LANpak - Scratch Build

[Insolent Gnome]

Thanks!

[Insolent Gnome]

Time to start on finishing touches.

I cleaned up the wiring with some leather cord. This isn't the last bit of wiring clean up for the case, but I needed to get it wrapped up for QuakeCon.



And then I shoehorned all of it into the shell. It was a little precarious balancing everything while getting the radiator mounted.



And hit the power switch...it works!





The green is too much but my board didn't have an LED header so I hooked the green line of the RGB to a fan header. It's not sophisticated and I'll get a better solution, but it works for QC.

And an obligatory "junk in the trunk" shot. There are some things that I'll tackle later but at least now I can throw it in the truck and we can head to QuakeCon.



With my peripherals of course. Headset, mouse, TKL keyboard, 50' of cat-5, and a display cable. It's snug, but it fits.



Thanks for following along and thanks to my sponsors:

[Insolent Gnome]

So back from QuakeCon. 2nd place in the scratch builds.



I was hoping for more, but even while I was there I was noticing things that I wanted to fix.

First on the list was my cheap straps. I ordered a nicer set of straps that were meant as replacement straps for backpack sprayers. They didn't have any cheap metal swivels and had strapping that I could make work. To make them work I needed some tension locks though, so I sacrificed an old hiking pack that I haven't used in a long time for the cause.



Those aren't exactly what I'm looking for because they hook on to a loop, but they'll work. I also have the problem that these locks are 1" and my straps are 1" on the bottom, but 3/4" on the top. I'll keep my eye out for the right ones, but these will get me by for the next LAN in Omaha.

As you can see, the straps are a little bit and have an extra bar, but they do work and won't give out like the metal swivels on the last set.



Next fix was something that I notice at QC that had never caught my eye, but stood out when the inside of the case was lit by the fans in the dark. The lining I used in the basement was perfect, except that you could easily see the edge of it through the window and it looked pretty messy. So pull everything apart...



I bought some 1" gloss black automotive trim to cover the edge of the material.



So much cleaner.



And since this is in the Cooler Master World Series I picked up some CM MasterFan Pro 120 LED fans and Cooler Master's RGB controller so I could get the green I wanted in the fans.





My god, the wiring is a mess. But everything is installed and works and I have a LAN to get to, so cleaning up the wiring can wait....again. At least it all looks good from the front through the window.



One part of the wiring that I did clean up were the switches. I had had them mounted in a box by the GPU, but that really stood out through the window. Plus, the reset button got too hot when I was re-soldering it and didn't work, and they were just a pain to reach. So time for some new buttons.

I soldered up some micro switches and attached them to the frame closer to the back of the case and then ran the wires along the frame to keep them out of the way. They're invisible unless you know they're there and make turning on the rig so much easier. Plus, they both work, bonus!



Now to throw it all back together and head to NETWAR in Omaha to play some games and run a case modding contest!

Along the way, my truck hit 100K miles. I'm not sure if I'm happy or depressed about this.



Thanks for following along and thanks to my sponsors:

[Insolent Gnome]

So one last thing I wanted to do before submitting this build for the CM World Series was to clean up the wire. When the case is closed up you can't tell what's going on behind the scenes, but that just isn't good enough. I wanted the wire handled so it didn't look like a rat's nest. So I started to clean up the fan wiring, which was no small task. 4 fans with power and RGB, and and RGB controler that had it's own mini-connectors with around 18" of cable for the RGB hook up. To make things more difficult, the fans had super thin wiring, not really great for re-pinning or soldering. So what to to, fight these cables to make something decent looking, maybe or swap fans?

I swapped fans. Will I get dinged on it because the rest of the Cooler Master products I have are hard to see in the case? Maybe, but I'm really wanting nicer, uncluttered wire in the back. I went back to the Polaris fans that I was running before since they daisy-chain and now I have one set of cables instead of 8.

Also in a weird twist, they're quieter in this case. Both sets are silent running outside of the case, but once everything is together, it turns into a resonating chamber. The small mechanical noises get magnified A LOT! The Polaris fans seem to be either a bit quieter or at a frequency that doesn't stand out as much, so you don't wind up with as much of an annoying hum while it's running. Granted, at a LAN, you'll never hear it, but I do run it at home too, and it's just enough to be noticable.

But back to the case, the cleaned up wiring. Now down to one line from the RGB controller and no need for a fan splitter.



Also while in Omaha, we did a little looking around and found a camping store between the hotel and the event and they had 3/4" tension locks. No 1" locks, but these are definitely better for the top straps since they're the right size.





Now all that's left are pictures for the contest.



Thanks for following along and thanks to my sponsors:

[Insolent Gnome]

And the final shots.