Project Stealthlow

[Waynio]

gret progress i love what you have done so far

Thanks bud if I'm not waiting all day for deliveries I'll try & get the bars & back panel fixed on today so fingers crossed I won't be waiting all day & the boredom of waiting doesn't squeeze all my enthusiasm out lol .

The motherboard has arrived, so waiting on the psu, fans, heatsink & cpu & have to say the motherboard looks really nice for a cheap one .

[Waynio]

LOL sitting around watching TV made me vegetate a little so I'm not in the mood for modding today but got the new parts .

[Waynio]

Grrr as I was a little worried about the light doesn't spread through the stick bars so the only way to do this right would be to plug some diy LED's in the base on both sides, but this could make for some extra nice effect .
Here it is with the LED strip draped around them.

And here with just the fans.

I suppose with the motherboard having bits of a nice blue I could use blue LED's the stick bits might look really nice too in a 2 tone .

These fans are silent too BTW .

[Waynio]

Bad news or typical news lol.

I'm gutted I chose to give asus a last chance, years later & same old asus, honestly every single asus board I have bought has been a PITA, should have waited a little longer to raise the money & bought the p67-ud7, all asus is good for is wasting my time & stressing me out, honestly I'd be happy to pay double for a product that works so I take that back about gigabyte out pricing themselves lol I guess their price is very well justified.

Obviously there are many who don't have issues with asus but me I have been very unlucky with every single asus board I ever owned, I'm going to try & get a refund to put towards a gigabyte p67-ud7 I haven't got time for asus BS & waiting for a stable properly functioning bios.

Switched my socket 775 back in play until I have the gigabyte board which won't be for a while .

Cold boot & restart issues btw so freaking annoying utterly temperamental on how it works, wasted an evening & all night so I declare asus as total garbage.

Not sure if I should bother wasting more time trying to get it working .

[Waynio]

The store I bought the asus board from confirmed it as being dead so I wasn't wrong so got it switched for the msi p67a-gd65 & it is awesome .

I'm not certain but I think intel advise not to go above 1.5v on the ram & think I found out why, when I did put my ram up to 1.6v it also increased the cpu volts from 1.17v to 2.05v

My ram is 2x2gb ocz platinum 1600mhz 6,8,6,24 1.65v so not rated for these new sandy bridge rigs & I'm running it as 1600mhz 7,8,7,24 1.6v but holy sheet this memory wipes the floor with my previous 900mhz ddr2 big time more than double fast & with good low latency too.

I'm yet to overclock this rig, just been getting things sorted before I go there but I'd be really happy to achieve 4.5ghz on this & with the temps I'm getting on this I see no reason not to get to 4.5 or higher .

Ran some bench marks with my overclocked q9650 & ddr2 so when I've benched this new rig on stock settings & overclocked I'll post my findings comparing the 2 .

I'm super impressed with the msi board being rock solid & for having a reset cmos switch that totally works the second it's pressed so now I see gigabyte & msi in the same light, heck msi might be my new favourite as it had 2 extra sata ports & the cost was good & affordable which is a nice bonus so while msi are probably under selling themselves while their name rises to greatness, gigabyte is ramping up the price because of it's already situated good rep I think the winner of these new boards is msi in the premium low end and asus pffft .

[Waynio]

Got the needed bits to carry on so can start back up whenever which will probably be tomorrow .
Helicoil kit, helicoil removal tool, 100 m3 helicoils for 3mm material, hex driver since it's the 2mm size I always use, aluminium case feet which I'll heavily mod, m8 countersunk high tensile bolts, m3 countersunk bolts & m3 button head bolts.

[Waynio]

Project is alive again .

Here's the helicoil set minus the 3.2mm drill bit, very glad I tried them out, all you do with these is drill the hole, tap it, use the question mark shape tool to put the helicoil on (it has a slit & the helicoil has a stick out bit) & you place it in the hole & turn until it sits in the thread by 0.5mm or 1mm, then you pull it out & then push in the hole with the blunt tool & shake out the bit from the helicoil & woo hoo you have a very good reliable thread .

I put helicoils in all the corner bars, top & bottom so they are solid now.

Back panel fixed onto the base.

This is how I did it instead of messing with the drill press I used the cordless drill, clamped it in place measured & marked, did a spot drill, then a 2mm drill, then the 3.2mm drill for the helicoils so it was perfectly placed .

The front optical/fan plate clicks in place (nice fit) & holds without bolts but it will be bolted up.

Didn't take pictures of my attempts but started off wasting a couple of hours trying to use the disc sander, getting toasty throw it in cold water at least a hundred times D'oh, then switched to the air finger belt sander, was taking too long, then went on to vice & files & if I'd have started off with vice & files I'd have probably got them both made lol, but spent too much time on them for today so I'll do them tomorrow, anyway nice progress making up for down time I think .

Ah & the wood piece is to keep the back panel straight, some how it is slightly curved but will be fine once the motherboard tray is made & installed .

[SXRguyinMA]

lookin good

[Waynio]

lookin good

Thanks mate & wow I'm up at 6am so another full day at it ahead .

[Waynio]

OK set out to at least make the curve bar connectors & get the curve bars fixed to the rear panel today & done it .

It was hell to make the connectors from the 19mm square bar & didn't truly fancy using the acrylic bar so luckily I had some 6mm by 25mm flat bar that I bought when making the stack unit that never got used & turned out to be perfect for making the connectors with so with them only being 6mm thick they wasn't to thick or to thin for putting helicoils in, thought I'd need to put 2 bolts on each curve bar but 1 on each was good enough, if I'd have known that I'd have put the bolt in the middle, oh well.

So with this done now I'll be able use the fixed curve for making the templates for the side panels, motherboard tray & bending jig for the acrylic .