Liquidation
OK, so this is the beginning of the project. As you can tell from the name, liquid is obviously involved. Lots of it too. It will have alot of very custom pieces, including a completely custom wiring harness. Also, there will be a water fall in this baby. That's right, I said a water fall; inside of a computer...
So, I started with a super cheapo case from Fry's. Cost $35 and came with a 380watt PSU (Power supply unit). Not bad, but not good enough.
My first order of business, as usual, was to strip the case to bare nothingness. Took a whole of 5 minutes and it gave me a much better idea of what I am working with.
The next order of business was to get a good PSU. I found this one @ Fry's for about $100. A steep price, but It's absolutely perfect for what I need.
It's made buy "Ultra" and is a very nice piece. You can select which wires you want to use, which, in the end, will make for a MUCH cleaner setup. As stated before, I will be making all of my own wiring for this system, but for now, I'm going to use the assortment of wires that came with the unit. They include several length 4-pin molex connectors, PCI-E power cables, a 24-pin mobo (motherboard) connection, and a 4-pin mobo connection.
I also picked up a few fun little parts for the project:
From the top left:
A new Cooler Master Aquagate Mini R80 water cooling system for AMD Socket 754 CPU. $80
A 3.5" bay USB2.0, firewire, and audio connection box. $15
Stainless steel brake line (3/8") from NAPA. $5
PCI Slot covers (black.) $5
Vantec copper RAM heatspreader. (A very nice pice also). $8
I also took some shots of my "workspace." Oh the carnage...
Next, I mached up the CD-ROM drive. I do this every time to make sure that I get the proper wire lengths and also to take measurements for cutting up the metal inside the case.
There's about 2" of space between the PSU and CD drive.
Ok, I got the parts mached up for now. This was @ 1am this morning. Now that I look back on it, that was a BAD idea, considering I have to be at work at 11am and I haven't gotten a whole lot of sleep this entire week...
As these pics were taken, the PSU started making a strange ticking sound. Come to find out, the fan motor is bad, so now I got to go back to Fry's and exchange that bitch...
More to come as I can get it to you guys.