Forum Feedback TechEnclave presents Clean & Clear Contest

[impulse1992]

My Entry For The Techenclave Clean & Clear Contest

Spent whole Sunday morning cleaning up my PC

Got up at 10 o'clock lol I usually get up at 12

Skipped Lunch & Here's The Result

Time Spent 4-5 Hrs

Pc Config

Processor - AMD Phenom x2 555

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H

Ram - 2*4GB Gskill Ripjaws DDR3 1600Mhz

Cooler - Stock AMD

PSU - Corsair Vx450

Cabinet - Nzxt Gamma

HDD - 500GB Seagate

Monitor - 15" Samsung CRT

Stuff Used

Hand Blower Pump, Cloth, Brush, IPA, Cotton, Screw Driver, Cable Ties & Some Water

Cleaning Process

>Disconnect the PC From Mains

>Disconnect All the Peripherals(Kb, Mouse, Headphones, Etc)

>Removed the Cooler

>Used Hand Blower Pump To Clean the Cooler

>Cleaned the Processor With IPA

>Used Brush & Damp Cloth To Clean the Fans

>Cleaned The Dust Collected On the Base Of the Cabinet With Damp Cloth & Dry Cloth

>Used Cotton Dipped In IPA To Clean All the Dust Collected On the Motherboard & Rams

>Cleaned the Whole Cabinet With Cloth & Hand Blower Pump

>Cleaned HDD & Bays with Cloth

>Cleaned the PSU Air Filter

Cable Management

>Put All The Cables On The Backside Of The Cabinet

>Removed The Useless 40GB IDE Drive

>* Routed The Front Panel Audio & USB Cables To The Backside

>* Routed The 8 Pin CPU Cable From Behind The Motherboard

>* Routed Power, Restart,HDD Led, Power Led From Backside

>Put All The Extra Cables In Free Space Above The DVD Writer

>Used Cable Ties To Secure The Cables In Place

* These Cables Were In The Front Side Of The cabinet Above the Motherboard

Note

1) Pls Note I Had Done The Cable Management Around a Month Ago So didn't Need To Do It Again But I'll Describe What I Had Done Back Then(Also Didn't Take Pics Back Then)

2) In The Excitement I Forgot To a handwritten note While Taking Pics Had To Retake So "Before" Pics Are Without The handwritten note Sorry

First I Forgot To Put A Handwritten Note Then After Retaking the pics with the note I realised I Forgot tot Write The date Had to Retake The Pics Again

PICS

Before

After

Good Luck To All

 

[thunder.dragon]

Is it closed? Can I enter now? .. damn I missed! Please

 

[JuGGa]

Is it closed? Can I enter now? .. damn I missed! Please

I think its valid till today, 26th!

 

[rakesh_sharma23]

i think its open till Midnight today.... so you have only six+ hours thunder.

I have not participated ....

But it is a real joy to see so many Cable Management Freaks here.

Best of luck to you all ..

 

[Chaoseater]

^ Its till 12:00 PM. That means the Contest has been closed.

Important Dates: -

[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]

Contest open until: 12:00 noon on March 26 2012

Poll will be up by: 20:00 hrs on March 27, 2012

Poll will close by: 20:00 hrs on March 28, 2012

Results will be announced by: March 30, 2012​

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[FaH33m]

damn ! Couldn't post the the pictures few days back since TE was down and then forgot about it. Admins should consider extending the contest for a day or so since TE was down for quite sometime in between

#[member='Renegade'] , #[member='Saiyan'] , #Safin

 

[Saiyan]

^Is it ok if we extend it by tonight ?

#[member='FaH33m'], #[member='thunder.dragon']

 

[FaH33m]

^ Would be great if you can do that , I was anyways under the impressions that there's time till 26th midnight

. Thanks a lot.

 

[Saiyan]

yeah go ahead. We did have loads of downtime. Its fair that we extend it.

Contest open till 23:59 today.

 

[aman.pitbull]

Nice work, but you really must hate your PC , looking at the way you stack up those HDDS

, believe me keeping HDDs the way you did is really-really risky, and apart from that how the hell can you risk > 5TB data on an Intex PSU

, get a better PSU ASAP. You know loosing 2TB will give you sleepless nights.

