Posts by James Morris4

The only thing I can think of, without even sketching it out, is just asking: "Why mess with nature in the first place?" 😁
Since warm air rises, it would probably be better to blow the air from underneath, letting it heat up as it travels upward.

Honestly, I think you did a great job here. That case looks killer, and it was a smart move to ditch the cage to make room for an extra fan. 👍
How does an HDD even fit in those 5.25" bays if you actually put one in there?

Yeah, that's what we call overclocking xD
Anyway, do you even realize how old this card is? You aren't going to get anything out of it, except maybe a 5% bump in performance on ancient games. It's a weak card, honestly kind of a meme at this point—just an outdated GPU running Shader 1.4. It's a no-go.

The GPU is running at 4890 with a Scythe Musashi, while the CPU is at X3 720 using a Scythe ninja 2.

Finally finished. Everything is dry and all connected inside. It’s definitely an improvement over how it was, though I guess it's still not quite perfect yet.
The main goal was to clear out the space in front of the vents so no wires would block anything.
In this photo, you can see the area under the GPU and in front of the 12cm front fan. Now, no wires are directly obstructing the airflow, whereas before it was just a mess of two fan cables, two 12V PSU cables, the GPU fan cable, and a SATA cable.
In this photo, you can see the space behind the CPU fan (behind it, if we're looking at the direction the air blows forward) and the HDD cage. Absolutely no wires are in front of that fan now; previously, there were ATX cables, an IDE cable, and the HDD power cable right there.

It isn't exactly a work of art, this photo, and the lighting wasn't great either, but you can tell it looks better than before. Imagine this same shot with 528 wires cluttering the foreground—that's how it used to be.

I'll pick this back up after the holidays. I need to drill a hole for a top fan (I might try some DIY soldering there), another hole for cable management, and a fresh coat of paint—thinking of going with a red and black theme.

My case is currently drying out. I went over a few spots again this morning. There was some discoloration in certain areas, but things are looking better now.

Christian Mendoza60 said:Guys, I'm struggling with a problem. I need to drill a hole in my case—not through the side panel, but through the aluminum mounting plate where the motherboard screws in. I need a hole about 2.5cm wide by 1cm deep. What should I use to drill this so it looks decent?

I actually just did this today.
Here is how I handled it: first, I marked the square area I needed to cut out using a regular pencil.
After that (and make sure you double-check your marks at least 8 times), take a nail and a hammer and make small indentations at the corners—slightly inward from the actual edge—so the drill bit doesn't slip. I made three little divots per corner because I planned to drill three holes so the saw blade (just the blade, obviously) could pass through easily.
Then I just sawed it by hand. It makes for a straight, clean cut without any wobbles. It’s slow going, but it's definitely better than trying to use an angle grinder or something similar; I tried that before and it was xD
Here is a quick sketch showing where to make those indentations so the drill stays steady:
___________
|' ' ' '|
|' '|
| |
| |
|. .|
|.. ..|
-------------
Does that make sense? The dots (and dashes xD) show the spots where you'll make the indentations and where you'll drill. Depending on which direction you start cutting, you might not actually need three holes per corner, but that's my method.

Once you're done, the edges will be sharp, but a standard metal file will smooth them right out.

Instead of hand-sawing, I previously tried making the cut with an angle grinder, but it ended up crooked and messy, leaving black burn marks on one section (the paint job fixed that later).

I'll post some photos tomorrow of the cutting and painting process. I'm painting it black using some metal spray paint and a basic brush. The paint didn't grab onto the surface very well at first; I probably should have used a primer first. For now, the first coat is drying, and I'll get back to it tomorrow morning.

EDIT: One more question regarding wire sleeving. Where can I find some here in the US? Is it worth buying a kit from MDPC-X, or does that kind of stuff come pre-installed like on Alienware laptops? I looked at the kits MDPC-X offers, and for about $100 I can get all the necessary sleeves, heat shrink, and shipping. Besides that, would I need any other tools?

Zachary Wilson30, what did you use to paint the case? Was it automotive paint or something else?

placidcanyon2 said:...flexericom/dremelom...

