Wooden ITX box

[Vario]

 

[MT Alex]

That is looking really nice. Don't forget to use a wood conditioner, Minwax makes one that is alright but Daley's Benite is the really good stuff. Put a coat of Benite on, let it dry, then hit it with some 220 grit and your stain will go on like glass, and none of the nasty blotching that is inherent with soft open grain woods.

 

[Nordic]

That gpu looks cool just like that. Forget the mesh ... unless you have small children or cats that can and will stick something in there.

 

[Vario]

That is looking really nice. Don't forget to use a wood conditioner, Minwax makes one that is alright but Daley's Benite is the really good stuff. Put a coat of Benite on, let it dry, then hit it with some 220 grit and your stain will go on like glass, and none of the nasty blotching that is inherent with soft open grain woods.

Thanks I really appreciate the tip. I am encountering some bumpy grain as well as the front's beautiful knot encounters the top of the front board, its all been hand sanded from 60 to 120 to 150 to 220 so far, interior just roughly 150. Might not try to correct this because it could just get worse and its kind of neat. I rounded the front corners with a medium sponge.

Pretty happy how it turned out so far, especially for a simple butt-joinery project.

Will that benite interfere with the filler (Elmers) I used? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001T4YU7K/?tag=tec06d-20

 

[Vario]

Tried cutting a switch panel, first drilled the hole into the box and it fucked up the front of the wood so I decided I'd just mount a switch blank and drill that (steel, $3 blank from home depot). I'd need a drill press to get through this shit for a 16mm and 14mm switch so I gave up on that after turning out two plates so far both with dissatisfactory oblong holes all bent and twisted and scratched. My dewalt cordless li-on drill warped the crap out of them, even with cutting oil and stepping up my bit sizes, I really would need a drill press to do it.

Luckily the MPNC switch plate with dual 22mm's fits the hole I already cut out on the case, BARELY, and so I am waiting on that to arrive.

I am going black switch plate, black switches, the power switch will have a white LED ring that turns on. The LED will probably wire off a molex connector pins in the 5v and ground rather than the LED turn on since case headers are a PITA. Had to really splurge on this and its the most expensive part of the build really but if I am gonna be staring at the front of this box and the switch plate is glaringly horrendous looking I will be pissed off at it every time I look at it. I think some of you fellow modders know that feeling.

 

[Vario]

Hey Guys bunch of stuff was completed over past few days:

Ended up with the MNPC 22mm Dual Switch Plate and two 22mm vandal switches. This meant I had to redo a bit of my switch opening so you'll see a picture of the plug I put in. I also had to cut the metal out a bit on the left side facing the front of the case so that I could fit the wiring for the switches.

Ran out of good isopropyl, this stuff is 95%, beat that Don't drink this stuff guys, its poisonous!

cut the metal out then another coat of the flat black paint to hide the cuts:

Clamshell ready to go in with the powersupply:

Clamshell on and stability testing. Found that this time my mobo was good (had to RMA the Z77E, which sucked and had a bad stick of ram this time around. Now its finally 100% stable after 24 hour memtesting the remaining 1x8GB stick

The LED is a nice faint white, enough to know its on but not obnoxious or anything so great for the home theater media box / portable lan box theme. Bought the MNPC stuff and the vandal switches from Performance PCs, they gouged me on shipping as always but they have the best inventory ever!

I still haven't figured out how I'll run my 92mm intake fans but my temps are great even without any intake! I will probably zip tie one fan only out of the five because theres not much space.

 

[Vario]

Everything's running solid but I am using a single stick of the Cosmos's Hyper X ram and the Xeon 1230v2 to test stability and temperatures at the moment. When I get my new Samsung Green modules I'll stability test those, then overclock them, then put in the 2550k, overclock that (cherry picked 5ghz chip, so probably run at 4.8 ghz) then get the ram nice and optimal and stability test the crap out of it, get a few fan potentiometer controllers and hide those at a nice optimal noise level (probably 9v volts ought to do) it in the front somewhere before I button it all up.

Right now I want to test my cooling. I ran prime 95 with no intake fan for 26 hours straight and temps never cracked 65*C, typically averaged only about 52*C.

I added a 92mm San Ace server dual ball bearing fan as an intake. Heres how the setup looks (visibly not much different from before because most of my changes were rerouting the cables for better cooling, I'll photo this when I put in the Samsung Green):

(the single fan is a bit high so its not optimal, its mounted on zip ties and so its not really finalized, I lost about 20% of the fan's surface area because its so high up)

Looks the same as before from the front:

Side view of the happy 7850 pulling in room ambient air through its own custom sized slot:

Heres my idle temps

25*c to 35*C average core is pretty solid!

idle graphics

29*C average, used to average about 40*C idle in my Antec300Two, so what a difference having its own big ass cooling slot makes!

Fully loaded CPU and mobo sensor temps:

1 hour into Unigen Valley stock clocks: 7850 860 core 1200 memory, max temp is 70*C.

I should add that the base is completely unsanded unlike the top so it doesn't look very pretty compared to the top (smoothed to 150 grit). I might hit the base with 80 grit to bring it even with the sides (sort of warped a bit like every clamp glued butt joint box) today to get it all squared up. When its all said and done it will be 220 grit then I'll put on the pre stain conditioner, then 220 grit that, then stain it cherry, 220 grit, then stain again, then probably repeat until its nice looking, then maybe 320 grit that.

 

[t_ski]

If you have the funds, you can dress it up a little with some radgrillz:

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=59_457_362

 

[Vario]

If you have the funds, you can dress it up a little with some radgrillz:

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=59_457_362

Yep I was thinking about that. The holes are just slightly too large for 120mm but 140mm rad grills would fit.

