The "Windows XP Box"
By Andy France
Posted on December 1, 2003
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I had hoped to use that back panel that came with the motherboard, but it was too high so I had to make a new one. This was handy as it allowed me to fit the power connector on to it.

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The case looked very dull in white so I painted it metallic green before starting the assembly, fitting the front panel switches and LEDs.

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Next I added the case fans. They are wired together to a single connector.

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The CD and hard drive fit in next after splitting the 40 conductor ribbon cables near the connectors after every five wires to make them more flexible. You can get away with this with low speed 40 conductor IDE cables.  [ I don't know about the faster 80 conductor cables but suspect that it would do bad things to the transmission characteristics especially if you don't keep pairs of conductors together. ] Cables take up a lot of space, especially when they go around corners.

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Before adding the PSU board I put some insulator on top of the hard drive as the PSU components are very close.

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Once the PSU was in place it started to look very cramped. The hard drive and its IDE cable completely fill the space between the PSU 12 volt in and ATX power out connectors. Fortunately the only thing left to add is the motherboard :-(

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