MiniHack

ElAwesome, on , said:Coming along nicely! Thank you. Just also bought this one: http://www.ebay.co.u...984.m1438.l2649 I couldn't resist it as I am needing to drive down that way soon for a family celebration so I can call in and collect on the way. I have modified my backplate design a little and that should be with me in the next week or so and will also be the basis for a new laser hive product line. Basically I have made a complete backplate outline which, though I am cutting it for my own mobo pattern, I will easily be able to adapt for a standard ATX rectangular IO pattern. That new plate will then be bondable to the original back so it can be blended in to the original plate and allow the user to either keep the original handle mechanism (or get rid of it) and to either keep the original small holes on the "wide" side of the cube or get rid of them. If the user wants to get rid of them it will then be an easy conversion to add a wider (more open) mesh for...

So, a bit of an update today. The aluminium rivetnuts arrived and so did a aluminium plate I had cut for the Cube. So it was now time to get the files and dremel out again and do a bit more fitting up. These are the rivetnuts for the new hanging system so I can get rid of the handle assembly: Tip: if you have a cheap hand operated rivet tool M6 rivet nuts in aluminium are about the limit that I think you can mount properly! Still, this open style of rivet nut will flush mount and give a really strong thread. First I had to open up the holes in the inner cage a little to take the rivet. Then they went in fine This is the result: Opening up the holes in the perspex and also a little in the top plate for the outer case meant the Cube will then be able to be secured in the case using some cap screws. The aluminium laser cut turned out well. and here you can also see how I have cut out the handle section (I'll replace this bit later with a more op...

Hi all, I want to let you know about a competition I am running from Laser Hive Facebook page Basically I am looking for the best videos of people installing my stuff and in response to that I am offering prizes. I am looking for the BEST video instructions from my customers on how to fit one of our kits. The winners will get a kit of their choice (you just pay the shipping) or a small hot swap enclosure (3 drive) or a custom designed laser part. Entrants agree to their videos being posted on the Laser Hive website/facebook site and the Laser Hive YouTube channel and the winners will have their videos used as a resource for our instruction packs. I am looking for videos in categories of: G3/G4 kit plus G5 ATX and mATX. One winner for each of these three categories. I'll judge winners based on clarity of instruction etc. Please spread the news of this competition across the forums and help increase the "likes" on the Facebook Laser Hive site. Note: Competition...

A couple of shots for scale on how this compares to the internal size of the Cube:

Keeping this build quiet and within the power limits of the pico psu are two of the most important parts of this build, as well as seeing if it can cope with a mildly overclocked 3770k. As part of this I am trying to test everything for power consumption/noise before it goes in to the Cube. Just been test running the Corsair pump and Alphacool radiator combination, along with the two Phobya fans hooked up to a simple Asetek fan controller (literally about £3 inc. postage). Noise from the fans at full tilt is reassuringly loud with a good through breeze, but when I use the controller it can be turned down to something less than audible. Power draw at the wall from the combination of pump, and two fans is 14w (inc the draw from the ATX PSU itself that I am testing them on) at max settings and goes down to around 9 or 10 at lower speeds. Disconnecting the fans and pump and measuring just the draw from the PSU with fan shows that as taking about 5 watts - so in reality my fans and...

....and the winner for the Worlds smallest water cooling loop is: :weight_lift: Baudouin, on , said:I understand better now why they sell some air pressure revolver rivetnut. :P Jean Claude Van Damme would struggle using my little rivet gun. Epic fail.

When all the different pieces arrive I will try to remember to take lots of photos! I think that the actual watercooling may be quite simple in the end, it is the planning that takes the time. I am super pleased to have found that Alphacool radiator though as it seems to be exactly what is needed for this kind of mod inside what is quite a small case and it should also be much more efficient than the corsair one. So while this mod. has now taken a different direction than when I started I am hopeful that the end result will be a lot better.

Another small update - Following my thoughts on getting rid of the handle latching mechanism I have now decided definitely to remove it. It just takes up too much room that could either be used for something useful or could be freed up to help airflow. My solution is for the interior of the cage: 1. replace the left over heatsink sides with lower profile aluminium channel - so that the side parts stay rigid when I take away the original parts. This will increase the area inside the Cube without causing a loss in strength; 2. Make a plate that crosses from left to right to join the side pieces (with their now new inner rigid channel), the plate has 120mm fan hole for the "inside" fan (and with extra holes or gaps to route cables and pipes); 3. Make a similar plate that crosses from left to right to join the back left and right sides of the drive holder together which also has a 120mm fan hole etc. for the " outside" fan and rivet/bolt/weld this plate to the drive ho...

