[Build Log] - Old School TJ07

[Salty_Pepperpot]

Hi all!

 

So back in the ye olde days of the internet I used to lurk on XtremeSytems and there was introducted to the Holy Grail of computer case modding through Charles Harwood and his MillionDollarPC TJ07 builds. Ah so beautiful! So shiny! I bought my TJ07 from the now defunct ChilledPC, with the view to get it watercooled and all fancy like the big boy MuderMods. Obviously I'm a little late, because that was back in 2010 and its still dry as a bone. But not for long! Welcome to my first ever build log!

 

So the plan is to * finally* re-crerate my very own MurderMod- style TJ07. I'm not going to lie, there's not going to be much originality here as a thousand better modders have been here before and done it all (and better). Then again, it's been so long that everyone might have forgotten what a TJ07 is..... and anyway, if nothing else this log will been in homage to all the amazing work from the MurderBox guys, MillionDollarPC, xForma, and everyone else who did a sick build in this case. Hopefully there will be some useful information for someone to find in this post- most of the xtremeSystem builds have been lost to Photobucket failures, and even my carefully collected bookmarks folder of builds on Overclocked has been nuked by the forum upgrade. Dying build logs about a dead case.. maybe I'll call this one The Crypt

 

 

Blah blah blah, get on with it. Picture time!

 

 

What a beauty! I'm currently running a Ryzen 5 3400g/GTX 1080/32Gb on a mini ITX board because my X99/6850k system motherboard decided to stop booting, so it looks extra tiny in this case. Check out my awesome orange Xigmatek fans! 10 years old and still going strong

 

Theres some mods been done to this by ChilledPC as well. I got the internals powdercoated, a new window cut, inverted ATX layout as i think it looks so much better in a TJ07, and a quad radiator bracket. I did a couple of tiny mods too, replacing the front bay USB ports with a little 3.5" fan controller and I also changed the front Status LED's to orange ones. Because orange is the best colour. There's a terrible hacksawed cable routing hole along the rear midplate that needs cleaning up too.

 

I'll be grabbing some parts from ColdZero, and maybe a midplate from MartaMod. Surprisingly, the aftermarket parts scene for this case is still going strong. A testament to how awesome this case is!

 

 

I apologise for the obvious neglect  Ill make it up to you TJ07 I promise! First things first, need to move existing hardware to a new case and start the TJ07 healing process X

 

This buildlog is sponsored by Pepper, Financial Advisor & General Assistant, MD, BSc (Hons) She is ready to begin.

 

Sythe Himuro's might get reused as they are so cool. We shall see.

 

 

Unfortunately these guys wont. Enjoy your retirement, I will always be your biggest... fan.....

 

 

Venerable GTX 1080. Might end up using it for another year at this rate, if Nvidia don't pull their finger out. Maybe pigs will become airbourne and AMD will produce a competitive high end GPU! We need the competition that's for sure!

 

 

 

Wanted to picture this as its a very cool feature of the case. The whole tray slides out the back so you can work on it with loads of access! 

 

 

Safe and sound in another decent case- a H440 I think it is. 

 

 

So much room for activities! I will take it apart completely as its 99% screws (not rivets) and give it a very good clean. Very simple to take apart. Maybe that's why the aftermarket parts scene is so decent for this case? 

 

 

Pepper is very sad and has been relegated to the sofa after discovering she doesn't have opposable thumbs and is therefore quite useless as an assistant. Good work Pepper. 

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by Salty_Pepperpot
Fixin' Pictures

[Bastiaan_NL]

The Mighty TJ07! I wanted one, but bought a CoolerMaster ATCS 840 instead. It also had the motherboard tray which was awesome!
I'm glad you are reviving this case, and I can't wait to see what you come up with. Have fun and thanks for sharing

[Steven]

One of my favorite cases from that time, I know @Duality92 is doing a big mod right now in a Corsair 900D, those were my two favorite cases from that time. 

[Salty_Pepperpot]

Let's have a look at the plans. I found a fantastic sketchup model for the case. Everything else is from TuboSquid free files. I've modelled some little bits here and there. 

 

 

I hereby name this build, The Pepperpot! 

 

Yeah I know, nothing too ground-breaking, but why change 10 years worth of good ideas? The only part of the waterloop that makes me nervous is the GPU> Reservoir tube. 

 

 

If any experts can lend a thought as to the feasibility I'd appreciate it  Apart from that, I'm pretty confident everything is going to work out fine, it's a fairly simple loop.