Though I'd go black, heres an option:
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/1...adiator_33512.html?tl=g30c637s519&id=D6fvq8Ju

Got the fan controller installed (Evercool Twister), cut the tabs off, put a fan splitter on it, shoved it in an unused corner of the box and ran it off a molex connector and now the temps are cooler!!!! and the volume is less. I guess the high powered server fan on my 120mm rad was generating too much turbulence because now I don't really crack above 50*C in prime.

 

[Vario]

Installed the Samsung 30nm ram. Memtesting it. Came up with a new name for this pc: Ballista.
1) Its wood 2) its fast and lighter weight 3) its a "siege" engine.




The 7850 can get up to 1300mhz core, I just know it. I just can't keep temps down. It gets to 1250 easily with 1.25vcore but temps approach upper 80*c The i5 is capable of 5.0ghz and the ram is the infamous samsung green. Its too bad its a 7850, I can't justify watercooling a 7850, maybe a 7950 but not a 7850.

 

[Nordic]

After market cooling of gpu?

 

[Vario]

IDK might be the memory chips that XFX uses or its the cooler doesn't work right covering the memory improperly. I doubt I can get it any cooler unless I use a full waterblock, the Double Dissipation cooler gives better core temperature results, after I did new thermal paste, than most 7850's I have researched.

I ran the system for 24 hours prime 95 stable with 4.4Ghz 2550k @ 1.280volts and ram at 2133 cas9 1.50v, max temps the core saw was 75*C during that run. Heres my 3dmark11 without videocard overclock: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7226638
ScoreP6368 with AMD Radeon HD 7850(1x) and Intel Core i5-2550K Processor

Graphics Score
6002

Physics Score
8584

Combined Score
6850

Now I will work on making a nice 24/7 7850 setup, probably do 1125 core with stock memory clock. Then make a custom bios for it so I don't have to use sapphire trixx.

 

[Vario]

Used vbe7 and made

stock voltage

 

[Nordic]

I was suggesting you get aftermarket cooling for the gpu. Such as these.

Read this for peoples opinions on that xfx cooler:
http://www.techpowerup.com/191541/xfx-radeon-r9-280x-double-dissipation-pictured.html#comments

 

[Vario]

I was suggesting you get aftermarket cooling for the gpu. Such as these.

Read this for peoples opinions on that xfx cooler:
http://www.techpowerup.com/191541/xfx-radeon-r9-280x-double-dissipation-pictured.html#comments

yeah I am aware but it looks sexy contrasted with the wood.

new bios: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7227143

ScoreP7599 with AMD Radeon HD 7850(1x) and Intel Core i5-2550K Processor

Graphics Score
7389

Physics Score
8550

Combined Score
7973

Valley gets it up to close to 90*C only 77*C on 3dmark11, maybe I need a more conservative 1050 mhz and undervolt it slightly.

 

[Nordic]

It does look sexy

 

[Vario]

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7227308

1050 bios with undervolt. Temps dropped 10*C and it seems more stable. I'll have to experiment more. I really hate software overclocking and the new VBE7 program that a forum member darkhmz made is simply brilliant.

Score P7360 with AMD Radeon HD 7850(1x) and Intel Core i5-2550K Processor

Graphics Score
7114

Physics Score
8540

Combined Score
7771

 

[Vario]

Undervolting the GPU allowed me a nice stable default "factory" oc setting (as far as catalyst is concerned, new max in CCC of 1250) of 1050 base with 1.17vcore and a 5 watt bump in the tdp (basically more power limit). Awesome. I hate using software GPU overclocking, seems like it fucks things up sometimes with the driver, I'd rather have my GPU preloaded. Thanks so much to darkmhz for the VBe7 Software!

Read more about how asrock's load line calibration and other things operate and its a bit different from gigabyte in nomenclature; level 1 is actually more load line calibration than level 5 WTF!!! I set it to 4 and now my overclock is way way more stable. I hate LLC and always use a bit more offset to accomodate vdroop instead. Nothing wrong with vdroop IMO for a 24/7 usable system. Temps are down to only 75*C at 4.5ghz so I squeezed another 100 mhz out with this. It was 85*C IBT at 4.4GHZ. What a difference!!!!!!

 

[Vario]

4 hours of tribes ascend no problems this thing is a tank max temp only 68*C on the 7850. 50 loops IBT at max. 24 hours of prime blend. 24 hours of memtest. IBT can't get over 75*C

 

[Vario]

Okay heres where I am at on the computer end: finished. On the box end I need to mate the two pieces and sand then sand then sand then sand

Heres my results: Remember guys, this is 24/7 screwed together rarely opened except to dust PC so I went conservative on all my settings. This processor can do 5.0ghz at ~1.48v and the GPU can do close to 1300 mhz if I could get the cooling down a bit better. Ram won't go over 2133 due to bios option not available for this cpu.
CPU VALIDATOR: http://valid.canardpc.com/fc3i3l

GPU VALIDATOR: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/u79k/

Superpi 1M

3dmark11: ScoreP7388 with AMD Radeon HD 7850(1x) and Intel Core i5-2550K Processor
Graphics Score
7126
Physics Score
8684
Combined Score
7797

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7251257

 

[Vario]

Okay so Its been awhile. I am finally working on finishing the wood base. I hooked the system up to the 42" tv and played grid 2 on a Xbox 360 Wired Controller and it felt awesome. Ran it naked because the wood isn't done yet. Love this little rig.

 

[Vario]

I attached the sides/top to the bottom tray. It now looks like a solid hewn block of wood. I love how the grain lines up. I am hitting it with 80 grit sandpaper. I will post pics after I get a few more hours of work on it. Its going to be fantastic. I'll work it up to 220 then put the prestain conditioner, then the stain,etc.

 

[Vario]

 

[Vario]

shoop da woop

 

[t_ski]

Looking better!