Gallery: It's done! Well, the case is at least, and we're rather happy with its rugged, Warhammer 40,000 looks.
So, at long last, the case – but not the build – is finished.
We started building our 40k-inspired Vox-caster mod what feels like a lifetime ago. It was a strong start, too, and our ambition of weekly updates even, almost, kinda made it. But work – real work, not something that we pretend is work, like this – took over. Boo-urns!
Last week, however, we dusted off the bits and piles of screws in the labs and got back to it. And, as we suspected, we really are an idiot for a) not properly sorting the myriad of different screw types, lengths, widths and so on, and b) we really shouldn’t have started and then taken a month-long break.
To say that putting this back together was a curious challenge is an understatement. John Gillooly, bless and curse him by turns, would stick his head into our corner of the labs regularly and giggle at our self-inflicted predicament. We’d place a panel, peer at the screws, remove the panel, peer at the size of hole, then peer at the screws all over again.
Even when we did commit (“It must go HERE!”), we’d realise later on that what appeared a tight screw (hee!), was in fact the wrong screw. Some of these bastards are micrometers different! So then we’d have to take it apart, realising that what was holding one part together was in fact meant to screw in (hee!) entirely somewhere else.
Yes, I’m an idiot. But, if John’s constant giggling was anything to go by, at least an entertaining one.
All frustration aside (and really, if ever you do something like this, SORT YOUR BITS), we got it all back in one more or less contiguous piece. For now, we’re ignoring the small pile of left over screws (John is sure that the next time I pick the case up it’s going to fly apart at the seams), and thinking ahead to actually getting a working system in here. As we said back at the start, we’re basing it around a GIGABYTE G1.Sniper and a 990X CPU. It’s kit that GIGABYTE and Intel have been generous enough to let us hold onto it for this very project.
The rest of the build, though, is a bit more fluid. In fact, the pile of kit we so nobly gathered way back at the start is now, well, apart from the RAM and HDD, kinda... gone. So what do you guys think I should look out for? I’m kinda inclined to switch from my usual ATI/AMD card to a GTX580 or two this time around. I’ve been using ATI cards for Gods know how long, but I think it might be worth a change. At the very least, I should see what the other side is like after all this time. An SSD would of course be nice, but damned expensive.
And, of course, some appropriate lighting.
Once I have some gear in there and all cabled (and I am in two minds whether I should go neat or merely brute-force (as the Imperium would), I’ll look at adding a few more bits and bobs to bring it inline with my vision. I’m cutting out (slowly, labouriously) an Imperial Eagle stencil to put on the side, and looking for a suitably retro looking phone-handset to place in the drive bay, for that whole comms device feel.
So what else? In the meantime, check out the gallery of the more or less final box. Like it?
Issue: 137 | June, 2012