 

Here's the proposed hardware:

 

CPU : Ryzen 5800

GPU:  RTX 3080

RAM: 32/64GB Corsair 3200

MOBO: X570 ROG Strix-E

PSU: Silverstone Strider 1000w

 

Storage (If anyone cares):

 

O/S: 512Mb NVMe

Games: 1Tb NVMe

Media: 8Tb HDD

Projects: 4Tb HDD

Projects Backup: 4TB HDD

Adobe Projects: 1TB SSD

 

All I need to buy is the Games NVMe, the rest has been collected over the years. I really like having separate storage for separate things. 

Here's a list of watercooling bits:

 

CPU Block	Quantum Momentum X570-E
Reservoir	EK RES X4 250 (R2.0)
Radiator	EK Coolstream 480
Radiator	EK Coolsteam 240
Pump	Aquacomputer D5 Next
GPU Block	Heatkiller 3080 (if it looks nice)
GPU Backplate	Heatkiller 3080 Backplate
Coolant	Mayhem's Dye & Distilled Water

 

All kinds of 3/8-5/8 (16mm) fittings and tubes also. And a few tools to get them bent etc etc etc.

 

As I mentioned before I'll be getting lots of aftermarket parts from ColdZero, Martamod. A few cable combs from Clockwerk. Monitoring stuff from Aquacomputer. Loop cleaning stuff and fluid from Mayhems. 

 

I decided I have far too much money so I'm going to sleeve my own cables. Cablemod was pretty expensive anyway so why not go whole hog? I got a little test package the other day from MDPCx with a few items. Sample sleeves & shrink for size and colour, 15AWG wire and various crimps, connectors and terminals. Thanks to the sample bits I've decided on the sizes of sleeve and colours. 

 

 

Introducing the ghetto studio for crap-tacular pictures. They cant be any worse than the ones in the first post!

 

 

So this was an unexpected contender. Stripey sleeve! I think it looks really cool, and I'd love to use it but it just wont fit into the theme for this one. Maybe next time.

 

 

After playing for a little while I've come up with

 

From left to right: Shade 19, Papaya Orange, and Oxide Orange. Snazzy.

 

I've decided to use Small XTC with transparent heatshrink. I'm going to do Lutro's heatshrinkless method. I actually decided on 17 AWG wire as I thought 15 AWG was really tricky to get into the connector when it had been sleeved. Subsequent practice has made me realise this is not the case, I was just doing it shittily. Never mind. The difference is very slight. I'm going to use white wire for the oranges and black for the Shade19 sleeve. (The right backing colour makes a huge difference. I was really surprised to see how much better the colours look on the appropriate background). Im using small XTC sleeve as it fits nicer and I like the tighter weave. 

 

I have also received a Silverstone ST-1000 PTS. I've had one of these running for the last 10 years and it's been flawless. I was actually debating weather to keep it going for this build too, but the matter was decided for me when my other half decided to short some pins to test the Ryzen System when it was getting built. Magic Purple Smoke, goodbye PSU

 

 

So this is the same thing as my old one, except its shorter now! It's not amazingly high rated on the PSU lists but I trust them. Also, it's a 1:1 pinout with only one split cable on the ATX 24pin, so sleeving is going to be so easy compared to others! (I hope)

 

Package arrived yesterday so I'm getting the log up-to-date for another post soon. I hope this is actually interesting  Cheers

 

 

 

Ninja Edit to Include less teeny image of render:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by Salty_Pepperpot
Fixin' Pictures

[Salty_Pepperpot]

21 minutes ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

The Mighty TJ07! I wanted one, but bought a CoolerMaster ATCS 840 instead. It also had the motherboard tray which was awesome!
I'm glad you are reviving this case, and I can't wait to see what you come up with. Have fun and thanks for sharing

 

Cheers. I was trying to get the next post in before anyone replied but you're too fast for me  Designs Above!

 

1 minute ago, Steven said:

One of my favorite cases from that time, I know @Duality92 is doing a big mod right now in a Corsair 900D, those were my two favorite cases from that time. 

 

Another great case. I also loved the Stacker 830, although I never had the chance to own one. 

[ENTERPRISE]

Nice and Welcome to EHW. 

 

Man the memories that come flying back to me with reading the first post. Good days. The plans for the build look great, looks like you have put some serious thoughts into it, enough to model it out with Sketchup (Solidworks man myself). 

