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Insolent Gnome

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Insolent Gnome last won the day on November 30 2022

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  1. They have a submission form live now on the cmws landing page.
  2. The rules page mentions a final submission form. Where is this or is this even a thing? "Submit your mod project between Aug 1st, 2022 to Dec 22st, 2022 by completing the final submission form (Opens Aug 1st, 2022) and attaching any additional documentation needed for the awards you wish to enter."
  3. Before I get to wiring I need to button up a few things. Power switches are always a good thing. I decided to mount these to the back panel and since I wasn't worried about them being fancy, used some extra surface mount switches from my last project.And then there was mounting the fans. The @#$%#$% fans. Ok it's my fault but what a pain. So while laying out the fans, I had a feeling that a measurement was off. I was thinking there was a half mm that I should be dealing with somewhere but wasn't for some reason. But I plowed on, finished the lay out and drilled them out. And then when I go to install the fans, I realized that my spacing was at 110mm for the screw holes instead of 105mm. The half mm measurement that I wasn't running into was for the 7.5mm in from the outer edge. Instead I came in 5mm and, welp, that doesn't really work. So two options, cut slots in the panels or cut slots in the fans. And though I didn't try to fit the case on the bandsaw, I'm gonna guess the fans were the waaayyyy easier option. So, custom modded fans...that means it's worth more, right?!!Now that the fans fit, the next mountain was the mountain of wires that come with them. LED fans are a nice touch, but the wires, ugh. And not having a motherboard tray to hide them behind, double ugh. So I mad a box to hide all my sins in. My sin box.6 wires go in and magically 2 come out. I'd tell you how it works, but it's against the law to divulge magic secrets.But for reals, I just needed a place to hide the wire mess to make it look cleaner so I didn't have to cut and solder a custom set.And then cut that set apart and re-do it cause I flipped a wire.And then it was the PSU cables. I decided to be trick and loop the wires outside the case. Loved the idea, hated having to do it. But first we need some wires.And some holes.This was the point at which I started cursing this idea. A 24 pin set later, I would decide that the CPU and the MB cables should swap because of how they layout on the PSU. Then after getting all the cables through the first set of holes and getting the two GPU cables(the 1070 is only an 8 pin, but I ran the second set for upgrades later) and the CPU cables back into the case through the second set of holes, I realized that the CPU cable was no longer capable of reaching the plug on the motherboard. FML. Needless to say, I wired this little "feature" like 2 and a half times.In order to keep the loops even, I used a little piece of 1/2" scrap pipe as a spacer. And if you look close, you can see my taped over tape for labeling the wire order, which kept changing.And I definitely hooked the cables to a tester to make sure I have them all pined right.And in the end she fired right up, no problems.So all that's left are the finals, and that's coming up next.
  4. So this is the goal, obviously without the clamp.But before that, lets cut a bunch of holes in things!How about the top of the case? Yep, that needs a hole!And the door? Sure, why not.I decided a passive vent in the top of the case might be a good thing to help get rid of heat. No fans, but it's at least a place for hot air to escape. And all fancy door have windows, right?During all this cutting, my corded Dremel died and I was down to a cordless model, which, good in a pinch, not great for what I want. Soooo, I got a new tool. Sure it's a cheap Harbor Freight rotary, but it cost half what a new Dremel would and it's got a foot pedal for speed control. So nice and perfect for composite work.So hanging the fans so they float in the front of the case. Sounds cool, so naturally I'm gonna figure out how. Since the whole idea of the case is natural fibers and burlap is made from jute and they make jute rope, it only makes since to use it. But to keep the case from cutting the jute and keep the jute from breaking the case I was gonna need some grommets and a way of stringing the rope so that it didn't stress the edges.While I was at it, I also put in some eyelets and rope to dress up the top vent.The front panel was a little different because it was so thick. I didn't have eyelets that would go all the way through so I wound up gluing and eyelet in from both sides for basically the same result.I ran a loop of rope through the eyelets on the case first to give myself something to attach the floating panel too. The idea was to avoid having the rope loop over the edge of the case and snapping that front half inch off. Probably wouldn't be a problem with the bracing pieces in there, but better to not have to worry.Then I laced the floating panel to the loop of rope on the case. Let me tell you, fun times! But I like how it turned out. And any vibration from the fans is totally isolated, bonus!And for the windows in the door panel, I picked up a fancy piece of glass and went to town on it with some alcohol ink. After a lot of trial and error, I settled on a brownish orange that went well with the burlap.Then cut to size and glued in.So now we're getting close to the home stretch.
