First G5 Build and Vinyl Wrap

[Mabes]

The mailman brought the rest of my building materials this week. specifically the Laser hive front panel and fan mount. I will get to the front panel later.

The fan mount is super simple and clean. I love all the stuff laser hive is putting out. Quality materials.
Ideally you would take the tray out to mark the holes to install the top bracket but I mounted the mother board tray directly over the screws to take the tray out. So it is never coming back out. Luckily it was easy enough to make a template for the top holes and drill them out. They even included an allen wrench that fit the screws so I was able to slip my hand in the top and tighten everything down.



I cut out a hole for the rear power plug and mounted that all up. I ordered this plug from eBay. It is fused and has a switch to power it up or down. It took a little soldering but we got it done, and it works!



Next came the front panel. Cut out the front via the template and installed the panel, no problem. Now I am stuck on the power button wires. Apparently this is a stupid question because it has not been asked once on the inter web. Not once! But I am denser than the average rock and I have no idea what each wire is It has a 2 prong connector with a blue and white wire. Plus one more white wire and one green. I think the 2 wire connector is the LED for the power switch and the other white is the actual button and the green is ground. but I am too scared to try it with out knowing for sure. Anyone wire these up before. Any pictures? And I don’t know which is + or -.



Any ideas?


I started with wire management. I have a ways to go but its looking good I think.



And I powered it up for the first time. No drives hooked up or monitor or anything. I just wanted to see we got power to the board with out any smoke, fire, large explosions. All tested great Motherboard pulsed a soothing blue glow, that was kind of cool.

Oh, and we got sidelined today. A little too much fun in the sun. And Track starts on Tuesday?!?!!?!





OH and I scored a NIB Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 on ebay! I spent more than I had planned but it was way less than they are going for retail.

I'll be updating the first post in the next few days with all the current pieces parts.

Matt

 

[Mabes]

David from The Laser Hive responded to me. There is supposed to be a wiring diagram in the kit. I must have tossed it with the other garbage.
If anyone else is curious now or in the future, here is his response:
Switch connections
Blue/White pair: Blue = Power Switch positive (PowerSw+);
White = Power Switch negative (PowerSw-).
Green single wire = Power LED +
White sIngle wire = Power LED -

 

[Mabes]

This build is more or less complete.
I do have one more little piece of bling to add, but that wont happen until next weekend though

All is working so far. I have a few bugs and oddities but its only been up for 24 hours. I should get it all sorted out in the next few days.

About the Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34" IPS LCD Monitor
HOLLY COW!
I was all kinds of worried about getting something this crazy. And when the enormous box came in I was really worried. And then I pulled it out of the box and set it on my desk I was really, really worried. But as soon as I powered it up, OMG! Game changer. The ultra wide craze is for real.
I'll get some nice pictures up soon, but here is one my wife snapped and put on facebook.



And the mostly completed guts.

 

[Mabes]

Now to wrap up this build log, literally.

To finish it up I wanted to do something special for this build. I toyed around with paint ideas but finally decided to do a wrap. I have not seen very many, if any wraps so I fired up photoshop and started sketching.

I’m an aviation nut, and flight sim junky so after several other designs I kept coming back to the good old Shark mouth of the AVG or Flying Tigers fame. I happen to have access to a brand new HP 570 large format latex printer(I’m the prepress, press, and finisher in our large format print shop) So I printed out the wrap on matte vinyl and finally got it installed tonight at home with the help of my son. Its a little different I know, but I think its kind of cool.
I finished it off with a little foam board to cover up the cables and PSU on the top shelf. The geek came all the way out on this build

Printing

Installation

One side done

More cutting

Finished

A little detail. Go ahead, count the rivets

Inside finished


I changed the title to reflect the wrap.

 

[AppleMacIdiot]

Dude! This looks great! That look of pure joy on your face while testing your display says it all.

So glad you found a decent GTX 1080! I’ve resigned myself to my old card for at least another year, unless those darn prices return to something vaguely normal again.

 

[Mabes]

Thanks! This entire process has been a joy. Seeing it all boot up on that killer display was icing on the cake

Keep an eye on ebay, you can still find a deal(ish). I ended up getting more than I needed and paying more than I wanted but I decide I have come this far, might as well go all the way. Plus my wife hasn't seen the bill yet so its all good.

The last hurdle has been hurdled. I couldn't get it to shutdown or sleep without restarting. Now it all works (so far). And I installed win 10 on the second drive last night and have that side all configured. Dual booting is working like a charm.
Now I am debating on trying the new OS update that just came out. Or I might just leave well enough alone for a while

 

[Mabes]

My son posted a video on his youtube channel about the build. Fun video