 

Depending on how much of a gamer you are or how many games you keep installed at any one time, possibly consider a larger nvme for the games drive. 

[Salty_Pepperpot]

14 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Nice and Welcome to EHW. 

 

Man the memories that come flying back to me with reading the first post. Good days. The plans for the build look great, looks like you have put some serious thoughts into it, enough to model it out with Sketchup (Solidworks man myself). 

 

Depending on how much of a gamer you are or how many games you keep installed at any one time, possibly consider a larger nvme for the games drive. 

 

Nice to be here, cheers. I've been planning this for ever at this point, there's always been a spec list floating around somewhere-  I'm so pleased its finally happening. Thanks for the tip, I found a cheap and hopefully cheerful 2TB PNY XLR8 I'll tray and squeeze into the budget. It does make more sense. 

[Supercrumpet]

Definitely following along for this one. The TJ07 and TJ11 were two of the classic top-end cases from the era of when I jumped into PC building.

[Bastiaan_NL]

23 hours ago, Salty_Pepperpot said:

 

Cheers. I was trying to get the next post in before anyone replied but you're too fast for me  Designs Above!

 

My first infraction on this forum, hopefully no ticket  
Thanks for the update, looking good! I'm a little afraid of that thight tube bend in the top, if you manage to pull it off I'm sure it'll take a few tries. 
The only way to give the bends a little room there is going straight up, make a 90 degree bend into the corner where you've drawn the upward tube and make a 90 back down and/or use a thread extender to bring the fitting a little further away from the block to create more room (will also work for the bend you've drawn, but still not as much room). 

I love the colors you've chosen for the sleeving, the mdpc-x products are awesome. I still have a large box filled with sleeving and heatshrink from them 

 

21 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Depending on how much of a gamer you are or how many games you keep installed at any one time, possibly consider a larger nvme for the games drive. 

I second this, the size of some games is really insane! My MW folder is 240GB alone...

Edited October 26, 2020 by Bastiaan_NL
My English sucks...

[Salty_Pepperpot]

1 hour ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

My first infraction on this forum, hopefully no ticket  
Thanks for the update, looking good! I'm a little afraid of that thight tube bend in the top, if you manage to pull it off I'm sure it'll take a few tries. 
The only way to give the bends a little room there is going straight up, make a 90 degree bend into the corner where you've drawn the upward tube and make a 90 back down and/or use a thread extender to bring the fitting a little further away from the block to create more room (will also work for the bend you've drawn, but still not as much room). 

I love the colors you've chosen for the sleeving, the mdpc-x products are awesome. I still have a large box filled with sleeving and heatshrink from them 

 

I second this, the size of some games is really insane! My MW folder is 240GB alone...

 

Hah no tickets here

 

I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying- Something like this?

 

 

It does get rid of the tricky S-bend at the top. Good shout! 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bastiaan_NL]

Exactly! And the more you bring the fitting away from the heatsink with a thread extender (I have the bitspower g1/4 ones in different sizes) the more room for the bends you'll create at the highest part of the tube. 

Nice drawing by the way, makes it easy to visualize 

[Salty_Pepperpot]

Update time, Package from Germany....

 

 

It's Sleeving!

 

 

So many goodies in here. As I've mentioned above, I've decided to use Small XTC with transparent heatshrink, on 17 AWG black/white wire.

 

 

This stuff looks amazing!

 

 

 

My personal favourite colour- Papaya Orange. 

 

 

This is an absolute beast! Its made my crimping so much easier. Can't recommend it enough.

 

 

With its baby brother awwww bless.

 

 

A whole host of connectors, crimps, terminals, p-clips. I've been practicing some crimping and after about 30 wasted ATX pins I think I've worked it out  

 

 

I've started making a shorty cable. The Silverstone pinout is super simple. One split cable and after looking into it, I don't think I even need to include the double one at the back there.  

 

How's my Crimping? Apologies this is the best macro shot I can do without a lens. This is through a magnifying glass ahah.   

 

 

Heatshrinkless! It's not difficult at all. (With some practice....)

 

 

17AWG on the left, 15AWG on the right.

 

I got another package from Germany too!

 

  

 

Pepper approves!

[Salty_Pepperpot]

57 minutes ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

Exactly! And the more you bring the fitting away from the heatsink with a thread extender (I have the bitspower g1/4 ones in different sizes) the more room for the bends you'll create at the highest part of the tube. 

Nice drawing by the way, makes it easy to visualize 

 

This is a great idea, cheers! Make it so much simpler. 

