** UPDATED 19/8/2016 ** Project Blue Lightning COMPLETE

Actually I just noticed that there is a bit of space just behind the drive cage area where maybe some of these cables can be hidden without putting pressure on the side panel.

Exactly my point...


And i have Arc Midi R2 - a case with GREAT cable management. I still tuck what i could on the back side of the optical drive cage...

Please know this case itself was an old case, from back in the days when stuff was made out of steel and had very few aesthetic qualities or even cable management qualities and least of all cooling. From its original design it has been modded quite a lot to even get this far, so with a little more tidy up and once all the bits are in I think this is a project I will certainly be proud of for a while.

Also I understand that there are some totally amazing watercooling builders here I have no experience sadly with watercooling nor do I have the budget to put together a rig of that caliber yet, so I have very purposely made this an air cooled rig and chosen parts to really cut down on thermal output as much as I could for an AMD based system.

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The build looks great. Everyone is just trying to help you make her look even better. I understand that some cases make cable hiding really difficult but just take your time and try a few things and it will work out. It always does. When it comes to our builds we are never really done.

Its a fine build and I would be proud to call mine. I look forward to your finished pics in all its glory.

As for water cooling it is not really needed. I have both an air cooled and a water cooled pc. I love them both and they both bring something unique to the table.

Do you intend to find a neat fan grill for the front? That's a really nice blue from the pictures. ;)

The front corsair fan has a blue LED that lights up when its on so I think to keep that kinda aggressive and unique styling I will leave it like that, there is a possibility I may order a mesh dust cover for it at some stage but I will see how it works out first for a month before deciding on that one.

The 92mm fan in front bottom is covered by the front panel so that one is not an issue and there is clearance inside of it to ensure good air flow. The rear fan was a bit more visible for the exhaust and the hold cut out does not look super attractive at this stage, I have ordered from ebay a grill filter for the rear fan attachment that will tidy this up at the back.

To

eastexas, Yes I totally understand the help everyone is providing here with cable management and trust me I am not done yet with this part of the build there will be further improvements. I have not done myself any favors though by using non modular components so it is a bit of a stretch trying to get those cables behind the chassis drive cage where they can be neatly hidden, its ok though I will figure that out soon and once I have something that does work well I will post photos of the cables re-organized.

I guess the best thing so far is that at least none of the cables are intruding directly on any of the motherboard components. So that is a start, I might order some cable sleeves and see if I can use those to remove some of the unsightly clutter.

Try pushing those cables in the drive cage as Psycho suggester. That is what I did on my first build with non modular cables and it worked out for the most part. The way you cut your window really does hide most of cables though. So that was pretty smart and it looks good. Nice job on that window.

Graphics card still has not arrived, am very sad no tracking information available via local logistics service, I know the card is in the country, I know it is with customs as of last week I do not know why processing and delivery is taking so long since I literally live like 90minutes from the customs office...

So I do understand they have thousands of packages to scan, and that it takes time but I did pay for priority shipping within 5-10 days and now its been about 10 days.. No GPU means that completing my build is delayed this makes me a sad panda.. waifu is also getting pissed off since for two weeks all i been doing is talking about geeky pc things with her ; ;

Anyways in other news.. I am still looking to name this PC something, just not sure what to call it.. its an AMD rig, with mostly Asus parts and its painted and customized with mostly blue accessories. If anyone has any ideas for good names please post them on this thread I will take the top 3 that I like and put it to a poll!

My last thing after the graphics card install will be figuring out what OS to use, at the moment I am thinking Linux Mint might be nice from a productivity standpoint, I am really really against the idea of installing Win 10 cos of all its craptastic bloatware right now but I also want to play overwatch and this might mean I have to install win 10 ; ; oh the dilemma...

Oh there will be an updated photo soon about what I have done with the cables since the suggestions were made...

Cable Management Update

I hope this is a bit more tidy than before. Truth is I had to re-wire the whole thing but work out exactly how to place the cables on the rear side of the drive cage where there was a bit of space to store them without affecting the back side panel. To get it this far it took me 3 hours work, this conceptually seemed easy enough but physically was quite the challenge...

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That looks fantastic. Job well done. Rig is looking sexy.

Takes forever to get cables right. I spent a month just on the cables for my last build and still was not fully satisfied. Like I said before it take time. A lot of time but the results speak for themselves. Also if you ever need to replace a part now the parts are easier to get at.

Sorry to hear you are still waiting on the gpu. I know how frustrating it can be waiting on the last part to arrive. It will get there eventually and you get to have some more fun putting it in on that day.

For an OS I guess that is a personal thing if you need certain Windows stuff but I run Linux Mint or a version of Linux on all my rigs. I have had very few problems with Linux Mint once you get it all working right and that does not take much if anything. I can tell you that I like the Mate version of Linux Mint but ran into issues on my z170 build and had to use the cinnamon version to solve them. No problems with cinnamon though.

I want to see the glam shots once the gpu arrives and you are done. Specifically the case itself. I like cases like women like shoes.

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Look at that

Before

After

Time well spent I would say. Good job

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What is th pci card you have i there?

wireless pci card

Looks amazing with the cables well hidden! Good job!

Bravo, sir, bravo...

The GPU arrived!


When I turned it on the Corsair Fan in front reminded me a lot of a star trek ship ....

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Software stuff
ACPI Issues, I am not 100% sure but the bios on this motherboard was struggling to detect my optical drive, the hard drive was detected but there seem to be some load errors when I have started setting up Ubuntu. I am a bit concerned at the moment I hope once the partitions are created and it boots up into the OS it wont have any issues.

Really nice job all around. Did you get the OS issue sorted?

It will be sorted, will order an SSD next week and then install both ubuntu / windows dual boot.

removed the optical drive, decided not to risk the SATA/IDE issue given its apparent conflict with AHCI, barely use the dvd drive these days anyway..

As for the 500gb mechanical hard drive, I am returning that to the person I purchased it from for a refund because basically it was falsely advertised as having 0 bad sectors but a drive test I performed showed 17 bad sectors and significant issues with read / write on the drive.

I am running the system off an Ubuntu usb stick right now and it has been running stable. Fan profiles are set to Silent and only sound like a faint whisper during operation so that is great, average temps as per bios report hover between 17C and 25C, motherboard and CPU respectively.

Once the software side of things is sorted out I am fairly confident this will run very nice.

Overall am happy with the effort.