Small update: The Alphacool radiator and 2 Phobya fans are on their way. I am re-thinking the design slightly and am working on creating a sort of structural cassette out of the fan and radiator and drive support cage combination. I think I can use existing structural parts inside the Cube inner cage to get a good location of all the parts and effectively join the drive holder to the latch mechanism side supports. I am also thinking now of getting rid of the handle latching mechanism itself to open up the centre of the Cube a little more. This will let the fans breathe more easily and cool my radiator more effectively. As a side benefit it will also allow my mobo to re-locate a couple of mm more to the centre so I may be able to gain back the space to have a slot loader in the Cube. I can't make too many cuts until the actual radiator and fans arrive here but a plan is formulating..... The next problem though will be the question of how to make the core easily removeable...

Baudouin, on , said:Nice MiniHack. I am jealous, I have one working Cube, another case and full of Cube parts, but not the money to buy the parts to build a Hackintosh for the moment, maybe later. And your build will be very inspiring and big help. Thanks Baudouin. Money is the limiting factor for me too. That's why mostly I am tearing apart other builds to make new ones. The big expense on this one is the i7 processor....but that is probably at the end of the Cube build going to be ripped out and put into the G5!! At least if it doesn't work then I can just pretend this build didn't happen (!). I'm excited though as I am always looking for something different in how to mod these old Apple cases. ElAwesome, on , said:Hell yes a WC'ed cube :) I'm surely gonna follow this one! Thanks - I must admit though to being jealous of your desk!!!

Hi all, Another project in progress for me since last week is this one. At the moment it feels like I may have bitten off too much. Background I've done a few Cubes already, the last couple used the original CUbe heatsink to cool them and worked well. This time I wanted to go for something different and I took it on because I already had the parts for it here. Bits being re-used from other builds are: Zotac Z77 wifi board Corsair RAM, Corsair H80, 160W PicoPSU, mSATA drive, Old Cube bits. New parts: i7 3770k I'll admit this is a bit of a silly power crazed build. Having done a Cube with an i5 2500K I wanted to up the Geekbench scores and see whether the unused H80 I had could be used in a Cube. Of course, it couldn't be fully enclosed, so the first thing to happen was this: No laser cutting here, just good old dremeling - this case eats dremel disks!!! The discolouring is as this particular old case originally had my old Mini in a Cube inside it...

Baudouin, on , said:MiniHack, I will be watching you. :D Thanks for the measurements. So I may use a Lian Li 3 SATA board with the G5 HDD older, hummm... Lian Li do make a 2 sata board as well.....so if the spacing is the same that would be the logical choice. The 3 sata though can be chopped down to 2 without problem or loss of functionality. I just need to take apart another G5 to double check how it'd work at the back. My suspicion is it might not fit in the regular placing up top and right but may work as an array elsewhere perhaps underslung from the DVD shelf.

I can give you some measurements. On the Corsair backplane the vertical distance between each SATA connector is 38mm. On the Lian Li 3 SATA board it is 35mm. I have just measured a G5 holder and it looks to me like they are approximately 35mm!!!!!! That may mean it is possible to attach a backplane to the original drive holder without too much hassle. I have got rid of most of my originals but I will pull one from a machine and see how practical this is. Stay tuned......I may be making my own drive holders redundant!

Mr.D., on , said:My suggestion would be a right angle and a 'left' angle plug - the 'left' being a 270 rather than 90 turn. The right angle going down, the left angle going up, then fold the cable back on itself. Assuming you have a pliable enough cable (monoprice has some good Sata3 and 6 cables that aren't super thick and are pretty cheap) you'll just have a small bump going up. To use the stock G5 HDD mounting I had to use one left and one right angle cable because one went up and the other went down. Only took me 5 different combinations to get that all correct! Two questions: 1> Was it required to cut the TeslaConverter case to get the cables out because of the MB height? I think you did a good job of cutting very little, but now you have a raw metal edge rather than the folded metal edge that was there originally - Not as pretty (that's minor) and a potential area to catch and/or cut the sheathing or the cables inside (that's major). 2...

A bit of an update today. After lots of measuring with bits of card and paper I have made up the first try at a full width motherboard tray for this. The tray is cut from 5mm black acrylic (too shiney I think!) and is to be positioned for cable and (potentially) tube management. I went full width but not full height as I need to get the PSU case in and out easily and want that to be able to be done without moving the motherboard. So, this is me putting in the fixings to hold the tray: I used rivnuts (of course!) to go through the existing inner case holes. Unfortunately on their own they did not give me quite enough room for cable management behind the tray and then with these standoffs attached (5mm) the tray interfered with what I wanted to do with the front IO. So instead of cutting another hole in the tray (which I think would have caused a weak point) I swapped the 5mm spacers for a 2mm nut fixing. Not ideal, but it would give me about 6 or 7mm of cable manage...