[Salty_Pepperpot]

Another package.

 

 

These arrived much sooner than I expected! This afternoon I've had a play around with all the Aquacomputer stuff. 

 

 

Sweet holy jeebus. What a total cabling nightmare! One Aquero, one Farbwerk, 3 Splitty4's, 6 Corsair QL120's and a whole load of spaghetti. At least I don't have to cook tonight! Unfortunately, the Farbwerk can only support 90 LED's per channel. As the QL-Series fans have 34 LED's each, this means 2 fans max per channel. I'm having to use one Splitty4 per 2 fans, and I've used one Farbwerk channel for LED Strips. Not included in this setup is the three in-line water temp monitors I want to include, the pump, a flow monitor and air temp sensors. I'm definitely going to have to work out how to shorten and sleeve the majority of this stuff. It's all going to have to fit in the bottom of the TJ07... somehow.... I'm going to have to build some kind of mounting setup

 

As for the Aquasuite software, it's exactly what I need. no nonsense, no fancy graphics or bullshit interfaces. My partner bought the ThermalTake Riing AIO. The fans are cool, and look great. The software is complete garbage. It works, (just about) but the way its laid out... its tedious and obfuscated. 

 

 

Nope. Bad.

 

So neat! So tidy! Individually addressable LED's with any effect and copy/pasting. Yes Please. 

 

 

I need to plug everything in. But already I can see this is seriously good.

 

That's all for today! If anyone has suggestions about the spaghetti problem I'd love to hear it. Current plan is to build some kind of mounting system, and start building custom cables.  There are a few of these ^^^ connectors though, and I have no idea what to call it, (miniature USB?) or how to take it apart.

 

[Bastiaan_NL]

22 hours ago, Salty_Pepperpot said:

 

This is a great idea, cheers! Make it so much simpler. 

Happy to help

That's a lot of nice stuff you've got there! 
I just hide as many cables as possible, but I don't think that's what you are planning to do. So good luck sleeving them all
The 5 pin usb header is actually pretty simple, if you lift up that little black tab on top of the metal pin and hold it, you can pull out the cable with the pin. 

[ENTERPRISE]

On 10/26/2020 at 10:10 PM, Salty_Pepperpot said:

Update time, Package from Germany....

 

 

It's Sleeving!

 

 

So many goodies in here. As I've mentioned above, I've decided to use Small XTC with transparent heatshrink, on 17 AWG black/white wire.

 

 

This stuff looks amazing!

 

 

 

My personal favourite colour- Papaya Orange. 

 

 

This is an absolute beast! Its made my crimping so much easier. Can't recommend it enough.

 

 

With its baby brother awwww bless.

 

 

A whole host of connectors, crimps, terminals, p-clips. I've been practicing some crimping and after about 30 wasted ATX pins I think I've worked it out  

 

 

I've started making a shorty cable. The Silverstone pinout is super simple. One split cable and after looking into it, I don't think I even need to include the double one at the back there.  

 

How's my Crimping? Apologies this is the best macro shot I can do without a lens. This is through a magnifying glass ahah.   

 

 

Heatshrinkless! It's not difficult at all. (With some practice....)

 

 

17AWG on the left, 15AWG on the right.

 

I got another package from Germany too!

 

  

 

Pepper approves!

D5 Next, great choice ! Have one of these as my secondary pump and it is fantastic. I also applaud your patience with respect to custom sleeving you cables, you have patience I do not haha. Lastly, hey kitty !

[Salty_Pepperpot]

22 hours ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

Happy to help

That's a lot of nice stuff you've got there! 
I just hide as many cables as possible, but I don't think that's what you are planning to do. So good luck sleeving them all
The 5 pin usb header is actually pretty simple, if you lift up that little black tab on top of the metal pin and hold it, you can pull out the cable with the pin. 

 

It is going to be a lot of sleeving …. probably best I don't understand quite what I've gotten myself into yet!

 

10 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

D5 Next, great choice ! Have one of these as my secondary pump and it is fantastic. I also applaud your patience with respect to custom sleeving you cables, you have patience I do not haha. Lastly, hey kitty !

 

Looking forward to using it.  And I haven't started sleeving yet... we shall see how far I get before I do what Bastiaan does and shove em under the radiators

[ENTERPRISE]

1 hour ago, Salty_Pepperpot said:

 

It is going to be a lot of sleeving …. probably best I don't understand quite what I've gotten myself into yet!