 

[rejin]

@aman.pitbull : Thanks man, budget is already allocated for a total CPU upgrade, except for HDDs(i5 2500K + 650Ti/6850 + PSU + cabby + RAM), by April end as mentioned in my post. Waiting to get some money for mobo.

If u watch close, i have connected only 2 HDDs.The system is mostly used as a storage device now and i copy watever i want to my laptop and then use. I swap the HDDs once in two months.

Scrapping out my lappy soon.

I will post the config in my mind on another thread soon. Please do give ur comments

 

[jovito]

Tried for the first time to do cable management........

http://s1055.photobucket.com/albums/s517/jovito7/cable management and clean up/ heres the link

As for the steps that i took to clean the pc were...........

1 switched off the pc.

2 visualized how best to arrange the cables.

3 cleaned the interior with a vacuum, cleaned all the fans with a dry cloth and difficult places with a paint brush.

4 removed all the dust filters and front and top covers.

5 bundled the cables with zip ties, and arranged then together.

6 cleaned the dust filters and covers.

7 checked the connection of all the parts and if it was securely fit.

8 switched on the pc.

kindly do advise if i have done anything wrong or suggestions.

 

[FaH33m]

So here's my entry finally .

To start with , when I had first got my TE recommended PC back in 2008 or so , I used to be a cable management and cleanliness freak . It was a new PC with kickass hardware and all the bling so loved taking utmost care of it . It would involve dusting it every few days and cleaning it with a brush every 1-2 months + full cleaning once a year.

Off lately the amount of problems my PC had started giving which involved taking out the parts for testing and an RMA of the power supply recently etc , I never bothered with cable management and any of the cleaning . I was just waiting for it to die and give me reason to look forward to an ivy bridge based rig .

So when I saw this TE contest , I thought lets do a complete cleaning + cable management and give my PC the much deserved respect for serving me for so long and still going strong after the innumerable breakdowns

The Dirty Picture

Living right next to one of the busiest roads of the city is a curse. The amount of dust that accumulates inside the PC just within 3-4 months is unbelievable. Have a look

.

and a messed up table .​

The Cleaning Phase - 3-4 hours spent ​

Since there was way too much dust inside , I didn't bother with trying to clean before disassembling the PC with the fear of more dust falling into the motherboard slots / graphic card etc and causing issues later.

Its important to keep in mind that when you dust the cabinet from outside after a long period of time , all the dust settled will eventually fall inside and clog the parts so it's best to avoid it .

-Disassembled every single part inside the cabinet as well as the monitor / speakers etc for cleaning .

- Carried the cabinet straight to the balcony , removed all parts . Sighed looking at the amount of dust accumulated .

- Kept all the hardware aside , including fans / screws of cabinet etc .

- Tried dusting out all possible dirt and dust inside the cabinet . There was still loads of it left inside .

- Figured out the only way to get it super clean was give a nice bath to the main chassis ( minus the top + front panel etc since the panels inferior paint quality is prone to rusting from past experience ).

- taped and completely sealed the front panel wire/ led / buttons to avoid contact with water.

- gave the cabinet a nice clean wash and dried it up .

Till the cabinet was drying up in the sun -

-Cleaned all the 120mm fans using super fat paint brushes used to paint walls etc .

- Cleaned the motherboard,RAM, Graphic card, Hard drives , PSU etc with another paint brush .

- Had to remove the GPU heatsink completely to clean its fan and applied a fresh coat of thermal paste.

- Cleaned external hardware - mouse , keyboard ,monitor , speakers and finally the table

End result in Pics below ,



During Cleaning :

My CM690s front fan filter has to be removed since it was too thick and now more it suck in all the possible dust . Fixed it using 120mm Silverstone fan filters this time .

After Cleaning :​

Now that almost all the cleaning was done - lunch break taken . Got back to the PC for the assembling .

Before assembly , did a test run of the hardware to make sure nothing died during cleaning .

Preparing for Test setup : ​

Before the final assembly , a small photoshoot of the stars of my modest rig

.

Since I haven't yet mentioned the config , here it is :

Q6600 @3ghz + CCF ,Asus P5Q Pro , GSkill Pi-black 4GB , Sapphire 4850 512MB ,Corsair VX450 , 5 TB of HDD space. Cooler Master CM690 modded by KMD.​

Final Assembly + Cable management ~ 2-3 hrs ​

To be honest, cable management with the CM690 is a not a very difficult task with some cable ties / velcro ties . Its not as easy as just throwing all the cables at the back like in the case of full towers 800D etc but with some patience and work , one can get a really neat job done .

