Luciel

Thought about it but just couldnt get it fast enough and I just wanted to finish it, guaranteed though, It´s going to be in my next project

Thanks guys! Tom1, I wouldn´t even know where to start pricing this mate :S

Hi Everyone, After almost a year since I started the project, it is now Finished. Since October I´ve been adding paint effects, ink effects, done some detail changes, added missing details and essentially obsessed over there damned thing. Following the original idea I did 2 casings, one for the psu and one for the gpus, unfortunately I just wasn´t happy with them, I felt they changed the overall look to much. I never wanted it to look clean as it simply doesn´t fit the post-apocalyptic style so in the end I opted for a rough way around it. The last 4 PSU connectors are bare and inked cabling for the GPUs. I´m sure quite a few of you would´ve proffered casings but I feel this way is what suits the style of the project best. I also pretty much "coated" the whole thing with a mix of inks that took me a month to get right for a more old-n-gritty feel as while I was very happy with how the faux wood effect turned out, I felt it didn´t much the rest of the oxidized copper effects, this slight effect ink helps blend these two together and really make it look like it´s been around for a hundred years. If you compare these final pictures to the previous update pictures you´ll find you can´t exactly point why, but you´ll understand what I mean (or at least I hope you will ) I also realise there´s no SLI bridge, this is simply because I´ve misplaced mine and didn´t want to wait till I ordered a new one to make the final pictures as I didn´t feel it was that important and... I really needed to end this stage of my life. APASF is the project I´ve always wanted to do ever since I started painting and modding and while there are somethings that NOW I may have done differently, I´m extremely happy with the final outcome, I´m also relieved it´s over, it's taken a huge toll on me and in the end, it was more of an obligation and obsession rather than something I enjoyed doing as sad as that may sound. I´d like to thank my sponsors for being so patient with it as it´s taken 6 months more than I originally thought it would and of course for being there with me all the way. Right, without further wait, here is the final shoot of APASF "A Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk Future". Thank you all for reading through this long worklog during what for me has been the hardest project I´ve ever done! Until next time, Luciel

In deed, I was really aiming for that

Little update today This morning I finished the plexy and I have to say, it couldn´t fit any better or tighter. Originally I was debating wether I should screw it or glue it down or simply leave it alone but, considering how tight it fits, it´s not going to vibrate or go anywhere so, it´s perfect, hell it wasn´t easy taking it out again (as I will be painting the wood). And just so you can see how it could look like minus the paint and filters. Hopefully I can play around with the VIA mobo this evening and do the calculations I needed to do as yesterday it was pretty much instant K.O, needed to catch up with sleep! PS: I also aplied the slight smoked tint vynil to the 5mm plexy on the underside (so it´s between both pieces). The guy from the vynil shop did say that I may encounter issues since plastic contracts and expands with heat and then cold (on/off server) but I may get lucky since the temps aren´t that much and it´s between two pieces. I took the risk as it wasn´t expensive and worst comes to worst, I´ll take the vynil off and aply some smoked lacquer instead. Unfortunately I took no pictures and you don´t see it because the plexy´s top layer protection is still on, no sense taking that off until the end to prevent it from getting dirty.

Thanks guys, oh I completely agree with mdf not being the ideal material for mods but as I said in the first post I didn´t want to risk buying good wood and wasting it if things didn´t work out being my first scratch mod and wood mod.

Actually sounds like a very interestin config!

hey guys, just like to clarify that this is not a NAS but a server, the NAS concept came from Tom1´s idea of using FreeNAS as the OS

