UPDATE 3.0
Things have moved along a little further so I'm back again to share my progress. A few things have happened since update 2.0. NFC hooked me up with a couple extra side panels for whats coming up next, I bought some EK Monarch blocks for the RAM (not they'll be WC'd) to provide a little extra height between the DIMMs and the PSU.. lets start there, RAM.
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I'd never removed the heat spreaders from RAM before... years ago back when all RAM came naked, I added heat spreaders a time or two but never this way round. It was easy enough, I used a low temp on my heat gun and gently warmed up one side of the RAM at a time. Once warm I slid plastic card (like a gym or library card) in under the heat spreader. Repeated that a few times and off they popped.
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They look much better now.
The majority of my free time over the last couple weeks has been spent on the wiring. I mentioned last time I'd intended on replacing the stock (thinner AWG) wires with new cables made with thicker 18AWG black wire. Well that turned into an epic battle between the function vs aesthetic gods..
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Oh, I put the cooler back on the GTX1060, it's a much tighter fit but the cooling (mainly noise) is so much better for it. I'll look at tarting it up a little down the road. The odd thing is.. the orange on the cooler matches the orange on the 960 EVO drive. As they are, the only two components you see on that side of the chassis, it sorta works... as is... But I guess we'll see.
But anyway, you can see the 6PIN GPU cable. The stock HDPLEX cable is yellow/black 21 AWG (not sure...) wire with a single 8-PIN at the PSU end and a 6+2 x2 at the other. Strapped up, fitted, you could barely see the new cable.
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But then things started to get complicated, well, crowded. I made the 8PIN EPS which turned out okay considering it had to bypass the 24pin to be routed correctly. However the 24pin is where the battle truly begun. The thicker AWG added a lot of bulk compared to the stock HDPLEX cable (if you were to simply cut the stock cable to length). I reassembled the build and booted her up. everything worked a treat. But they really ain't much to look at..
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So the war begun.
I don't know who struck first, wire or sleeve. But we know that is was me that scorched the ends
Bare black wires certainly look better then the HDPLEX cables but it's not much of a build without some sleeved goodness. Firstly, I had decided I had plenty of room to sleeve the EPS and GPU cables. I also took the HDPLEX power connector cable desoldered the stock wire, replaced with new wire and sleeved them.
ATTEMPT TWO:
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I hated this when I did it*. the EPS cable looked smart, clean, the cable combs made a color combo work and pulled your focus. But the 24pin looked fat and untidy. I didn't like that the power switch red cables popped as they were much shorter then the others. I knew I didn't have enough room to sleeve all 24 but felt as the positioning would hide the others, sleeving a few would add something.
*annoyingly, looking at it now. I kinda like it.
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The EPS was different, half the wire needed to remain bare in order to pass under the 24pin to get to its PSU connection. It was the pattern I didn't like. I love the colors, the chassis pulls cues from certain 'M' class BMWs with it's estoril blue paint job. The sleeve was picked to highlight aspects of the motherboard (the red DIMM and PCI slots) and to further that BMW scheme connection. The colors are a combination of the brand logo and the 'M' logo. So first time round It looked like this, a repeating pattern. But with only 8PINs it's too much and with only 6PINs for the GPU and 4PINs on the power cable.. I could
not repeat the same pattern.
So it didn't last.
ATTEMPT THREE:
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I swapped the red switch sleeve for black and took the color out the 24pin. I went with 3 black to cover the bare wire beneath and one gray to pull in the Noctua Redux fan. I also redid the EPS wire (I didn't take a better photo...) I needed a pattern based on 4 wires, something I could repeat on the GPU and power cables. So I did. The EPS became gray, blue, light blue, red. With the remainder in black.
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I repeated the same for the GPU to match the EPS. At this point, had gone with 2x blue 2x grey on the power cable. It was getting there, but I still didn't like it. The 24pin still looked fat and untidy, I liked the use of combs on the GPU cable and was happy I'd found a pattern I liked but by matching the EPS it meant that you mainly saw the grey, red, black wires on the GPU cable when really you could only see the grey, blue, light blue on the EPS. So they looked totally different.
So it wasn't to be.
ATTEMPT FOUR:
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I had to do something about my fat untidy 24PIN. The main problem I was/am having is the 24PIN sits higher on the mobo then it's bottom edge on the PSU. So the cut lengths have to allow for a bridge type bend in the middle, A: to allow the PSU end to connect lower then the mobo and B: to run that 8PIN EPS under it.
So this time round I thought I'd sleeve four cables all black on the 24PIN to hide the wires underneath. I also trimmed a few to drop the high point on the cluster of wires. I bound them to pull them in tight under the sleeved cables above.
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Which worked (for the most part).. it dropped the 24PIN cluster enough to make the 4PIN power cable (now grey, blue, light blue, red pattern) sit above it.
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I also took the GPU cable and flipped it, so the pattern would show more of the blues. Added more combs to the GPU and power cable then reworked how the power cable routed through the chassis to the PSU.
and that's where I'm at... do I like it? no. Do I like it better then the previous attempts? sure. I don't really like the look of cable combs and don't feel my runs are quite on point. But I keep telling myself it's not finished.. I've got the back plates coming and the frame side panel to come, then a glorious tempered glass pane to finish it off. So for now, I'm leaving it. I need to move forward with those two bits. Once they are in, If I still don't like, I'll try again. It's all a process.
Thanks for checking it out. What do you think? Should I go back to bare wire? try a different color combination? rework the lengths? or do you like it?
J.
