(Part 2) Best products from r/pcmods

I took on a few sleeving projects, and it definitely has a learning curve, but I can give you some tips to maybe help you out.
First off- I know you said you know how to get the connectors off but for me getting the pins out of the connectors (24 pin, 8, 6,4- pin) was tough. The little specialty tools that are sold for this purpose for this did not work at all for me. The best tool I found for getting the pins out of the connectors was a "DenTek Dental Pik." Its a blue and white pick that you use for your teeth, sort of similar to what dentists use. The curved head of it allows you to easily push in the "wings" on both sides of the pin so that you can easily pull them out of the connectors. This tool will speed up the process! Here's a link to the actual tool on amazon, you don't need the mirror, but the two tools that come with it will work wonders, trust me.
Second- you need to pick your material. You can use paracord if you're on a budget, and just remove the core. But I found one material that I really liked was PET sleeving, (1/8" for psu sleeving.) The good thing about PET sleeving is it expands and makes it easier to slide past the pins. A bonus is that 1/4 inch PET sleeving is also really really good for SATA cables!
Third- it wouldn't hurt to buy some spare female atx pins and an atx pin crimper, just in case you mess up one of the pins. Plus if you buy a crimper and pins you can cut your psu cables to the length that you need them to help tidy up your cable management. (Or you could even also buy male pins and female connectors and just make sleeved cable extensions too.)
Forth- I would label all your wires with masking tape when you take them out of your connectors. Also drawing a diagram doesn't hurt either. I made a foolish mistake and almost fried my GPU, which was really really dumb.
Fifth- I think cable combs really bring the whole thing together. For one of my builds I drilled out some acrylic to the right diameter so that I could slide the wires through before I put the connectors on. I them sanded them with my dremel to make them rounded. This made for a really nice home-made cable comb.
Lastly- patience is key.. at least for me it was. It took a lot longer than I thought.. but once I was done it looked great. Do some research and figure out if its worth it to you to spend the time and money on doing it yourself. Its a rewarding experience, good luck!

Then your choices for a case are only limited to itx, nearly every tower case you come across will support mATX and ATX, then you have Full Tower cases that would make that little motherboard seem out of place. Tons and tons of good options from $60 and up.

As others have touched on, a good modular power supply unit will not only be more efficient/reliable (especially if you want to OC anything!), it will help take care of cable management. I have always went for "full modular", semi modular will have a 'pony tail' with the motherboard, cpu, and gpu connectors rolled into one. It's nice to be able to route each PSU cable where you want imo.

So then there are your two main issues, cable management and airflow. You have a decision to make regarding the case, I understand liking how a prebuilt case looks because some do look nice. If you want to stick with that case you need to figure out how to mod it to increase airflow. Generally speaking, switching to a aftermarket case will be simple and increase your cooling performance twice over without having to mod a thing.

I use and always recommend EVGA PSU's because they generally perform great in benchmarks and come with a 10yr warranty: 550w Gold

If it were me I'd build in this case just for the hell of it for $40: CM Masterbox

Here's another case that would be good in your situation: Corsair Air 240

All depends on your budget.

Eh not sure what's going on here as there seems to be a lot of conflicting information. You've probably figured all this out now given your post was 3 days back, but it could be useful for somebody else who stumbles upon this post:

• First up, here's a wiring tutorial for those who aren't used to working with 6 pin momentary switches. It's clear and concise with good pictures, should apply to almost any 6 pin switch.
  
  
• For those looking to purchase a switch, you want a momentary, not a latching one. A PC power button quickly closes the circuit, causing it to switch on. If you've ever held the power button down in order to hard reset the computer (without the reset button), you'll understand why a latching switch won't work.
  
  
• For connecting the switch to the motherboard headers, these made by NZXT are a great option. I used the white versions to hook up a vandal switch in my most recent build. They'll save you a good amount of time, effort and money when compared to crimping your own set. Of course, if you have crimpers etc. already, go ahead and make some from scratch, but if you have those you're unlikely to be considering a tutorial on how to hook up a power switch. Just lip off the ends of the wire that attach to the front panel and solder them to the switch instead (or screw in if you got a screw based switch).
  
  

you can use any RGB fans, but you'd wanna stick to a certain scheme. Corsair LL fans are nice, but a pack of 3 with a node pro and a fan hub is 99 bux. Thermal take's fans are also nice and only require 1 box to make them work, AND its only 1 cable where corsair is 2.

Those coolermaster ones look pretty decent as well, looks like it has a standard 4 pin RGB connector which most motherboards have these days, so if you can run the RGB off the mobo software that would be the easiest way to go. but he linked 140 mm's not sure if that case uses 120 or 140 i have no knowledge about it.


Edit if you need 140 this link is cheaper by 5 dollars.

Theoretically, you could--battery management computers primarily manage/change/monitor batteries based on their voltage. However, laptop batteries also keep track of the mAh (i.e. capacity) of the cells in order to estimate things like battery health and estimated run time. I'm not sure how Lenovo's batteries are designed or how the BMS in their batteries would react to a sudden increase in capacity.

However, you would likely have to do some serious modding. Custom case for the laptop to fit the new extended cell, custom housing for the battery, you'd have to spot-weld the cells together...dangerous work. Instead, I propose a simpler, less invasive solution.

Replace your battery with the OEM replacement (make sure you're buying from a reputable source, you want only the A-grade cells in your machine for maximum battery life). Then, buy a cheap charger, like this one. You can then cut the charging cable away from that block, and solder/shrink wrap the appropriate tip on the end of that power cable so it would plug in to an external battery pack that supports 20V output, like this one.