Definately! As it turns out I had some time today to work on this so, update! My original idea was to fill the "T" with 6mm glass, however I´ve been recommended by several people in that area not to do so because aparently cutting one single glass piece in this shape would not be very sturdy so instead I went with plexy. I have several bits and pieces of it in the workshop but unfortunately non that are 6mm so instead of having to go out and buy a new 6mm piece, I found some 1mm and 5mm so figured I´d cut those two to size and use it instead (no sense to waste decent material!) Have in mind that the final look will have all those wood-colour parts painted so it will all match. Unfortunately I didn´t get my camera back today as I thought I would so, phone pictures again, sorry about that. So first I cut the 1mm to size: And here we go: There´s some sanding needed for a perfect fit though: Perfect! it was a pain to do though, 1mm is somewhat fragile and it´s very easy to over-sand the sides. I also found that I already had one of these cutting tools so no need for the one I bought, I´ll be taking it back tomorrow as this old one works just fine, plus I am fan of bosch for power tools but they are always so expensive. Anyhow, started on the 5mm piece, this is much easier to work with. Just need to do the round borders now and hopefully I´m done with that by tomorrow. The plan is to aply a smoked effect vynil between both pieces as I´m really liking the smoked look, so I will go out and see if I can find some tomorrow. After that, I will paint the parts of the plexy that sit on the standoffs black as opposed to painting the surface of the standoff black in order to get a perfectly smooth look. On a side note, brought up the small via itx pc from the workshop and I´ve started taking it apart and will check if it still works shortly. But it´s definately looking promising! I still have to do some calculations taking in to account the lenght of both motherboards, the psu and the pico psu to make sure I can fit all the backplates properly (i.e. if there´s enough space) in to the back of the desk. Here are the specs: VIA Embedded - VB7001 I´ll update when I make the calculations and check if this thing still lives!

Right so I downloaded it, loaded it into vmware on the server, had a play around with it and while I think it´s fantastic for a NAS, I think I would sooner rather than later find out it limits me, so I think if I don´t find a better solution I could stick with it, but I rather try something else.

Will have a look at it after lunch and get back to you on this

FreeNAS? What is it (aside from the obvious nas software?)

I haven´t decided yet, currently on the server I use W7, but if linux offers me more software raid flexibility I may go with that (either one is fine as I use ubuntu daily for work).

Cheers Tom1!! It´s good to be able to have some time now to visit forums On a side note, while sorting out the workshop I found a little something I had completely forgotten about, a rather old but fully functional via itx system, with a 1ghz via cpu and 1gb of ram, if I remember correctly it´s power needs are rather low, so, I have to make some measurements but if I could also fit this in here and add a switch inside as well, I could use that for overnight downloading, set up rsync between both so when both are on (i.e. in the morning) all downloaded stuff will automatically be copied on to the main server. I´m also debating raid solutions for the main server, considering all drives are of different sizes I´m wondering what I could do, mostly so I don´t see so many drives in windows or linux (haven´t chosen yet what I´ll use) specially since I plan to add even more drives (having 11 sata ports and all), any suggestions are more than welcomed! Jbod came to mind but of course that means if one drive is lost, the whole thing is screwed so... no.

