The Utterly Imbalanced CaseLabs TX10-D build(s)!

[HammerON]

So I previously unboxed the EVGA 1300G2 but as fate would have it, I got this on Tuesday:

Ok that wasn't exactly the halo effect I wanted so let's get right to opening up the EVGA 1600G2:

Look at all these cables:

That's enough PCI-E power for 3 MSI 290x Lightnings/EVGA 780Ti Kingpins without needing a daisy chained cable

Oh, I forgot to mention I also got a 750G2 for Side 2. So here's a EVGA fanboy shot:

But wait, there's MORE:

So how do they look all mounted on the PSU mount?

~5000 W of PSU in there, enough to burn down any circuit I have in this place. The ax1200i is pretty much spoken for already but the 1300G2 needs a new owner who will care for it and keep it longer than the ~6-7 days it has been opened

Anyway, so here's the final PSU configuration:

The EVGA 1600G2 for Side 1 and EVGA 750G2 for Side 2. I got these both at a tremendous price so no complaints. But not everything worked out as planned, I had a set of Lamptron handles that I was hoping to install on the PSU mount to make it "drop-in" style too. Unfortunately the only place I can have them without interfering on the 4 mounting locations are the extreme ends and the handle holes match exactly the screw in locations of the mount to the case:

So there is no way I can think of making this a drop-in mount unless I am missing something obvious. Oh well! Next up, this goes in the case and I see if the stock cables are long enough. Side 2 has the same motherboard that I currently have but for Side 1 I have to assume a similar layout and see.

That is an amazing amount of wattage with all those PSUs

 

[VSG]

That is an amazing amount of wattage with all those PSUs

Haha.. Yup! Enough to blow up any household circuit here. One of the times I miss the 220v circuits back home.

 

[VSG]

So I had some thumbscrews at the front that were getting stripped and no matter which screwdriver I tried or how much WD-40 I added it did nothing. In the spirit of the US independence day, since finesse didn't work I resorted to brute force to get what I wanted

Dremel + metal cutting blade + WD-40 on the screws equals:

I cut a large, flat hole in each of the stripped screws so I could then use a flathead screwdriver with increased torque. 30 minutes later, all of them were out and I can now play with the front of the case as I wish:

There is enough space for a 5x120mm rad in the front on each side if I want. Bitspower had promised such a rad (600mm rad) last year but nothing came of it so far:

Oh well! I am doing some radiator cleaning now, I had to remove all the fans off that Mo.Ra though and it will be a real pain to put them back on

Used Part 1 of the Mayhems Blitz Pro cleaning kit on the Alphacool Monsta 480, Phobya G-Changer 120 and Swiftech MCR120-XP. No prizes for guessing where most of that gunk came from. The amount that came out was pretty shocking though, as I had the monsta in a loop before for ~ 2 months and had the Primochill SysPrep running through it initially. Guess now we know that does absolutely nothing! For the rest of the rads, I had a 1:10 by volume solution of distilled white vinegar and distilled water in them for 6 hours followed by flushing with regular tap water and then distilled water. The effluent from these was much better which goes to show XSPC, HardwareLabs and Watercool really clean their rads before shipping them. Now on to Part 2 of the kit to do a general scrub and neutralize the pH back to 6.5-7 after the acid bath. For this I set up a rad only loop which took up most of my my table downstairs:

The loop is still running (24 hours recommended) as I write this. Tomorrow morning I drain it, run just distilled water to clean it up and we are all ready to go!

 

[ne6togadno]

So I had some thumbscrews at the front that were getting stripped and no matter which screwdriver I tried or how much WD-40 I added it did nothing. In the spirit of the US independence day, since finesse didn't work I resorted to brute force to get what I wanted

Spoiler

Dremel + metal cutting blade + WD-40 on the screws equals:

I cut a large, flat hole in each of the stripped screws so I could then use a flathead screwdriver with increased torque. 30 minutes later, all of them were out and I can now play with the front of the case as I wish:

There is enough space for a 5x120mm rad in the front on each side if I want. Bitspower had promised such a rad (600mm rad) last year but nothing came of it so far:

Oh well! I am doing some radiator cleaning now, I had to remove all the fans off that Mo.Ra though and it will be a real pain to put them back on

Used Part 1 of the Mayhems Blitz Pro cleaning kit on the Alphacool Monsta 480, Phobya G-Changer 120 and Swiftech MCR120-XP. No prizes for guessing where most of that gunk came from. The amount that came out was pretty shocking though, as I had the monsta in a loop before for ~ 2 months and had the Primochill SysPrep running through it initially. Guess now we know that does absolutely nothing! For the rest of the rads, I had a 1:10 by volume solution of distilled white vinegar and distilled water in them for 6 hours followed by flushing with regular tap water and then distilled water. The effluent from these was much better which goes to show XSPC, HardwareLabs and Watercool really clean their rads before shipping them. Now on to Part 2 of the kit to do a general scrub and neutralize the pH back to 6.5-7 after the acid bath. For this I set up a rad only loop which took up most of my my table downstairs:

The loop is still running (24 hours recommended) as I write this. Tomorrow morning I drain it, run just distilled water to clean it up and we are all ready to go!

you tried with wrong screwdriver.
with this

screwdriver you could've dealt with those thumbs with ease

 

[VSG]

Not sure if that was serious or not, but either way that wouldn't have worked. The stripped thumbscrews were holding on a flexbay solid cover so there was only about half a centimeter of wiggle room to turn. Before this I tried out needle nose pliers but there wasn't enough grip available.

 

[VSG]

Can I request suggestions on colors for the exterior of the case? I am considering getting it powdercoated in a color/texture of my choice if the price is right. Interiors are black (as is the exterior for now):

Here is a picture of the samples (didn't realize till later that I have #34 in there twice). I reduced it to a 5 MP picture to retain detail and yet not overwhelm the page so please excuse the size if it is too big for your screen:

They got many more colors obviously, I was thinking of something in the brown-grey family so got more of those. The rest are just an indication of the other color families available. Not in there is a copper strain that they had run out of samples for. Now I currently have everything in black and am planning to keep the interior black for now due to their single color minimum charge policies. So now I am requesting suggestions from everyone here and elsewhere. I currently have no preference, so will definitely weigh in suggestions before making my decision. Please bear in mind that I still need to give the place a test sample to see if they can do a good job so nothing is guaranteed.Thanks!

Edit: Resized it, it was too big for this forum. Here is a link to the 5 MP image: http://imgur.com/2pJQ2yX

 

[Toothless]

20, 21, 22, 63, and 18 are my favs, but then again 56 is really nice too.

 

[VSG]

20, 21, 22, 63, and 18 are my favs, but then again 56 is really nice too.

Brown was the first color I thought of honestly. Great choices.

Having said that, the interior will be black. So brown/bronze on black might not look much different than the current black on black. I have this posted on 6-7 forums where the build log is current so will weigh in every suggestion before making up my mind. Thanks for the votes!

 

[VSG]

FYI, EVGA has sent me one of their individually sleeved cable kits (in red, compatible with the G2, P2 and T2 series of PSUs) to check out. Does anyone have any particular requests or tests?

 

[Vario]

you tried with wrong screwdriver.
with this

screwdriver you could've dealt with those thumbs with ease

Yep vice grip would have worked too. Vice grip needlenose too.

 

[VSG]

So as I mentioned earlier, Jacob from EVGA sent me an entire cable kit in red to check out and use it in my build if I like it. The least I can do is share my thoughts and ask if anyone here has any specific requests as far as pictures and tests go.

I currently have these with me to test out the cables:

Here's what the kit looks like when received:

Once the box is opened, we see 3 bags inside:

Not much to gain from those 2 pictures so let's open them up. Bag 1 has the 20+4 pin ATX cable and 2 4+4 pin EPS cables:

If you have a correctly calibrated monitor, the color of the image below will be exactly how it looks in real life:

Too bad I sold my Corsair red sleeved kit last week, but I do have one 20+4 pin ATX cable in white from Corsair for comparison:

Corsair uses PET sleeving I believe compared to what I have been told is Micro Cord in the EVGA cables. If this is incorrect, please let me know.

