Project: Armor Redux

[SXRguyinMA]

Alright, my Thermaltake armor case is currently water-cooled, I painted the whole inside of the chassis black, and installed an extra 120mm LED fan in the side panel (I bought the Armor before the 25cm side panel fan).

Here's the plan. I'm going to be getting rid of the watercooling. Yeah its cool, but I don't need it on my Pentium D. Also, its a hassle anytime I do anything to the case. I have to drain it, remove the tubing, etc., then reconnect everything and refill/bleed it, check for leaks, etc etc.

I've currently got 2 12" UV cathodes that light up the water tubing. Since the tubing will be gone, the UV cathodes will be useless pretty much.

I'm going to pick up the new Thermaltake Big Typhoon Pro cooler. Also by ditching the pump I'll have room to put my 2nd 3870x2 in crossfire

I've got one Thermaltake iCage installed, and will be ordering a second to add incoming airflow. This will be painted black as the other is. This will give me 3x120mm intake fans and 1x120mm exhaust fan (in addition to the 140mm PSU exhaust fan and the 2 exhaust fans on the 3870x2 cards that blow directly out of the case). I'll also be getting a NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller to control the 4 120mm fans and the CPU fan.

Now I was having a tough time deciding what color scheme to go with for the lighting. I thought red would look neat. But the CU cooler has blue LEDs in it, and my mobo (Abit AW9D-MAX) has changeable blue LED back-lighting effects. I think this will end up clashing pretty good with the red LEDs I wanted in the fans, etc.

So I'm again enlisting the help of my friend John over at PCBoard.ca. I'm going to get another one of his LED Rainbow kits (same one I used in Rockin Case). This will be controlling the case lighting effects. I'm going to be mounting some of his RGB modules inside the case. This way I can make the interior any color I desire, or even cycle through various colors or even the whole rainbow.

And then another thought crossed my mind. I'm now going to have 4 120mm blue LED fans. That will mess up my whole lighting scheme! So I'm getting a bunch of these 5mm RGB LEDs that will replace all the blue LEDs in all of the fans. These will be connected to the LED rainbow controller as well. This way, the fans will change colors in sync with the interior

I'm also going to be doing a lot of cutting/sleeving/heatshrinking of wiring to make it look a lot nicer. I never really took the time to lay it out nice because it was the only PC I had to use. Now that I've got Rockin Case to use, it'll let me take some time on this one and do it the way I always wanted to.

Once I get my tax returns back next week I'll start ordering up the parts.

Here's some shots of how it looks right now:

[Trace]

Looks good! I'll be watching this one

[SXRguyinMA]

alright, I got everything ordered this morning, except the 2nd TT icage. I'm not going to bother with another cage, I've got plenty of 120mm fans (non LED). I'll make an acrylic bracket for it to mount where it would if I used the icage. Once everything comes in, its time to start working

[SXRguyinMA]

alright I got my performance-pcs order in. I'll be doing a separate review on the Thermaltake BigTyphoon Pro cooler, so keep an eye out for that. I also received the NZXT sentry 2 fan controller and some cable sleeving.

I managed to get the 4-pin molex connectors cut off the fan controller, the 3-pin connectors re-soldered and everything sleeved up.

now once my LEDs come in from LEDshoppe.com and my RGB kit from pcboard.ca, I can get rollin on doing up the fans

[billygoat333]

I want one of those sentry 2 fan controllers. they are sexuh. lol

[SXRguyinMA]

alright, got the RGB kit in the other day and got it soldered up and tested, works great. and got this nice little brown package in from Hong Kong today

I got an RGB strip, 20 RGB 5mm LEDs, 100 560 Ohm resistors and 100 470 Ohm resistors

now I'm just waiting for this order to come in from Performance-PCs:

2 x Connectx™ Low Profile Molex Connector - Punch Down with Cap - Black
- Cap Type: Pass-through Cap
2 x Connectx™ Low Profile Molex Connector - Punch Down with Cap - Black
- Cap Type: End Cap
4 x Connectx™ Male Molex Housing Black
- Molex Pins: Add 4 Molex Pins
5 x Connectx™ Female 3-Pin Fan Housing Black
- Molex Pins: No Molex Pins
5 x Pro Series Male 3-Pin Fan Housing with Hood - Black
- Molex Pins: No Molex Pins

will be doing some wiring and sleeving and such this weekend, stay tuned

[TheMainMan]

I love those little brown packages from Hong Kong! So much fun for so little cost! Look forward to seeing it come together!

[SXRguyinMA]

I got my performance-pcs order in, everythings perfect

More progress today! I got one fan completely done! Holy crap was it a LOT of work! I had to solder 3 resistors to each LED (one for red, green and blue), then heatshrink and run wiring, then consolidate wiring and end with a molex connector. Molex works perfectly here because I've got 4 wires (power, R, B, G). These will plug into a central wiring harness coming off of the RGB controller board

The one thing I noticed is because the RGB board controls the LEDs with PWM, it makes for interesting effects on the fan blades. I didn't like it at first, but the more I watch it the more I like it.

resistors soldered:

wiring soldered and ready for heat shrink:

wiring completed, LEDs installed and wiring bundled:

fan completed (almost, waiting for installation time to sleeve/trim the 3-pin power cable)

and a video I'm going through the different modes in the video, most I'm not letting run all the way through.


I also picked up this nice sheet of alu from the hobby shop

I used my metal brake and bent it to the size of a 5-1/4" drive device:

and I've got a perfectly-sized spare piece of plexi from Rockin Case

I also picked up these momentary switches, the flip switch and red LED that willb e installed in the panel

the idea is the DVD drive will be stealth-ed, and one button and the LED will be for the drive, the switch is to turn the LED effects on or off, and the other button is to change the mode

I want to get words water-jet cut out of the alu (MODE, ON/OFF, ACT. and EJECT), and light the plexi with UV LEDs, so the words will glow green. We'll see how it works though, I may go a different route with the words, and I'm open to suggestions

I'm also looking for someone that can program the IC chip used in the RGB kit, as there's some sequences I want programmed in that aren't there.

[SXRguyinMA]

this project is not dead, I've been hard at work on it, it should be finished up tonight, will get pics up once its up and running again

[SXRguyinMA]

rig is done! uploading pics as I type....