 

 

Looking forward to using it.  And I haven't started sleeving yet... we shall see how far I get before I do what Bastiaan does and shove em under the radiators

Hah, I think im a pro these days when it comes to cheap and easy way to hide cables lol

[Salty_Pepperpot]

Took the day off today as it was raining- So I've been playing with my layouts for the lower case section =D

 

I didn't take into account all this Aquaero stuff in my original Sketchup file. I've also got a D5 instead of a DDC, so new pump placements required. 

 

 

The DDC is already really squished in there! I spent a while throwing about the Aquacomputer parts in this section but there's no chance they're going to fit. 

 

 

Design MKII- The D5 is too big to fit in-between the rads, and there needs to be space for the cables to run too. This new layout keeps the buttons on the D5 easy to reach and I can get a wider 240mm rad now if I want! This hasnt solved the Aquero stuff needing a home though, sooooo...

 

 

 

Before & after ^^ - I've moved the Himuro Drive days to a vertical config. I've and created a little mount for the monitoring stuff which is going to be super simple to knock up!

 

 

It will be super easy to access through the front panel.

 

 

Moving the Himuro Drives to a vertical config makes the inside of the case look nicer too! They fill the space almost perfectly, and give me loads more room- the space between the GPU/RES/Himuro has gone from about 5mm to 5cm. Should make life easier all round. As long as all my measurement are correct.... still has to pass the IRL test

 

I've cut a piece of foamboard into a extended-motherboard tray to get measurements for the one I'll get made at ColdZero.  I'm at the awkward point now where there's really not much I can do until I order the hardware and the Watercooling stuff though, everything is relying on everything else being present to get precise measurements. Another new decision to make too, 6800xt or 3080? 

 

Cheers for reading the latest rambles.

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by Salty_Pepperpot

[EHW Ai]

subbed: The TJ07 is a great case, I had one as well back in the day 

Edited July 3, 2021 by iamjanco

[Bastiaan_NL]

23 hours ago, Salty_Pepperpot said:

still has to pass the IRL test

Haha this is so true
Nice solution for the "monitoring stuff", looks good with the drives mounted vertically!

[Salty_Pepperpot]

On 10/29/2020 at 11:02 PM, iamjanco said:

subbed: The TJ07 is a great case, I had one as well back in the day 

 

She is a beauty.

 

21 hours ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

Haha this is so true
Nice solution for the "monitoring stuff", looks good with the drives mounted vertically!

 

Thanks! It forced me to go back and look at old designs with fresh eyes which is always a good thing.

[Salty_Pepperpot]

A tiny bit of actual IRL modding today. =D

 

Note: A friend mentioned the pics could be bigger, so I'm upping the resolution. Enjoy!

 

The TJ07 has the power button and status LED's mounted on this little PCB on the front of the case. A popular mod is to encase this in a little box so it looks all neat &  tidy, so that's what I'm doing today.

 

 

Looks like I was lazy and only mounted it with 2 at some point in the past.... 

 

 

Standoffs/Power button hole.

 

 

 

The PCB off the case. A lot of people replace the power button with a Anti-Vandal style switch but I think the stock one looks super clean, so I'm leaving it alone. I have a vague memory of there being a reset switch, so something must've happened to it at some point.... I have replaced the blue LED's with orange ones (of course), so no edits needed there.

 

 

 

This is the box, it's a Hammond Box. Specifically, a Hammond 1591ABK  - 100x50x25mm. 

 

 

I've drilled holes for the PWR, LED & standoffs. The standoffs that come with the case for mounting the PCB are a few millimetres shorter on the threaded screw part compared than a regular motherboard standoff. I'm using the standoffs to hold the Hammond Box in place so swapping them out with  regular motherboard ones makes up for the difference in thickness. Lucky because I didn't think about it at all. =D

 

 

Mounted in the case. Cut a little hole in the side for the cables. 

 

 

How much better is that!  The cables will be lengthened & sleeved when I know how long the replacements need to be.  

 

 

If anyone knows how to get cables out of this connector I'd love to hear it. I haven't tried as I don't want to break it. It's soldered to the PCB so I'm being extra cautious! Id like to take them out and replace the wires completely, but otherwise I'm going to have to cut & solder which is more effort.

 

 

 

 

[mouacyk]

Can't wait to see the transformation. I've been going sff for primary desktop, but I do have a server to overhaul someday.

[Bastiaan_NL]

That's a neat way to hide that PCB, looks clean!

Did you manage to get the pins out of the connector?