AzzKickr wrote:I always admire good sleeving work, yet have never succesfully completed it. Had some attempts in the past but with lousy results. I blame the sleeving brand 😜
Looking at this I might give it another shot though 😀
I have also been playing the Champions beta a couple of weeks ago. Fun game yet nothing special. I'm just hoping it will provide the same "customizability" as Q3 in terms of console commands, tweaks, mods, dedicated servers, ... bout I doubt it very much.
Yeah, sleeving quality makes a huge difference. I've tried with the cheap AliExpress rubbish before and it was crap. Not very tightly weaved so wires were visible. Didn't melt well and overall a bad experience. Since I started buying better quality (MDPC-X, Darkside, Shakmods and Teleios - whoever has the colours I'm after for a specific build) I've had great results. I used to use Paracord but since I found PET I've never looked back.
Also heard they'll be adding mod support to Quake Champs in the future. Not sure how far in the future that is though. 🤣 But I'll play regardless, because hopefully it won't be dead like Quake Live is here.
tl;dr for upcoming paragraphs:
Considering GPU backplate upgrades to make them special and stand out more. Australia sucks for buying things. I'm getting old and grumpy. Rambling because it is 4am and when I start researching something I can't sleep until it is done.
Updates for Today:
Didn't do anything with the system physically, aside from some overdue house cleaning and ripping my game CDs to ISOs to put onto USB for this computer since there's no ODD, I've gone back to the drawing board on my backplates.
When I got my build name laser cut, I've been thinking more about how great laser cutting is. It certainly beats all the hand cutting I've been doing, but it just isn't feasible for when I'm simply cutting out rectangles and other simple shapes. Meanwhile, I was talking to the guy who is making all my domed badge replicas for ones I can't source for this build since he has a vinyl plotter and printer. We got onto the topic of this project and, he has a desktop laser cutter and 3D printer too. He's into the whole maker thing I suppose.
I'm going to try to get some more acrylic at a good price to do my backplate designs in 3D now. Some transparent acrylic cut out to make the design and painted black (for consistency in colour with the other painted acrylic) with the UV green showing below it. I'd prefer to get some 1mm or 2mm, since the existing backplate is already 3mm and I don't want it getting ridiculously thick.
If that all works out, I'll be building a totally separate backplate for a fellow retro gamer and good friend of mine - a Voodoo5 5500 backplate with built in lighting and a fan controller (which will likely be adapted from a readily available one), so he can adjust the speed on the aftermarket fans he put on it easily. It's now in my long list of acrylic based projects, with the AT test bench and scratch case build, but probably will be first to get done after this build since it is the fastest.
Ahh, all the possibilities. Makes me want to invest in my own laser cutter! Maybe if I was building full time 😀
Rant:
If there's one thing that has really hit home building this, it is that Australia sorely lacks a central place to buy PC modding supplies at reasonable prices. I've been doing this for awhile, but it has generally been simple and straightforward stuff. Water cooling and other hardware components aside, it is impossible to find high quality screws, nuts, acrylics, tools, paints, wire and sleeving components in one place like it is in the US and Europe. We don't even have a company that does custom sleeving locally!
With the amount I spent on shipping and the time I spent waiting, I'd rather have paid someone to make my extensions for me. But not an option here. One admittedly great company does sell MDPC-X and all the sleeving supplies here though, just not the custom sleeving service. They were also out of the colour I wanted when I was purchasing. 😒 Everyone else sells premade Chinese crap or overpriced (and still crap) Cablemod.
Now when I talk about screws, I don't mean standard M3, M4 or 6-32 case screws, I mean the nice ones. Polished/chromed/titanium/anodised ones. I can buy 10pcs of decent quality M3 5mm screws for about $6. They aren't very nice though because they have stamped lettering on them. Same price, I can buy 100pcs of them from China with free shipping, that actually look nice and something you could put on display in a mod project.
It's just frustrating when I have go to go one store to buy one or two things and pay shipping, another store to buy one thing and pay shipping, go overseas to buy some more and more shipping costs, shop around locally to hope I can find things which sometimes does work out, but also often doesn't.
We got some really talented modders in Australia, but sourcing is just... ugh. It's not too bad if you do it a lot since you are going to be buying in bulk, which means you can either buy from the good suppliers here, or just order a lot from China at once. For one off projects though, the shipping often ends up costing more than the actual parts. This has happened to me in a big way in this build, and it is just wasted money I could have actually put into more hardware or nicer mods.
Rant over 😒
Upcoming:
I have a young cousin (16) coming over to my house tomorrow. He loves computers and wants to get into modding, so I said he can sleeve some of the cables that aren't visible / are in the back of the case to get some real hands on experience. I don't expect it to be anything amazing, but it's not visible and he'll have some fun, so it's all good.
Might do some paint experimenting on the scraps tomorrow while he does that. While writing this and proofreading, I thought about my backplate idea for my friend and might implement some of that on my own. Not the fan control since it'll be water cooled eventually, but some low voltage UV LED lighting for each GPU card. Just to make sure it really glows nicely. Guess it's back to eBay/AliExpress for me tomorrow 😀 Thank goodness I'm off work until the 15th. 😈