When building my uATX rig I decided that I wanted to give it a red theme. However the case I chose came with a blue LCD display so I bought a replacement red display and modded the case.

The temperature display included with the eyeT eCute case displays a single temperature read from the attached probe and is powered from a molex connector and unfortunately the case is only available with a blue display. So I searched and searched on google until I evenually came across something that looked suitable at Watercooling UK. At £4.99 and not incuring much postage and packaging I thought I’d give it a shot.

Unfortunately when it arrived I discovered that it was ever so slightly bigger than the pre-fitted display. I’m not adverse to a bit of cutting but the location of the display in the case meant that it’d be a very tight fit getting the larger display in underneath the lower 5.25″ slot. Nothing to loose, so out came the dremel and I cut away at the case’s front bezel.

The original display was framed completely by the plastic bezel but to fit the replacement I found that I needed to remove all of the upper part of that frame and trim down the other three sides. fortunately the new display comes with a lip all the way round to cover up any jagged edges left after cutting a suitable mounting hole. I made sure that the display was a tight fit so that it would stay in place even without the upper part of the frame.

I also decided to mod the power connection used for the LCD display. I had managed to outlaw molex connectors from my case by moving completely over to SATA and with the display being at the front of the case and the psu at the rear I didn’t want to trail a molex across the case especially as the case has three windows! My first thought was to connect to a motherboard fan connector but when I double checked the connector I realised that it was using the molex 5V rather than the 12V that I’d been expecting. So after a bit of research I decided to connect up to the 5V supplied from a spare motherboard USB header.

The USB headers have 9 pins on a (2 x 5) ten pin format as follows:

+5V o o +5V
USB1- o o USB2-
USB1+ o o USB2+
Ground o o Ground
Unused x o Ground

So it’s just a case of connecting the red wire to one of the 5V pins and the black wire to one of the ground connectors. It was then that I had a brain wave and remembered that a motherboard speaker connector used the same o x x o format, so I dug out an old speaker connector (you can normally salvage one from an old PC case) and trimmed the wires. Then I soldered the new display wires to the speaker connector wires and tidyed it off with a little heatshrink. I think it’s a neat little solution, it certainly allowed me to connect up the display with a minimum of exposed cabling visible through the windows.

I’m very pleased with the final finish especially with the Xilence 3.5″ fan controller in the bay alongside it. I’ve just got to decide now whether to replace the green power LED with a red one.

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