Sometimes you just have to improvise… As (bad) luck would have it, the Via Artigo that I wanted to put in this case, seems to be out of stock everywhere I look. Most eta’s put it’s arrival at the middle of March. Well, I’m way to impatient to wait almost a month before it arrives.

I don’t want it to hold up any work on the case, and that’s where the improvisation comes in. As it turns out, you can buy the Via PX10000G Pico-ITX motherboard separately, so that’s exactly what I did. So, I purchased that, along with a DC-DC power supply, hard drive, memory, and wireless adapter. The only thing I’m really missing is the small case to put all the parts in. Well, after thinking about it, I don’t know if I really needed the case anyway. I can fab something of my own almost as easily. It’s a little strange to think about the fact that I bought an entire ‘computer’ last night… just to put inside another computer… lunacy I tell you!

In addition to the Via system, I just ordered some other parts as well. This time around, it was mostly for cooling. After much contemplation, I decided to go ahead and pull out the big guns here. If I truly want this case to be something amazing, plain old watercooling wasn’t going to be enough. That being said, I went ahead and ordered the Wintsch Labs Arctic Web TEC cooler, and a Meanwell auxiliary PSU. I also ordered the rest of the needed tubing, barbs, and fittings. At this point, I don’t know if I’m just really committed to being crazy, or crazy enough to be committed…

Speaking of parts, I did have some other items arrive. I had another package arrive from FrozenCPU. I sometimes feel like I single-handedly keep them in business.

A few LED switches, shrink wrap, wire sleeving, and a laser LED light…

A little hex mesh…

Since the case is watercooled, I wanted a decent sized reservoir. This is designed to fill a 120mm fan hole.

You’ll see here why I chose the reservoir that I did. I thought I’d take care of two issues at once. Not only did I need a reservoir, but I had a 120mm hole in the back of the case that I needed filled.

In order to fit the reservoir in place, I needed to do a little trimming.

A little work with a dremel, file, and sandpaper got me the following results.

Next up, a little front panel work… Coming soon!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Modding, Project: Rogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.