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Need to fix the slant, and manage that jungle of wires, but I love the way this looks. It looks more blood red in person.

Any takers on how long till they light on fire? Ill be sure to turn it off and unplug them after I leave.

 

links to four of my Aliens​

The ALX-Files: ABOVE TOP SECRET
Uncovering Area-51's Biggest (& best kept) Secret of All
A Triad of Power Supply Swaps
*********************************

Beauty & the Beast
- puuurrrfe xxxion with my alienfriend -
***************************​

Spoiler: The Beast

Pegasus X99 link, 2014 buildlog with nice pics, & original link here. enjoy

Spoiler: The Beauty

Part2 of Pegasus x99, 2015 buildlog now archived on NBR in its original format. This lovely lady & her pride & joy are in for an inside/outside make-over, which includes hand-polishing the exterior panels into a luscious mirror-finish, new custom cables, a looking-glass window, 980Ti upgrade, plus other treatments & fineries added as the finishing touches. Find the results of our joint effort below. enjoy

________________​

Airene 14 Feb 2015 10:43PM​

This is a continuation of my 1st mod project. It was my very 1st pc build, in the amazing Area-51 R1 chassis. The original Alienware mthrbrd & all hardware was swapped for an Asus X99 a few months ago

​

Specs:
Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard
Intel i7 5930k
Corsair H100i Liquid Cooling
Corsair High Performance 120mm fans x4 push/pull
Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR4 3000MHz
Corsair AX1500i power supply
SLI EVGA GTX 980Ti Superclocked+ with backplates
Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card
Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD x2
Asus Blu Ray drive
Asus 28" 4k UHD monitor
Razer Blackwidow Chroma Stealth keyboard
Razer Naga Epic Chroma mouse
More useful links here if you're interested in building your own - All credit goes to Cass-Olé:
> Motherboard Swap Guide< > Custom Acrylic Window Kit< > Polishing Your Panels<
After swapping motherboards and getting Command Center & AlienFX working I decided to take it a few steps further, only with the help of my friend Cass-Olé and his tremendous amount of effort and guidance. He is incredibly skilled and talented, and did anything and everything I could not do on my own to make sure I was 100% happy with my system.
He made Pegasus a brand new full set of custom colored power supply cables for my AX1500i to replace the other set he made. These power everything in the case including Alienware's Master I/O daughterboard. They are hand made, purple and black wiring with purple connectors and black sleeving to match my purple-themed AlienFX. Top vent and top left powerboard cabling was also sleeved purple. The custom cut clear panel window was also hand made by him, it is not my work and they are not for sale. He has spoiled me rotten and I am very lucky to have all of this.
I hand polished the front panel with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and Meguiar's Gold Class Liquid Carnauba wax. The motherboard side and hard drive side doors were polished with a buffer, and then finished by hand. Lower panels were polished by hand by him.
The idea here is to break through the dull semi-glossy paint on the original panels by polishing them, and revealing a wet mirror-like glassy finish which is much more appealing.
Dedicated to Stef, who gave Pegasus her wings and made her fly.

Part 1 - Stripping her bare
Five of the six panels were replaced with brand new ones and polished and waxed while off. The front panel is the original.
Removing the front and lower panels was a bit tricky. You must first remove all the led connectors from the master i/o (mio) board. The front panel has three mio connectors, the lowers have one. There are multiple clips that hold these to the case. For the lower panel on the hard drive side, you have to remove the right side hard drive fan to reach the middle clips. For both lowers you must remove the power supply to reach the rear clips, which have to be popped off first to avoid snapping the middle and front clips. The rear panel is held by one screw behind the top left powerboard. The top vent and radiator cage must be removed first to reach it with a screwdriver. Then the clips simply slide down and off. If you need replacement panels, your best bet is to look around Ebay, you might even get lucky. Alienware stopped producing these systems years ago so parts are becoming hard to find.
Tips and your guide to mio anatomy also provided by Cass-Olé:

front panel & hard drive bay trim

Rear and lower panels

Top active vent

The Black Silk cables
Black Majik
The Doomsday Machine meets Black Silk
Powerboard harness and cpu 8 pin
Activent harness
Under construction
Corsair h100i & purple led fans with yin/yang flower of life fan grills
Almost finished! next step is polishing the panels
Step 2: Polishing/ Getting the wet look --> All you need is Meguiar's
Front & side panel handjobs...
After many weeks of searching Cass-Olé finally tracked down a pair of brand new replacement front panels. One for him, one for me! These are very difficult to find these days. He kindly polished it up for me before sending it my way.

Testing out the shiny new door's reflections with my monitor:
The beautiful beast looks twice as brilliant with a purple-blacklight
Sleeping Beauty
Best buds
The Tigresse
11x17 acrylic window
Shiny lower panel
The Alienware TactX keyboard has an unsolved issue with the Asus motherboard causing it to boot bios before windows when connected. I upgraded to a Razer keyboard. It has a lot more customization options and brighter leds but doesn't beat the TactX in the sexxxy department
I set up a UV light kit along with my NZXT HUE. Loving how the purple complements the AlienFX!
Cass-Olé kindly sent me a brand new cable organizer to replace my broken one.

________________________
__________________
__________​

Posted by Cass-Olé
on 14 Feb 2015 10:56 PM

happy Valentine's day to the one & only tigresse of long island & Pegasus
... mirror mirror on the wall ... who's the fairest of them all ...
*whispers*
the Alienware Club's Mona Lisas are.
***************
Well, well. Old School is back in session. For this day's history lesson, at Christmas in Mod Part1 Airene & her Airea-51 Pegasus both pranced into the AlienwareClub dawning the hottest latest greatest x99 R1.5 Airenaware the forum's yet to lay ii's on; some watched in horror while others cheered in glee at the lovely smackdown they laid on the new kid on the block; forced a beastly thumping on her baby brother eddy r2. opened up a can of whoop *** on 'it', & about everybody else on the planet including me. Like Jeanne d'Arc, she wielded her Titanium sword Hexcalibur, off with its head! ... the Victresse now heiress to the throne.
{a very merry stinkin' Christmas to ya lil' brother. a lump a coal in your stocking ya little 3-sided brat}

After they'd cut it to ribbons in center stage of Coliseum & peeled back that pyrite look-alike gold foil it wears, looky what we all found in our stockings & it wasn't a cherub: it's a tin-foil hollow carob santa.

hand-dipped & gifted to us courtesy of our LadyGodiva solid white & dark chocolate strawberry blonde Mrs Santy Klaws

* * * * * * * * * *

What better day then Valentine's to unveil their refreshingly skinny-dipped side of beauty. What I see slowly unfolding up there - undressing in a reverse strip-tease no less - are looks that kill.
Sleeping Beauty's been awoken from her 5year slumber. She's awake. Wide awake.

glass gl x slippers & a wet happy ending for the forum's Princesses.

abre los ojos

- bare thee witness to the awesome reality in their new dulcet Claire de Lunar panels -

- welcome back to the newest alienF x -

last Halloween I dropped the trick & treat g-bomb in my post titled:

• The ALX-Files: ABOVE TOP SECRET: Uncovering Area-51's Biggest Best Kept Secret of All. Aurora R1-R2 Secret Xposed
• http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19604330

It's the Manhattan Project. We all know her now as Long Island Airene & so Central Park's her other playground; what she & I accomplished together the past 6 weeks wants to debut tonight as: the Manhattan Project: the Seqwel

*the 2nd coming*

In my post I challenged someone, anyone to be the next person to polish their case & drop their own gspot photo-portfolio & make it their New Year's Resolution. Well guess what. This message showed up in my inbox, look at the date on it:

Enya: Only Time
Just when I thought I'd have no takers, on New Year's Eve Airene made it her resolution to beautify her Lunar-51; to unstrip from the paper-thin gauze curtain that 'd secretly hidden in plain sight from her all these years that luster & allure already bottled simply waiting to be uncorked like the driest wettest champagne, & unbridle that desire to bring them both to a truer sense of a state of completion then they already were. I'd used inviting language & photos to tempt a restless someone just like her into reanimating her Alien. Waving the majik wand. The whole nine yards. I'd hoped she'd come calling on me for just such a project but I wasn't sure if she ever would due to the amount of effort reqwired, but time & again she amazes me at her sheer will & tenacity, & yet here again & back so soon she's reached the ultimate finishline together hand in hand with me ...

That message is a good place to start the storytelling of her shiny Aireborne Stallion: no longer a *** these are now daily Flights of Fancy on gossamer wings & the elegance bound & released in the resplendent poignant visual ballet between light & shadow & reflection can & does occur there at every moment now on Long Island:

... under the Light of the Moon ...

... & in the Light of the Sun ...

In her 12-31 message, she saw my Halloween Project finally & penned a substantial message for my consideration; if she only knew she could have had what she wanted & more in nary a sentence. Over my 30month membership I've typed these projects up, barely ever a response when I do. Airene's proven to be my protégé however, so I wouldn't have missed this project for the world, & it's been a 6week wait for Feb 14th to finally get here. It takes a deal of time to read the Manhattan Project & go over the photos, but not lost on her I do not think were the words: the dead finish. The dead Alien. I think my negative speech & outlook & opinion on the factory paint job burned her up inside & over time I've realized that my opinion matters highly to her. Impossible then for her to continue on like that:

• she loves a shiny sparkly thing too

The video she mentioned she'd watched was the same Margot Robbie wet-look on utube I'd watched & linked to: a black case w/an enviable paint job. An anxiety brews over the thought of having all your panels repainted & so none of us do it. A 20 dollar challenge on the other hand where your desktop never leaves the comfort of your home is another situation entirely. A big deal to her of course, a not so big deal to me so I jumped on this w/her, I thought she'd never finally ask. Nobody wants a dead Alien, nor be told that that is what they have there, & it bugged her I know it did; the knowing but more likely the seeing that the difference in margin between the haves & the have nots isn't so great when it only comes down to two liqwids: compound & elbow grease. A lot of time & a little money.

Airene has nothing, no thing at all to be jealous of now; in fact, on 1st look, her object of desire's turned objet d'art now turned object of other's envy, mine included, duly fascinated I am here by all her work. I told her: don't send me any photos unless it's a plea for help, please just surprise me right along w/the rest of everyone,so I'm seeing her photos for the 1st time & I've waited for this day to happen with baited breath doing the countdown. If you're a basic member like me or an employee of Dell Alienware, judge for yourself privately or publicly:
Her P-51 Mustang is a Work of Art

-hexpensive -

Enya: Flora's Secret
the mise-en-scène, yes intentional & lends itself towards the cover of secrecy once all the lights go down; a minor mystery's involved now as well as a parallel level of major intimacy; a work of art? how? why? this photo sent to me as a teaser the day the door panel showed up so your guess was as good as mine & one needn't guess anymore over the visible serenity waiting to be relished were all the lights to come back up to understand the how & why but that certainly does not have to be the case at all ... for now, bathed & basking in the soft glows & diminution of the qwiet slight phrases of self-centered illumination, just enuff there to make out the silhouette. The still here goes over well with me; turn the lights up, like majik springs to life the shiniest little alien-girl in all of her glory. she's been doted on. on a daily basis ...

priceless? yes. pricey? oh yes.

She took the $20 Challenge

Right side? Can't see *** >< Left side? Let there be Light MoonLight
More New Parts

Pegasus has brand new panels - every last one - total restoration at great prices. awesome sauce

________________​

Taking the Majik Wand to Airene's Majik Pony: Creating the Newest Work of Alienware Art

welcome to the GL X Club ... welcome to our Concours d'Elegance

Enya: Book of Days
Can your Area-51 earn a blue ribbon in our Beauty Pageant? Or can it get cut to a ribbon ...

Airene's hardware is pricey. We count the amount in dollars in thousands to recreate her build. Her exterior look of course was purchased for much much less. About $100 w/the window. Without? About $20 actually. She bought a buffer as optional as you saw & some car-care accessories as well, but here in the forum we know it as the $20 challenge & the simple purchase of a polish compound & wax.

