# [Modding] Scratch Build: Project Lambda



## xanan (Feb 26, 2011)

After months of reading through bit-tech forums, and picking up my jaw from the floor, i've decided that its finally time for me to get started on modding, especially so since my last 'mod' was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10320

Of course, back then, I didn't know the difference between a SATA cable and a Molex, and that the only only tools that I had were a knife, a screwdriver and a soldering iron, and I had no clue that you could get a machine to cut parts out for you if you had the appropriate drawings.

Anyway, the few months I spent reading the forums did help a lot (thank you bit-tech!), and now I finally have the courage and confidence to start work on a more ambitious project.
The mod in itself is quite simple, being just a cube case, inspired from The Weighted Companion PC by Magnus Pearson.

So without further ado, here goes:

I like Acrylic. However, living in India, there are obviously limitations to what you can do (oh and yes, English is not my first language, so please bear with any grammatical or spellings errors  ). For example, I've never found a place which can sell acrylic tubes and rods.  As such, given the fragility of my last case, I wanted something solid to support the panels, and so I decided to use Steel for the framework: 
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10321

Note the presence of a bracing in the middle. That will come later, but I guess you already figured what it is going to be.

It is going to be heavy, but then heavy is good. As for the Hardware that goes in this baby, well, I was on a shoe string budget so I had to make the best of what I could get. I was however clear on a few things, vis a vis: No more mATX, no more Asus mobos (they are good but I cannot afford them), no Intel, make that definitely NO Intel.
That pretty much meant that I was going to have a bigger cube than the Companion. as it stands now, it will be 400x400x400mm

The hardware that goes in this baby would be:

1. AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8Ghz
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10325
2. MSi 790GX-G65
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10326
3. 2x500 GB Seagate 7200 SATA Hdds (would probably get WDs later on...for now, all my music is on these)
4. 1333 DDR3 Corsair RAM 4 Gbs (2x2)
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10327
5. MSi ATi Radeon 5450 1 gb (don't really have the cash for the higher end cards, so I'll probably crossfire this later on)
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10328
6. As for the PSU, I wanted a corasair 850 or 1 KW but then those are too expensive for me (close to $ 250) so I will be daisy chaining two 450W PSUs (less than $10 each )


The whole bundle cost me about $500 which is good two months paycheck. It'll be a miracle if I don't starve to death before I finish this mod.
Any way, with all the electronic hardware purchased, the next step would be to start building the case itself. This would prove to be an arduous task due to two major issues which I hadn't taken into account:
a) Having access no other mode of conveyance other than public transport (which would be kinda expensive since I had no idea where to go), I was forced to march through half of Bangalore on foot. I'll explain why in a moment.
b) Knowing only two languages, that is, hindi and English, it was going to be hard to communicate to the people who could actually build the frame for me since they usually know only Kannada. Did i mention the only tools I have are a screwdriver, a knife and a soldering iron?

So, after about five hours of walking around in temperatures touching 40 C, I managed to find two gentlemen who would build the frame pictured above: Vishnu and Manjunatha.
Vishnu:
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10329
Manjunatha
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10330
Hearty thanks to you guys.
And build the frame they did, in less than 45 minutes, using only a hammer, a chisel and an arc welder.
The frame measures 386 x 391 x 390 mm. Why the weird dimensions, you ask. It is, after all supposed to be a cube. Well, we'll wait for the answer. to Vishnu's credit, he got the measurements bang on. Not a single mm difference in what I had specified and what I got.

With the frame finished, it was time to go out to get the other material required for the build, so i got these:
Two momentary switches (No one knows Vandal or bulgin Switches here so don't bother even asking for them), some wire, LEDs,resistors red sleeving (PVC, nylon is apparently not kept in stock here) and a Power supply.

Now it was time to actually start doing something my self so started on the dreadful task of sleeving the PSU. After two hours of trying to remove the wires from the Molexes, I gave up and resorted to cheating- I had to extend the PSU wires any way, so I opened up the power supply, cut off the wires one by one, extended them, and sleeved them.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10332
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10331
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10324
Not too shabby, eh?

Here's a sneak peek of what the mod is going to look like once it is finished. My friend Rajat helped me make a sketchup rendering of the mod, and has provided invaluable assistance during whatever progress that has been made.

