One problem I had with the build was the stiffness of the wires for the USB 3.0 ports on the front panel. The two wires from the port melded into a single, fat, plastic-encapsulated plug, and the header for the port on the motherboard, instead of being vertical like most pins, was parallel to the board, and that caused the cables to press against the drive frame. The fix was a simple right-angle adapter meant for exactly this purpose. And it was only $6 and change.

My case also came with a 200 mm fan that sucks air through a screen in the front panel and blows it across the drive bay. It ran virtually silently at 18 db. But the original fan developed a nasty squeak, so I sought out a replacement. Unfortunately this is a unique 20 mm thick fan, and nearly all replacements were 30 mm. There was only one, and the one with the blue LEDs that matched the original was out of stock, so I had to get the red one. Fortunately with the front door shut, you don't really have to see it.

I had a little USB Bluetooth dongle that for some reason I was unable to make work. Broadcomm only makes Windows 7 and earlier drivers, and doesn't support it any more. Then I realized that my motherboard has bluetooth built in. I just hadn't thought of it. It apparently uses the antennas on the back that I hadn't attached because I didn't intend to use the built in wi-fi. So I put on the antennas and enabled the bluetooth and the signal is a lot stronger than the little dongle. I can now use my headphones anywhere in the house without dropouts. However, the phone utilities will be kind of missed.

My case is designed to be a noise suppressor. The left panel even has eggshell foam on it, but I haven't had that panel on for ages because of all the monkeying I had to do with Himawari, and because the numeric display that showed the boot process and temperature was on the motherboard. Even now, I have the LED on Purah's CPU heatsink set to display colors to indicate temperature and the cover off so I can monitor it. But I won't be able to see it if I put the cover back on to control the noise (My homebrew water cooling system was virtually silent). This is from before clear cases became a thing. But I have seen the light. As much as I normally hate all the ludicrous RGB crap that is in fashion, which makes your PC look like a Pride Parade exploded inside it, I finally saw a use for the 12v, 4 pin RGB connector. I spotted some cheap RGB strips (not the more expensive 5 volt ARGB stuff that does chasing lights etc.). I can easily run one on the exterior of the case and set the software to have IT display the CPU temperature where I can see it.

The strip's waiting in my shopping cart while I decide on one more thing, I wanna get a Much bigger drive to replace D (Where all the anime lives.). I could either double it with a 6 TB Western Digital Red for under $100, or go completely mad and get the 14 TB model - which would have more than enough space for running automated backups of the rest of the computer too, confounding my previous plan to take advantage of the drive slot in the top of the case.

I should also consider finding a good way to merge F and H, removing the Windows installs, and consolidating the data and the saved preferences (for programs I haven't reinstalled yet). Although, if I consolidate H to F (The SATA SSD) that frees up another drive. And there's still the stack of drives I was going to run backups to (various 2 and 3 TB drives, but older ones). Decisions, decisions.

And I'm left again pondering the wisdom of water cooling again in my pursuit of silence.

Posted by: Mauser at October 12, 2023 05:14 PM (BzEjn)

Posted by: Mauser at October 13, 2023 08:04 PM (BzEjn)

Posted by: Mauser at October 21, 2023 04:00 PM (sZ6tC)

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