Hi Guys, I´m currently only a couple of days away from finishing APASF (which hasn´t had any updates in months due to work and life in general getting in the way) but that should be done real soon, a lot of more has gone in to it but I´m saving it for one big final update. Anyhow enough on that. This new project has many "new" things for me. 1: It´s the first project I actually plan for an extended period of time. APASF, Fallout Cause SP, PS2 Corset, etc where all simply ideas I had in my head and they just developed as I did the projects. On APASF, having such major modifications to the case I realised how important it was that certain things I should plan out ahead to save me trouble later on when certain things didn´t work out the way I would´ve liked them to. 2: Even though I´ve done quite a few casemods, improved my paint effects skills tenfold and learned a lot, I felt it´s time I did my first scratch build. The reason I had never done one before is merely because I like to have a "canvas" if you will to work on, therefore prefering to do casemods. In this case (no pun intended) however it´s different as the following project is meant for my room, as an extension of my desk and I´ll get in to the details further down the text. That said, I do expect this project to be relatively simply in design, work put in to it and final look, being my first scratch build, I don´t feel comftable overdoing it in design and details as I tend to do with casemods. 3: It´s the first time I do a project which I intend to use myself rather than just doing it for the fun of it (and having my everyday pc on the side) So, a lot of "new" aspects to this project and a lot of potential things that could go wrong but the fact is, this project is essentially an experiment, if I enjoy doing it and would like to improve my skills with wood I wil most definately do more in the future, with the final idea being a wood take on my APASF project on a much larger scale (you would´ve though everyone would be sick of steampunk by now but hey!) Right! Now thats all out of the way... ...let´s start with a bit about the concept of this project. The idea is simple. In my "mancave" I have one desk that´s long enough for my 3 screens and my PC and next to it, on the left, is an extension "desk" or "module" mostly for aesthetical reasons, it fills up the side of the room nicely and adds more space to store stuff in, place crap on top, etc.and next to it there´s another piece that´s only for storage. So, under this "desk-module-thingie" is my bin and my server. It´s one of those servers that we use for media streaming around the house (2 floors with 3 rooms and the lounge with TVs in all of them), downloading over night (our connection is rather crappy at only 3mb, so big downloads happen over night), music streaming and general storage. It´s one of those where we put all the old hard drives that are kind of small for today´s main PCs but still work perfectly and would be a shame not to use them, so for example, there´s a 160Gb in there, a 250, 2x 500 and 1x750Gb. Unfortunately lately the server has been failing, a couple of the sata ports don´t work all the time (the HDDs are fine though), the motherboard´s ethernet stopped working a long time ago, so it has an added pci card for that and in summer it gets very hot due to poor ventilation. Yes I could add more fans or even liquid cooling, but you have to understand it´s a pc with all the old hardware inside that only has a sharing purpose so, spending money on upgrades just to extend it´s life a bit doesn´t seem right. It´s an old M2N ASUS Motherboard with an AMD X2 3400+ and in summer, the poor thing suffers (we get up to 45c on a hot summer day in the south of Spain, so the CPU easilly reaches 70-85c). and the hard drives... wow.... yes. I´ve also never liked the fact of having the server on the floor, it gets very dusty, dirty and generally ugly. But I don´t really have space on the desk plus, it´s kind of ugly so don´t really want it up there. Here´s a picture of the current desk-module-thingie with the server (and bin, of course) under it. The concept of the project is to replace this desk-module-thingie unit with one that will match the desk on the right and storage unit on the left as this one does. This new unit will have the same height, width and depth but the actual "box" will be deeper using all the space between the top and the metal legs (which I will be re-using from the current unit in order to match the style of the rest). The surface will have nothing on it as it will be partial glass/acrylic (depending on what seems like the best idea) and 200mm fans with filters in strategic possitions (one above all the hard drives and the other I haven´t decided yet (as in I know where it will go but not what to put under it). The reason for this fans being on top is because there´s no breathing space on either side of the desk nor the back, and I didn´t want them on the front. Within the "desk-module-thingie" will be the server, that is, same hard drives but new hardware, that´s right, I´ve decided to retire this server for good. By doing this I hope to integrate the server and by doing so, keeping the same style of furniture within my room and adding a stylish surface with the server in it and solving once and for all, it´s heat issues, dust issues, etc. Yes, I know, we´ve all seen a lot of desk mods, and some of them are trully great and amazing, BUT! has anyone ever seen a desk-module-thingie-mod before?! Didn´t think so. Let´s start then. I went out and bought the screws, drill bit and a new tool for my collection, basically some of the stuff I´ll need to do this. As I said before, I´ve actually