  5. Well the front of the case is probably gonna have some fans mounted, so how am I doing that? Good question. First up, some different burlap. For this I went with black dyed rather than the natural color. Just for contrast.I did a hand layup, but this time no vacuum bagging since it's a flat panel and I'm out of bagging material.I had a wild hair and decided that I wanted a floating front panel.And then I laid out the fans, which I would find out I measured wrong, but more on that later, leaving a half inch for figuring out how to make this thing float in the front of the case. Sometimes it's just a bit of on the fly engineering!Burlap composite being what it is and needing something to attach the front of my door too, I decided to make some brace pieces for the front of the case out of the leftover black burlap panel. However I decided to hang the fans, I'm sure it's gonna try to bend the sides of the case and I'm just gonna nip that in the bud.The case is six layers of burlap and has some flex, but the black burlap panel is 8 layers and waaaayyyy heavier on the epoxy since I didn't loose as much to the breather cloth. These things aren't flexing. And there's that little strip where the front door mounts will be.As I was showing pics to some friends, I notice I had forgotten the fan on the back panel. Whoops! So I cut one in, and again, laid it out wrong, but yeah, later...Up next, the ultimate in fan isolation.
  6. To prep the mold for the layup, I gave it a nice coat of wax to seal the foam and make everything easier to get apart. And then I got all my materials ready for vacuum bagging. Bottom layer of release cloth, because if you've fought a mold once, you'll take any advantage you can get.And with our breather cloth, vacuum bag and burlap ready to go.And now for some epoxy...crap I forgot the epoxy. Just kidding, I only forgot to take a pic of it.There we go. Entropy Resins laminating epoxy. 30% biobased which from what I gather means that 30% of the carbon in the resin comes from new biological sources, like from agriculture, rather than from petroleum. Not my normal go to, West Systems, but they have the same parent company, so lets give it a try.Since the hand layup and vacuum bagging is a bit of a rush though, I've got a before:And after:Now to let it cure up and we can see how it turned out. Not super impressive in the pics, but that's kind of due to the weave I think. The burlap soaks up a ton of epoxy, but with the open weave, it also looses a lot into the breather cloth. You don't get the nice smooth surface that you do with carbon fiber.But since this is burlap, it works. A super glossy finish like you'd put on carbon fiber would look weird here. It's burlap, they make potato sacks out of it. Its rough and rustic and has flaws and weird spots in the weave and that's the look I'm going for. I do kind of like it when perfection is the enemy, it plays to my strengths.Next up, making more than just a burlap tube.
  7. First up was to figure out the layout and the size. I mean, it's usually good to know the direction you're heading before you start slinging epoxy around. I decided on an old school layout with the PSU up top. Just seemed different from the current norm and that's a space I like to occupy.I'm going to vertical mount the GPU to show it off, plus, it's just way easier to layout on a custom build.Next was size. I'm a fan of compact layouts and not wasting a ton of space on dead air and I just happen to have a Meshify C in my shop so I based the dimensions off that. Is that an MNPCTech poster trying to sneak in!?!So with size and layout figured out, it was time to figure out what I was gonna make the case out of. Flax fiber was my first choice because it seems to be the material that's leading the way as far as coming to market and if it's good enough for the wing on a race car, it'll probably surpass my needs. But since natural fiber is kind of a new thing, places you can buy a few yards are few and far between and that's if they have the weight you want in stock. And for flax, no luck. So I started looking at other possibilities. Hemp popped up, but once again, I couldn't find anything available other than a few fabric weaves. So while looking around the local craft store for mold materials, I decided to check out if they had any natural fiber fabrics that might work. I mean, linen is flax fiber. Most of the fabric was poly or a poly blend, but then I stumbled on their bolts of burlap. Yep, the stuff they make potato sacks out of. And dresses for Marylin Monroe. And, well, it would be interesting. So I picked up 16 yards of burlap.I wouldn't say it's the best candidate for composites. The weave is crazy open and the fiber is all over the place, but it might work. So I did some quick layups to test and figure out thickness. And you know, it wasn't half bad and had a very unique look.So lets get a mold built. I used pink insulation foam because it seemed like it would be easier at demold time than wood and it would be dimensionally stable under vacuum. Also, the epoxy not eating it up was a good feature.Glue all those together.Then smooth it out and put it on my new rotisserie. Figured I was gonna be wrapping the burlap around the mold, so being able to spin it was gonna make life easier.One nice thing about composites is there is quite a lot you can do with design since the material conforms. Only having a month and a half to get this done though, I decided to keep it simple. Chamfer the corners because sharp corners are the mortal enemy of hand layups.And I decided to glue some small acrylic squares onto the mold to give it a bit of flair.Next up, the layup!
