- Joined
- Jun 24, 2010
- Messages
- 76
Slaughter House
Music production/Gaming rig.
First, I'd like to thank tonymacx86 custom mod'ers and this thread for the inspiration. I was in the market for the perfect case when I came across this thing of beauty. I wanted something stylish, functional, quiet, and somewhat compact. There aren't that many cases out there that fit my all needs today.
I had originally planned on getting the Corsair 600t white, its got style and function but wasn't compact, and cost $169. I had almost pulled the trigger, but luckily saw the iBox thread and checked Newegg for the Lian Li...it was on sale for $119!
I of course, wasn't going to leave it stock. I have a lot of hardware to stuff into this thing and therefore modding will be necessary.
(I apologize for the quality of photos/video, they were taken with my iPod touch. Also didn't take as many pics as I'd like.)
Here I just did a quick build to test things out/wait for more parts.
Not bad, but that 5 1/4" bay had to GO! One of the downsides to this case is the fact that they decided to put the 2x120mm top vent directly above where the power supply goes. And I had plans that required me to use that (H100). So I took my nice new drill and drilled out the rivets that kept the DVD drive attached. Worked quite easily. This newly freed up space will be my new PSU location. Upon arrival of my new H100 I quickly got to work.
The H100 was quite big. It's a 240mm radiator that's actually about 275 wide. Barely fit the width of my case. I removed the top bracket and dust filters and proceeded to attach the rad to it. The holes didn't line up.
Unfortunately I had to do some bending of the bracket, angle some screws, and not install 1 of the 8 all together. It's not perfect, but it works! Installed the 2 Corsair fans and dust filters then slapped it in the case.
Eventually I'm going to replace the Corsair fans with 4 Noctuas in push/pull and move the Corsair fans to the bottom front and use them as intake fans with the U.L.N.A.s supplied with the Noctuas to quiet them down.
The rest of the rig came together pretty easily. All that's left was to decide PSU arrangement. At first I had it sideways but the plug stuck out one side and there was a jumble of wires on the other. Not doable. So I took out the top front bracket and decided to utilize the empty space between the fan mounts and front grill to stuff all my wires. Turned my PSU, ran the wires, plugged everything in, now that's excellent wire management! Even used the bracket to prop the PSU down as to allow my power plug to clear the rad. With 2 more fans I might have to move my PSU as far forward as it will go, or mod my PSU and run a plug extension to the back of my case.
Last major problem I came across was a design flaw in the case. My 6970 is LONG. The only way to plug the power cables in was to bend the wires. I could've used a Dremel to clear the space (and probably still will), but I didn't see the harm in some bendy cables.
Future plans:
*Up the ram to 16/32GB 2133MHz just cause I can!
*Upgrading the fans as mentioned above.
*Cold cathodes (white).
*Lexan the holes left by the DVD drive openings (cool windows for my cathodes).
*Patch the opening in the back where my PSU originally went. Not sure what to use yet.
*Cable sleeves? Just to clean things up a bit more but not really necessary IMO.
*I said at the beginning that I wanted a quiet build. My video card is far from quiet
so I'm thinking about custom water cooling for it. I know I could fit all the parts, but it would be a tight squeeze.
Quick video of my rig as it stands right now at about 80% completion:
***Rig***
OS X Lion runs great. At least up to 10.7.2 (6970). Right now I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 in RAID 0 (yeah, it's fast!) until I get a third 120GB SSD strictly for OS X.
ATTO Results:
Final Pics:
Music production/Gaming rig.
First, I'd like to thank tonymacx86 custom mod'ers and this thread for the inspiration. I was in the market for the perfect case when I came across this thing of beauty. I wanted something stylish, functional, quiet, and somewhat compact. There aren't that many cases out there that fit my all needs today.
I had originally planned on getting the Corsair 600t white, its got style and function but wasn't compact, and cost $169. I had almost pulled the trigger, but luckily saw the iBox thread and checked Newegg for the Lian Li...it was on sale for $119!
I of course, wasn't going to leave it stock. I have a lot of hardware to stuff into this thing and therefore modding will be necessary.
(I apologize for the quality of photos/video, they were taken with my iPod touch. Also didn't take as many pics as I'd like.)
Here I just did a quick build to test things out/wait for more parts.
Not bad, but that 5 1/4" bay had to GO! One of the downsides to this case is the fact that they decided to put the 2x120mm top vent directly above where the power supply goes.
And I had plans that required me to use that (H100). So I took my nice new drill and drilled out the rivets that kept the DVD drive attached. Worked quite easily. This newly freed up space will be my new PSU location. Upon arrival of my new H100 I quickly got to work.
The H100 was quite big. It's a 240mm radiator that's actually about 275 wide. Barely fit the width of my case. I removed the top bracket and dust filters and proceeded to attach the rad to it. The holes didn't line up.
Unfortunately I had to do some bending of the bracket, angle some screws, and not install 1 of the 8 all together. It's not perfect, but it works! Installed the 2 Corsair fans and dust filters then slapped it in the case. Eventually I'm going to replace the Corsair fans with 4 Noctuas in push/pull and move the Corsair fans to the bottom front and use them as intake fans with the U.L.N.A.s supplied with the Noctuas to quiet them down.
The rest of the rig came together pretty easily. All that's left was to decide PSU arrangement. At first I had it sideways but the plug stuck out one side and there was a jumble of wires on the other. Not doable. So I took out the top front bracket and decided to utilize the empty space between the fan mounts and front grill to stuff all my wires. Turned my PSU, ran the wires, plugged everything in, now that's excellent wire management!
Even used the bracket to prop the PSU down as to allow my power plug to clear the rad. With 2 more fans I might have to move my PSU as far forward as it will go, or mod my PSU and run a plug extension to the back of my case.Last major problem I came across was a design flaw in the case. My 6970 is LONG. The only way to plug the power cables in was to bend the wires. I could've used a Dremel to clear the space (and probably still will), but I didn't see the harm in some bendy cables.
Future plans:
*Up the ram to 16/32GB 2133MHz just cause I can!
*Upgrading the fans as mentioned above.
*Cold cathodes (white).
*Lexan the holes left by the DVD drive openings (cool windows for my cathodes).
*Patch the opening in the back where my PSU originally went. Not sure what to use yet.
*Cable sleeves? Just to clean things up a bit more but not really necessary IMO.
*I said at the beginning that I wanted a quiet build. My video card is far from quiet
so I'm thinking about custom water cooling for it. I know I could fit all the parts, but it would be a tight squeeze.Quick video of my rig as it stands right now at about 80% completion:
***Rig***
OS X Lion runs great. At least up to 10.7.2 (6970). Right now I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 in RAID 0 (yeah, it's fast!) until I get a third 120GB SSD strictly for OS X.
ATTO Results:
Final Pics:
