SpruceGuy's Cheiftec Dragon DX - Modified!

"Built NOT Bought"

A Brief History
After many years of running family computers and then hand me downs...
Back in mid 2003 I had saved enough money to build my first official custom gaming PC!
I spent £500 on what at the time to me was "an all out build" only scrimping on what I thought could upgrade later.

Original System Specs 2003:

Intel Pentium 4 800HT 2.8Ghz 512Kb Cache CPU (Northwood)
Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000 Motherboard
TwinMos 1Gb DDR400 PC3200 Memory (2x512Mb Dual Channel)
Nvidia Geforce 4 MX440SE 128Mb DDR 8x AGP (Was originally meant to be an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128Mb*)
Seagate 300GB Sata150 8Mb Cache
Liteon DVD (IDE)
Liteon CDRW (IDE)
400w Power Supply (Included with case)
Cheiftec Dragon DX Case in Black

*The original PC spec was meant to include an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128Mb* but due to it playing up after install and my little knowledge of graphics drivers at the time, was "offered/conned in to "a swap that if it cured it I could keep the card as it worked, as there wasnt much difference between them I was told as they both were 128Mb! Being more happy that it was now working I accepted to later find that I had gotten the bum deal! But hey, you live and learn.

I used this spec for a while running overclocked @3.6Ghz on air although the graphics let it down in the end but other than that it worked very well.





Getting restless in the modding department I then chose to rebuild my main rig and carry out a few modifications in 2004 to gain a better case flow and air cooling setup.

So now with a pretty effective quick release system for the drives in place I was good to go and set about fitting the largest fans I could physically fit into the front of the case.
The fans of choice turned out to be a pair of 120mm Antec Blue LED fans (with a slight modification to the chassis of the upper fan to alow it to fit perfectly).










So now I needed to find an alternative mounting system for the hard drives due to me cutting so much material away for the front of the case.
So after removing the old triple cage system and I found a drive bay cage from an old Siemens Nixdorf Unix Server RM400 to modify to suit.
















So now with the front airflow sorted and a even better flowed drive bay cage design I needed to get this air back out again! But a problem arose as the maximum rear fan size after mods was going to be only a pair of 92mm fans so I also opted to upgrade the PSU to have a 120mm Case fan too to help with the exhaust airflow.






So with that all done I rebuilt it all back up and it looked like this from the front,




Although the HDD QR Cage was a bit untidy (nothing a paint wouldn't cure) I was reasonably happy with the results.
So much so I upgraded the components within the case to a Socket A AMD Athlon XP2500-M on an Abit NF7-s motherboard and reused the TwinMos Memory and a lovely modular Antec NEO 480 PSU

System Specs 2004:
AMD Athlon XP-M2500 1.8Ghz 133Fsb (@200Fsb x11 - 2.2Ghz) -NEW
Abit NF7-S Motherboard -NEW
TwinMos 1Gb DDR 400 PC3200 Memory (2x512Mb Dual Channel)
ATI Radeon Graphics Card -NEW (Cant remember which card - Martin may remember)
Seagate 300GB Sata150 8Mb Cache
Samsung 120Gb IDE Hdd (Extra Storage)
Maxtor 80Gb IDE HDD (Extra Storage)
Liteon DVD (IDE)
Liteon CDRW (IDE)
Antec Neo 480w Power Supply (Modular) -NEW
Modified Cheiftec Dragon DX Case

So just to make sure it all ran cool enough while running overclocked I upgraded the CPU cooler and the GPU cooler (both socket A coolers)













The socket A Mobile CPU system seemed to never run consistently although reviews stated it was one of the best over clocking CPU's which I found to be flakey just my luck but then the Neo PSU failed and this left a bad taste in my mouth with my build choices as I had sold on the P4 800 HT which had been twice the machine the socket A was in terms of raw power but the AMD was meant to be the gamers choice. So back to the drawing board to build yet another reincarnation of my Cheiftec rig.

Back To The Drawing Board

So in 2005 I decided to rebuild my rig with an even better setup than i had previously.

System Specs 2005:
AMD Opteron DC170 Dual Core 2Ghz 2x1Mb Cache
Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard
4Gb Kingston Hyper X DDR (4x1Gb DDR400 PC3200 Dual Channel)
ATI Radeon X800GTO2 256Mb Graphics Card (Bios Flashed To X850XT)
2x 500Gb WD Black 32Mb Cache 7200Rpm HDD's in Raid 1 SATA3 6Gbs (Redundancy)
1x 150Gb WD Raptor 16Mb Cache 10,000Rpm HDD (OS Drive)
2x Pioneer DVDRW 108 Optical Drive (IDE)
1x Liteon DVD Optical Drive (IDE)
650w Corsair TX650W PSU
Superflower 4 Fan Controller with LCD Display
Modified Cheiftec Dragon DX Case

The system worked like a dream and offered me alot of reliability against my previous AMD setup! I was glad that I had got it right this time! Although the build had went wildly over budget to over £1000 EEK!!
I use this system as a daily for many years well a little over 6 years to be exact and was still using the dual core for daily work until 2011! Then I decided to build its final incarnation!

System Specs 2011:
AMD Bulldozer FX8150 3.6Ghz 8 Core (Total of 16Mb Cache L2/L3)
Asus M5A99X EVO Motherboard
16Gb Kingston Hyper X DDR3 (4x4Gb DDR3 1600 Dual Channel)
ATI Radeon HD6870 1Gb Graphics Card
2x 500Gb WD Black 32Mb Cache 7200Rpm HDD's in Raid 1 SATA3 6Gbs (Redundancy)
1x 150Gb WD Raptor 16Mb Cache 10,000Rpm HDD (OS Drive)
1x Samsung DVDRW Optical Drive (SATA)
650w Corsair TX650W PSU
Corsair H100 Watercooling Kit
Superflower 4 Fan Controller with LCD Display
Extremely Modified Cheiftec Dragon DX Case

Its final build spec has been the best build so far as its still my current daily driver and has plenty power for my needs. Photoshop, Illustrator and Premier Pro/After Effects.
It also runs over clocked @4.2Ghz which I find helps push things along a bit easier!

So to up its game as the HDD's became the bottleneck I swapped out the Raptor for an SSD and upgraded the graphics from ATI AMD to Nvidia.

System Specs Current:
AMD Bulldozer FX8150 3.6Ghz 8 Core (Total of 16Mb Cache L2/L3)
Asus M5A99X EVO Motherboard
16Gb Kingston Hyper X DDR3 (4x4Gb DDR3 1600 Dual Channel)
Nvidia GTX760 2Gb Graphics Card
2x 500Gb WD Black 32Mb Cache 7200Rpm HDD's in Raid 1 SATA3 6Gbs (Redundancy)
1x 240Gb SanDisk UltraII SSD (OS Drive)
1x Samsung DVDRW Optical Drive (SATA)
650w Corsair TX650W PSU
Corsair H100 Watercooling Kit
Superflower 4 Fan Controller with LCD Display
Extremely Modified Cheiftec Dragon DX Case (To take watercooling)

>>> PICTURES OF CURRENT MACHINE GOES HERE!

To Be Continued...

Finally a look at SpruceGuy's Chieftec Dragon which is just WOW!
That's one heavily modded piece of hardware...
THX for sharing this with us.

Thanks Nik
Yeah instead of getting a new case when I needed to upgrade I just modified the case to suit when required I will update with pics very soon with its current status and I will get round to tidying it all up and painting it but as its my daily driver workstation its rarely switched off and has been like that for the last 5 years.

I had my first case for years, but never modded it.
It was a LC-Power big tower from the early 2000s in beige, nothing special.
I can't find a picture of it, but I keep on searching.
The next one was a Chieftec Big Tower in anthrazit, a really HUGE one (67cm in height).

Yeah I like the Cheiftec cases as they are well built and seem to be free of all the extras that came with the more expensive variants like the Antec's as the front fan mod from 80mm to 120mm cannot be done on an Antec with front panel for audio and USB as its directly in the middle of the front grill and would need to be removed (I added USB, Firewire and front panel audio to the side of my cheiftec front panel as it didn't come with anything to start with and being a big case its not so easy to access the rear once its in operation (under my desk along side the LGA775 HackPro Dev machine and the Dual LGA771 Xeon Server) I have got a bigger case than my Cheiftec for my server its a full tower and is in process of being revamped to a more modern spec to accept dual 140mm fans in the front (original was none upgraded to 120mm) and rear will accept a single 140mm (originally 92mm and it was also previously upgraded to a 120mm) But I also want to run dual water cooling loops for both CPU's and upgrade the super hot DDR2 FB dims cooling solution so this will be next and a video will be made in the process! Ill get a build thread started for its progress shortly.

I really loved the big tower.
so much space in it without all the unnecessary extras and "bling-bling".
just big, black and heavy as a rock. but after about 10 years of tough useage, it just fell apart. The drive cages with the fan holders, the front door and the mounting rails is all that's left of it. some spare parts for Wildcat's case.

a true work in progress machine that keeps evolving I like it!!

that unknown ATI card looks like a Sapphire 9600XT.... is that where mine went????! hehe

yep, looks like a 9600xt.

Yeah Martin it has been an evolution as it seems to run for more years after every update to the case when new hardware is put in haha.
As of now its still plenty powerful for its daily work and has been working hard for over 6 and a half years and still going strong and PSU is 12 years old now and this is why I like corsair products and of course all running in a 14 year old case! haha

Nik your right the card was a 9600 XT as I do remember it was the better option to what the machine had originally came with. (9600 Pro which was swapped out by the guy that first help me build it - crafty sod!) That thing clocked well with the modded socket A cooler with uprated 80mm fan haha those were the days... Wait a minute nope not much has change still want to mod everything and tune it up a bit haha well life never changes

Ill have to update the thread with current pics but will need to take some first which means digging it out from its cave.

If you like modified cases Vampire you will like what we are doing to my server, which is an older full tower case.

you just mounted a socket A cooler on that 9600?
hm, never thought about something like this....

Is it the server Martin mentioned in another post?
the one that "replaces" your heating?

Yes Nik that's the one as of now I also use it to cook breakfast and that's very true about the heating as since we changed over to ddr2 (which was those toasty FB dimms) a year ago my heating has never been on and my house is 20 degrees ambient.
So I probably break even in the running expense of the power draw on the server to create this heat haha I do have some thermal control measures to put into place so it should drop the temps a lot. But that's for another video

so you save some money in the winter like I do.
when it's cold, I just turn on the FX-8350 and kick some a$$ in GTA V or ME: Andromeda...
looking forward to see the transformation of this.

Yeah it is essentially but a heavily modified one as it didn't fit natively so had holes drilled through it for capacitor clearance and also other holes for memory cooling and of course the fan was a stock 60mm number so adjusted the cooler fins to accept an 80mm, and it had mounting holes drilled into it and tapped with fibre washers to stop shorts. it worked really well and cant remember where the cooler went or the card?

sounds like a whole lot of work to get this running...