  8. I know right? Back so soon? But this year for the World Series, Cooler Master added a new category for best use of reusable materials. Which means, "– For this a large proportion of the build must be made from natural, bio or recycled material/items." I thought it was perfect timing because I had been mulling a case idea that fit perfectly into this.The general idea:A natural fiber composite case. While working on Carbon, I came across some stuff on natural fiber composites. Not as strong as carbon fiber(bout half as strong if I recall), but it was a really cool look; and being a renewable resource, something that I thought had a bright future. So I put the idea on the back burner because I was too far along on Carbon to change things out. Skip ahead to the middle of October when I was finishing Carbon, and there was just enough time that I might be able to knock out a natural fiber case before the December deadline.The hardware:Since this is a last minute personal build and the category we're shooting for is "natural, bio or recycled materials/items", why not use some recycled hardware?CPU: Intel i5 9600KMB: MSI MPG Z390 GAMING PRO CARBONRAM: 16GB HyperX Predator DDR4GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070PSU: Silverstone SX700-LPTStorage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB and 2TB NVME drivesFans: 3 Cooler Master MasterFan MF120 Halo and a random CM case fan I had laying around.CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black EditionYep, I did have to buy the new storage and cooler, plus I totally forgot to get a pic of the case fans.Next up, we'll start with the build.
  9. And the final shots. I tried out my Pixel's portrait mode...worked pretty well. Better than me playing with f-stops on a real camera. It's already been to one LAN party and a note to self, lighter wood next time! Thanks for following along! Hope you enjoyed the build or at least learned from my follies!And one more huge thanks to GeForce Garage who helped make this build possible and helped me get my sanding game on point!
  10. Before I get into the little tweaks to make this thing desk worthy for me, I did grab a pic of the pump housing after the chrome paint. If you remember, I said that Killer Chrome does a good impression of chrome on super glossy surfaces, but on textured surfaces, it's a good metallic look.Not flashy but it does match the board very well.And now the little tweaks. First up I was thinking about this build in competitions. It needs a name and a little stronger theme. I decided to cut the name down to Carbon seeing as most of the case is built from carbon materials, be it carbon fiber or the carbon in the wood. And to tie it together better I'm changing up the grills for competition purposes.For me, the tree grills mean a little extra and I think they're cool in my head, but for competing, I'm going with grills based on a graphene lattice. A simple lattice made of carbon atoms. It makes for a simple and more normal looking grill and you don't get much more on point with the Carbon name.But the silk silver PLA wasn't doing it for me, so I printed another set, smoothed them out with primer and went with a black ceramic engine paint. It just has a good sheen to it and now the spheres really show up.The next tweak was a breeze. Literally. It's fans.I was proud of my cheapy ring fan find, and they were pretty quiet too, but the LEDs were just too much in the case. So I went with one of my favs, the Noctua Redux.Granted they're better looking than the browns, but the frame color just looks off in the case. Since I had luck with the Killer Chrome before, I decided to try my luck again.And they came out with a sharp cast metal look that I really like!Since I was getting close to wrapping the case up and everything was working, I went ahead and dropped my drives in. A 512GB and a 2TB for the m.2 drives and an 8TB spin drive.It's definitely much calmer on the inside now. Matches the outside of the case better too!One thing that was bugging me though was the lack of light coming from the 24 pin cable. In my original design, I staggered the wires to keep the cable tight, but that wound up blocking all the lighting. So back to the drawing board.This time around, I went with an open, snap in design. I'm not feeding all those wires through again!But the closed combs bit me in the butt again trying to change them out. Not only was it a pain to get the wires in, but it was also a pain getting them out. I wound up cutting the combs off.It's a bit of a different look, but they work and I don't have to pull pins from a connector to add more combs if I want.As for the 24 pin, it wound up about the same overall size.And now I get a bit of light peeking through.I think that's all the changes I had for the build. I'm pretty satisfied with the final product so all that's left are some final shots which will be coming soon.Thanks for sticking around and also thanks to GeForce Garage for going along with a build that is a little off the beaten path from trendy.
