As promised..Pics of the new rig.

[Jasmania]

I finally got around to taking some jpegs of my new rig. As I've collected comic books for the last 30 years, I decided to go with a Batman theme. I haven't started to cut the box yet, so what you see here is still the first stage. So far I've added new lighting, fans, DVD, CD-RW & floppy drive aluminum covers, did some etching on the front panels and took the LED panel on the front of the box apart and re-worked it to give a cleaner appearance. There was an extra plex panel with white lines running across the display that I cut out.
The Bat fan grille was added in the Q Window and I took a second 80mm Bat fan grille and spent 5 minutes with a bench grinder to get the Bat symbol attached to the front of the LED display. The Bat is hinged and can be lifted to read the time & temp display on the LED. The Bat symbol is also etched on the aluminum panels that are cover by plex over the un-used drive bays. Future mods will include a tribute to Frank Miller's version of Batman on the other side panel.

Once again, here are my specs-
P4 2.4C overclocked to 3.12Ghz
Asus P4P800 deluxe mobo
2 GB of OCZ dual channel PC3200 DDR RAM
Sapphire 256mg Radeon 9800 Pro with an Arctic Silent VGA Cooler replacing the stock fan & heatsink.
Two 160gb hard drives, each with a Vantec Dual Fan HDD Cooler installed.
SoundBlaster Audio
Skyhawk Jupiter aluminum case w/ a 500 watt PS, front LED display, front USB, Firewire ports, Q-Window side panel & cold cathode lighting & fans.

The big silver box in the upper right hand corner of some of the pics is an 80mm CPU cooler vent fan that is postioned over the mobo and pulls the air from the CPU fan & heatsink and exhausts it directly out the back of the case. Same with the Arctic VGA Cooler on the Radeon 9800 Pro. Helps to keep the box nice & cool, even when both the CPU & graphics card are overclocked.

I will post new pics as I get farther along with the cosmetic mods.
Heres to the joy of building your own box!! :D

[Glockstar]

So far I've added new lighting, fans, DVD, CD-RW & floppy drive aluminum covers, did some etching on the front panels and took the LED panel on the front of the box apart and re-worked it to give a cleaner appearance.

The big silver box in the upper right hand corner of some of the pics is an 80mm CPU cooler vent fan that is postioned over the mobo and pulls the air from the CPU fan & heatsink and exhausts it directly out the back of the case. Same with the Arctic VGA Cooler on the Radeon 9800 Pro. Helps to keep the box nice & cool, even when both the CPU & graphics card are overclocked.


Well, I couldn't get the pics "to work". :(

But damn, with all those fans I just know your PC sounds like a 747 taking off! :p
What?!? I said... I JUST KNOW YOUR PC SOUNDS LIKE A 747 TAKING OFF!!! WHAT?!? I... never mind.

[Renzatic Gear]

SOUND DAMPENERS, NOOBZOR! OMG!

How much did the Arctic VGA Cooler cost, Jas? I've noticed that the stock cooling isn't exactly the best you can get on my 9800 Pro (same brand and make as yours, cept 128 meg). I've been doing some reading on which one is the best, and I've been leaning towards a Zalmans, but yours looks to be a bit slicker.

Oh yeah, really nice setup by the way. I'm gonna be getting a new case once I upgrade to an XP 3000 and get an Nforce 2 mobo. So far I've been leaning towards an aluminium case, but I've been thinking about going a bit far and seeing if I can find a way to install a mobo inside of a patio grill (I'm being serious here).

http://users.chartertn.net/greymatt/grill.jpg

Do you have any idea how cool that'd be? I could do so much with that.

[Jasmania]

Well, I couldn't get the pics "to work". :(

But damn, with all those fans I just know your PC sounds like a 747 taking off! :p
What?!? I said... I JUST KNOW YOUR PC SOUNDS LIKE A 747 TAKING OFF!!! WHAT?!? I... never mind.
Thats weird..I just clicked on the attachments and the got the "save to disk or open file" menu. When I clicked open, there was the jpeg.

(Sorry..I don't know how to load the pics so that they all show up in the post without opening an attachment. Admin....Any help???)

As for the fan noise, I SAID THE FAN NOISE!!!, LOL, I don't think it's too bad. The Arctic VGA Cooler has an external switch that allows you to run it on high or low settings. On low its almost completely silent and on high its about the same noise level as the stock fan. The HDD cooler fans don't make any evident noise. The power supply fans, side window fan and CPU cooler fan you can definitely hear. I have always added extra cooling fans to every computer that I've built, ( case fans, slot fans... you name it ), so I may just be conditioned to a louder than normal computer. Also I usually use headphones while gaming or listen to CDs while surfing or doing data work so the noise isn't an issue for me. The important thing is that the inside of the box isn't smoking and all the components are happy. That, my friend, is the key to successful overclocking!!

[Renzatic Gear]

Or you can go with water or freon based cooling and avoid the noise and fans altogether...something I'm not nearly ballsy enough to do just yet.

Oh, and if you want your pics to display in the body of your message you'll have to have some webspace to upload your pics to and use img html tags.

[Jasmania]

SOUND DAMPENERS, NOOBZOR! OMG!

How much did the Arctic VGA Cooler cost, Jas? I've noticed that the stock cooling isn't exactly the best you can get on my 9800 Pro (same brand and make as yours, cept 128 meg). I've been doing some reading on which one is the best, and I've been leaning towards a Zalmans, but yours looks to be a bit slicker.

Oh yeah, really nice setup by the way. I'm gonna be getting a new case once I upgrade to an XP 3000 and get an Nforce 2 mobo. So far I've been leaning towards an aluminium case, but I've been thinking about going a bit far and seeing if I can find a way to install a mobo inside of a patio grill (I'm being serious here).

http://users.chartertn.net/greymatt/grill.jpg

Do you have any idea how cool that'd be? I could do so much with that.
I will try to find a link to this great mod site for you. The guys on this site have put computers in just about anything you can think of. Some of them are amazing. I got the VGA cooler on Ebay, new-in retail packaging for $10.99. It installed like a dream and works great. Make sure you get a Revision 2 model if you want to use it on a Radeon card. All the reviews on this baby are good to great. Do a Froogle and I'm sure you can get a good deal. The data I saw showed that this worked as well, if not better, than the Zalman heatpipe setup. It's also cheaper and easier to install.

This isn't the link I first mentioned, but this Wired mag article has some fun mods.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.10/makeover.html
When I find the site I will post another link to it.

[Glockstar]

http://users.chartertn.net/greymatt/grill.jpg

Do you have any idea how cool that'd be? I could do so much with that.

The kid ain't right.