Airene contacted me w/her New Year's resolution to be the 1st person to join me as a member of the new GLX Club; she wanted to see for herself first-hand the results of polishing her case into its hidden coat of GLX Armour, & for good measure top it all off w/a large looking glass window. That would take care of the outside & it surely did, I can see for myself. Make no mistake: the Claire de Lunar variety is more difficult to photograph & capture the in-person effect than the Stellar Black is; due to the nature of light, & in my own experience the Lunar-51 GL X can be an elusive Alien at times to get to tell the truth & plays hard to get w/the camera's ii's.

Airene's done a fine job for everyone; Heart informs us that if looks could kill you'd be lyin' on the floor, so she knows not to bother w/calling on the President's opinion: her photo of BenFranklin who's out from under the veil of secrecy & under the influence of the truth serum w/his crystal clear portrait in an authentic trade is the 24-7 4D reality there. She's earned her rightful place on the Alienbook but must surely & sorely be is its own form of: lady, you is bad for business. If you are best described as the new greys with a new Alien Agenda, we are best described as Phobos, Moon of the War Planet Mars, newly unthawed & reanimated we've come to make War on everyone & everything here on Planet Earth; Fine Young Cannibals we've become. Let the word go forth from this time & place to friend & foe alike that the torch has been passed to a new breed of alien, touched-down on the 3rd rock from the sun & we didn't just land here in a spaceship speaking klaatu barada nikto. We were already here. Ancient Aliens. Be that as it may, check your calendars for the Day the Earth Stood Still:

- what we have in the Alienware Club on Valentine's Day is the new Miss Universe -

Our Mona Lisas ​

I told ya'll in mod part1 she went & snatched that gold krown right off his head ...

Contemplate if you will the dedication & devotion it reqwires to say to yourself: today, I am going to start the job of polishing my whole door panel 6 or 7 times over, using two different buffing techniques I am not familiar with, & I'm not going to stop until the job is finished. Afterwards, I am going to tear my whole computer apart to install everything, remove the front panel & polish it by hand 6 or 7 times, put everything back together again, document what I've done the best I can & then publish my results for others to judge all of my hardwork by.

diamonds are a girl's best friend ... so's a diamond-gloss finish for the both of them

Gentlemen, I present to you the reigning He x Goddess. She is the forum's new hex kitten & her Airea-51 R1.5 is your new Pinup Girl. Immortalized inside this post left-to-right top-to-bottom is the game changer; hers represents the newest benchmark. Her Lunar-51 has brought in a very high-tide, laid siege to & swept the shore clean of all prior sand-castles, erased the slate, Majik'd her Kingdom, reclaimed center-stage & is now the Wet DreamLand high-water mark for what an R1 can become.

Her & her AlienFriend Pegasus have both earned my highest respect. I hope you will join in with me here & offer them both your sincere congratulations on yet another job well done.

- Caribbean Blue -

Enya >< Shepherd Moons
Airene had this one up but took it down days later & I don't know why; they look painted on there. her original panel simply can not do this. they show she's done a fine job of polishing
the ii's of the tigresse
... here in America & around the world, we celebrate our beauty qweens ...
- silent lucidity -

Qweensrÿche
Snuggling Up In Her 4D *** World & the Sudden Reality of a New DreamLand

of all the photos I've seen & been given so far, the above photo captures my heart in the very same way her claire de lunar-51 helps capture that still moment in time for us. if you preened through the manhattan project, a recurring theme I left there was the concept of the dead alien locked up, imprisoned not behind but inside the walls of area-51. like a shadow, a ghost, an unknowable latency which was trying to pierce through the veiled barrier of our reality; a soothing trance unfolds where you can share-bond with her visage for endless moments, impossible unless you deliquesce the false-front of the façade.

afterwards ... transcendence ... sublimation ... transformation ... life itself comes into our panoramic view full-focus & in a living breathing now proven stunning color. the photo is highly symbolic for what happens after your alien wakes up ... the look on your face can mirror the look on hers ... pleasantly startled, in a state of awe & wonderment perhaps from seeing into our world w/a clarity never before known & for the very 1st time, very much like we all are looking into her world too with new-born's ii's seeing what none of us have ever been allowed to see before; a mutuality of discovery where our two worlds are simply colliding as if it was always meant to be this way. this technique is our newest doorway to our promenade down the primrose path leading us into the 4d-world of the self-indulgencies & instant-gratification where yet another enamoring outlet & connection toward le joie de vivre swings opens for us as the boundary which held everything back has been dissolved. turned taciturn & laconic from my viewing pleasure, I prefer to just be in the moment ... let the four-majik-corners & that which is the image & in the image speak for herself ... telling us all we need to know without ever saying a word ....
"... I want my Pegasus to shine like the light of the moon! ..."
her beautiful star twinkles as bright as a matinée idol; time for a serenade & fare-thee-well
******************
goodbye Norma Jean, from the young man in the 22nd row
who sees you as something more than hexual, more than just our Marilyn Monroe
******************
you may not see a nicer 51 than this anytime soon. inside or out

hers is the most expensive one to emerge as of late, certainly the finest looking Lunar yet seen next to my own. hardware-wise she's made my baby girl feel less-endowed. our GL X's still wear their factory paintjobs which are slicked-over with glassy classy mirror finishes & definitely rival if not top the best of the best looking out there, without suffering the points we tend to take away once an Alien's undergone a paintjob since there are the purists among us & always will be who think it a no-no, you retain a sense of originality yet shed the old originality in the process; it is an excellent project to consider as a weekend make-over you can do right there in your home & comb your hair in your finish b4 you head off to work Monday morning.
she's used Nzxt's Hue multi-function Led controller for an added day-night F x display; note the black cords & their lovely reflection in the left of the door. he xellent shine-job
______________________________
Kracking the Majik Whip at Pegasus: through the looking-glass
Her 11x17 Look In Window
Mrs Money dropped a ton of cash on new hardware to create her Airea-51 HEX R1.5. To showcase that new hardware, she opted for a window'd door panel. The acrylic window & moulding was purchased from FrozenCpu.com (more about those bozos later) for about 25 bucks. I had a brand new door panel, so I cut it; Airene sent a brand new door panel to my doorstep as an even trade:

prepped & protected, aluminum skin cut w/Dremel-tool & cut-off wheel; smaller thinner wheel for the corners, sanding drum for burs, took an hour. it takes longer but I prefer this over a simple jig-saw:
next comes the polish & the wet-work. this in a series of photos I sent her as a visual polishing how-to. the door was polished 1st w/a 6" 3500rpm buffer which did half the job, then I finished it off by hand:
- midnight moonlight -
__________________
Polishing the Lower Panels

She bought new lower panels from RedPlanet, a pair for $38 shipped. Wow. She had 'em sent here & I performed some majik trix on 'em; my brand of a good vanishing act. She'll then polish the originals

I've used blue-tape to keep the Ultimate Compound out of the crevices. If compound or wax cakes up in your crevices, use the sharp edges of a piece of paper to scrape it out; never use metal or a needle:

is it done? no. this is about 10 minutes into the project. I polished that small section a few times to see some results, which are looking sweet. I still had to tape up the edges to do the rest

the handjob I gave her? my goodness that one photo you can see every carpet fiber reflecting ...

It'd be up to her to gloss-out & glass-out some panels too, so w/the other helping hand I lent courage & advice; in her new bath spa massage & facial facility Airene decided to play w/it both ways: get it wet by hand, get it wet w/a powertool, find the gspot w/both. Massage that skin til you see your new initials come for yourself into focus.11x17 cut-out used as a test-piece, she plugged in & went to work.
{this photo, inside joke from her to me then me to her on polishing day}


In our experience a low-speed buffer can do half your work, the rest is good old-fashioned elbow-grease to hit the divine levels of the underlying glassy-spot. No need to max-out the tester panel, just enuff to get the feel of her 1st vibrating tool which she'd later take to her door panel: elbow-grease ain't sumthin' she can buy from the store. No toxic fumes: a sweet cinnamony big-red smell. On seeing her door panel shots for my 1st time, her work & results there are every bit as good as mine here:
worked her powertool on it, sees some hidden shine ... now she's ready to attack the real thing
slippery when wet

one of the slipperiest front panels you'll ever see
new R841R Lunar front panel bezels from Velocity Electronics $120 Texas USA, while they last: http://velocityelec.com
______________________
Black Silk Linens Wrapped & Boxed w/a Purple & Golden Bow
I approached her w/the idea of an interior dress-up ensemble, which would include taking out the 1st case harness in exchange for a silky black. I suggested some purple accent wires for added flair, next we stumbled on purple connex & finally some purple sleeve. I don't know how much longer I'm going to make power supply kits for Area-51 so I wanted to go out w/a bang in a way on her project.

The 1st product chosen for her interior beauty make-over was gold; we got our hands on over a hundred premium 16gauge gold-tipped phosphour-bronze molex psu terminals for use on the black silk cables, made from a new ax1200i cable set I owned. All important 12volt wires & the three primary grounds on the vid-cables wear gold molex female terminals, while the 7inch atx extension wears gold pins at both ends, male & female to add ideal conductivity in the connections there.

ax1200i's 24p (& my extensions) normally come w/nineteen 16g wires - so they are already fat out of the gate which is why I like them - but to press the point, both her 24pin atx & 7inch extension are now made up of twenty one 16g wires, a pair of 18g's for the less important sundry wires & a plain 22g 5v sense wire they all come with. ax1500i's main cable is about as fat as it gets & needs to get:
1) insert male pins in male connex 2) throw on heatshrink(s)-sleeve 3) insert female pins into connex

we ordered 40ft 16gauge of the prettiest purple wire I've yet seen & 10ft of black 16g (for half the 28" cpu cable) from our klown foes at Frozen & got most of the purple connex from them. They botched our simple order several times, cost us precious time & still owe us for a damaged 6pin connect:

we got the rest of the purps & some purpl-sleeve from the good people at Performance-Pcs.com, whom we wished we'd dealt with all along. live & learn. uv purps can be blue or ... purp ...
24" + 7" extension. her 31" Black Stallion cable comes with a majik blue & purple tip
her xtra-fat all-16g 24pin snapped a snap-lok; I sent her a new one & she moved it over a smidge. I've since made/sent her a new batch of accessory cables & her cable mngmnt skills 've come a long way since last December, a new high-priority given the see-in window. I note in this March 19 photo, she took my advice to place the sata data cables in front of the 24p to keep it tucked to the wall ...
Sullying our post is a $23 b4 shipping & tax eddy r2 vid-cable?

For Pegasus the White Beauty & DoomsDay the Black Beast, only the best would do. When you buy ax1200i you get a pair of what are called pci-e pig-tail cables in your pouch. Those are the ones you want, because of the six 24" primary volt-ground 16g wires in them. Corsair also sells these, for 5 dolla each. 5 dolla. For 25 dolla-shipped I can buy 4 of the black pig-tails, 8 feet of premium 16g wire with of course 16g pins, ty very much, & sexxxy full-bodied black silk sleeve. For Airene, I disassembled these pig-tail-types, tossed the lil piggy which eqwals spare wire; I cut a brand new 24" into a 13inch section & an 11 inch section, since Area-51 came stock with 13 & 11 inch cables, that size is just right. These then are way easier to handle in there than a stock 24incher of course - & - I get two cables from one. By inserting new purple 12volt wires? I actually netted 4 cables from one.

The 3rd vid cable I cut a 24" down to 15", & since I used 16g purples in it, this one 15incher I was able to make a pair of cables from by removing the black 12v's & turning them into grounds for the 2nd pair. Since we got to use ppl wire for 12v, I was able to make Airene six silky cables from just a pair of standard pigtails (= 12.50 in base material netted us, yes, three over-eqwivalent sets of eddy r2's cables. Again, the 16g wires in the vid-cards all wear gold tips @ both ends.

8pin Cpu cable: 28", half-blk half-ppl 16g, gold-tips at both ends, fat-wire & precious metals to decrease resistance & improve conductivity. Black Mod/Smart Kobra SS high-density weave for the longer cpu cable; nice shimmery stuff, not a whimpy low-thread-count see-through weave like 'some' companies use.

