Show Us Your Rig [5]

Nice rig there Roadking01.

Anathema | What is the Definition of Anathema? | Dictionary.com Had to look it up. I may be wrong but I don't thing there is a USB3.0-powered card reader. I've never seen and USB3.0 SDHC, MemStick, etc that are either. I'd be interested if there are.

Roadking01 said:

Latest upgrade: added second radiator and two new fans and changed the tubing from clear to red and finished the clear acrylic door

Very nice Roadking01

A Guy

Nice Build Roadking01, I like the red and blue.

Roadking01,
Welcome to SF. That's an impressive side window and really shows off the rig well !

I finally got the card reader and the extra two USB 3.0 rear ports installed. The ports and cable were fairly easy to install; it only took about 10-15 minutes. The card reader was a total, misbegotten bugger that took over an hour and a half, a bucket of sweat (in an air conditioned house, even), a rich vocabulary, and some blood and bits of skin to install. The hardest and most time consuming part was getting the four pin Molex connector plugged into the back of the reader. The pins in the socket were a bit on the fat side and I didn't have a whole lot of room to put my hand. I tried loosing things up by repeated plugging cables into the reader's socket before trying it inside the case. I eventually got lucky and got the miserable POS in. The fingers in my left hand are still cramping from struggling with it. I was afraid it would decide not to work after all that but that was just fatigue induced paranoia at work. It works just great. It's going to be so nice to be able to read cards without an external reader sticking out just begging to get knocked off and broken.

Well, now that is off my chest, here are some photos. These two show where the added USB 3.0 ports and the PCIe connector for the card reader are installed.





The added USB ports block the black PCIe socket but I can't use that one anyway because a card in there would block some air for the GPU card as well as causing the GPU card to run at only eight lanes. I snuck the two cables up behind the GPU card.

I was going to show a shot that shows where the cables run alongside the PCIe power cable for the GPU card but the idiot forum software kept rotating it 90° (mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble). You can see them in the upper right hand corner of the first photo if you look closely

These shots show what the reader looks like from the front.





That gap above the reader is from the optical drive. I have a BD drive on order that will hopefully fill that gap (but, then again, it's the same brand as the existing drive).

mjf said:

@ICit2lol
I've thought of buying on of these ICY... from PC Case Gear. Do you find it good?

Absolutely I use it all the time and I set one in the machine I sent to my brother.
Now if you get one it is a bit of a fiddle to fit as the sides that fit into the bay as you can see in pic are not that deep but it wouldn't be hard to make up some extension brackets but after fitting five I have never run into any probs. For the money a real nice bit of kit.
ICY BOX 5.25in Multiport Panel with Card Reader [IB-863-B] - $39.00 : PC Case Gear


Lady Fitz if you look the reader has two 3.0's to the right of the 4 x 2.0 and audio jacks and come through form the back - no horrible scrambling around. Plus I have two front SATA docks so this case is seventh heaven

I wonder why the Icy Box unit is not available in the USA ? I found it on eBay, but it ships from England for $51.50 plus $ 6.00 shipping to USA.

Nice looking unit :)

DocBrown said:

I wonder why the Icy Box unit is not available in the USA ? I found it on eBay, but it ships from England for $51.50 plus $ 6.00 shipping to USA.

Nice looking unit :)

Yep Doc it is actually made in Germany and ships to Europe and out here but why not to the US - real strange.

Like I said to MJF the best piece of gear I have to be honest am actually in danger of wearing it out it just gets that much use.