neilhart's Prodigy "The Black One" - ATX in a mini-ITX case

[chaosdesigns]

I was concerned that that may have happened. Do you think you might repurpose the DQ77KB into a cube?

The good news is that there are three more Prodigy colours screaming for your mods! LOL. I saw the orange and red ones at my local NCIX just before Christmas. You've done a fantastic job with the black one!

http://www.tonymacx86.com/screenshots/bitfenixcolors.jpeg

Cheers
chaos

 

[MacTester57]

Neil, you did it again!

I thought the hack would be more presentable if the rear panel did not look so bad. So I shot a coat of flat black primer and did a quick bake off. My wife does not know about this one.

LOL

What about your cube project? I tought, you will use the DQ77KB for this one? I've just finished my cube here.

MacTester

 

[neilhart]

Neil, you did it again!



LOL

What about your cube project? I tought, you will use the DQ77KB for this one? I've just finished my cube here.

MacTester

MacTester you are a tough act to follow. Your cube is almost beyond perfect. I am about to yield up my DQ77KB from by current Loop L5 AIO project and write off the project as "failed". This is a hard pill to swallow.

My new rear panel for "The Black" should arrive in a day or two and I can get that portion finished. I have some fine tuning to do to get the DVI and VGA ports free of the current chassis intrusion. Then I want to get the parts to customize the cables (cut to correct length and re-terminate). And I put a HD 6870 on order. So it will be a while to get "The Black" to where I want it.

neil

 

[neilhart]

A small update -

The front panel arrived. The package.

The new panel sealed by a srink wrap to the shipping panel.

The fine tuning... added holes and adjusted the I/O cut out for access to the DVI and VGA connectors.

The new panel in place.

A rear and top view.

And a shot of how the ATX board fills the space available.

more to come.

neil

 

[kiwisincebirth]

I thought the hack would be more presentable if the rear panel did not look so bad. So I shot a coat of flat black primer and did a quick bake off. My wife does not know about this one.

Sorry, but I have to ask, painting and baking... seriously... I haven't seen this done before, what difference does this make? Do you use any specific type of paint? How long and at what temperate? What about multiple coats of paint?

 

[neilhart]

Sorry, but I have to ask, painting and baking... seriously... I haven't seen this done before, what difference does this make? Do you use any specific type of paint? How long and at what temperate? What about multiple coats of paint?

Well it was a cold wet weekend and not conducive to paint drying. The kitchen oven is perfect. Use very low temp, say under 200 F, shut off the heat and let the parts set for 30 to 60 minutes. And this is just Rust-oleum flat black primer (which is a quick dry under normal conditions) and using the oven on a rainy day just hurries it along.

And I don't do this normally so have no answer to multiple coats.


neil

 

[SJ_UnderWater]

this was brought to my attention a little while ago, and I think the EDID issue is either solved by selecting the AIO from the BIOS (small note: #38 lets you flash modded BIOSes like a PM patched #46 using the F7 utility), or by using the Intel Integrator Toolkit and adding an AIO .bin package. I'm finishing up a non-AIO DQ77KB build and have practically everything working. Message if you need more info about the procedure I followed before I post.

 

[neilhart]

The project is complete. "The Black One" case mod project is complete. A few photos follow:

I removed the front panel hex mesh to reduce the air flow restriction. And you can see my initial cabling. This needed to be clean up which allowed me to add the 3.5 inch SATA hdd.

Here is the "before" cabling at the GPU and USB3.

And with the GPU cable re-terminated and cut to length. Also the USB3 cable re-routed. The black SATA cable run the the right side panel where two 2.5 inch drives are mounted in the stock bracket. And added the 3.5 inch hdd standing on 1/2 inch standoffs from the bottom panel.

A photo of the hdd and the SATA cables termination.

While I had the system disassembled, I pulled the control panel and turned the USB3 connectors 180 degrees so that device connectors can be inserted right side up.

Reassembled with the 200 mm front fan in place.

Then a functional check-out before final assembly.

.

.

The final system photos.

Final words. The case is complete. I am shopping for a pair of quick SSDs to replace the drives in the right side panel. I would like to try a SSD RAID 0 using the High Point Rocket 640L PCIe card. And also shopping for a 3 to 4 TB 7200 RMP 3.5 inch hard to replace the 500 GB WD drive that is currently installed. I have ML 10.8.2 running and the GPU is currently a Sapphire HD 6870.

Also note that the CPU cooler on the i7-3770K is a very small unit but keeps the temps in control. In my one hour 100% CPU stress test the temps got to 68 and 69 degrees C (as reported by the Hardware Monitor app.). The room ambient is about 22C. No over clocking yet.

Comments and questions are welcomed.

neil

 

[ersterhernd]

Very interesting project Neil. You did an amazing job of packing all that hardware in there. I saw one of these on the shelf at NCIX (Langley BC) last week and wow they're small.

Which did you enjoy more? Your Apple case mod(s) or this one? Just curious.


Regards,

E

 

[neilhart]

Very interesting project Neil. You did an amazing job of packing all that hardware in there. I saw one of these on the shelf at NCIX (Langley BC) last week and wow they're small.

Which did you enjoy more? Your Apple case mod(s) or this one? Just curious.


Regards,

E

Well that is a good question. I have been using the G5 Power Mac hack as my primary machine for two or three years and have refreshed it once and I intend to refresh it with a Haswell based MicroATX motherboard when they become available. The Cube, Power Mac and Mac Pro (hacks) are near and dear to me. The retail PC case hacks are more or less just projects to show what can be accomplished and I will give most away to family members/friends. And again it is all about OS X being the major attraction.

nel