Hard drive satas: I did up a pair of hand-mades (not a trio this time) & threw three sata heads on each to decrease case clutter & power all six hdd bays.

Main sata-peripheral: I disassembled three stock sata harnesses, robbed them of their long 30" black wires, sleeved it & tossed on ppl sata heads & a ppl 'molex' 4pin head.

Last but not least: MIO. 7inch mio harness is made up of four blk wires, 5 ppl wires, & an 'oh-solo-mio' white wire for 5vsb: white's symbolic for Pegasus. Mio's 10pin is in fact a purple connect. Neat (=
I sent her a free MindMeld Mark III Tesla Suisse Army Knife adaptor for her H100i. She's 'trading' me for the old harness I built her, we'll close the deal soon as I make any necessary optional harnesses & adaptors in black (I made/sent one so far). I have some top pwrbrd & activent harnesses here & surprised her by experimenting w/the purple kobra-ss accent sleeve, & as you can see I sent a black-sleeved pwrbrd-activent set as well which can go in whenever ... as a little black number costume change ... for the new femmes fatale:
hotlantians: replenishing the warrior spirit

Again, my post here is penned for Airene to read most of all; you're listening in on my conversation to her as it were. Mind that, as I got chatty in her last post also. I'm going to wind-up my presentation now by thumping the Area-52 r2 again for being the imperfect ufo that I see it as & know it as. Having messaged w/Airene for a few months now & become partners in crime, comrades-in-arms certainly, I'm aware it's ok for me to spank her baby bro in public like this again, even if some of you will flinch at the flogging as corporal punishment inside the pages of her glorious re-debut as is going to happen. To me it makes things all the more memorable so that no one in R1 Nation forgets what we know. Her desktop is our star attraction & what we can all aim for now. Haswell-E & 1500 horses running as many cards as you can afford should be the best news you've heard lately. Perhaps we all can't afford this build at the moment but we should take comfort it is there waiting for us when our Alien's time comes. Hers is a lesson in what happens when money & free-time are judiciously spent on moving up to the next level. They're our newest bon vivants. Well done Airene. If you're a fan of the movie Gettysburg like I am, but not a fan of the r2 like her & I are not, you'll remember Sam Elliot saying: 'we can deprive the enemy of the high-ground'. And so 'we have'. Just look at the advantages won.

R1 & r2 did not leave the factory in outrageous states of dress & performance. The trick then is to seek out the help of the aftermarket to provide what was skimped on by the Aliens. Intentionally skimped on. Eventually we're going to see r2's w/their mthrbrd & psu/case harness changed out, a window-mod to look through & finally see something worth seeing in there. Points taken away from any new spray-jobs of course. At the core of most Aliens is an enviable appearance package & is the one department the designers don't skimp on. The Aliens sell looks backed up by a light show; their proprietary hardware year-after-year tends to come w/the promise of being able to run the latest Intel/NVidia-AMD offerings, but pound-for-pound their interest is in easy dollars over staying deftly competitive, tooth & nail as it were, so areas are left skimped on, swept under the rug, as they consistently do not behave like the world's finest craftsmen when everything about them says they should be, if they only would. Even they know this. The aliens do not bring enough to the party themselves; what we see is them cashing-in on the new x99 Haswell-E craze packaged in a unique box. Their Game Victorious slogan of course has a faux feel to it, deservedly so. Game victory's won & lost with more than just the best Intel + card-tandems. Airene knows this. r2's owners are bound to realize this soon enough as well. With her 1st build at Christmas, qwite understandable why she chose a mthrbrd, psu, & cooler swap to bring her Alien back to a state-of-the-art level of modernity. The hardware she brought to the party helps wave the game victorious banner there in her ivory tower & here in our forum. The appearance package has now been addressed in its majority basically once & for all; she's set, sitting very pretty at the moment inside & out; the proper steps were taken to outdo the Aliens of the past present & possible future, & she's more then ready to drop her build into every modding forum that exists, take on the larger world w/a greater reception of applause than she'll get here I like to think.

The look-but-don't-u-ev-uh-touch-it mirror-finish? Her Airea-51 helps define the concept of the upper-echelon; walk into the room & you will know her case was made by experts & cost a fortune. Sterling Silver. Darned right it's back to looking like it cost 5grand new. Hexpensive. She's at the level & wearing the look of the Jaguar & Mercedes as part of the finest things in life. Alienware did good, we've polished it all off with something even better. Luxury has met performance. Outstanding.

When I joined the forum over two years ago & slowly amassed my body of work here, from time to time I would receive salutary messages from the employee members, giving my work & I the thumb's up. In fact, when I debuted my 11x17 window & how-to, I was approached to possibly have my photo up on the Aware Facebook; after a message or two w/AwareFB & some photo submissions, my photos were apparently not up to their standards, had no time / interest to try for better pics, that was ages ago & I know my pictures sucked, whatever. My ALX had the x58 alien board in it, of course.

I found it odd that no members who work for Dell or Alienware chimed into Airene's initial x99 post to give her alien a pat on the head; throwing the baby out w/the bathwater, I see. No applause, not even a golf-klap from the triad camp for our new x99 Champion. Knife to a gunfight, see what'cha get ... I wonder if in her follow-up baby & bathwater post if the same 11x17 window-mod now worn on a very rare polished Alien using high-qwality photos taken by an even rarer female owner is worthy of the Alienware Facebook & honorable mentions by staff.

- splishes & splashes; splishing & splashing in the bath water -
KittyKat's got everyone by their tongues; on a daily basis our Tigresse does in fact champion the phrase: looky what I got. In my 30month membership in this forum, no one qwite like her or her pride & joy has ever existed; this is her very 1st build, confesses to knowing nothing at all; we've all been there before, our 'first time', & her there fumbling alone in the dark as the novice she was.

• hers is at once the most powerful & now most breathtaking example to ever grace itself here
• if there is a finer work posted in the AwareClub someone send me the link to it immediately

She's not to blame for Triad being as wobbly as a three-legged chair nor is it her fault that Alienware w/the full plenary resources of Dell behind them can not, will not, never did & maybe never will produce a product on this level for public purchase. It should be obvious to everyone that hers is a simple exercise in filling in all of the many - many - gaps left behind in the prior & present vacuum.

- Licking Your Alien's Reputation Clean -

We'll never know what R1 might have been after it was put out to pasture before it's time. Ivy-Bridge E, Haswell at best, a power supply improvement, 240mm radiator in the Penthouse perhaps, certainly a factory window was a possibility since the 604GC mio board does in fact have an optional interior rgb connector that can light up an led, I've tried it, it just needed a tweak to Command Center to unlock, but never got it. The top left powerboard has unused graphics liqwid cooling features. Who knows what it all may have evolved into. R1 owners have been swapping out x58 for years now to stay modern. x58 & stock power supply are dated & can be removed when u feel it's time, boxed, put back whenever, so your R1 can still fight the good fight in 2015 while running & looking it's best, like never before, it has never looked or performed better, here she's proven it for us & proudly so.

Some R1's have evolved, can be brought out from pasture & entered right back on into the Triple Krown. Yadda yadda. Airene informs in her 1st build-post she took her hard-earned savings & invested into her majikal mythical kreation here, & now lost track of the damage. As has always been the case, we can assume her move to other brands of hardware will not get their pretty faces on the Alienbook. Had she waited it out a little longer, been one of the 1st to install the new r2 motherboard & power supply into her Alien, they'd probably welcome her in w/open arms & place the Triple Krown on her head for it. In some other post I might be willing to draw it out on paper better that the r2 alienboard & psu are both under-engineered pieces of hardware, done so in the attempt to bring it to market w/a lower starting price. When 5 & 6 large changes hands, all the cut-corners have a serious effect however, becomes head-scratching how so much $ bought so little. That's how I see it. The more you spend the more you defeat yourself & the less you've spoiled your Alien. Odd.

love can not be alien from your work
we picked Valentine's day for a reason
- Victory's Secret -

___________​

I met someone online, made friends with him as the result. I used the word Alienware & he used the f-word but it wasn't foo-ey on the them. Is that so? I sent him links to the Manhattan Project. I sent him links to Airene's 1st build. Now a link to this build. "Oh. Ohhhh, I gotta get me one of those". A different story altogether, now ain't it brother. The rehabilitation of a company's reputation has thoughtfully been won over in one persons mind. Our Aliens at least, hers & mine, have the visual & visceral power to change people's minds is the extension of this. Or, changing people's opinions, one person at a time. One can build an argument called the best of both worlds. The not-so same-old killer looks harboring the latest greatest hardware. I've read that Alienware once considered selling just the Aurora case, bare, as it were. Real rumors, who knows. What we know is Area-51, Aurora, now Area-52 are three enviable cases that were meant to house, & I mean they were meant to be the house of the planet's best hardware. In a bare-minimum sentence which can open a larger discussion, admittedly: the Aliens haven't moved in lock-step w/the market & so our aliens & therefore we get left behind in other's dust. We're part of the reason people cry out: build your own. Get more, do it for less. Fine. Just do your build inside an alien when you do do it. And thus a new reason to be on the Facebook ... she's licked the competition, licked her & our alien's reputation's a little bit more clean:

lickety-split
___________​

My Lunar-51 GL X gets a Make-Over too
I've used fat 16gauge wire & gold pins everywhere
In our March 2nd news-feed, we hear that the official portrait of former President Bill Clinton hanging in the National Gallery has been tinted ... stained with symbolism. From the artist:

If you look at the left-hand side of it there’s a mantle in the Oval Office & I put a shadow coming into the painting & it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.

indeed.

lunar shadows now loom in the alienware art gallery. not from manneqwins. stellar. très magnifique

girl-eqwins. harleqwined twin girls perhaps. *wiki* the classical appearance of the harlequin stock character in the commedia dell'arte of the 1670s - complete with batte or slapstick - a majik wand used by the character to change the scenery of the play ...

indeed ...

this comprises the new interior exterior dress-up & beauty make-over she & I designed for her:

Airea-51 GL X / HE X99 R1.5
Airenaware Design Studio Long Island, Ny

Mrs Money & Mr Monet

we're bringin' sexxxyback

- Team Industrial? -

those *** don't know how to act​

here's our ville valo v-day music

him >< digital versatile doomsday
it's all tears/drown baby @ 42min >< killing loneliness @ 57min
Now let's all jump in & get wet:

Orinoco Flow >< Enya >< WaterMark
a song dedication to Area-51's new Vanilla Sk y high-water mark
... sail away, sail away, sail away ...

Prometheian >< Phobos >< Pyrophobia
feel how hot we get​

I know Airene, shameless bump (=​

you have to stick your landing after your acrobatics both on then off of the Pommel Horse to earn a purrrfect 10

__________________________

edit for the Fall of 2015


... nevermind my junky polaroid camera, it's the thought that counts ...​

I wanted to again say you were most welcome ... & ty ... it was unforgettable ...
Have a happy birthday today young lady ...
- Cass -

______________________​

Posted by airene on 11 Jul 2015 2:12 PM​

I added some shiny new SLI 980 Ti's to Pegasus last week! EVGA Superclocked+ with backplates & of course custom cables made by the great Cass-Olé. More photos later.

________________​

Posted by Cass-Olé
on 11 Jul 2015 4:44 PM


yes indeedy you've answered everyone's qwestion there girl if SLI-Ti's work inside of Area-51 ... in DreamLand they do at least ... in fact it's a very very refreshing feeling you managed to wiggle a pair up on inside your Airea-51 for debut faster than Alienware itself can in theirs. bravo once again.

the fast road to twin pretty sli's

The story goes they were ordered 6/29, delivered by EVGA/FedEx for $8 & zero sales-tax in 3days time the following Friday - total cost? - over a hundred dolla less than a $1500 Alienware TitanX. Hoo-rah. She sent me some pics last weekend of the new cards installed & of course I had a job of my own here to do when I got early word she was expecting somethings wonderful to arrive soon, but some cables I made didn't arrive til today which held up the announcement. I believe Airene's busy this weekend & will update her photos when she can in a follow-up post. In the meantime, I'd like to load some pics of the sleeved custom-cables I made her recently to help deliver the spark to her brand spankin' new bouncin' baby Titans. I think it was last month I'd done my own black & purple set for my ALX, where on she became very enamored, qwite taken with the results & seemingly couldn't resist the urge to get her kitty-kat-klaws on some of this lovely purple passion, commissioned a few of these for herself & the Joy Ride & helped use up most of my left-over cable set materials. Oh yes. Can do Mrs Money.

The black sleeves I used are soft paracord from a CableMod Corsair set I had, purples also by CableMod sold by performance-pcs.com in d-i-y 4packs, so we bought a few packs along with some uv purple connex. The grfx-cables used up a 25foot roll of upgraded 16gauge wire from Lutro0 / MainFrameCustoms, wearing 60 gold-tips end-to-end for some added bling bling & 24carat electron transfer which are cut down into 13 & 12" pairs to help ease case-clutter; for the time-being I also made her a sized main-sata, mio 10pin & 24pin ATX which she'll install some other weekend perhaps, Haswell-E's also fed titanium-rated juice direct from the DoomsDay Machine therough the ATX cable which wears gold-tipped 16g 12v wires, while cpu & hdd satas are a certain possibility down the road to complete the few remainder cables needed for a full purple & black velvet wardrobe change & another make-over. Our project started off as a simple set of grfx-cables & from there unexpectedly blossomed into nearly a whole new case harness; for now she's auditioning what I made so far & seems to be pleased with the work. She'll have more of her photos up in the near future so for now browse the teezer pics. And I guess nope, I have not yet retired from helping to beautify her oh-so se xxxy very GL X-y AlienFriend Pegasus:

GEFORCE ??? No sir. The G-Spot-Force
*ahem*
& now they truly know what the Ti stands for in the Tigresse of Long Island
* wink *
▽

______________
​

Posted by airene on 13 Jul 2015 3:48 PM And some more photos of the baby Titans!

 

You are a rare beast, who speaks in riddles. I will spend many hours deciphering your hieroglyphics. Very jealous of your contraptions....

 

So are those spoilers safe to click? Because I have a bad feeling about them...

 

No clicking the spoilers will leave you either penniless and broke or with an insatiable urge that will never be filled... You have been warned

 

My GeForce Experience, I switched to a single monitor at 66hz until I get a dvi-splitter.

 

What do games look like on triple 1080p with a GTX 960???

 

Fine. Some games don't support Surround though (like Skyrim, but you can edit the .ini), and of course Netflix and stuff still doesn't support it. VGA is still VGA even when put through 3 DP adapters. When I get a DVI Splitter and 3 more cables it should be better. I should have just gotten one 144hz gaming monitor, in fact I realize that now. The card is nice even though it is a GTX 960 it's the MSI 100ME a limited edition card. It has 4x DP 1xHDMI 1xDVI and 1x VGA and even a micro-HDMI I think.

 

Well, my desktop has suicides after watch others desktops!

 

Nice build!

 

Finally got around to snapping some photos of the inside of my desktop, plus some photos of my new desk setup.













(using my phone's camera, so not the best quality photos for this)

 

Needs some cable management but I like it!

 

Hey, it''s much better than the setup in my previous case. Plus, I was messing around with the wiring since I put in one of my WD Reds for testing before the rest of my server parts arrive.

EDIT: oh, I see what you mean at the bottom of the case. Thanks what I get for buying a non-modular PSU

 

my custom CableMod kit is arriving tomorrow or Tuesday. i'll get some updated pix of Snow White up afterwards.

where she sits for now:

 

i think she's finally 100% done:









some GTA V action:

 

Apologies for the terrible camera (using my phone plus poor lighting) also the LEDs don't reflect anyway near as much as they do in the pics

This is the rig I've built for my partner (part list http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/v86RkT )





need to tidy up the cables at the bottom of the PC also planning on getting a clear side panel as soon as it's in stock in the UK hence the lack of side panel the stock one is ugly. also not overclocked at the mo as the sli setup just kick out far too much heat so looking to water cool it

 

looks good.

 

thank you, your build looks amazing, you've done a really good job with it. I should have an update in a few weeks with water cooling

how did you get such good, clear pic's of your build?

 

appreciate the kind words. are u going custom loop or all in one? keep us posted.

i just used my phone lol. iPotato 6S.

 

Currently, it has an all in one (h110i) I plan on upgrading to a custom loop as the amount of heat the GPUs put out warm up the case & side panel, have everything ordered other than; pump, res, tubing, fittings & coolant. It will involve a fair bit of modding so might take a little while, Dremel time also thinking of replacing mobo as its heat sinks & PCI-E slots are blue so won't look great in a red & black build lol, also trying to think of some way to hide the HDD


that's impressive for a phone

 

Time to replace the god awful stock FX-6300 cooler with another AMD cooler so I finally have a chance to take some nice shots and show my "Ghetto Poser Workstation".

​

I salvaged the case from a scrap all-in-one which had an Intel D945GTP mobo and a P4 631 in it, gutted the hardware and replaced them with a G31 mobo, a Xeon E5450, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive, quite outdated but hey, it was only £70 and at least I got a decent quad core.

Then my dad wanted my setup to refurbish the two Northwood-based towers in his office so it got a second upgrade (which becomes what the pictures show), here's the spec:

Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M LX V2
Processor: AMD FX-6300 @ 3.5GHz (Turbo Core disabled)
RAM: 2 x 4GB Kingston DDR3 PC3-10600 (low profile, 8GB total)
Graphics: Nvidia Quadro K620 2GB DDR3
Storage: 500GB 3.5" Hitachi Deskstar SATA 1 7200RPM hard drive
Power supply: 300W small form factor PSU
Display: 2 x 17" 5:4 (1280 x 1024) LCD screens
Cooling: Stock AMD cooler with copper heatpipes + 100mm case fan
Miscellaneous:
IDE DVD drive replaced with an SATA one
Floppy drive removed
No optical mouse, replaced by graphics tablet

Spent about £220 on the upgrade, not particularly powerful but it was cheap enough and fitted my need so I won't complain.