  11. So lets get the boring stuff out of the way so we can get to the cool stuff at the end of this update.Putting parts on the motherboard.I was gonna tape up the CM cooler so that I could paint the pump, but I got to looking at it, and the top pops off. Sweet.Not only did that make it easier to paint, it also gave me a spot to hide the wires so I didn't have to cut them down and put new connectors on.I didn't get a picture of the top after paint, but I painted it with Killer Chrome paint, which does give a good chrome finished on super glossy parts, but on parts with texture, it has a cool metallic look that matched the motherboard. So I went with it. I've got some other parts coming up that I painted with it, so you can see how it looks.Some things are coming together.I was ready to mount my switches but I needed to lengthen the wires and sleeve them with the reflective paracord I went with.I was gonna epoxy them down, but there was no real good way to hold them in place while it cured, so I used super glue. Hey, it works!And the wires ran right through my nice little inset on the bottom of the tub.Next up are some fans. Can I just say, WHAT THE :) IS UP WITH FAN PRICES??? $30 a fan and nothing was what I was looking for.With a bit of hunting I did find these and I like the look. Just a simple LED ring, one color, with the LEDs tied into the fan power so no extra wires. Almost perfect. Granted the LEDs will dim with the fan speed, but I can work with that.And 5 of them...$27. I got all I needed and an extra fan for less than one LED fan. Now I will let you in on a secret, I did change the fans out later for more expensive units(still not $30 a pop though). Not because they didn't work, but in this case with all the reflections, it got super busy so I went with non-LED fans.But getting down from my soapbox...one pair of fans got wired together for mounting on the AIO, the other pair, I sleeved the wires to run them behind the mb to their own fan headers. I mean, I've got like 4 extra headers, might as well use them.And with most of the hardware in the case. Looks pretty solid.While I was doing all this plugging things together, I decided to try something different on the fan grills. I like the look, but the foil wasn't the cleanest way. I debated going with a painted finish, but since I would have to print another set to paint anyways, I tried a silver silk PLA on the print. I think it came out pretty good for no finish work.Less sparkle, but way cleaner. I was really impressed.I was debating on putting the wiring in this update, but I'm trying to catch you all up, so here we go with what I think is the coolest bit.It starts simple enough. Sleeving my wires with paracord. I used a reflective paracord cause it was a simple pattern that went well with the build, but part of me was hoping that it would add some sparkle.I hate using cable combs, as some people might know, but since the wires were just going to be hanging out in the open and I planned on them being a feature, I figured I should round up some combs. Round being the key word there.3d printed with the same silver silk PLA as the grills, they have a nice metallic look.I didn't give myself enough room to slip the wires through easily, but I managed to mangle my fingers getting them in the combs. Are they combs if they're round???With the round form, it took a few more combs per cable than normal to keep it all in check. It all looked really cool till I had to put the other connector on. Silverstone is a one to one, so the other connector flops over. It took a few tries to make it look like something, but I wound up weaving them back across each other to make it work.Lets just say the 8 pins were a joy compared to the 24 pin.Although I like the fact that the round combs are different, there was another reason for making round cables.Those are LEDs and 4mm side lighting fiber optic cable. It looked cool on the website so I thought I'd try to put it to good use. Just a warning, avoid Adafruit if you value your wallet.In every comb, there is a middle hole just for the fiber optic so I can run it down the center of the cable. It winds up being invisible.Until...The LED's do require a bit of infrastructure so I built a holder for them that includes a spot to hold the wiring.It just sticks to the back of the PSU and plugs into on of the extra peripheral connectors. The tape is to mark the bit of fiber optic that I need to cover up with heat shrink otherwise that open bit would drown everything else out in the case.And the full set of cables. The 24 could have used some extra space to shine light through, but it's already bulky enough. The 8 pins are just about the perfect spacing though.And of course I had to try it out in the case. Ignore the multiple colors on the LEDs, this is before I could go in and set it all up.See what I mean about busy with those fans? But I think the cables look awesome! Like they're glowing! I ran all the wires long so they could meander around the case and be a feature. The best way I can describe the look I was going for is a high tech interpretation of the branching of a bristle cone pine. You know the super old trees with the windswept branches? I just didn't want the cables running straight to the components. It would have been boring.Thanks for following along! Next time I'll start all the tweaking that I'm going to do. Normally I have to hurry and finish for a deadline. This time around I can take a minute to tweak things and change stuff that doesn't quite work. Such a luxury!And thanks to Geforce Garage who had no idea that a main feature of this case would be...wires.