Look ma, no heatshrink! These cables look and feel neater in person already. While I can't demonstrate this easily, these cables are also more malleable in that they can be bent easily and they retain the bent shape better than the Corsair cables.

I understand why Corsair went for heatshrink, and I give them props for making the individually sleeved cables available as a kit but the issues of mass production means not everything is perfect. For instance, the heatshrink here is not all uniform in length or application. Some of the heatshrink is actually beginning to come off despite me never having actually used this cable before. This isn't to say everything is perfect in EVGA land.

The Corsair sleeving is thicker, but the inner wiring in both these cases is 16 AWG- so far so good. But a closer look at the wires in each cable show something I haven't really thought about till now:

These are wires in the same 24 pin ATX cable. At first I thought this was a mistake since only 1 wire was thinner than the rest but then I looked at the stock cable and there were many more thinner wires in there. All the thinner wires (18 AWG I believe, will confirm once a local sleever is done taking the cable apart and putting it back together) are actually in one area which is not critical in power delivery. So, if anything, EVGA is actually putting more effort into making these individually sleeved cables better for power delivery. Now whether or not there is a real world difference between 16 and 18 AWG will be found out soon, at least in my case.

On to bag 2 which contains the VGA cables:

2 daisychained 6+2 pin + 6 pin PCI-E VGA cables and 4 6+2 pin PCI-E VGA cables. Here is where I am a bit concerned about:

The wires on the daisy chained 6 pin connector all seem to be 18 AWG. This is plenty enough for most people, but if someone is benching hard and has no other choice but to use daisy chained cables, then this may cause an issue. I will be testing this out real soon. The pro overclockers typically have 1 PSU per GPU and some go even more extreme. 8 Pack, for example, likes to use a 1200W PSU for each 8 pin PCI-E connector being used when benching. So common sense would dictate you just use 1 cable per connector and not go with daisy chained connectors when operating way past TDP of a GPU. But when you have 2-3 GPUs like the EVGA 780 Ti Classified K|ngp|n edition or the MSI R9-290x Lightning, you have an 8+8+6 PCI-E connection on each card:

So while there are enough PCI-E connectors on something like the 1300G2 and 1600G2/P2/T2 for 3 of these cards, the kit here has only 6 cables. EVGA is looking into making supplemental VGA only sleeved cables available for purchase, so please do let them know if this is something you are interested in. They are also considering selling bare-bones PSUs (no stock cables) for a lower price than the regular models. This would be great for anyone wanting any sort of custom cables so once again please do let them know of any interest in this.

Finally on to bag 3 (peripherals):

4 x 3 SATA, 1 x 3 Molex and 1 x 2 Molex + 1 Floppy connector. Funnily all these wires here seem to be the thicker 16 AWG type even though 18 guage would have been plenty. I also think the floppy connector is redundant and should not have been in here but I am sure there will be someone now to prove me wrong.

If there are any errors in what I have written, please don't hesitate in letting me know. I am not by any means an expert in this field and am only looking at this from a consumer's point of view. Also do let me know if there are any particular requests for photos or tests. These were all taken hours ago and the wires are currently being tested as we speak but I will gladly do all I can.

 

[Vario]

Can I request suggestions on colors for the exterior of the case? I am considering getting it powdercoated in a color/texture of my choice if the price is right. Interiors are black (as is the exterior for now):

Here is a picture of the samples (didn't realize till later that I have #34 in there twice). I reduced it to a 5 MP picture to retain detail and yet not overwhelm the page so please excuse the size if it is too big for your screen:

They got many more colors obviously, I was thinking of something in the brown-grey family so got more of those. The rest are just an indication of the other color families available. Not in there is a copper strain that they had run out of samples for. Now I currently have everything in black and am planning to keep the interior black for now due to their single color minimum charge policies. So now I am requesting suggestions from everyone here and elsewhere. I currently have no preference, so will definitely weigh in suggestions before making my decision. Please bear in mind that I still need to give the place a test sample to see if they can do a good job so nothing is guaranteed.Thanks!