The basic task is to try and route all the cables from the back .

Some important points to remember -

>> If you plan to route the 4 pin motherboard power connector from the back - make sure to first install the motherboard , route the cable from the back >> connect it to the motherboard and only then install the top panel 120mm fan . Incase the top panel fan is already installed , it can get really difficult to route the power connector from the small cut out at the top and then connect it on the mobo.

>> While routing the power-supply cables to the back side from the cut out provided next to the PSU - make sure to first route the bigger and fatter cables like the 24 pin connector , molex connectors etc and then make way for the thinner and smaller connector . If you do the other way round , it will be difficult to get pass the 24 pin connector in the end

>> Make use of the provided cable management tools with PSU / motherboard . For everything else there are cable ties . Its best to get hold of velcro ties incase you keep changing or removing hardware often .

>> For the front panel connectors etc you can sleeve them together using a thin sleeving tubes available at local hardware shops.

>> Rest of the cable management is self explanatory from the pictures below

.

The Final Look

​

A completely clean and shining rig ! Feels like the PC is back to its glory , the good old days when it was brand new .​

 

[Saiyan]

Contest extended by another 24 hours. Updated the first post with revised dates.

 

[JuGGa]

Nice photo collage #[member='FaH33m'] ! Good click! & good work indeed!

 

[thunder.dragon]

My Entry:

Took me 7 hours to clean this up with:

1. Small Brush

2. Doctor's Spirit

3. Cotton

4. Water

5. Cloth

6. Blower(My mouth)

Initial Pictures and see all those Noida Dusts

Process

a) Open Up the remove all the Wires one by one and open up the cabinet side panel one by one (don't tell me you can't do that)

Removed the DVD Drive, Graphics Card, HDDs, PSU, FANs CPU Heatsink

c) Started with cleaning the fan blades with Cloth 1st then used matchstick - covered the cotton on it's head, took Spirit and cleaned.. Cloth is not good for the side of fans hence spirit or water.

d) The started with GCard, 1st cleaned with Brush strokes followed by some beatup with cloth..

after that started with same Spirit formula with match stick n cloth

e) Started with HDD with cloth and Spirit

f) I ddnt removed the mobo from tray but still cleaned the RAM DIMMS, RAM, CPU area, HDD connector s, MOSFETs area with Doctors SPIRIT with care/ No water - and bit cloth

g) Took the FAN Grills - filters are washed them with Water splash - Used the pipe and my finger to create huge water pressure and did like FireFighters. Haha

h) Next up the PSU with Brush sadly my figures are too fat to get inside so only Brush strokes as much as I could.

i) This is the bad part.. used Brush and My Mouth as BLOWER to clean the dirt of the CPU Heatsink. .. became tired after 12-13 blows... fewwwww!!

j) Brushed the cabinet's inner part and also used cloth to clean.

k) I ddnt untied my cable management hence it was just blown by air with help of CLoth.. - PS: Not my mouth was kinda tired.. LOL also saved 2-3 hours as my management takes time.

l) Slowly started assembling and ta tara... here you are.. shiny Xandra - sadly I am selling it now.

Hope you all enjoyed and help me win

 

[jassi]

A little better management than before ..

Steps to keep my cabinet clean is just cleaning it in proper interval of time.i.e (twice a month) .

usually i Clean my cabinet with :-

. Blower

. Small Brush

. Cloth

. Water

. polish

thanks

 

[RD274]

Its a bit difficult participating in these kinda contests when you have a chota Elite 335, as it is the VX450 makes it look like Doctor Octupus's visit to the Shire but still I tried.

I started with this-

Before:

And ended with this-

After:

Time taken: Today.

Tools Used: A dusting cloth and a thick paint brush

.

EDIT:

Pic with name and date-

EDIT2: Does anyone happen to have a Delorean with them? Apparently I need to go back in time and smack myself in the head for not writing the date on my pics before cleaning.

 

[Saiyan]

Contest is over now guys

I hope you all had good time cleaning your PC. That itself is a win for you all

 

[Gannu]

Some really good entries there. Alright I guess show's over. Let's take this up in the Staff Section now.