In terms of creating a safe, polished finished product, you'll have much better luck with an external battery. And then you have the best of both worlds--power when you need it and portability when you don't.

EDIT: Even easier, just buy this tip in the appropriate size and then you can plug it in to the PowerAdd. I don't know the dimension of the PowerAdd DC barrel, you could measure that after ordering.

Not a fan of the Halo on the heatsink or the undersized fan on it, but if temps are fine....shrugs

I've got 140mm Halo rings on two white bladed 140mm fans, and they are awesome*(far better than most LED fans, imo)....so they just seem sort of wasted on a grill/heatsink.

I kinda like the case idea though, some open airs look great.... but dust...ugh. Of course, I typed all this thinking that the acrylic was DIY, then I looked up again. Ah well, it's just me kind of musing anyways...

For a rev 2.0 I'd go completely independent rather than have a fan mounted there...use something like this Another version of the fan seen here Or some other framing so that the acrylic isn't depended on.

The concept is that it's like a bell-jar

Or build it into a wind tunnel and don't have a side fan at all, just mount it all on a base with like a 200mm fan built into the base and w/ the ventilation at the top, maybe with the PSU under that...but eh..like I said, Just musing.

So for $10 of led strip and $25 of controllers you'd be able to make 10 sets of strip kits for $35. Selling at $20 each would net $200 and then $165 after materials and probably $130 profit after shipping and magnets. You can probably get an even better deal on the rgb led strip as well to increase profits.

Overall I'd say it is a pretty good deal but I wouldn't buy it for only 1 foot of led strip. Especially not $8 for another foot. Great for people who don't want to solder and/or just want an easy kit. This however, also exists and is only $17 with prime shipping.

You guys seem to misunderstand the title or something, but yeah the fan fit perfectly with its casing but only because the wire held it in place

If you want to keep the original GPU fan in tact, https://www.amazon.com/CRJ-4-Pin-Adapter-Sleeved-Graphics/dp/B07Q5BTTDX/ref=pd_ybh_a_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YZ6DQABEG8BRYWYR6EE0

I suggest upgrading your CPU cooler to something possibly like the Cooler Master Hyper Evo, use some ArctiClean to clean up the CPU before the install after you remove the old cooler. I suggest using coffee filters to clean it up because they are lint free and work very well. You can find tutorials online on how to install a new cooler if you have any issues with it. You can either use the thermal paste the cooler comes with or get some Arctic Silver 5, I think Radioshack repackages it and sells it.

I also suggest setting it up so the fan is pushing air through the cooler towards the back of the case and if you can afford it, get a second fan for the other side and do a push/pull config and that will help temps a lot.

Or if you have enough room and want a good solution to lower CPU temps I suggest getting something like the Cooler Master Seidon 120XL. I have one in my build and helps the CPU temps since my case is so small


Also get some cable ties, that shit is a mess

They're really nice. Soft and flexible, so they can be bent to fit in tight spaces. The color is nice and bright as well. Connectors fit very snug

Amazon's selection and FrozenCPU's selection. They may be cheaper at one than the other, or actually even in stock

Here are the 3 that I bought for my X99 build, in bright green:

• 24-pin ATX extension, 30cm long
  
  
• 8-pin EPS
  
  
• 8-pin PCI-Express
  
  The color options are green, black, orange, red, blue, silver, white

+1 for PCI

I game and have never had problems connecting unless it was ISP side (boo comcast). I also stream Netflix and Amazon without any signal issues.

I use [this PCI-E adapter] (http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WN881ND-Wireless-Express-Low-profile/dp/B0079XWMEI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405104552&sr=8-2&keywords=tp-link+pci+wifi) with good results. They also make regular [PCI] (http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WN751ND-Wireless-Adapter-Low-profile/dp/B005FUGPP4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1405104552&sr=8-4&keywords=tp-link+pci+wifi) depending on what you have available. I'm sure the Rosewill one is quite good too.

I also picked up something similar to [this] (http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-ANT2405C-Desktop-Omni-directional-Antenna/dp/B001VEAI74/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1405104686&sr=8-11&keywords=tp-link+antenna) to help with my signal, since my room is quite far from my router. It will give you some flexibility on your antenna placement, and gave me a huge boost in signal.

For your purposes either would probably work but I prefer having the cleaner look of a PCI card and I'm under the assumption that there is better power/bandwith going through PCI. If you do go with USB, I suggest something like [this] (http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WN722N-Wireless-Adapter-External/dp/B002SZEOLG/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1405104921&sr=8-14&keywords=usb+wifi) where you can add on an optional antenna if you have signal issues.

you'll want to clean - sand -clean your case before you paint. you don't need to use anything to harsh, just some rubbing alcohol, some fine (200+ grit metal sandpaper) and then some rubbing alcohol again, make sure you keep fingerprints off the case as the oils on your fingers will prevent the paint from adhering properly.

you'll probably want to prime the case first, spray paint with primer won't do it, as you're going from a very dark colour, black, to a much lighter colour, red.

The best way of doing it is to sand everything down, paint everything in black, GLUE your stencil to the case (after the black has dried), there are some glues specific for stencil painting. Then prime your case with the stencil on the case, once that dries (DO NOT REMOVE THE STENCIL) paint your red over it, BEFORE this dries, remove the stencil. Be very careful as some of the primer paint may have stuck to the stencil and can try to rip into the decal.

After you have everything painted, put a clearcoat on it, and give it a good polishing sanding, use a good metal polishing compound, and a buffing wheel, or a cotton rag. (something like these) DO NOT use a washcloth or other 'pile'd' fabrics, they will soak up your polising compound and scratch your case.

Okay, just wanted to make sure. Here is the link to the item: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P3JDQNC