Alright, great. It would have been even better if I actually knew what that was. 😕 😁
I'm definitely no expert; I usually just settle for asking things like, "Hey man, do you know how we could..." or "Grandpa, do you happen to have that one thing..." xD

Edit: Okay, Google helped me out.

Timothy Newman14 said:If you want to cut that, just grab a jigsaw and get to work.🙂

Is there seriously nothing else anyone wants to add? lol

Alright, I've got a mid-tower case, a Corsair. Specifically, this model.
Inside, I have the motherboard, CPU, GPU, one HDD, an optical drive, a Cooler Master Hyper 212 on the CPU, a Miyamoto Musashi on the GPU, one 12cm fan in the front, and one 9cm fan on the left side (looking from the front). All in all, there are a lot of wires; the PSU is a Xilence RedWing 580, which isn't modular, so there are cables flying everywhere. I've tried to manage the wiring as best I can by taping them to the walls and tucking them away, but it still looks pretty messy.
I've looked at some guides on how to tidy up cables, but my biggest issue right now is that the motherboard tray extends across the entire right side of the case (again, looking from the front), meaning I can't tuck the wires anywhere without them being visible.

What I want to do is measure the space to the right of the motherboard and drill a hole there so I can route the wires behind the tray. How feasible is this? What kind of tools would I need? I assume the case is aluminum.

Here's a photo to clarify:


If we assume the blue lines mark the edges of the motherboard, then I would cut out the section marked in red. Obviously, it would look cleaner than this sketch. I'm not using the vent area because it's impractical for me, and please ignore the dust and the wires—I was running some experiments while my parents were out xD

Do you have any other advice? Anything else I should keep in mind?

quietcyclist89 said:It won't work for me in Raiders, someone help please :P

I guess a new build won't actually help that much. World of Warcraft is just so overoptimized that you'll probably still deal with stuttering, though maybe slightly less. Don't get your hopes up. I have a pretty solid rig myself, and even then, I run into lag quite often during 40-man raids.

I suppose that Cooler Master should be able to handle an NVIDIA GeForce GTX series. At least, that's what this link suggests.
😁

Maybe you could take a quick look at the computer itself, or check the PC specs if you have them handy.
All those X2 cards pull a massive amount of power just to run, so I wouldn't recommend picking one up unless you're sure you have enough wattage and amperage to handle it.

What kind of power supply are you running?

I suppose so.
I've tested quite a few external hard drives, and they all seem to hit the same speed limits.
To be honest, I haven't really come across any flash drive, hard drive, or other storage device that actually manages to max out USB 2.0 speeds before.

Not necessarily. I think it’s fine.

I don't have anything against the 4650; it's a decent enough card for an HTPC setup, but if you're planning on actually gaming, you probably won't get very far with it. I'd personally go for the 4670 just for the extra performance.

Regarding Nvidia's performance in gaming... I suppose Nvidia has been performing slightly better than ATI lately, so they can afford the massive advertising budget. If you want to figure out which card is actually superior, it’s best to just look at raw brute force performance in actual games rather than comparing memory or clock speeds and all that stuff.
ATI has had DirectX 10.1 for quite a while now, whereas Nvidia doesn't have it—not even in the same generation as ATI. DirectX 10.1 mostly just offers slightly better performance over DirectX 10; beyond that, there isn't much significant difference. The GeForce 9 series is roughly on par with the Radeon HD 3000 series.
The fact that you're running DDR2 on your PC doesn't really have anything to do with the video card's memory.
The 4670 provides somewhat limiting gameplay (though that depends heavily on the resolution, I guess), and it's probably even worse on a 4650.😁
What resolution are you even using?
CUDA doesn't mean much for your gaming experience, and PhysX just gives you things like glass shards staying on the floor after a window breaks, or maybe more realistic fabric physics—basically just some eye-candy related to physics. It's not a huge deal. Some games support PhysX, while others use Havok or other tech that doesn't get nearly as much hype. Personally, PhysX doesn't mean much to me; I've played games with PhysX enabled and I've played them without it, and in my opinion, the experience is pretty much the same.

I’d probably lean toward the 4650, since it is from a newer generation. Have you considered looking at something a bit more powerful, like a 4670?