New Desktop Computer - Part 8 (The Installation)

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Tux Jr. has reported for work and is now on the job holding up the graphics card, doing an excellent job of it.


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Amazing example of improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Thanks! Don't forget desperation and a bit of redneck engineering.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The fan cable management in one area on the CPU cooler didn't quite turn out the way I expected and it nagged at me until, after watching a movie on TV and eating lunch, I pulled out the MOBO (fun) and redid that cable management.

This is how the bad cable management looked before I fixed it.

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See that big bundle on top of the fan? That had to go bye bye.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Here is what the pile looked like before rerouting it.

I don't know why I thought that would be hidden.

Here is what it looks like now after rearranging things a wee bit.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

And this is how the area looks after getting the MOBO reinstalled.

Not perfect but methinks that was good enough of an improvement to have been worth the effort.

I did drop three screws today while removing and reinstalling the MOBO. I saw where two of them went so I was able to manipulate the case to get them to roll where I could get to them. The third one I don't even remember dropping but I heard it rattling around after I noticed it missing in the pile I had made when removing them. I manipulated the case umpteen different directions before I finally found the elusive little bugger and retrieved it with the magnetic tip of a screwdriver. Whew! I've yet to do a build where at least one screw gets dropped and I have a bugger of a time trying to find it. This one was the easiest one so far.

Note that I have relocated the power cable going to the graphics card. If that adapter I ordered (in triplicate ) fits, that will allow the cable to go across the top of the graphics card and not be nearly as noticeable.

Now I get to decide whether I want to try to plug in those pesky CPU power cables or work on the four SATA data cables. Decisions, decisions.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

After supper, I decided to tackle what I thought would be the harder task: connect the two CPU power cables to the MOBO.

This is what I was up against.

The camera flash would wash out the shot and create too many shadows so I propped a flashlight in there to take the shot.

It looks roomier than it actually is. I could get my hand in there but there wasn't room to use my fingers. Here is a closer shot.

With the case laying on its side, I removed the screws holding the top fan in and "slud" the fan forward in the case to expose the fan hole. That gave me a window (port hole?) I could easily get my hand through.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Getting in there and plugging in the cables was much easier than I expected. Here are the plugged in cables (you can see the fan I temporarily moved in one of the shots).

Here is the view from the side of the case (that fan is on the top of the case).

This was much easier than I had expected. I love it when a plan comes together! I wish MOBO manufacturers would locate those sockets, and the CPU fan headers, to the right side of MOBOs to make access easier (some are experimenting with possible solutions).

[Lady Fitzgerald]

After a 2.5 hour ordeal, I got the *&^%$#@! SATA data cables sleeved, routed, amd plugged into the MOBO and the hot swap bays. I'm tired, cranky, overheated, and the one TV show worth watching this evening is coming on soon so I'll spare you the gory details and just show some pictures. This is a picture of the cables being plugged into the MOBO.

It's not as neat looking as I want but flat cables do not take twists and turns very well.

This shows the other ends of the cables plugged into the hot swap bays inside the 5.25" bay.

It looks a bit messy but it can't be seen from the side.

All I need now is that adapter for the graphics card power cable. Frankly, I'm nervous as a squirrel in a treeless dog park over the first boot up after all the problems I had.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I was too wound up to get to sleep so I futzed around with some little details on the case.

First was to close off a cable management opening. This is the one where the power cables for the hot swap bays, the computer power and reset button cables, and the *&^%$#@! SATA data cables passed through.

Because of the hard turn cables have to make there, that was a nice touch by the manufacturer of the case. However, that's a place where dust can get in so I installed the cover I had made to block it off since I'm through dragging cables through there anytime in the foreseeable future.

Then I put the top cover back on.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I didn't take any pictures of it but I installed a plastic baffle on the floor of the case at the back that I had made awhile back but didn't know if I wanted to bother installing at the time. It blocks the view of two fan cables that stuck out a bit more than I liked.

The side of the 5.25" bay is rather ugly so, a few days ago, I cut a piece of aluminum to cover the side and painted it. To fasten the cover to the side of the 5.25" bay, I used some neodymium magnets I had knocking about. First, after cleaning them with IPA (IsoPropyl Alcohol), I stuck some 3M mounting tape that uses their VHB adhesive on the backs of the magnets.

After trimming off the excess tape, I stuck them to the side of the 5.25" bay.

I used some red Scotch-Brite to sand off the oxide layer on the back of the cover, washed it off with IPA until the tissue paper I was using no longer turned black, then put a sticker on the front of the cover. After pulling off the release paper on the taped magnets, I stuck the cover onto the taped magnets, pressing firmly on the magnets. Using magnets lets me easily remove the cover if I ever need to.

That cover can also be used to mount a 5" LCD screen that can display various parameters such as CPU, GPU, SSD temperatures, RAM usage, etc. My graphics card supports four video streams and I'm using only three so I could feed the LCD from the fourth stream. Or I could use the onboard HDMI. The magnets stuck to the cover have a countersunk hole in them so I can add rivets to make them more secure than the tape alone to hold the LCD screen better. That's a project that will be sometime in the future, if it happens at all. In the meantime, Tux Senior can keep swatting away at Microsoft butterflies.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I had a lie-in this morning after being up too late last night. After a very late brunch, I put the side panels on the case to see how they look. I already had put some stickers on the right side panel. This is the view from my hallway looking into the bedroom.

The hummingbird looks fine but the rose was a bit of a disappointment. Up close, it looked fine but, when viewing from a few feet away, it loses definition and becomes a bit of a blur. I've ordered another one to see if it might look better.