  12. As you can tell by the last pic I posted, I 3d printed some trees. You might ask yourself, "Why did he print some trees?" A totally valid question. Well...This build is sort of themed around trees and carbon. Maybe not overtly themed(yet) but it's been in the back of my head during the build. Wood panels, carbon fiber tub, so I wanted something to be the bow that sort of tied it together. And since I needed grills for some airflow, we printed some trees.And you might ask, "Why do you have a view from the top and one from the side?" Also a good question.And the answer is, in my head, that seemed cool. If you look at the front of the case, you get a side on view of a tree, from the top of the case, you get a top down view. Sort of like if you were to have a tree in the case and project the views to the acrylic panel these are going into. I'm weird, but it works for me.The next question is most likely, "What are those two bumps on the side profile?" Well, that is a little personal bit I put in for me. Just before I started working on these, I had to put my 16 yr old lab down. I thought it would be nice to add a little reminder of her into the build, since this is a personal rig. Now it's very personal. The silhouettes are for her and her brother, who she's buried next to under a tree on my property.And now I have something in my eye, I swear.There was a whole process of finding pictures for the shape, fixing them in an editor, converting them to .stl and taking them into fusion. Needless to say, they ended up on the printer. And like most printed parts, they are a bit rough. Some because of the printer, some because of the design. To clean up the prints and hide my sins, I decided to silver foil them to match the foil I used in the carbon fiber.Now all I need to do is put them in the acrylic panel. Break out the power tools!I cut the acrylic a little tight and filed and sanded till I got a good friction fit with the grills. I didn't want to have to add brackets or mounts or glues that would mess up the finish or look, and I also wanted the option to change them out in the future. Now the case can breathe a bit better. I wanted them just for general airflow, but I did place them so that the front grill would give the PSU somewhere to pull air from and the top grill is over the GPU fan, which I think is an exhaust???While I was playing around with Fusion and the printer, I decided to knock out a handle/latch for the acrylic panel. Something to open it without getting a bunch of oily fingerprints all over the acrylic and kind of hold it in place. Not that I expect it to really fly up at any time.To mount it to the acrylic, I decided on screws. Adhesives would have worked but screws would allow me to change it out if I ever wanted to. For the mounts in the handle, I used push in inserts and epoxied them in.And handle!Thanks for following along. Next update will be generic putting things together I think. Not exciting, but you kinda gotta do it.Thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring this build!
  13. Now to take care of that giant open section in the middle of the case, and I'm gonna start with this.Just your standard smoked acrylic, but I did have them cut it to size and round and polish the edges. A bit extra in cost, but it pays for itself in the labor I saved. Plus I'd probably mess up the first one polishing the edges.The plan is to mount it to the carbon fiber tub with a hinge giving me a door to access everything.This is why I made my GPU bracket so big and ran it to the top of the case. I wanted something extra to support the hinge and not stress the carbon fiber.So first I cut a pretty standard hinge I had left over from another project and got it mounted to my acrylic.And then mounted that to the case. I know, rocket science.I had wanted to mount the hinge on the back side of the back panel, but had to settle with mounting it to the inside to get enough clearance for the screws. Not a big thing, but if I had to do it again, I might try a different hinge style.That was all simple enough, now to try and ruin a $100 piece of acrylic. Let's bend it.I had brainstormed a bunch of different ways to try this in order to make sure the bend came out as well as possible. Like cutting a mold out of fiber board or hot gluing a thin piece of sheet aluminum to the case to make sure the acrylic didn't sag. In the end I just went for it straight up.I got a bit of sag in the middle of the bend, but an acceptable amount. Nothing that ruins the look.Only a couple of things left to finish the acrylic. One is to cut off the bottom edge so that it matches the case. The others I'll get to later.I wanted to try something a bit different for the power and reset buttons so I did a little hunting on Amazon and some electronics sites...and couldn't find anything that I liked. Figures. So I bought a couple of styles that I thought I might be able to make work to see what I could come up with.I was basically looking for these style of buttons, but with the wire coming out the bottom. No luck. And yes, that's just a standard pcb mounting momentary switch in a housing. I could have made a new housing but I decided to just chop these up.I'll mount them so the cut is in the back and no one will be the wiser. Except for you all and you're not gonna tell anyone...right?With that bit of prep done, I needed to get the final finish on the carbon tub.First thought was clear coat, and boy was that the wrong thought.It was great for the outside of the tub, but the inside had way more pin holes than I had imagined. You can kinda see the rough finish in the reflection of the PSU bracket on the side panel. That should be glass smooth or damn close.So, there was a lot more sanding and a few applications of epoxy to seal up the inside of the case. Yes, it sucked and was a pain in the :). Especially trying to keep from messing up the outside finish and making more work for myself.Once that mess sanded out, I tried the clear coat again.It turned out much better this time around. The reflections of everything make it almost too busy now.Remember those switches, I'm gonna go ahead and pop some holes in the PSU bracket so I can mount those later. That reflection is sooooo much better.Thanks for following along, next time I'll be growing some trees on my 3d printer.Thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring a level of sanding that I hope to never repeat.
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