I was forced to include some ghetto mods in my most recent build...
You know, it´s those late night sparks of half-assed motivation that get you in the mood to start that project you thought about every now and then for a year or two. And suddenly it has to be done right now, in the middle of the night and be finished by the next day.
I wanted an XP-machine for some old games that just refuse to cooperate with anything above Windows Vista and had all the parts around to build something, except a nice case to put it in.
But then I came across the old and beaten up case of my very first PC. It had a broken power switch, missing covers, a few dents. Lots of scratches, missing front panel connectors, dust EVERYWHERE. My first intention was to throw it away, and then it hit me. I can´t just throw that away, that is MY first PC. So I build this guy:
I used what I had lying around and my biggest concern was getting enough air through it in this small case, now that we have hot summer temps. I did not have fitting fan sizes for this occasion, so I used the broken fan from an arctic cooler, hung it in front of the Asus V60 heatsink with some zip-ties and tape. The slight angle shoots some air up towards the PSU located there.
The PSU is an over 10 y/o Sharkoon 450W with a small 80mm fan on the back of it, drawing air through a small duct that I angled the arctic fan towards to help it out. Before you warn me of old PSUs, I know of the danger and I trust this unit because it is nearly unused and lived a happy life. Oh and I just don´t have anything else atm.
To help get some air in the case I taped this fan to the side panel. I mentioned the broken power-switch of the case? Well I solved that by sourcing a 'case-open-warning' switch and routed that little button towards the front, hanging out of a missing front panel cover. Feels like hot-wiring a car to start it
It does make a beautiful glow at night tho, my phone does not capture this very well, but it looks pretty neat. Shot through the closed side panel.
The parts:
Case: Thermaltake Matrix VX
Board: Asus Rampage Formula
CPU: Intel E8400
GPU: XFX 9800GTX+ with Arctic Accelero cooler
Soundcard: some Creative Soundblaster X-Fi
Gonna make some exterior pictures tomorrow during daylight. Currently installing XP.
I was shocked that this thing started without an issue. I just randomly picked parts and threw them in, I have the bad habit of completing a build before I test anything. So far I always get away with that