been planning this for a while and checking out loads of projects from several moders out there, to see how they worked the wood, problems they encountered, etc. By doing some research I encountered my first issue. The fact of how expensive good wood is. Don´t get me wrong, I have no trouble paying whatever I need to pay if it means I´ll be happy with the result, be it hardware, tools, materials, you name it. But! being my first wood experience I figured it would be criminal to get good wood and potentially screw it up and have to get more, and essentially not do it justice, so. I took the desk-module-thingie apart and saw that it was made of plywood, which was surprising as I always though plywood was weak and not sturdy yet this thing is rock-solid, so figured, well, I could do it with plywood as long as I can find something as good or better than this. Went down to my local wood warehouse and in deed, I found some stuff that´s actually a lot better, and they even offered to give it a "wood-look" finish, it also happened to be cheap enough so I went for it. Now, I have some pictures of the wood itself, which I had them cut to the right sizes (obviously, measured everything up weeks ago in preparation for this) but they are in the camera which I don´t have right now (the first picture I put earlier in this thread is done with my phone and so are the other three you will see before this post is over, so I will add the others later on and everything from then on will be done with the camera I normally use. (Future edit: Insert wood pictures here). The front openings I can do (and did) myself, for the switches, optical drive, sound card bay unit and fan controller but the top I really needed a CNC machine to do the grooves nicely, which is where the glass/acrylic will fit on and since I needed to do that, might as well get the CNC machine to also do the fan holes (which are quite specific as you will see). So, went back to the wood place and they did have a CNC machine there, sat down with the computer guy (never thought I´d say that in my life), and we went through the CNC program with the measurements and all that. Now. normally I´m against having someone else do a part, no matter how small, of my project, but I don´t think I had no choice here. Anyhow, I´m really happy on how it turned out, so I put all the pieces of the "box" togueter (no legs yet, obviously), without screws, just to see how it would look so I could show a couple of pictures, so here goes. First, with the back off: And with it on: Now I know it´s obvious I did the front holes myself as they are not perfect, it was weird cutting wood compared to metal which is what I´m used to and I think I may just need to use just a bit of filler in order to get it spotless, but you know, not bad for my first time right? There´s another piece of wood within that structure that you don´t notice but I have to tell you about it because it is important. It´s a fake base. It´s where everything will be mounted on and what not. so you may ask, why a second base for that? Simple. between that base and the real base, there´s about 2cm of empty space, the purpose of that is the following. On the fake base all kinds of holes will be done to pass through cables, connections and all sorts of other stuff that will be stored in that space between the fake base and the real base, for the simple reason of Cleanness, no cables, better air flow, looks muchs nicer, specially since you´re going to be able to see the inside from the top. Of course this makes it somewhat complicated if I need to change a part, add cables whatever once everything is finished, so, in order to that, easilly, the next item in the list is to cut a square of the true base and mount it back on it´s place in the form of a trapdoor. So, you can´t see it but it´s there for when I need to access cables or do some tinkering from underneath. In terms of hardware, the last pieces I needed arrived today: So the complete list is the following, basic stuff mostly: Asus P8B75-M LX Plus Intel Dual Core G645 2.9Ghz 2x Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3 1333 PC3-10666 4GB (1x4GB) CL9 Liteon IHAS120 CD/DVD SATA Asus U3S6 PCI-E which adds 2 more USB3 ports and 2 more SATA 6gbps ports. Conceptronic PCI which adds 2 more SATA2 ports and one IDE port (I have one old 500gb IDE hdd that I didn´t want to waste). Sharkoon Media Reader 2.5" (for the front). Kingston SSDNow V300 60GB for the OS. NOX Hummer M 650W 80+ 2x Lamptron Vandal Resistant Switches (red iluminated) Lamptron FC9 A few NZXT sleeved LED cables (again, red ilumination). 2x Cooler Master 200mm fans (again, red ilumination) which where used to measure exactly the cuts on the top where they will be fitted. Sorry but no water cooling in this one for now, might change my mind, depends on what kind of space I have left once I´ve decided where everything´s going to go. Aside from that list, I bought a ton of cables and all sorts of bits and pieces a couple of weeks ago, including fan black fan filters which will look perfect in order to make the surface as clean as possible. And well, that´s about it for today. I hope I have another update for you guys soon, hopefully next week as I am pretty packed this week and I do want to get APASF done and done. Cheers! PS: About the name, while it may look like it has to do with the red lighting it will have, it doesn´t really as the desk is mostly black. It´s actually because at my place we call the old server "Crimson" due to it´s red details, the fact it´s in my red room and the fact it gets stupidly hot in summer, almost expecting it to be red hot so I kind of wanted to keep the "pet" name and that´s the why