Moving on to the left side windowed panel, I had forgotten to allow for the margins around the window, truncating the stickers on the 5.25" bay cover. This is the view from my desk chair.

At first, I thought I was going to have to replace the stickers until it dawned on me all I had to do was move the magnets on the back of the cover. I also stacked another magnet on each one to increase the thickness so the cover would clear a raised rolled edge on the edge of the 5.25" bay.

It took a couple of tries for me to get it right but now we can see all of Tux Senior doing his job of swatting Microsoft bugs.

I've also decided that, if I do install a small panel for display computer stats, I'll put it where it will appear in the lower right hand corner instead. That would block the view of a somewhat less than stellar looking area of the computer.

Eventually, I'm going to have to replace the plastic window with tempered or laminated glass. Besides being easily scratched, that plastic is a dust magnet.

[grndplane]

Give Mr. Linux a shotgun to blast that Windows butterfly. Joking aside, great job. It will be an awesome computer. Some of the troubles that you had happen to all of us, we just don't admit it. You know that clear sticker that is invisible on the bottom of the cooler next to the cpu. Yep I went back and reread the instructions on my water cooler after it was all assembled, and I had forgotten to remove it. Also I used an MSI motherboard and after I booted it up I had a audio crackle. I was depressed, I thought I would have to pull the MB and return it, or use the HDMI audio from my graphics card. I eventually turned off the High Definition Audio in the BIOS, then later re-enabled it. The audio was perfect after that, so I guess it can get into a wonky state. You did great, and we have all had problems. Looking forward to your next updates.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Give Mr. Linux a shotgun to blast that Windows butterfly. Joking aside, great job. It will be an awesome computer. Some of the troubles that you had happen to all of us, we just don't admit it. You know that clear sticker that is invisible on the bottom of the cooler next to the cpu. Yep I went back and reread the instructions on my water cooler after it was all assembled, and I had forgotten to remove it. Also I used an MSI motherboard and after I booted it up I had a audio crackle. I was depressed, I thought I would have to pull the MB and return it, or use the HDMI audio from my graphics card. I eventually turned off the High Definition Audio in the BIOS, then later re-enabled it. The audio was perfect after that, so I guess it can get into a wonky state. You did great, and we have all had problems. Looking forward to your next updates.

Thanks!

The Noctua cooler I have didn't have that clear plastic sticker on the contact plate. Instead, it had a rigid plastic piece molded to fit around the contact plate to protect it from scratches. The one I almost forgot to remove was on a RAM stick cooler.

I'm still waiting to get the u-turn adapter for the graphics card power cable.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I've hit another delay. Today, dear, delightful (more like monumentally moronic misbegotten) Amazon was supposed to deliver the last part, the graphics card power cable adapter, I need before I can attempt to fire up the computer. It made it to a Phoenix metro area facility where I live this morning, left the facility shortly afterwards, and seems to have vanished. Now they are saying it won't arrive until Friday.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

After I watched the one TV show worth watching last night, I had a couple of hours before bedtime so I made a list of all my movies using FilelistCreator, LO Calc, and LO Writer and printed it up into a booklet. I wanted to make one half sized by cutting letter size paper in half but my printer doesn't recognize custom sizes so I ordered some A5 sized paper which is close to the size of 1/2 letter size and is recognized by my printer.

Then I made a new map of all the rear I/O ports that shows what gets plugged in where.

That went quickly enough. I've been chewing on how I was going to keep a printout of that map handy when I need to plug in all the cables for some time. It dawned on me after I made that updated map that I could make 1/4" wide labels with two rows of port names fit on the back of the computer so I did some experimenting with my label printer and worked out how to do it. I was almost done labeling when I discovered this.

(Mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble!) I wasn't going to be able to get to sleep until that was fixed so I went to work (pardon my language). The proper way to fix it would have been to replace that one cover with one that has only the one USB type C port and another one that has two USB 2.0 ports side by side but that would have taken hours and involved a partial tear-down and redoing a lot of the cable management. I also didn't have the parts I would need. So on to Plan B: cut a notch in that stupid flange that was blocking the port.

Strictly speaking, I should have completely broken down the computer to avoid getting metal bits where they don't belong but there was no way in Hell I was going to do that so I used small magnets and double sided tape to catch the filings. After moving the PCI cover that had the USB port that was being blocked, I used a small slotting file to file two slots in the flange, used some old flush side cutters to chew out most of the metal between the two slots, then clean up the mess with more filing (have I ever mentioned I HATE FILING?). The result was a hack job but it's on the back of the computer and the USB cables that will get plugged in will pretty much hide it anyway.

This the flange after my meatball surgery on it.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Here, I've reinstalled the PCI cover with the blocked USB port.

I checked the fit by plugging in the USB extension cable I will be plugging my DAC into and it was a pretty snug fit but, the important thing is it fit.

These shots show the rear I/O ports and their labels (all the cables that will be plugged into the rear are also labeled).

Due to space constraints, the labels don't always exactly align with the ports but they are close enough for me to know what cable goes where. Some of the labels are crooked but my hands were pretty shaky by then (not to mention cramping) so I was doing well to get them that straight. Again, the labels are on the back of the computer where they won't be seen and they will get the job done.

I've been up all night and my tired hurts so I'm going to have some breakfast, then make me the filling of a sheet sandwich and sleep off most of the day.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I finally got the connector I needed to connect the graphics card to the power cable and installed it.

It allows the cable to run across the top of the card where it's not as noticeable.

It also looks cleaner than having a cable sticking out from the card.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

While I was at it, I cleaned up the routing of the SATA data cables a bit.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

This exciting saga (again with the hyperbole?) will continue here. viewtopic.php?t=414720