a little underbody lighting? that's illegal on the streets round here.
Your other rig, I almost bought that case to mod but couldn't get by the disc drive and floppy drives being on opposing planes. Guess i'm a little OC that way

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Whens the water coming in?

Uh, never? Unless it can weigh less than my air cooler and get me a higher overclock... but I'll have to volt-mod first (or Asus release a BIOS that actually gives me more volts on the Xeon). Basically watercooling doesn't pass cost/benefit/portability analysis for my LAN rig.

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
That looks purple to me. I thought you said it looks blue in the picture!

Well, it looks a lot MORE purple in RL.

Originally posted by: WoodButcher
I like your idea for feet, a little underbody lighting? that's illegal on the streets round here.

Illegal where I used to live, in SoCal. Buddy of mine was a Sherriff deputy and he told me such stuff. Don't know around here (Wisconsin).

picture of underglow

Originally posted by: WoodButcher
Your other rig, I almost bought that case to mod

Are you sure it was that exact case? My case is just like the Athenatech units, except done totally in aluminum (except for face). The finished system weighs around 14 pounds.

Originally posted by: gorobei
How's your temps. I did a test session of TF2 on my Mfly with the panels on and the heat was quite toasty. (One of the power cables snagged and stopped the exhaust fan.) Even when with the fan running normally, it was warmer than I prefer. The HX520 just doesn't spin up fast enough to draw the gpu heat away. My sticker just came loose too.

I don't quite remember exact temps, but nothing to worry about. If you're having high temps with the MicroFly, the fault lies in the case. Where does air come in? IIRC the ONLY place that air comes in is the little slot underneath the front fascia. That, and all the little cracks where dust gets in. My point is that the MicroFly might seem to have good ventilation, but it doesn't. On the X-Qpack cases the side panels have perforations along the front edge, plus the "2" version has the vents down the front sides as well.

How do I know so much about the MicroFly? I used to have one. There it is, sitting next to my other LAN party rig.

Here it is showing a hint of the innards. Here's the rear view. Why does it have four DVI ports, hmmmm?

Here it is, NAKED. I like to test stuff outside the case. Yes, micro ATX. Yes, SLI. Yes, SATA RAID 0. Yes, Athlon FX. Yes, system had a total of twelve heatpipes (four on each GPU, four on CPU). Those were heady days. Of course having it outside the case made it easier to hook up a FDD to install Windows on RAID.

Of course I don't do all SFF systems. My main rig is in an Antec Solo.

 

[aigomorla]

zap, if you were to get the corsair nautius used, and replace some parts in it, you could overclock = to a Lapped TRUE with better temps.

And the nautilus fits ontop of your Qpak quite nicely, and has quick discconects, or i could teach you how to use koolance ones which are safe, and you'd probably have a kick butt lan box thats uber overclocked after mark and i got done with ya.

XD

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
zap, if you were to get the corsair nautius used, and replace some parts in it, you could overclock = to a Lapped TRUE with better temps.

And the nautilus fits ontop of your Qpak quite nicely, and has quick discconects

External rads would reduce portability. Also, once I switched to the Xeon E3110 my temp problem went away (was getting toasty on overclocked E4500).

Sorry, but you have your work cut out for you if you're trying to convince me to watercool. Even high end air like the TRUE is too expensive for me. Most expensive coolers I get are Scythe Ninjas (never paid more than around $40 shipping included for one). My tastes typically runs towards the "cheap bang/buck" parts, and I no longer chase after super high overclocks.

 

[Rubycon]

Yeah water cooled portable PC (well that is small hehe) is about as practical as cows behind the hamburger joint if you catch my drift.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
Yeah water cooled portable PC (well that is small hehe) is about as practical as cows behind the hamburger joint if you catch my drift.

I dunno, that sounds somewhat like a challenge to me...hmm...

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
Yeah water cooled portable PC (well that is small hehe) is about as practical as cows behind the hamburger joint if you catch my drift.

mmmmmm.... they can cook themselfs! yummy.

 

[v8envy]

For a brief moment in my life I wanted to mod my Koolance case into a lan box. I'm a reasonably meaty guy, so it would have been practical to go for the sheer shock value of plopping out that 80+ pounder full tower next to all those little boxes. I'd have to schlep another 80 pounds of 21" trinitron to go with it, of course.

Then I came to my senses and realized it was midlife crisis talking and I really didn't need a his&hernia.

Oh, on topic: sexy little case, Zap.

 

[lopri]

I have no idea how you stuffed all those in that case. I could never pull that off.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: lopri
I have no idea how you stuffed all those in that case. I could never pull that off.

Pretty standard stuff, nothing difficult about it.

Most difficult little build I've done was for a buddy, stuffing a socket 754 A64 (when they first came out) into a mATX mini tower with an optical drive, a 6800GT video card and SEVEN HDDs. I had to do some drilling and custom mounting for those hard drives on that one. I took pics, but for the life of me can't find them.