DIY Steam Machine aka Blackbox

December 20th, 2013 | Posted by tonyscha in Technology - (2 Comments)

Alright, so while I love the title steam machine, its not a steam machine from valve, its more like a Windows machine that runs Steam Big Picture.

Lets start off with the parts list

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2lc0n

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  $129.99
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard $49.99
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory $52.99
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5″ Solid State Disk $79.99
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $39.99
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card $199.99
Case: Lian-Li PC-V351B MicroATX Desktop Case $89.99
Power Supply: Antec TruePower Classic 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  $49.99
Total: $692.92 (post rebate prices)

 

All the parts

20131216_203630

Side view did my best to organize the cables

20131219_201244

Ah video card!

20131219_201213

Hard to see, but I had to cut part of the case so the video card heat pipes could fit.

20131219_201149

Motherboard came this way, the northbridge heatsink was not latched down, I found the clip and spring, and attached it. No problems so far.

20131216_205302

Final product

20131220_180649

3d Mark Benchmark

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1893385

 

 

 

Old – Aluminum Case Mod

March 14th, 2010 | Posted by tonyscha in Personal | Technology - (0 Comments)

Here was my other case mod I did back in the day. This was from 2005 I believe. I will add my comments I originally had 😛

The place i bought the case from
http://dealsonic.com/skmssialatxm.html <—- Dead Link

The manufacture website http://www.skyhawkusa.com <—– Dead Link

This is the case after i took it apart, and kind of put it back together so i
could get a picture


This is the only plastic pieces on this case are the two on the left, and they are covered up.



I wanted to mount an 120 mm fan like I ordered, this will have to change, maybe a 92mm fan because 120mm will not fit.

I am going to mount a 120 mm fan on the front though. This will require a lot of cutting and gluing of some sort, more to come on this when i get around to it.


The front piece are even aluminum

And at last, the slide out motherboard tray.

I am going to put a blow hole on the top.

This is a picture of the back were i am going to make the fan part of the case.
Going to cut the inside part, and leave the outside lip.


This is how the fan will sit in the back

Drawing is fun… The front of the case needs some cutting to make a 120 mm fan fit. I dont have to cut the front plastic piece because the fan will be on the back side, but to get maximum air flow i will cut it.

Just showing how the front fan will be, but it will be on the back side.

BLURRRRRRRRY opps, well i see pets in pictures so I took a picture of my fish, and my new XP-90 that has an Panasonic Pofolio fan.

and at last the cheap filter and grill guard for the top blowhole.

ANOTHER UPDATE Dremel time !! Here is my front mounted fan after i cut the front


The fan on the back was tough to fit, i need to cut the frame as i said before. Here you can see it sitting in the frame on the left side.

I cut the 3.5inch frame that holds the Hard Drives and the Floppy. I needed the room so the fan could blow some air. I was going to some how remount it but I decided that it doesn’t need it.

Here i jimmy rigged a power supply and hooked up the fans to kind of see what it will look like after it all set to go


This left to do

1) Cut blow hole on top of case, i was practicing with Dremel on the insides first.
2) Get some money and order the rest of the computer components HEHE 😀

Here is a picture of all three of the fans mounted

The top one with its grill guard, i wasnt sure how it would look, but doesn’t look to bad.

Here is how i marked it off on the inside of the top of the case…. if that make any sense. Pretty much looked at different sizes of power supplies and looked at the depths on them, i didnt look to hard, but the biggest i seen was 180mm. So i made the fan 180mm from the back of the case, then just centered it from side to side. I checked with an extra cd-rom and i wont be able to put it on the top bay but thats ok, i was thinking about putting a fan controller there.

This picture you can see i mounted a fan on the bottom of the case to blow air up.


My new Desktop

March 11th, 2010 | Posted by tonyscha in Personal | Technology - (0 Comments)

I built a new computer over the last week or so. I was looking for something to replace an old used desktop I bought for $20 dollars about 2 years ago. It specs are
Gateway, Intel P4 2.2ghz, 1 Gig of mem, 120 Gb HD, Stock Power Supply with Dead Fan, 120 MM fan keep the PS cool and a x800 ATI video card. The computer was getting very sluggish but severed its purpose.

I was in the market for a $500 dollar Desktop / Minor gaming PC. After a little research, I came up with the following setup.

Motherboard – BIOSTAR A785G3 ~$60
OCZ Platinum 2GB DDR3 1333 ~$50 ( after rebate)
AMD Athlon II X3 435 Rana 2.9GHz ~$75
WD 1TB ~$75 (bought it from dell)
Antec Case/ 500Watt PS ~$100 ( on sale)
DVD-Rom ~$20
ATI Radeon HD 4850 ~$110
Windows 7 from School MSDNAA = Free!!
Total ~$490

It was fun to go ahead and build another computer, been a while since I had the chance. If I wanted to make this a more dedicated gaming pc, I could of bought a smaller hard drive and cheaper case / power supply, and spent a little more money on the graphics card. The CPU does well for the price point. It was hard to decide on where to save and where to spend more money with this kind of price range.