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10333

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10335

Don't worry about the weird Lambda, I have have changed it to this:
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10334

Also, I hadn't been sitting idle all this time. I had prepared the drawings for the laser cutting, and had given them to a local firm which makes sign boards. The panels came in and I decided I would just place the parts to have a dekko if everything was was going to be the way I wanted.
Here's a small pic to show what I had in mind.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10336

For some strange reason, my camera does not show the orange as it actually is- it always turns it to some kind of bright, bloody red. Don't worry though, I assure you it is exactly the same as shown in the Sketchup model.

Sadly, not much progress has been made since so far I have been unable to find the screws that I want, and once I find them, my next worry would be to get a drill some how so that I can make holes in the 2mm steel that I'm using as framework.

Also, I have yet to get the back panel cut, since I've so far been unable to get the dimensions of the Back Panel I/o ports and the Expansion Slots. 

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10353

This is going to be the DVD drive cover. The idea behind this is to stealth the drive as well as advertise it. However, I'm not sure of one thing. The hole in the middle will have a piece that would cover it as well. Should I change it to orange or should i use a black piece?

okay, just so that you don't think that I've been lazing around, I decided to post a small update. Progress has been slow, but not without reasonable cost. First off, I ran out on heat shrink, wires, and not to mention I needed some screws etc to hold the case in place, in  order to not rely on hope and chewing gum alone, I had to make a trip to the Hardware market which pretty much took an entire day.
Secondly, in the past 72 hours or so, power cuts reduced the work to a crawl- we got power for only about 40 hours or so.
Any way, that aside, let's see what I got:

A power drill, A second hand drill for wood + some HSS bits
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10559
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10541
no more drilling holes with a knife, yippee. I'd love to see a guy who is brave enough to even think of drilling holes in steel with this:
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10540

Some screws, nuts, and some dome nuts. These will be painted later on so I didn't bother about the color.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10542

Case feet
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10558
Paint
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10554

Fortification(that's been there for sometime though. Not an obstruction to progress though, I assure you.)
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10552

Internal fumigator:
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10555

First off, meet my friend, guy in mysterious and colorful polka dotted/doodle/flower boxers.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10553

I started off with drilling holes in the Acrylic panels. The panels are placed asymmetrically, so I had to measure the position of each hole carefully. It is as they say, measure twice and cut once.

With this done, it was now to drill holes in the steel frame. This proved to be much trickier than what I had thought. Due to the odd placement of the panels on the frame, I could not directly measure and mark holes on the frame since I don't really trust my measuring skills all that much.

I decided that I would place the panel on the frame and use a pencil to mark the position of the holes. That didn't work. The pencil mark matched the color of the frame.:wallbash::wallbash::wallbash:
So back to square one, I came up with another idea. I had a ballpoint pen lying around, and I had managed to squish it with my feet. Clumsy, Clumsy hippo.
Anyway, the solution was this:
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10546
I removed the tip of the refill, and blew on the other side to get some ink out...and presto, I have a marker slim enough to fit into a 3 mm hole

With the holes marked, now it was time to drill some holes on the frame. I had naively assumed that I would have to just hold the drill against the frame, and that it would drill holes. I couldn't have been more mistaken. 
Apparently, drilling steel is much tougher than drilling acrylic. The first hole took almost an hour to get done, and the bit was so dull by the end of it that it probably wouldn't even make a scratch anymore.
Convinced that I was doing something wrong, I scourged the internet for instructions on drilling steel, and learned that drilling steel was a two part process, first punching a hole, and then using the drill to, well, drill through.

Progress was slow though due to the frequent power cuts and voltage fluctuations, but somehow, I got four sides done. The bits that I had used must be poor quality ones because at the end of the day I was left with this:
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10551

Also, while the power was gone, I decided to paint the DVD drive.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10557
sanded the drive with this.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10548
Not a mirror finish, but then I don't really need one.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10549
Didn't want the screw holes to get gummed up so I plugged them with some TP. It works!
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10547
Anyway, the power went off again, and didn't come back till 12:30 AM. By then, I was in no mood to mask the drive and continue painting so I decided to call it a day. Its now almost 2:00 AM here, and I have work tomorrow. Maybe I'll sleeve the remaining PSU today, having seen an excellent video on youtube detailing the technique. Not too sure about the 24 pin though.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10539
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10538

Well, things have gone a bit downhill. First, some petty lowlife has stolen my camera, and I don't have the cash to buy a new one. The camera that I have at the moment is a low end one, so the pics are coming out a bit on the dodgy side.
Aside from that, since I didn't have a strip of molex connectors (the small metal clips that hold the wires) I had to cut the wires, sleeve them and then solder them back on. During this rather tiresome process, I must have goofed up somewhere- result: a blown up power supply.

Anyway, I bought another one, did all the sleeving again, and this here is the finished piece, minus a vinyl. Blurry pic alert.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10711

I also got some LEDs to add some light to the case. First step was to sand them. This was done using a standard 100 grit carborundum sandpaper. Sanding done, I hooked these up to a resistor and a 12v line. Resistor value was calculated using the LED Resistor Calculator courtesy Metku. For 9 blue LEDs with vdrop of about 2.5v, this works out at about 45 ohms.

Also, in the original design, I hadn't given much attention to the fact that the wires from the Power buttons etc would be visible from the inside.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10725
 A nasty clutter is not what anyone wants so I decided to cover with a piece of plexi. However, a bland piece of plexi would not look very nice so I first created a mask of the lambda and painted the plexi black. The lambda was then buffed with sandpaper to make it a bit diffuse.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10722
 Next step was to put in some LEDs to make the Lambda glow.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10718
I'm not satisfied with the Light leaking though. However, the LEDs are not yet fixed in place. Once they are, the light leaking though would create a border outside the plexi thereby highlighting the plexi.
To fix this up to the front panel, I had planned to drill holes in the front panel and screw the plexi on place. However, I realised that the holes would be too close to the front bezel.  I therefore epoxied the 'nuts' to the front panel. The epoxy wont be visible from anywhere, and also, I would be left with a 2mm gap which would be used to thread the wires from the bezel to the mobo and PSU.

Some more pics. Sorry about the poor quality. I'll upload better ones this weekend once I borrow a camera from my friend.
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10720

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10709
*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=10708

Here are some more pics that I managed to click, from a friend's camera

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=15214

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=15215

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=15216

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=15217

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=15219

*forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=799&pictureid=15218


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## funkysourav (Feb 26, 2011)

good job m8
love the HL2 theme
does this setup restrict the airflow in the CPU in anyway?


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## pulkitpopli2004 (Feb 26, 2011)

gr8 efforts.. 
turn out to be ultimate HL2 Rig.. wht wud be its weight now?


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## xanan (Feb 26, 2011)

The 140 mm fan on top exhausts air, while two 120s serve to bring air in from the back. The current weight of the rig with everything installed is about 9kgs.


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## Sid_gamer (Feb 26, 2011)

Great Mod Man....Half-Life 2 Theme idea is also nice....
Keep Up The Good Work..

cheers,
Sid_gamer


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## skippednote (Feb 26, 2011)

This is awesome. Whole lot of effort has been into.


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## Deleted member 26636 (Feb 26, 2011)

Great Work.....You are quite dedicated..


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## xanan (Feb 26, 2011)

Thanks everyone- nothings happens without dedication, and dedication comes from motivation, and that in turn comes, at least for me, by the appreciation of people like you.


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## asingh (Feb 26, 2011)

Simply unbelievable. Will follow this thread. Keep it up, and waiting to see the final outcome.


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## xanan (Feb 26, 2011)

Hey, this is finished already...in fact I have taken it apart because I'm working on another mod (that's logged here already)


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## ssk_the_gr8 (Feb 27, 2011)

nice mod xanan...keep it up


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## desiibond (Feb 27, 2011)

congrats. looks great.


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## abhidev (Feb 27, 2011)

The design is awesome...how many days did it take to complete???


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## xanan (Feb 27, 2011)

This took about a month to complete, but that's because I ran short of cash, and one fully sleeved, painted PSU died on me.


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## abhidev (Feb 28, 2011)

Good jod dude..........congrats!!


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## Faun (Feb 28, 2011)

Hey dude can you guide me on building an open system cabinet ? I too want to make one.


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## xanan (Feb 28, 2011)

Faun said:


> Hey dude can you guide me on building an open system cabinet ? I too want to make one.



Sure, why not. Are you planning to build a test bench sort of setup for benching sessions?


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## Faun (Mar 1, 2011)

xanan said:


> Sure, why not. Are you planning to build a test bench sort of setup for benching sessions?



I just want to make something with lot of room for airflow and easy to install eveything.

If I can spruce it up then that will be really great. It shouldn't look bland.


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## xanan (Mar 1, 2011)

If you need a lot of airflow then either you'll have to make a bigger case than this, or segregate components like I did. As for sprucing up, that depends on you entirely.


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## Faun (Mar 2, 2011)

Lets say a test bench sort of version, i don't want it to take up too much space.

Something like this:
*www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revimages/case/Antec_Skeleton/Skeleton_quarter_400.jpg


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## xanan (Mar 2, 2011)

Okay. How much are you willing to shell out on this? I'd say use aluminium, but you'd need atleast 3mm thick sheets. If you go the acrylic way, then you'll be spending close to 4-5k on laser cutting, and say about 1200-1500 more on material. Work out a budget for yourself, make a design, calculate the amount of material required. And most importantly, how you will join everything together vis a vis, how the HDDs will be screwed in, how you'll fix the PSU..and any problems. It is important to figure out the problems first, and then begin working as later on they might mess up the design. Pay close attention to how cables will be routed, and incorporate measures to stealth them if possible.


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## Faun (Mar 2, 2011)

I can spend 4k every month. At max it should be ready by end of this year. 

Shall I work out on a design. How do I do that ? Need inputs and suggestions.


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## Deleted member 26636 (Mar 2, 2011)

Faun said:


> I can spend 4k every month. At max it should be ready by end of this year.
> 
> Shall I work out on a design. How do I do that ? Need inputs and suggestions.



you could use Google sketchup... its pretty good for fast 3d concepts..but first you should at least have a few 2d drawings/sketches of your concept...look at others mods for inspiration & reference, then come up with something of your own..


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## xanan (Mar 2, 2011)

keep saving cash...don't attempt to start buying anything before you have 8 k...you probably don't need so much, but its always better to have some cash in reserve for emergencies.

Do you have any tools with you, or can you get them if required?


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## Faun (Mar 4, 2011)

Okay, I will sve upto 8k.

I have a power drill, jigsaw (circular blade to cut marbles) and what else do I require ?

I will be designing the case in Google sketchup as pointed by himadri_sm.


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## xanan (Mar 4, 2011)

You'll require a set of screwdrivers, Soldering iron, solder wire, flux. The jigsaw you have has a very high tolerance- as in, it takes out a considerable amount of material while cutting, so whatever you design, make sure you take that into account. You are set otherwise.


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## Faun (Mar 4, 2011)

xanan said:


> You'll require a set of screwdrivers, Soldering iron, solder wire, flux. The jigsaw you have has a very high tolerance- as in, it takes out a considerable amount of material while cutting, so whatever you design, make sure you take that into account. You are set otherwise.


I will post the pic of tools soon. If necessary, I will buy the required tools.
I already have screwdrivers, soldering iron, solder wire and flux.


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## xanan (Mar 4, 2011)

then you are pretty much set...just design something and post here. If you need help, i'd be glad to offer whatever help i can.


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## Faun (Mar 4, 2011)

Hey, thats great. I will need your help for sure. Let me try first and put it to scrutiny and practicability tests.


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## lordirecto (Mar 16, 2011)

Just curious, any progress here?


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## xanan (Mar 17, 2011)

This is a completed worklog. The mod was completed months ago, and has in fact been dismantled to make way for my next mod, which has already started.


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## Tenida (Aug 10, 2011)

Excellent work mate Keep it Up.


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## gameranand (Oct 10, 2011)

What about Faun's mod ?? Whats the progress ?
Great work by you xanan.


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## xanan (Oct 17, 2011)

Dunno about Faun's mod- To be honest, I haven't been online in quite a while as I have been too busy with work.


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