Guess what?

[clocker]

Yeah, yeah...patience is a virtue and all that.

[Virtualbody1234]

Yeah but get a move on!

[clocker]

I'm trying, believe me.

It was sooo nice to be back on my own mouse and keyboard with a system that is as responsive and quick as Sprock has become.

I miss her already.

[clocker]

Long time, no see, folks.
Much has been happening.
Outside of a pressing family matter (all's well that ends well, thank you) that distracted me for a few days, I still had the delay of the replacement waterblock to deal with.
In typical fashion I decided to use the down time (both literal and figurative) to mod the mod and upgrade the upgrade.

In the short time Sprocket was alive last week I noticed a few shortcomings that needed to be addressed.
Most pressing was the total failure of the reservoir to entrap air. This was not entirely unexpected but I had hoped the cute little w00tan rez would work but with my high flow loop it just didn't.
So I got this instead. We'll see if their advertising hype is true or not.
Also arriving in the mail is more Patriot RAM. Inspired by the early overclocking success of the Opteron I decided to go for the gusto again (this will be my third attempt at running high-performance 1GB sticks).
The final new upgrade is the readdition of a NB waterblock, missing from the latest loop, but very effective in previous incarnations.
Of course, my old Maze block had been bundled into a sale of other stuff so I have the new Swiftech MCW30 on the way. I hope it proves as good as the old DD block which kept my NB around 25-27C before. Running with just a HSF this time 'round, Sprocket was in the mid to high 30's, actually hotter than the video card was.
Weird.

On the modding side of things I decided to rip the whole chassis down to touch up damage to the paint from the rigors of assembly and also to cut the floor away to match the radiator fans.
Previously the rad has been mounted to a Plexi subfloor raised above the stock CM floorgrill. Although this seemed to work OK, I thought I could improve the whole setup by dispensing with the false floor and fully opening up the grill to allow for optimal breathing.
Like so...

There are a couple of side benefits to this which hopefully will become apparent later.
Right now I'm at a bit of an impass...need to let the paint dry overnight and have a few more pieces to make before reassembly commences.
As soon as the waterblocks arrive (please Jeebus, by Saturday at the latest!) we'll start this all over again.

[clocker]

Minor pictoral update today- lots has gotten done but most of it is not installed yet.
The rad is installed and it fits beautifully. It's now possible to remove the mobo tray without the radiator getting in the way. I also decided to refit the wheels, raising the chassis further above the desk to make sure the fans aren't starved for air...

These 140mm fans are also LED lit and I hope the blue glow is not too distracting.

I took a somewhat sideways jaunt and remounted the power switch. The logic behind this will be obvious later but the main reason was just to see if it could be done. Naturally, it was much more involved than I thought it would be but everything worked out in the end...

The reset button, along with the clear CMOS switch will be mounted on the backplane, accessable without opening the case but safely out of harm's way.

Two other big changes occured yesterday- a bundled sale of my unused LL v2000 case came to fruition and I got yet another Raptor.
Unfortunately, part of the case sale includes the Antec Neopower PSU that I've been using so I'm going to have to refit (and majorly rewire) the Seasonic 600w into the Stacker. This time I'm going to try and do it right...sleeving and the whole nine yards of custom fitting the loom...which will probably take an entire day to complete.

The new Raptor (another 74GB) was complete happenstance.
I saw an ad for it and the seller was desperate for cash so we worked out a trade...my 36GB unit plus $50 for the 74GB drive.
I decided I really missed the snappy response that RAID0 provides so the two big Raptors will be set up RAIDed and I'm going to toss the 120GB Seagate back in also. Unfortunately they will all have to fit in the same space previously occupied by just two drives so active cooling is a must. I still have two more 140mm fans I can use but the whole front bezel has to be redone to accomodate them and I'm also going to reinstall the two Sunbeam rheobus controllers to manage all the fannage.
Much of this work is already done but cannot be installed until the waterpump is in place (it is also being slightly relocated but can still use the mount I made before...I think).

So, here I sit...mostly done (yeah, right ), just waiting on the final pieces of the puzzle to arrive. The RAM and reservoir are in hand and I'm waiting on the new HDD and the NB and GPU waterblocks.
If I can get all the pre-prep done, once these things show up it should only take a day or so to finish.

Maybe.

[Snee]

Do you use some silicon dampener/gasket-thingies or something (ie: Something like this) when you mount your fans?

I dunno' if they are very necessary or useful, but I'm using them on three of my fans

[S!X]

Do you use some silicon dampener/gasket-thingies or something (ie: Something like this) when you mount your fans?

I dunno' if they are very necessary or useful, but I'm using them on three of my fans

There pretty much useless imo.

[Snee]

Do you use some silicon dampener/gasket-thingies or something (ie: Something like this) when you mount your fans?

I dunno' if they are very necessary or useful, but I'm using them on three of my fans

There pretty much useless imo.

I dunno', man.

I checked some reviews after I posted that, and the consensus seems to be that they help.

Can't say I noticed any change tho' I Just got them to protect my paint-job when I get around to sorting that out.

[clocker]

I think it would depend on the PSU and fans...none of my fans spin up fast enough to really cause vibration so the isolators would be useless.
With all five 140mm fans and three 120's going, the loudest sound in the case is HDD seek noises.
The turbine fans are effectively silent.

[Snee]

That'd sort of explain why I noticed no change, I've got fairly silent fans as well, except for the one on the graphics card, and I've got no dampener on that one.