 

This is still WIP but here is where I am with the rebuild of my partners PC

Spoiler: things left to do:

Front panel need to: replace LEDs/install screen/fit USB connectors
make custom power cables
sleeve all cables
fan shrouds to cover up the mess I made with hot glue
paint inside black (need to wait for better weather)
do something about the SLI bridge
need to lap CPU heat spreader & water block
finish off overclocking it currently sat at 4.6ghz on CPU

Spoiler: pre-rebuild

as mentioned in my previous post this was getting too hot from running the two GPUs

Spoiler: Build

Removed casing & optical drive bays & cut holes for 200mm fans & 360 rad in roof & modified plastic to fit (i cant find a lot of the pics from around this time think they were on my phone that died will add them if i can)




Testing of LEDs for fans & front panel

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went into work and de-lidded the CPU


finished the hard tubing

 

This thread is reminding me that I need to un-bland my rig. And maybe think about managing my cables.

 

I just built this one the other day. Today I added a couple of PWM fans and a LED strip.

 

Love the case.

 

Thanks, like so many other pretty things, it's going to be high maintenance, I already see dust particles on it but I don't mind.

 

Totally worth it.

 

Love zalman cooler. Reminds me of starwars pod races or something

 

As an update as well as a joke, my Core 2 Quad rig is in need of repair (3 bad caps and need a better PSU) but it's Chinese New Year holiday now and shops are closed, so this is my current "desktop" for the time being:


Here's my HP t510 "fat" client: Dual core VIA Nano ULV, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Broadcom WLAN/BT combo card, Windows 10 Home activated. Runs like a dog but good enough for a low-power second desktop (~25W on max load, I doubt there's a desktop here that uses less power than this), and more importantly it's almost silent, save for hardly audible hard drive noise.

Now I'm thinking of adding some flashy disco LED lights in it, like what JAY-san was doing in his build

 

Painful but hope you can get it fixed soon

 

Put racing stripes on it too. Those add 5hp to a car, they should add at least 2ghz to a computer.

 

What's ironic is that the VIA EPIA-M920 mini-ITX mobo offers a 2GHz quad core Nano as an option. Now if I can buy one for a reasonable price...

 

That does seem a little pricey for what you get.

 

I don't have a build yet, but I plan on selling my laptop soon to help with the process.

I saw that jet has a 15% discount for the first three items new customers buy before April 1st. I'm gonna take advantage of that and get a GTX 1060 3gb for $160 for the discount and probably a NZT side-panel case as well.

 

Nice Rig!

 

That's a darn good price for a 1060. Did you have a particular case in mind?

 

Don't get the 3GB version, get the 6GB version instead. 3GB is already not enough VRAM for a load of current games (let alone future games!), and it's the worst thing in the world to be VRAM limited as you get stuttering.

 

I checked how much VRAM for the games I'm currently playing and they barely hit 1GB of VRAM usage with the settings I have for them on my 970M laptop. I'm not super big on AAA titles, nor getting the highest resolutions and settings possible.

 

Probably the NZXT MicroATX tower case.

 

Ah, in that case the 3GB makes some sense then, as long as you won't want to play more modern games coming up.

 

I try to balance out my setting in preference to performance rather than quality. I do try to get as much graphical fidelity as I can, but I also make sure some settings like AA doesn't become an eyesore by making sure it isn't too high or too low. For the most part, I can do with or without AA. The 1060 3gb is also $50 less than the 6gb variation.

 

They make solid cases, sounds like it will be a pretty good build.

 

little update to the "computer room". got my girl a new desk, a new chair, Edifier Luna Eclipse speakers, and a Logitech G900 mouse. the Sager laptop in my sig is now her's.





also gave my dad my Audio Technica ATH-M50X headphones and upgraded to the AKG K7XX's.

 

What are those AKG K7XX headphones like? I have the AKG K702, and I hadn't heard of the K7XX before, although I did read up on them just now and apparently they have more bass and are slightly more veiled the the AKG K702's. Have to say that those AKG 702's of mine were a revelation in music & gaming for me: music opened up whole new detail & nuances in instruments & voices I'd not heard before, and for fps gaming it made it so much easier to pick out sound queues & locate targets/threats. AKG K702's are very analytical and are supposed to represent the music 'as is' without any additional colour, and a lot of people don't like them for that reason, but I like that style of it.

 

i've never auditioned the K702's, so i can't really compare them. i've only read online reviews and the main differences that i could find are: the K7XX's are a collaboration with Massdrop to bring down the cost, the K7XX's are made in China instead of wherever AKG usually makes their K700's, the K702's have silver accents whereas the K7XX's are all black (which i prefer), the K7XX's ear cups are supposed to be more comfortable (they're very comfy), and the K7XX's have better bass (which i also prefer).

compared to the ATH-M50's, the K7XX's are better in about every aspect. i listen to alot of rap, country, and a little EDM so the extra bass that the K7XX's have are very much appreciated. i have always enjoyed the ATH-M50's, but the lack of bass always left me a little disappointed. it's not annoying, sound stage ruining amounts of bass like some Beats, but it's noticeable.

 

See that tower acts like a wall. Afraid your GF might look at your screen while you play multiplayer games?

K702's are made in China as well. At first they were made in Austria, but then manufacturing was moved to China. Mine no longer have that proud "Made In Austria" writing on one of the earcups and instead have a lousy "Made In PRC" sticker on the band...

 

...amongst other things . . .

 

I like both those desks, probably going to get something like the left one pretty soon, since my rolling desk is getting a little cramped.

 

Awesome setup!! Your desk looks pretty spacious even with all you have on it.. Wish I had a bigger desk but no space in the flat here lol

 

i know u have proper computer(s), so a proper computer desk is a definite must. there's nothing like being able to fully enjoy your setup.

appreciate the kind words. i got it from Eurway a long time ago.

how much room do u have to work with? i see alot of people doing DIY-type of desks now a days on Youtube.