Update: I´ve been fighting for the last two weeks with the tubing, I´m still trying to fix the leak on one of the outputs on the reservoir, the other two leaks have been fixed (I took apart those sections and reinforced the joints with teflon which seals it quite nicely, for whatever reason that doesn´t seem to be working with the reservoir. I have a couple of options I will be trying on monday, hopefully one of them will work. Worst comes to worst I can permanently fit the joint which will fix the issue but will not allow for it to ever be taken apart again (not that its an issue as I never planned to but its nice to know I can if for whatever reason I need to). Updates to come following that. On another subject, I´ve been nominated for MOTM over at bit-tech, and the voting has been going on from the 6th of July. The voting ends on the 6th of Aug, i.e. tomorrow monday at 8 am. I´m currently fighting for the first place so if you feel like helping out, pop by and vote. But I´d like to stress that, only do it if you believe APASF is the best out of the 6 mods shown there. I´d greatly appreciate it : ) http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=233580

Congrats to the winners, considering I hadn´t finished my mod, I am quite pleased with the fourth possition, thanks to everyone that voted! : )

It´s been very hard to decide on the voting, I´m sure all of us participating want to be carefull when voting due to not leaving our own project behind and we have to reach some sort of middleground when voting. So instead of voting on looks alone, I´ve decided to vote on what my gut instinct says I really really like, regardless of work or skill that´s gone in to each project. So that said, here are my votes. Corsaronero333 - LIAN-LI Pitstop T60 Red - 3 Points I think this mod is underated, I love the simplicity of it yet the final look is astounding. Chentinox - Compressor - 2 Points I´ve always been a fan of plexyglass mods, and while normally they are simple yet stylish, it is very hard to make them look exceptional yet Chentinox doesn´t dissapoint. Arg0s - Steamplanet - 1 Point While it´s obvious we do not share the same concept on steampunk, I love the detail and final look of it and no matter what it is most definately steampunk-licious

All done, voting stage now, no?

Picks for voting stage: Also added to first post of the thread.

so what happens now? :S

Thank you Arg0s but it´s still far from finished. I hope it is valid for the competition though

Hi Guys, I tried my best, I´m sure you all know from my hectic updates these last almost 3 weeks that I´ve been working every second I get free on the project. Unfortunately it was not enough. The reason for starting so late was waiting for parts to arrive and basically financially being able to buy all the materials, paints, etc I needed to make this truelly unique. The fact is I´m about 1-3 days short worth of work on detailing, fixing some last minute issues (that always pop up) and so on to be happy with the final result. That said, I have made it as presentable as posible to be able to participate in the competition so I hope you deem it worthy.

thanks, I think that if I dont win any of the first 3 places, can I get a price for fast modding or just plain dedication? just under 3 weeks to build this beast :P

Right guys, we´re at that point, this is the update before the final update (in theory aniway). So, this morning I assembled all that needed to be in or on the case in order to do the piping. So, rads, motherboard and other assorted pieces. And this is what the case looked like pre-piping. So went down to my local friendly plumbing supplies shop and with some help from the shop attendant (my mate) and later on the owner of the shop (he was intrigued on what we were doing), I put it all togueter, it was incredibly hard to measure everything up correctly, tighten all the fittings being very carefull with the fragile ones (like the plexy ones on the cpu cooler or the plastic ones on the pump and reservoir). And after almost 4 hours, got it ready. So here is the bare essentials case (nothing is screwed in, details wise, only the liquid cooling related stuff. I now of course have to aply all the ageing effects to the fittings and pipes. After that I went to my actual job (as I mentioned in previous posts I took both yesterday morning and today morning off to work on the project but still had to work 4 hours in the evening. I´ve taken the motherboard out and left the loop running to be sure there´s no leaks before I put everything togueter. And yeah if there´s no leaks I feel optimistic about meeting the deadline but words cannot express how tired and generally exhausted I feel. Again, thanks for reading and following the project.