Moneypenny

[WiSK]

My Dad's PC was a hundred years old and so I gave him my NCase M1 for his birthday last year. He's into crime writers but I couldn't think of an overarching theme. Something else then: when I was young, we used to go to James Bond films, just the two of us. I always give builds a female name, so this one was named Moneypenny.

Parts
CPU Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition
Motherboard MSI H87I AC
RAM Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP 2x4GB
SSD Crucial MX100 128GB
HDD Seagate Momentus Spinpoint M8 320GB
DVD Sony Optiarc AD-7800H
PSU SilverStone ST30SF 300W
CPU Heatsink SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Pro
Case fans 2 x Noiseblocker S-Series M12-S2 120mm
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit EN OEM
Sata cables Akasa ProSlim, Silverstone CP10
Sleeving MDPC-X black

Spoiler: awesome 1980s graphics

There will be no GPU; the last computer game my Dad played was Rogue, in the early 80s.

 

[WiSK]

Reserved, final pics will go here.

This build log is a bit of a fake since I did the work last Summer

 

[WiSK]

I sleeved the ST30SF, but it's not modular, so I had to open it up. It was a challenge to get the right lengths because the case was already at my Dad's house.



Stock cables are like this:

• 1 x 24 / 20-Pin motherboard connector（300mm）
• 1 x 8 / 4-Pin EPS / ATX 12V connector（400mm）
• 1 x 6-Pin PCIE connector（400mm）
• 3 x SATA connector （300mm / 200mm / 100mm）
• 2 x 4-Pin Peripheral connector （300mm / 200mm）
• 1 x 4-Pin Floppy connector（300mm / 200mm / 200mm）

I aimed for the following lengths:

• 1 x 24-Pin motherboard connector（250mm）
• 1 x 4-Pin EPS / ATX 12V connector（300mm）
• 2 x SATA connector （200mm / 210mm）
• 1 x Silverstone CP10 5V+Ground only ( 250 mm )

 

[Phuncz]

Hi WiSK welcome ! I'm eager to see this build in detail !

 

[jeshikat]

Getting any coil whine out of your 300W? I owned one briefly but it whined like crazy so ended up getting rid of it. Shame though, because the semi-fanless functionality on this unit works pretty well.

 

[rawr]

Are you gonna put anything in the PCIe slots? Maybe a soundcard

 

[WiSK]

A modem is in the PCIe slot. My dad doesn't trust that his wifi router will always work, so we bought an old fashioned modem as fail-over. He has an account at the only ISP in the Netherlands to still offer dial-up.

Ready to start soldering new wires


I need more practice soldering. A bit blobby, insulation melted, etc. But they are good connections.


The reason to cut and solder new lengths is to make the wire all black. This way the sleeving looks even and the rainbow colours don't show through. But only after soldering the 13 ground wires, did I realise that I didn't actually need to cut them short... the ground wires were already black!


Obligatory shot of all the trimmings


Even though the wires are colour coded, I wasted time putting stickers on them

 

[QinX]

It's always good to see some DIY mods. If soldering cables is not your thing you could have a look at solder sleeves. We use them all the time at work.
Strip 2 cabled, put them into the solder sleeve, heat it up and you have a soldered cabled and heat shrink at the same time.
I still solder and shrink my cables myself, but this has its advantages as well.

Also don't hold the cables with those clips, if the insulation heats up this will bite into the cable. I know it is tempting but try and avoid it. Or have them not bite down on the cable as hard, perhaps some neoprene between them.

 

[WiSK]

Thanks for the advice QinX!
I only use the third hand like that out of laziness, because the wires were sleeved anyway, so bite marks from clips into the insulation wasn't an issue.

Here is quick guide for cheating heatshrink with glue. First pull sleeve back enough, so that you can melt heatshrink on to it without melting anything else. Stretch the sleeve and mark with pen where it will reach.

Pull back and wipe a little bit with superglue before the pen mark.

Then make sure you have the pin at the other end oriented the right way up. That's important because once you glue you can't turn it easily anymore. Now you are ready to stretch. Hold the pin, push the sleeve right up as tight as possible, but always allowing enough slack at the PSU end of the wire.


To make this natural curve, I cut the inner wires 13.2mm shorter than the outer wires. The distance between pins in the connector is 4.2mm and then you multiply by PI for a half circle curve.

 

[Phuncz]

I wish I could sleeve this good. After many many hours, with advice from MDPC, I'm still having sleeving come out of the connectors (without heatshrink) or have to fudge wire + sleeve + heatshrink in the same space that only seems to allow wire + sleeve. Oh well, I need to watch the videos more closely and read more to find out what I'm doing wrong

 

[WiSK]

Thanks, it's just practice and experimentation. Fudging can be an important part of it too

For this build I need to cut the wires accurately. It depends how each one comes out of the PSU, and where it will land on the motherboard. I made a spreadsheet.


First the upper row is sleeved


Then measuring and cutting the lower row


Of course when sleeving, the cables become too much for the little cutout...


... so I used a Dremel with cutting disc


Now it fits!

 

[jeshikat]

Looking good!

Once I'm done with Nova and don't have to keep swapping parts I'll sit down and get the hang of this sleeving thing.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

For reasons I can't explain, I've always really loved watching and reading and witnessing really great sleeve jobs. Thanks for sharing this!

(Also, I see a lego dude in the background, and I approve )

 

[WiSK]

Cheers guys - glad you both like it

I also made double Sata power connections


Important step after all that soldering is to test it


It seems to be in spec still


Here how the cables will be plugged in; once in the case I need to arrange each wire carefully to get them to line up

 

[Phuncz]

Nice work ! I also have one of those PSU tester thingies to test PSU cabling, they are awesome for that kind of work.
The all-black is coming together nicely !

 

[jeshikat]

Any tricks to keeping the wires nice and tidy once installed? I've seen those cable combs but I think they look a bit tacky.

 

[rawr]

I think you can do the thing where you give the cable the 'natural curve' (which Wisk has done), appropriately according to the layout of the case.

Alternatively you can get transparent acrylic cable combs, which can be quite discrete - if placed well.

 

[EdZ]

The cleanest way - requiring a ludicrous amount of effort - would by the hand-sew together the cable sleeves with appropriately coloured thread, linking the indise meeting edges of the sleeves together without 'squashing' the sleeve form. Completely invisible but a real pain to actually do, particularly if you do not have a cable pre-form and need to have the cables inside the case and plugged in to keep them aligned.

 

[WiSK]

I don't like cable combs, it looks too forced to my eye. I'm of the natural curve school as mentioned by Rawr. With some basic math skills you can calculate the length a wire needs to be. Two wires next to each other of different lengths will make a curve. If the sleeving is stretched tightly, it will hold shape. If 'trained' by gentle manipulation, it can keep its shape. I will show later how the messy bunch of sleeves shown in the picture above becomes neat.

Motherboard


CPU cooler


RAM


Drives


I folded a small piece of aluminium mesh to make a simple drive cage


The mesh holes are 3mm, so I used a 4mm drill bit to make a design appropriate to the build

 

[rawr]

I love the drive cage