Edit: Resized it, it was too big for this forum. Here is a link to the 5 MP image: http://imgur.com/2pJQ2yX

Red Baron #66 INV/REDIFS1

 

[VSG]

Red Baron #66 INV/REDIFS1

I got a few more color samples today if that changes your vote:

I don't even know why they gave me blacks to be honest, but there they are anyway!

 

[xvi]

Lots of safety colors in there. "Men Without Hats" would be proud.

 

[Vario]

I still vote that red!

I just picture bright red like a Ferrari on the outside, and on the inside all the wiring red, red accents on the circuit boards, etc, all contrasted against black interior case metal to make it all pop out.

 

[VSG]

Pretty confused now lol. I will make up my mind over the weekend. The GF needs to agree as well.

 

[xvi]

The GF needs to agree as well.

That's the most important criteria of all.

 

[ne6togadno]

Pretty confused now lol. I will make up my mind over the weekend. The GF needs to agree as well.

paint it 2 coloers.
let gf choose color of her side then paint your side accordingly

 

[VSG]

paint it 2 coloers.
let gf choose color of her side then paint your side accordingly

Since the exterior panels are the same in the front and back, and powdercoating can't be split in halves, they have to be the same color.

That's the most important criteria of all.

The GF has spoken, these are the colors she was ok with:

Blue speckle looks different in different light, that isn't the camera exposure at work here.

I deleted the close-up of this by accident, will take another when I get back home later if needed

Also, I won an EVGA 1200P2 (recently released, selling for $230-250) courtesy their Memories of EVGA Promotion:

 

[ne6togadno]

Since the exterior panels are the same in the front and back, and powdercoating can't be split in halves, they have to be the same color.

it can.
question is how much they will charge you for extra work they will have to do with masking.
dark roast

 

[VSG]

it can.
question is how much they will charge you for extra work they will have to do with masking.
dark roast

Didn't think about masking, good point. They have a $195 minimum color rate though. I will get the quotes soon so will be able to make a decision then. Thanks!

 

[Vario]

Blue speckle but its going to clash so bad with the rest of the system.

 

[VSG]

Blue speckle but its going to clash so bad with the rest of the system.

Ya, even though I love how it looks different from different angles that is not the best for my case. I like Weathered Iron, Dark Roast and Bisque Speckle- the last of which will give me a light exterior, dark interior. All of these are pretty unique colors though!

 

[VSG]

So I finally tried out the cables in the current rig to see how they looked. First up, motherboard, CPU and only 1 KPE hooked up with discrete VGA cables:

Don't mind the large cutout in the motherboard tray, I have a back cover coming in and will likely drill in a cable management hole in it. These were so easy to navigate and install compared to the Corsair set I had- the thinner sleeving definitely helps. They also retain the "bend" easier. I did get a sample custom paracord sleeved 6 pin PCI-E cable from the previously mentioned custom sleever which looked better and held shape better but for a $90 kit, this is really good. Some cable combs or lacing and the cables will look much better.

Now with the 2nd KPE hooked up, I had to use a daisychained VGA cable here without any choice:

The dreaded loop appears. Fortunately, thanks to that wall of VGA cables and the easy to bend cables, it is not hard at all to tuck in the loop:

One small thing I really appreciated was that the 6 pin and 2 pin sections of the 6+2 VGA cable are separated all the way from the PSU connector. So it is very easy to simply use the 6 pin part only if you have to!

I have decided to use the cables in my build and also set up some thing in motion with EVGA about the 1200P2 (hopefully anyway!) so I gladly announce EVGA as a sponsor of this build:

I also set up the 3 quad radiators back with fans, since I have already shown the SR 1 560 with the Cougars before I won't show it again. Here is the XSPC AX480 with 8 Corsair SP120 QE fans:

Those rings are definitely not finalized yet, but this rad is going to be on Side 2 where most of the components are set already. So I may well end up having all red rings in there. For the Alphacool Monsta 480, I decided to have the drop-in mount in the front so that the first set of fans provide enough gap to allow the front set of ports not interfere with the rad mount:

That's one thick assembly. I am considering removing the rings all together and going stealth like with the SR 1, let's see.

 

[Vario]

I feel that if you go with a non-color paint (grey black etc) then you might as well keep the stock black color.