Panda's holiday adventure!

[Panda Man]

Part 1 - The GeminII

I gots my GeminII yesterday! I immidiatly stripped my PC and and got everything set up.

Ooohh, shiny!





And now I cast my the stock cooler to hardware hell!



Yes, the drawer above that is hardware heaven :P

Anyways, installation was a snap. A little thermal paste, some screws here and there and presto! I also added a fan for good measure :)





The installation of the cooler itself it was easy, but getting it back into the case was a bitch. Routing the cpu molex behind it was rather difficult (but far from impossible) and I had trouble screwing in the top motherboard screws (I didn't even try the top right). I blame Paul. Booting up I ran speedfan and 2 instances of PRIME95. Temps idling dropped from about 35-36C to about 27-28C on average, with the window AC unit on it was a mere 23-24C. Under load it has gone from 53-54C on average to about 42-43C. This baby is phenomal! Thanks again to Rich, the HL staff and everyone that makes HL what it is


Part 2 - The ghetto cable routing mod

I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but being the lazy bastard I am I kept putting it off. Well since the 900 sucks ass in the wiring dept., I decided to mod it to route the cables behind the motherboard. I also didn't have the proper tools. You know where this going.

The dremel couldn't cut this thing, so I took a drill, a 36v drill :P, and drilled holes along the professional looking outlines I made :P No pic for this, sorry. I was more worried about getting it done. Then I cut what was left connecting the steel, bent it and popped it out. I then removed the drill bit and fixed this other bit that looked like an acorn. I have no idea what it is, but it can eat some metal :P I used that to smooth out all the jaggies, as you can imagine there were a lot. Then I used the dremel to finish the holes. It turned out better than I expected really, it's not quite ghetto enough. I'll work on that. I only have pics of the finished product. That's polobunny's fault.

WARNING: These pics are for those who like to laugh at cheap ass mods and can tolerate poor wiring. I don't have the money or the tools to do it properly.

Viewer discretion is advised. :P







All those cables hid nicely behind the motherboard tray :D It turned out pretty damn smooth at well, no way for the sleeving on the cables to snag and whatnot.


RESULTS:

TIME - Roughly 5 hours, including time to strip the case and charge the dremmel, reasemble, etc. 5 hours, top that blake! :P

WIRES
Before - Lots
After - Not too many.

AIR FLOW
Before - Not much
After - Lots more

COLD CATHODE LIGHT
Before - Dark
After - Bright

FINGERS
Before - Many
After - Less


FINAL PRODUCT - Again, not for the squeemish!








So yeah I know the wiring is still horrible. It's not quite as bad now as in the pics, I straightened up the bottom a tad bit more. Told you I'd work on keeping the ghettoness :P

[stinger608]

Hell Panda, it looks pretty damn nice man!!!!

I would have to say, it is colorful thats for sure

[polobunny]

Always so ghetto. Like I told you i'm about to do the same, with a dremel though. :P
I'm going to put catterpillar trim on the edges too so it looks awesome and all. :)

[Panda Man]

Originally Posted by stinger608

Hell Panda, it looks pretty damn nice man!!!!

I would have to say, it is colorful thats for sure

Why thank you thar stinger!

Originally Posted by polobunny

Always so ghetto. Like I told you i'm about to do the same, with a dremel though. :P
I'm going to put catterpillar trim on the edges too so it looks awesome and all. :)

Why shouldn't I be? :P Have fun!

[Capper]

Panda,
I'm so sorry, I forgot to put the tool for securing the cooler to the board in your package. If you need it, let me know and I'll send it out

[Panda Man]

Originally Posted by Capper

Panda,
I'm so sorry, I forgot to put the tool for securing the cooler to the board in your package. If you need it, let me know and I'll send it out

OH NOES!!1!11!!

Are you sure? Looking over the parts list in the instruction manual, it looks like everything is here :\ Everything is fitted nicely though, and works great, so either it's not necessary. Thanks again Rich!

[screwballl]

looks great!!
For me, I went from a Scythe Ninja to a Tt Big Typhoon and my idle temps were about the same (maybe 1 or 2º lower) but under load went from 54-56ºC to 44-46ºC
This is with ambient room temp of 78-82ºF

[Yellowhello]

Have fun with the GeminII! Those holes in the mobo tray look pretty ghetto though; maybe some rubber edge moulding will save your wires from getting stripped.

[azianai]

thats sooo much color @_@

[Stormcrow]

Now thats what I like too see! Ghetto systems, can't beat them. My wiring job is a bunch of scotch tape holding the extra wires to the top and sides of the case.