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#1031
First Build, Part Three
This shot is of the speed control pot for the left side panel fan. I had to make a bracket to hold it in. You can see a bit of the pot for the exhaust fan.
The next two shots show the hub that feeds the fans. The bottom connector feeds the two front fans (I had to sneak the cable under the PSU to a Y splitter and, from there, to the fans), the center one feeds the side fan, and the top one, the exhaust fan. I prefer to have the case fans running at a constant feed since a constant sound level is easier to ignore than one that keeps changing. The fans are quiet enough, noise shouldn't be an issue anyway. I probably won't use the filter on top of the PSU; it's there for now mostly to keep small parts from falling in (been there, done that, didn't even get a tee shirt).
This photo shows where I "snuck" the front fans cable under the MOBO plate and PSU. I had to take the connector off to pull it off. Whatever works.
Below is shot of the PSU and the cables connected to it. Yes, it's upside down. There isn't enough room underneath for it to get enough air and the convoluted botom made opening it up for air and adding a filter impractical. The two cables running across the top of the PSU lead to a pair of USB 2.0 connectors and will connect to a header on the MOBO. The CPU power and 24 pin cables coming out of the PSU had sleeves that were essentially transparent so I used wrap around sleeves on them. The other PSU cables are homemade. One leads to the fan hub. Three are combined into one to make routing easier, then splits back off near their destination. Each of the hot swap bays have their own feed from the PSU (I read in a review that if they didn't have their own feeds, it could cause the other HDDs to momentarily stop when a HDD is inserted in the bay). The third feed goes to the optical drive and has a cable splitting off to a four pin Molex connector to possibly feed a card reader/USB 3.0 hub. You can also see part of the cable supplying power to the SSD and HDDs (the SSD mounts on the floor of the case). That cable was challenging because I used #14 wire to avoid as much voltage drop as possible. I had to strip the wire where the connectors went in order to get them to fit without breaking. Fun.
This shot shows more of the SATA power cable and the cables leading to the shotswap bays and optical drive. I cut a new hole for the front panel cables to go through since the two places provided left them coming up a bit short and/or looked like heck. Now, I have enough length for all of them except the audio connector (I fixed that with an extension). Once the front panel cables are connected to the MOBO, I'll cover the exposed cables at the top of the case with a wrap sleeve. Those white things on the floor of the case are the silicone mounts for the SSD.
This is a closer shot of the cables going to the hot swap bays and the optical drive. The empty space is where I'll be putting a card reader later on (the one at the top of my list will need that four pin Molex connector floating in there right now). The only SATA data installed right now is for the 2.5" swap bay and I wanted to install it before putting in the 3.5" bay while it was easier to get at.
Part Four coming up soon.
Last edited by Lady Fitzgerald; 14 Jan 2013 at 21:02. Reason: Oldtimer's Disease